The last few days in Bangkok have been fantastic, but it feels like a sweet-sounding swan song to our entire journey. We've returned to the trip's birthplace, our metaphorical glasses coloured by our many weeks abroad. To tell the truth, Bangkok looks very different after being through the rest of Southeast Asia. Initially, what I found exciting yet frightening, offensive yet exhilirating, I still manage to find a way to love.
I've said to Taylor that I intend to visit back to Bangkok when I'm rich and eccentric (when, not if) although it will probably happen sooner.
On our first full day back, we ended up crossing to the other side of the dirty, dirty river that runs through Bangkok, our destination being the Forensic Medical Museum we had heard so much about. This was...probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. I've decided to attach a picture of an elephantitic scrotum I furtively snapped (photography wasn't allowed) in the less disgusting part of the museum. If you zoom in below the scrotum in the display case (about one foot in diameter) you can see the picture of the guy it actually came off of. This was actually the less empty and less disgusting part of the museum. The real treat was the area filled with pictures with captions such as "bullet wound through skull" "beheading due to car accident" and "grenade in torso". Part of the exhibit was a bloodied shirt that was the result of a stabbing death by a sharp dildo.
Needless to say, this was in Lonely Planet under the section "Quirky Bangkok". We walked around the other, safer parts of Bangkok for the rest of the day.
Yesterday, Taylor and I acquired a tailor, and had shirts made. Needless to say, these are of excellent quality that we'd never find in Canada. The tailor will actually keep our measurements for five years, so we can both now say "We have our shirts made for us in Bangkok". We also wandered the world's classiest mall. We ALSO saw 28 weeks later, in possibly the nicest theatre I've ever been in.
Today, we spent the day at Chatuchak Market, with somewhere between 10,000-15,000 individual stalls, spending an incredibly small amount of money for great stuff. I bought a sword. We picked up our shirts, and had possibly the most satisfying meal of the trip. I broke down and had a Guinness on tap with a Burger. Taylor had Laphroig and another Burger. Delicious
Then, we took a taxi/skytrain to where our bags are being stored. We walked down Khao San Road for the last time, pictured below. Taylor, my loyal Sherpa, is on the right. We have little money left, but we think we can make it home. 36 hours left!
Alright. We really appreciate the love and all, and we're glad you're following the blog closely. But what's with all this "We're so proud of you" and "We love you" stuff we see in the comments? Come on guys. You're making us look bad. Save that sort of thing for emails.
Hey there! We're back in Bangkok, and thanks to censorship I can't put up videos using youtube or metacafe. Fortunately, dailymotion is still allowed, so here we go!
I figure we've been posting lots and lots about the temples themselves, but that gives a bit of a false impression of what our time here in Siem Reap has really been like. Not that Angkor wasn't the reason we came here, of course, but there are lots of other strange things to happen over the past few days. Here are the headlines.
Monkey attacks Taylor:
That's a bit of an embellishment, but close enough. Angkor Wat is a jungle gym for small, furry mammals like this particularily evil one, and for the most part they're pretty cool until they show you their teeth. One of them had decided that he was going to camp out in a stone doorway. This happened to be a stone doorway that I wanted to get through, so I figured it would be a great opportunity to get close to a monkey. Anyways he asked me the usual questions, about my name, my quest, favourite colour, but when I couldn't answer that one he got pissed. He lunged at me, opened his mouth to reveal some hideous dentistry and hissed. I decided to back off at this point, good thing to or I'd probably be in Bangkok getting rabies jabs.
Dustin mounts tuk tuk:
I wish I had a picture of this one. It's our unspoken mission to do as many things as possible that are illegal in Canada, but okay here (I'm still recovering from my opium and coke bender last night), so in the spirit of things, Dustin decided to stand on the rear fender of our tuk tuk and ride that way, looking over the roof. Both of us have been talking for a long time about driving one, too, but when we brought that up our driver said no. And that was even AFTER the beer we bought him.
Woman throws stick at cow:
About as interesting as it sounds. But it cracked us up so hard we almost fell out of the tuk tuk.
