Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Been Listening to Tiger Army lot’s lately, specifically the song “The Long Road”, great stuff. I just landed my self in Vientiane, the capital of Laos after spending a day in Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng was an interesting little town that seemed to be based around tourism and tubing down the local river. It kind of reminded me of Nam Th but with tonnes of foreigners, lots of restaurants with pretty much the exact same menu, a whole slew of bars serving “happy shakes” and absolutey no charm. There was some nice caves in the area and I biked out to one of them and got a tour of it. It was a pretty cool cave going about 1km into the mountain side with tonnes of really cool stalagmites, some of which you could knock on in different areas and make different sounds. I got a tour of it, or more like was taken on a tour of it by a couple locals with flash lights. I was grateful that they were taking me on it and thought it was going to be like $1-2 for it but was a bit shocked afterwards when they came asking for $6 for each me and this Aussie I was with. The Oz talked him down to $5 but I walked away a bit pissed off as they didn’t say or post the price before hand. I’m sure I would have paid for it as going by myself would have been a bad idea but it was just a little annouying. But in the end it’s only $$$.

Luang Prabang
Before Vang Vieng though, I had to force myself away from the great town of Luang Prabang. I guess we all have our chill out towns, places that we get stuck in while travelling and stay there longer than expected, well LP was my town. I spent 10 days there and 12 nights before I forced myself to leave and already I’m regretting leaving thinking that I should have stayed there for x-mas. I kept putting off going, always finding more things to do. The last couple days there I rented another bike and headed out to Tad Sae waterfall, which this time I’ll took pictures of. I also took another cooking class, this time in Laos cuisine, went to the museum, which was actually really good and just chlled out at my favorite cafe Morning Glory. The place was owned and run by a guy from the states who knew his coffee. The shakes they had there also rocked and although I never ate there, from what I was told by others was dam good.

Morning Glory Cafe

My View from MG

Christmas
Thought I’d just touch base on this again. After some thought I’ve realized why Christmas doesn’t matter to me out here. Family. Christmas to me is about family and without my family here it’s nothing but just another day. Without Mom, Dad, Tiff, Booboosh & Mike, Brad, The Smiths and every last Hynek, it’s nothing. Same goes for New Years. Without my friends New Years is just another day, I highly doubt I’ll drink or do anything exciting. I’ll probably stay up to 12:05 and then go to bed. Without Mike & Erin, Colby & Steph, Sean and Jesse it’s again, just another day.

About as Christmas as it’s going to get

Random Thoughts and observations
I see a lot of local people here watching WWE, it’s pretty popullar. Everywhere from Nam Th to Vientiane I’ve seen people wearing and buying WWE shirts and watching it on TV.
There’s lots of travellers travelling with their kids. Children from toddlers to teens. Anyone can travel.
Seemingly everyone no matter how poor looking they appear to be has a mobile phone. Welcome to the digital age.
Roads in the north of Laos reminded me of the trains that go through the Rocky mountians and have to circle and loop around the mountains to make it through. You can be driving and see a road way across this gorge and like 10 minutes later be on it and looking up or down on where you just were.
Asians love Red Bull and their version of it M-150, at least I think it’s their version of it. Don’t remember seeing it Canada or Australia. They drink that shit by the truck load.
Berr Laos is a very very popullar beer here and from what I’m told is really good. If you can try it ever back home give it a swig.
One thing that I’m really missing and finding a bit hard is variety in food. I’ve gone form one extreme to the next; I’ve either had to pretty much always cook for myself to the opposite where I’m always having to eat out. A lot of the restaurants here serve a lot of the same thing and I’ve seen many that have the exact same menu as as place down the street. Things can get very borring especially if you’re in a town with limited market stalls and street food and finding restaurants that serve some of the local foods and cuisine can be a bit of a challenge.

So like I say, I’m in Vientiane now but I think I’m only going to spend like a day here if possible, depending it I can get my Cambodian visa sorted and then just on a bus all in the same day. There’s not too much of an appeal here for me but I’m sure that’s mainly because I really liked Luang Prabang so much and find it doesn’t compare. From here I’m off to the south to a place called Paske which is suppose to be coffee country and from there either up to some waterfalls or down to near the Cambodian border to a place called 4000 Island which is suppose to have quite the draw.

Peace
Troy

Cheapness
So I’m sure most people out there, especially my family, all think I’m a cheap bastard.  Yeah I’ve done some odd things, stayed in some pretty dodgy places and walked an extra couple miles in OZ to save a couple bucks but that was OZ and as I’ve said many many many times before Australia is an expensive place to travel.  I could have easily let loose the purse strings a little but I know I would have quickly piddled my money away.  I did loosen the strings up quite a bit at the end of my time there and actualy spent just about the same amount in the last month as I had the rest of my time in the country.  All it takes is a little bit of a relax and it’ll get ya.  It’s like travelling on a Laos bus with diharrea; one loosening of the sphinctor and your done.  So I’m now in SEA and I’ve let the strings dangle.  In Thailand I held onto them a little bit and watched that I didn’t go over board keeping my budget around $25US/day and still had a great time.  Here in Laos it’s just stupid cheap and I’m averaging less than $20US/day without giving a dam as to where/what I eat, sleep, drink and buy, it’s great.  It’s such a huge release coming from OZ to spent only like $3US a night and get a clean room with fan, clean sheets, soft bed and towel compared to getting a bunk bed for $20 a night in a dingy hostel down under.