Conversations with monks:
During our final day at the temples, we stumbled upon a group of monks smoking cigarettes and chatting on their cell phones. No alcohol, but tobacco's okay I guess. Everyone needs their vices! They were pretty keen to practice some English and spread the faith, so asked us to come sit with them, which we did for about an hour. Anywho, they'v got lots to say, which we thought was great considering the number of foreigners that must pass by every day and try to talk to them to make their experience 'more authentic'. They encouraged us to ask questions about Buddhism, they took pictures of us with their phones, and one of them bashed the monkey who was sleeping in the middle of the circle with an empty waterbottle. Here he is wearing my sunglasses.
Enough crocodiles to scare Steve Irwin:
Vita, the girl who works at our guesthouse revealed to us that for four nights we'd been sleeping within about 25'of over 150 full grown crocodiles, held in a secure pen of corrugated iron and chewing gum. They farm them, eat them, and sell shoes to tourists for outrageous prices, even though you'd never get across the border with them. Their eyes make for one crazy picture at night...I'd upload it but don't have another half hour. BAH!
Anyways, our time in Cambodia is at an end, and it's starting to feel like our trip is too, since we're heading back to Bangkok tomorrow morning, braving the dirt road from Siem Reap to Poipet. Wish us luck. God I miss street food.
"Around Angkor" is how our guidebook describes the Angkorian buildings that are a day or half-day trip from Siem Reap, Cambodia. We visited three of these today: Kbal Spean, Banteay Srei and Beng Melea by a rented tuk-tuk with our driver, Gao. For over 150 km of driving over bumpy backroads, we paid $40 (and a cold beer). But, before I get into that, first things first. In the desire to experiences temples more perfectly, I purchased a hat. This is what it looked like:
Kbal Spean
This is the location of the "River of a Thousand Lingas", Linga meaning "penis image". Now, before you start laughing like a five-year old, you have to realize that Angkorian culture did not hold similiar tittilations about looking at/making pictures of penises. In fact, at the end of the river there is a hollowed-out area where the king at the time would bathe in the running water after it had been "made holy" by running over all the penis carvings upstream. I have Western Culture to thank that I don't think I'd ever want to bathe in water that many other penises had been in, ceramic or otherwise.
When we got to the top of the 3 km path, I noticed several bumps in the river, which was pretty interesting. I hopped over a rope fence to look at them. Using guesswork, I assumed they were made to aerate the water for fish. Taylor and I argued for a bit over how old they were, but assumed they must be recent because otherwise they would have worn out. We kept going up and up, until finally we met a local who was working on maintenance, and he showed us around a little. There were some interesting carvings in the rock where we met him.
So, we walked back down the river where he pointed out the Linga. Well, guess what? All those bumps I had been stepping on earlier were actually the bases of what used to be stone penises coming up out of the river. Had we not met the guide, we would never have realized it! He showed us quite a few things, including an arrangment of linga and some other carvings that was supposed to represent a vagina. He also showed us the bath that I already mentioned. At the end of the tour, we gave him a dollar for his troubles, which seemed like the right thing to do.
Banteay Srei
Next, we went 18 km back down the road to a temple that is well known for its ornate carvings, and considered the best in the Angkorian group. It was rather small, but incredible to look around. There's not much to say here, but I can post a few interesting pictures.
This was around noon, and I looked down and realized how incredibly small my shadow was. Living at 45 degrees above the equator normally, I have actually NEVER seen it this small, so I took a picture. Doing some rough calculations in my head...We're about 11 degrees above the equator right now, and its near the summer solstice, so 15 - 25 degrees means a 10ish degree angle shadow. Science!
We ate lunch one of the various restaurants next to the temple (postcard? no bracelet? no Okay, maybe later you want one you buy from me. No!) while our tuk-tuk driver rested in a hammock.
Beng Melea
Finally, to the climax of the trip...Beng Melea. While the same size and floor plan as Angkor Wat, it has been utterly consumed by the forest, while is extremely cool and sad at the same time. We were hoping we could roam free, but a guide found us and we had to follow him, which actually wasn't too bad. He would stop me from doing things like scaling walls and other stupid ideas, but he was very informative and brought us on a tour of the temple through areas that we otherwise could have missed.
Of exploration was aided alot by a wooden walkway that was constructed in 2004 for the filming of a French movie called The Two Brothers, but we also spent a significant amound of time scaling rubble.
While most of the ceilings had caved in, there were several huge arched hallways that could be explored.
It was surprising how fully nature had taken over the entire structure. Here is me, standing where the ceiling would have been on top of one of the library, looking at nature driving back civilization.
It was a long day. Taylor rewarded our tuk-tuk driver, Gao, by giving him a beer, which he knocked back surprisingly fast.
Today was our first day, of our three day pass, wandering the ancient city of Angkor north of Siem Reap. Actually that's not totally true, we were there yesterday as well at Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset, which looked like something out of a movie. I kept being reminded of Jurassic Park, which is kind of how the whole thing felt minus the velociraptors. While we were up there we kept hearing this dull roar that made even the stones shake.
Taylor: "That must be the T-Rex"
Dustin: "You have a T-Rex?"
Taylor: "We have a T-Rex!"
It didn't take us long to realize it was the airport, which is pretty close by.
To start the day off, we did something that probably only our fathers would have done (not that we like to admit it) and got up around 4 a.m. to watch the sun rise over Angkot Wat. Well, our fathers and about 900 other tourists from Japan unloading from air-conditioned buses with cameras that made ours look like a cellphone. We had sorted out transportation the night before, and ended up renting single speed bikes from our guesthouse which we rode through the unlit streets of Siem Reap 7 or 8 km to the main wat. Stunning.
To try beating the crowds we figured we'd check out some other temples that people hadn't gotten to yet, then redo the main temple on the third day. This turned out to be a good idea, as it gave us about 20 minutes alone at a temple that turned out to be my favourite, Bayon. Let's jsut say that if Indiana Jones and Lara Croft had a kid, it would look something like this:
After that we wandered/pedalled pretty aimlessly, dodging kids selling postcards and ladies trying to seduce us with cold drinks along the way. I'm serious, they have it down to an art that's almost sexual...."Sir you want coooold drink? Mmmmm, cooooold?". Needless to say, we succumbed more than once. As for the postcard selling children, we developed a unique strategy to deal with them. When they ask us to buy, buy buy, and they don't let up, we play a little game.
"No no, you've got it all backwards. WE sell YOU postcard! Special price for you, three for $1."
This tends to perplex the little kiddies a bit, sometimes enough that they stop bothering us and other times just enough to get them to like us so they'll NEVER leave us alone. Which isn't such a bad thing, their English is often great and knowledge of Canadian statistics staggering. AT one point Dustin tried to explain to one of them what a biplane was. So now you understand why watching him talk to people almost kills me. Anyways, once we talk to them long enough we just give them a postcard of Kingston, or the 1000 Islands or something. Yep, that's us, spreading Canadiana all over the world. You can thank us later, Stephen.
Here's one of the temples we fund along the way. Lets just say that if Indiana Jones and Lara Croft had a kid, it would look something like this:
So that's our day, all 12 hours of it. Temple of the day? Well, Angkor Wat, I guess. Because frig. It's Angkor Wat. Anyways it's past 8:30 now, and my body decided it was bedtime hours ago. That and we've got another early start tomorrow, we're planning to hijack a tuk tuk and make the driver take us to far away temples. If that fails I guess we could just pay him. More to come (uploading pictures in uber slow here)!
Goodness Dustin that was the strangest post we've had yet. I would have liked to add some pictures here but the computer says i have to be an administrator to plug anything in.
As close as this place is to Vang Vieng, it makes me feel a little bit better about it because the whole IDEA of being here in the first place is to do some serious vegitating in the sun. Yes, in the sun, in fact yesterday, for the first time in my life, I intentionally lay on a little chair thing in the sun, for the purpose of becoming less white. Of course that's after I used about half a bottle of sunscreen, so not alot really happened, but I can say I did it. I ended up being a real beacon for the ladies wandering the beach offering massages, all they wanted to do was rub their hands all over my beautiful white, white, oh so white skin. I'm glad I made their day.
Anyways, without further adieu, this is why I like when Dustin pays.
He's a bit like an ATM. You know, it's so EASY to take money out when you don't notice your account declining, or at least not until you check your statement/pay him back. But it's still nice, and probably makes me drink more.
I especially like it when Dustin signs into whatever guesthouse we're staying in under his name. That way they've got his passport number, not mine, so that when they catch us stealing towels and beer glasses and tell customs about it, it's him that gets held up. In fact I've generally made a point of using entirely ficticious passport numbers when I do things like rent a bicycle for the day. Not that I'm totally dishonest, but that way if it gets stolen or whatever only my conscience is at stake, not my visa.