After much riddicule and teassing from familly and I started thinking that perhaps I was a cheap bastard but after a couple weeks here in Laos, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not cheap and in fact, most other travellers out here are the cheap bastards.  The shit that I’ve seen other people try to pull in order to save a dollar is just pathetic, like I’m talking just stupid and low.  There is a great night time market here in town full of amazing crafts and handmade items and the crap that people try to pull with the locals is just discpicable. Hagling with these local people over one dollar is a scene I see on a daily basis here.  The other day I saw this one girl talk a vendor down to 20 000 kip ($2US) for these hand made tops.  The girl then wanted 4 and started to insist that she get an other discount on top of the one already given to her because she was buying so many.  She started to get really upset and insisting that she get all 4 at a cheaper price.  I just about stepped in and gave the girl the dollar she was struggling to haggle out of these people.  She must have been on welfare or something.  It’s scenes like that that I see and overhear on a regular basis here.  People saying how such and such is really expensive when really it’s $5.  I’m they’ve lost more than that in their couch at home or spent that much on a simgle drink in a bar back from the gutter they crawled out of, it’s just ridiculous.

The local people here are poor, dirt poor.  I hear the going rate is $1-$1.5 a day so a buck goes a long long way.  I’ve bought a couple things at the market, a shirt for a whole $2 and these nice drawings made by a local art student for $3.  When I was looking at the drawings earlier in the day I asked how much it was, $1.5 for one.  I only had 5000kip ($0.50) on me and told the girl that I’d be back later.  As I started to walk away she dropped the price to $1 for special discount for me but told her I only had 5000kip and would be back later and from there she again dropped the price to the 5000kip I had on me.  I insisted that I’d be back but just seeing her desperation and the look on her face of how much the money meant to her makes me wonder how a lot of these people can sleep at night when they haggle like it’s their last dime and turn around and blow $1 on a Beer Laos without even a second thought. 

So no, I’m not cheap, here at least.  Compared to many other I practically toss the money around here.  I stayed in a place that was deemed “expensive” by many others at a whopping $5 a night and ate at a restaurant for the outrageous price of $4.  There’s a difference in travelling and living on a budget and just being an asshole.

Christmas
So Christmas is upon us again and again, another Christmas away from home and to be honest I really don’t care.  It’s a million miles away.  Last year X-mas was pretty much the polar opposite as to how I would have normally of spent it and this year I’m in a place that doesn’t celebrate it at all so as you could imagine the “X-mas spirit” really isn’t my little vocabulary right now and again.  I don wonder where I’ll be though…wow 10 more days.  Have you finished your shopping yet?  Suckers.

The Weather
Hot out today.  Hot out yesterday.  Probably be hot out tomorrow.

Luang Prabang
Still here after 8 day’s and will be here for a couple more.  I’m really liking Luang Prabang, great place to just chill out in nice cafes with lots of options for biking and other little sights around town.  Today I went to the museum, tomorrow I’m taking a Laos cooking class and from there It’ll be off to Vang Vieng for a couple days or so I say.  There’s plenty of tourists here and that would usualy make me not too fond of the place but it doesn’t bother me at all.  I think maybe because it’s such a quiet town that the loud and obnoxious tourists don’t stick around and instead head to Vang Vieng.  Vang Vieng is suppose to have some great out door activities, climbing, biking and hiking but it’s also a bit of a backpacker ghetto where us foreigners seem to swarm, get drunk, go tubing on the river, take drugs and watch Friends.  I’ve heard many a mixed things about the place but the best thing about travelling is that if you don’t like the place you can just leave.  Hell you can do that even with the place you live.  I was going to skip Vang Vieng thinking that I wasn’t going to have enough time on my visa but decided to extend my visa for a couple more weeks.  I really like Laos.  The people are great, the food could be a bit better but the coffee makes up for it, especially at this one cafe I found, which is owed by a guy from the US.  I talked coffee with the guy for like an hour.  He know’s his stuff and his place poured an amazing cup.  To answer your question Jesse, the launguage barrier isn’t that big.  Most people speak no to not that good of english but you make it buy using hand gestures and pigeon Enlish and Laos.  The only people really interested in practicing English are most often the novice monks and other young people but in saying that I remember reading that the medium age of the country is 18.9 years of age.

Laos Good
Troy

Laos, what can I say...You have images of this communist regime and thrid world country coming over the border and have no idea what to expect after coming from the adults playground which is Thailand. It's only across a river ... [Continue reading this entry]