But the number one reason that I enjoy letting Dustin pay for things is because I get the biggest kick out of watching him communicate with the locals. Which inevitably happens when he goes to pay for something. Let's face it, the dude talks pretty quickly and doesn't really slow down when he's trying to explain something. Fine with me, but it's totally priceless to see the looks on these poor people's faces when he's trying to explain Queen's frosh customs to a waiter somewhere. Or asking market vendors "Will this break?" when he's about to buy something. Reminds me of Quantum II with Gabe the Babe. There's alot of nodding going on, and everyone seems very happy, but very little understanding is actually acheived. Aaaah, Dusto, how I'll miss that in a few weeks.
So that's it. Feels a bit like the trip's winding down (boohoo!), and in a day or two we'll be heading to Siem Reap to check out the temples of Angkor. Today we're hopefully catching a boat to an island somewhere to do some snorkelling around a reef. Or so we're told. Alot of the boat rides include something they like to call 'Barraccuda BBQ' at the end, which can mean one of two things. Either it's just a name that sounds good, and we'll actually be chowing down to a full sized barraccuda. Which is great, except it means that they're in the water too...
In other news (dear Tom, Jack and Mike), I have just finished reading my first book. It's called 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman' and it wasn't very good.
Wake up. 6 am. Aircon, yes! Go shower. Towel off. Look outside on balcony. Smelly city, yuck! - Check on Taylor, in shower - Lots to pack! Hard things between soft, bag's been getting bigger. - Both Awake, ready to go. Outside. Find tuk-tuk < 10 seconds. Show bus tickets Haggling $2 $1 $1.5 okay. - Drive is 250 m. We were ripped off. - On the Mekong Express to Sihanoukville! Everyone bows put hands together, I feel underdressed not shaved. Bus has aircon, yes! - All types of English get on. - We leave late, as usual.
Smell - smell - smell - sleep - sleep - sleep - mountains? no, hills - sleep - sleep - sleep - bad Southeast Asian Karaoke skipping VCD - sleep sleep sleep - Awake! - Finish reading Huck Finn, good book - we stop to have holy water splashed on the bus. huh? - sleep sleep sleep - Ocean! Off bus!
tuk tuk? No! Moto? No. Moto? No! It 3 kilometers. No! No! No! We walk. Ooh, not good foh me suh. - Gotten very good at rejection. - Walk 1 km, stop. Hungry. - At Happy Herb Pizza we have non-happy soups - Full - Find two motos < 10 seconds. $1.50 to guesthouse? Fine. - vroom!
Monkey Republic? Free beer with check in? - We will walk around - Too expensive - Too far up a hill - too sketch - down dirt road, ocean getting closer! - too fancy - too fancy too! - just right - $5 for 20 m from the Gulf of Thailand - drop huge bags
Walk along the shore - 3 oceans touched for me! - stop somewhere - try to explain we want a drink made inside a coconut with umbrella, no good - drink anyway - I try to explain braces, Taylor laughs - Children stop by while we drink - You wan bracelet suh? Wanna painting suh? You buy from me! You buy from me! Play a game suh? Tic Tac Toe. You win, you get bracelet free. You lose, you buy from me? No. No. No. - Woman come by too - You want massage sir? Mista want guide book? Woman with babies and no social net. Sorry, no. - They all leave us alone. - We walk some more - White Russian, Two Angkor Beer, Pool with Cambodians - offered weed again, no thanks - walk back. - Beautiful thunder. Not feeling so good. Taylor looks at the time.
We eat supper, watch lightning. - Pretty destruction - I go to lie down on warm bed. No aircon! yuck! Old fan over bed at max. I feel sick Get up lie down yuck get up lie down go to toilet - I lose the food poisoning lottery and vomit - power goes out, wheres a flashlight. I get Taylors and drop it, breaking bulb. Find LED flashlight Good. - Go and finish vomiting - yay! feel better - Hose down bathroom with shower head - Taylor: you okay dude? - I've been better. I remember where we are - restless sleep - Power comes on again - Power goes off - I here something and throw on the lights. Nothing. - Lights off again. - There it is again. We get out the flashlight - Rats on the Roof! We check for holes - none - our toes are safe. Power comes on again. Sleep. - 8 am - I feel like shit - Power goes off, Power comes on. 10 am. Taylor already gone, go to breakfast. - Nice Cambodian waiter practices English on me. - Children, women come by. see above. No No No thanks. - Stumble back across beach - Sleep 4 hours - Taylor's back with cheap genuine fresh papayas - We go to leaky porch, watch best lightning ever seen, play card game we made up with waterproof cards - French people come by, we practice notre Francais mal - Feel like shit again - Go lie down - read book - Write this - Be better tommorow - two more days here.
As I guess everyone knows by now, we've left Laos behind and are now in the smelly, smelly city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The main thing we wanted to do here was check out the historical Khmer Rouge sites, which we'd planned on doing yesterday, but I spent yet ANOTHER day in bed sick with whatever the region has to offer. Thank you bacteria, how I'll miss you when I'm in Canada. Dustin has still remained completely healthy, lucky dude.
The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison are pretty well must sees if you're at all interested in the short but brutal history of the region. We hired a tuk tuk for the day, his name (the driver, not the tuk tuk) was some linear combination of Magh, Matt, and Mag. You never know, their names are so dissimilar from American names that there's no hope of guessing. He was a cool guy, and I actually think we got a bit of a deal? Though I don't think that concept exists here. After trying desperately to take us to the shooting ranges, he first took us to the Fields. Shooting ranges are these things that the army has set these up to rope in sick puppy tourists enamoured with the non-existent legal system, and who want to lob grenades or shoot rocket launchers at live cows for about $200 a pop. Anything to make a buck eh? Anyways...
The whole day was such a strange superposition of violence and calm, I don't know. I mean the Killing Fields are really beautiful, if you don't look under your feet and notice that you're walking on scraps of clothing and shards of human bone that stick out from the dirt. Birds tweet, there's lots of shade and even a nice breeze. It's pretty morbid. Ideas are very, very dangerous things.
We bought our driver a cold drink (what can we say, he was such a nice guy!) and off we went to Tuol Sleng, or S-21, which is a converted high school literally in the middle of town. Pol Pot made it the region's 'premier' detention centre for anyone that the Khmer Rouge saw as counter-revolutionary, which was essentially everyone. Anyone educated, religious, business owners, essentially everyone who wasn't a sheep that is. Same feeling as before. Birds sing, the grounds are fairly nice and well maintained, but as soon as you get inside and start looking at the cells, the pictures on the wall, and the devices you get a better idea as to what really went on here. The inmate/death toll is unreliable and depends where you get it from so I won't mention it. Gross.
I know this is a short post but there isn't much I can say to do justice to the sites. They're pretty well the grittiest places I've been on Earth. The details are pretty graphic so ask us when we get home.
Salut! We're in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, before flying out tomorrow morning. The nickname that this town has acquired, 'Little Paris', is true right down to the last detail. Here are some things that make this city French:
Expensive bakeries. You know those times when all you want for breakfast is a two-dollar cup of coffee? Well this is the right town for that. Despite the price, though, I don't mind paying a little extra somethin' somethin' for real coffee. I've been downing sludge for the past three weeks since Nescafe has some kind of monopoly...everything is instant, even when it's advertised as authentic Lao coffee, something we had heard was going to be awesome.
A little version of the Arc du Triumphe. What Paris would be complete without one? Actually, what CITY would be? It's called Patuxai, and it's pretty impressive from far away. Unfortunately it gets uglier as you get closer, a fact that the locals are well aware of. There's even a little blurb talking about its construction, which refers to the structure as an unimpressive, concrete monster. Talk about national pride. Apparently it was built with concrete donated by the USA to built a new runway, but I guess the truck didn't make it all the way to the airport.
Wine shops galore. I think I stopped in four of them before finally selecting a nice vintage of no more than a few dollars. Yep. I'm pretty cheap, I guess, but didn't want to overspend considering I wasn't sure if we even had a way to open it. Turns out that the guesthouse lent us their corkscrew, so we moved the furniture outside to our posh fourth floor balcony and went to town. We had also purchased some fruit, a baguette, cheese, and some cold meat to make a dinner of it. We abolished the wine and emptied the minibar in no time flat (yes, a MINIbar, we're living it up in this town), before going in search of more beer. I'll save you the rest of the details, but we ended up spending some time with a local at a restaurant named Chen, and I asked some ladyboys if they were men. I already knew the answer.
Ahem, so let me get back on some kind of chronological track. Our first night in Vientiane consisted of me hanging out at a French restaurant which turned out to be waaay too upscale for a smelly backpacker like myself, and Dustin running around on some kind of drunken scavenger hunt called the Hash House Harriers. You can read about it, or ask him. I noticed pretty immediately that while all the servers at the restaurant have obviously been told about western etiquette, it isn't in their culture and so the application is less than subtle. Forced actually. For example: usually when you're ready to order at a restaurant, you close your menu nonchalantly and the waiter comes over. Here, I had figured out what I wanted, and closed the menu only to be pounced on my people trying to take my order. They'd been circling like hawks, waiting for the bat-signal I guess.
But my run in with high society didn't end there. I was looking to get a foot massage at some point, so stopped into this little parlour on the corner near where we're staying. As soon as I opened the door, everyone in the lobby immmediately stood up and bowed to me! Pretty nice, I thought. I haven't decided how I want to abuse the system yet, but I think I'd like to go in and out the door until they stop standing and just look at me.
The next day we saw alot of the main touristy things, including Patuxai and Pha That Luang, the national monument to concrete and gold paint. I was a little surpried that for such an iconic temple, it wasn't more impressive or better maintained. But it was nonetheless incredible to see, in person, the same thing that's been starting at me from the cover of my guidebook for ten months.
We've also been spending a fair bit of time wandering, in true Taylor and Dustin fashion, through streets, shops, and the huge market in the centre of town called Talat Sao. It isn't as big as the one in Bangkok, certainly, but pretty huge nonetheless, and filled to the brim with silk scarves, cell phones and opium pipes. Man, some of those pipes are so amazing that both Dust and I have thought about taking up opium smoking, so we'd have a reason to buy one! I also had to fight off the urge to buy a cellphone. It's good I've got someone to talk some sense into me.
So I'll leave you with that. Next stop, CAMBODIA, and with it our return to the world of budget guesthouses and cheap food. Well that is, if we make it. Lao Airlines has the worst safety record in the world, I think, but has really stepped up since the new millenium. God save the Queen.
Dustin, Dustin Dustin. While I suppose that ANY English spelling of Vang Vieng would technically be incorrect, the standard is Vang Vieng, not Viang Vieng. Silly Dustin-poo.
Welcome to Viang Vieng, the town suddenly brought forth into a modern world by an influx of backpackers. Its honestly pretty disgusting. To find a place for dinner we simply spent ten minutes trying to find a place that wasn't playing Friends or some other American Television show overly loud, which led us too...
The Ooh La La Cafe, owned by the tiny yet energetic and friendly Hula, the owner of the place who used to work at one of the bigger bars. He suddenly became our best friend. Earlier that day we also met another San Fransiscan named Dan (shout-out) who has been hanging out with us for the last few days.
One thing leads to another among friendly and adventurous people and suddenly I find myself the next day gripping Hula from behind on his motorbike heading out to the annual "Rocket Festival" in Ban Phatang [N19deg04'22.7" E102deg25'47.9"], a TINY village 12 km north of Viang Vieng. Taylor and Dan are on another rented motorbike. Two pairs of aussies are also part of the caravan as we travel through beautiful countryside, with the weather changing every 5 minutes.
And suddenly we're at the Rocket Festival! Hula takes us for a walk down the road to a place where we imbibe Beer Lao, pictured here: meanwhile, in the background there is a sense of foreboding excitement as temporary bamboo structures are being erected to launch the rockets from.
As we're finishing up our Beer Lao, the sound of chanting comes down the street, and our group is greeted by the friendliest people I've met on the trip yet.
Holy hotcakes batman! These Laotions are suffering from some sort of horrible skin condition, in addition to their drunken revelry. Well, that's actually wrong. They are covered in, what I think, is axle grease, a flame retardent for the operators who will actually be climbing up and lighting the giant rockets off. It actually reminds me alot of the gentian tradition back at Queen's. You decide:
After some friendly touching, we were all covered in axle grease too, and the parade to the rocket launching/party site began.There was chanting, random instruments, offers of lao low whisky. You really should have been there.
Here's a good picture of our group. Hula is the Laotian guy (obviously) on the left. Here's a picture of Dan. And here's a video!
Alot of the party itself defies description. There were about 10 white people there, and at least 400 Lao. There was live music in Lao, a dance floor for about 100 in the open air, Beer Lao all over the place, and rockets going off once a minute. Let me explain a little bit about these rockets. They are cylinders about one foot and a half long, and two inches in diameter. They are tied to the top of eight foot bamboo poles, which act as launching support, which means a way of holding them safely away from yourself. Tied to the rockets themselves are tiny flowers, but I'm not sure why.
They are rockets, not fireworks, so they just shoot straight up. Actually, they are supposed to shoot straight up, but this never seemed to happen. Usually they'd corkscrew off into the jungle somewhere, and, a few times, even explode right on the launch pad. Its amazing the fun you can have when no one cares about safety standards!
Several BeerLao later (remember these are big bottles, so "several" really means "fourteen") I found myself and some of the other white folk on the dance floor. Laotian freestyle dancing goes very well with the rest of the Laotian lifestyle, meaning it requires very little effort and looks like it. It involved holding your hands out front of yourself, limply, and shifting from foot to foot. I am not exagerating this at all. If you feel creative, swivel your wrists - but for the love of god don't exert yourself. I found it pretty easy then to impress the four Laotian grandmothers I ended up dancing with. I would have whipped out the lawnmower or shopping cart, but I think that would have shocked everyone at the party; I was also thinking that would take too much effort.
Finally, it was time for us to go back to our world. We stopped 3 km north of Viang Vieng at one of the stops along the tubing route. It was a bit of a shock, because we went back to 98% white people. I'm getting lazy, since this is a long post, so I'll just say that there was a 30 foot tall swing over the water. I followed the simple procedure.
1. Climb swing 2. Swing into water 3. Swim to Shore 4. GOTO 1
Here is Taylor performing #2:
This happened several times, and then we headed back. Our day was over.
Today, we went to a Cave south of Viang Vieng called Tham Chang [N18deg54'34.0" E102deg26'32.3"]. Here is me swimming in some cavewater: Unfortunately, even though it is "the thing" in Viang Vieng, I'll probably miss out on tubing this time around. We're off to Vientaine tommorow.
Dustin's actually sitting next to me making a real post, you know, pictures and all, but I felt I had a few things to comment on. We're in Vang Vieng, as you probably know, which is a major pilgrimage stop for the young and uncommitted. I'll leave the description to Dustin.
On the drive here, which, by the way, was once serious cuisinart of a bus ride, I couldn't help but notice all the water supplies in the villages we passed, marked conspicuously with 'World Vision Australia' or 'Fench Red Cross'. Now I don't know about you, but when I think World Vision I think infomercials and washed up celebrities, pleading the general, and generally apathetic public to send a dollar a day, or sponsor a child or whatnot. But I certainly don't think of the regions in the world that need World Vision support as travel destinations. To me, they are tiny, inaccessible villages with no water or medical supplies, and their total isolation is of course ultimately their downfall; nobody cares about what nobody has any contact with. Yet here we are, a bunch of walking white wallets, aboard a bus labelled 'VIP' because it has air conditioning and a toilet, driving through all these places you see on the tube. Still, though, for some reason I'm strangely uncompelled to jump out of the bus and start digging ditches or handing out all my money. I dunno, I don't really have any solutions, I figured I'd just throw it out there. I suppose you have to live it to understand it, but until then (which will never happen) I'll probably maintain the same attitude towards poverty. What possible good could my lone, American dollar, do for the global problem of poverty? Nothing, well almost nothing, but certainly not enough to justify my loss of a dollar. Call me callous.
Anyways.
Vang Vieng is known for it's almost complete lack of Lao culture, with all kinds of backpackers sipping 'happy' shakes and mushroom cocktails, while watching episode upon episode of Friends and other American sitcoms. So my first impression is that the town is a real dive, which is also the opinion that I had been lead to believe by corresponding with those far better traveled than myself before coming here. After a few days here, my opinion is slightly changed, and I think I understand the draw here:
It's like home. Well sorta, in fact it isn't anything like home, but it has similar ammenities and luxuries. It's the ultimate relaxation, vegetation and intoxication mecca in all of Southeast Asia, it seems at least. All of the businesses cater to exactly what it is that makes Western people comfortable. For example, almost all of the bars and cafes have T.V.'s in them, which as I mentioned, air comedies and whatnot, but also the newest movies and music nightly. You can even bring your iPod and play it over the bar's sound system (which is bigger than mine, I'm sad to say). That and the tables are designed to be lounged around on pillows. So all these places are full of of people sipping drinks, eating food, and watching T.V. while their muscles atrophe. Paradise eh?
If you answered 'no', you're actually wrong. Seriously, isn't that the definition of luxury? YES! And that's exactly what all these places seem to capitalize on. So I don't blame them, not at all, and if there was a Vang Vieng outside Kingston I'd spend all my time there. In fact I don't even blame the patrons, I just feel that they've slipped down a very easy slope to slip into. But this is Laos, and while it would be so easy, so enjoyable, so within my comfort zone to catch the showing of 300 tonight while sipping on Beerlao and gorging myself on tropical fruits, I've got more cultural things to do.
It's quite easy actually. At least I know which restaurant I won't be returning to. Suddenly Death appeared and pointed a bony finger to my plate and said "The chicken soup!" and that was it. Tell me you guys have seen The Meaning of Life. So ya, I was totally bedridden for all of yesterday, and am on the mend but not totally 100% yet. It was bound to happen sometime, right Anna? Luckily our room has a western 'style' toilet, the answer to my prayers in times of need. Man, these Asian toilets for the most part require they own post. Most of them have no garbage can, no T.P, and no bum gun (you'll have to look that one up), just a hole in the ground, a bucket of water and your own creativity. Blah. Anyways enough about that.
Looks as if we're leaving Luang Prabang tomorrow, our stay was a bit shorter than we'd planned but we're going to tack on the beaches in Cambodia to our trip. Both Dust and I took a walk up Phousi hill to look out over the city, mind you on separate occasions. What a nice little town! We've got some nice little photos too.
There's also one of a flower sitting inside a bomb, should have been included in our last post. Seems to me like the ultimate way to say "Up yours America, is that the best you can do?". Good for them.
Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned sickness, I stayed in bed while Dustin and a friend of ours Larry took off to Kwang Si waterfall, something I was really looking forward to. Since I wasn't there, but have the pictures, I'll do my best to narrate. Here's one of me curled up in a ball on my bed, sweating:
At this point I had just woken up and was trying desperately to rehydrate myself without actually sitting up, wishing I was dead:
Aaah, must have been nice. But there are waterfalls in Vang Vieng, our next stop, so I don't have to go totally without.
This "take only photos, leave only footprints" thing is bullshit. Every time I go to a new place, it is changed by my presence. Pak Beng (between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang) wasn't a "cute mountain village", it was a well-oiled tourist valve. I doubt "Hill tribes" that its advertised you can see on treks have any sort of traditional lifestyle whatsoever, other than making nice silk for the falang (foreigners). Hypocritically, though, I'm going through these processes, except for the trekking thing, and making worse the situation that I am complaining about.
Its not the Pak Beng was not a "cute mountain village" as I expected - its rather that the footprint I feel I'm leaving is so BIG, mostly in terms of spending power. I know I wouldn't feel so bad in Europe, where I wouldn't be as noticeable of a leaky wallet.
In Bangkok, I'm just going to go ahead and say that EVERY Thai that talked to me was trying to get something out of me. Chiang Mai was a little better. Luang Prabang is a little better still, but COME ON. I've met tons of cool Westerners (including Australia, I guess) but I haven't really met any Thais or Laotians. The few people I have met, or at least have had an amicable relationship with, were the people I had just given money.
Yes, I'm comparably rich to these people. When you're poor in this place, you're REALLY poor - they don't have the same social net that we do. But, dammit. I'm here to experience culture, not get cheap beer. However, that's what some people are here for when the price for a big bottle of Beer Lao is 8,000 kip, less than a Canadian dollar. (That's correct, all those zeroes are supposed to be in there; wicked inflation)
Anyway, I had a wicked desire to get out of the Tourist area and meet some Lao, so I rented a nice mountain bike for $5/day and headed east on the closest road I could find. (This was on Monday) Very quickly, I was in the countryside, and it was cool. Everyone would say 'Saibaidee' to the sweaty white guy on the bike. I got to see non-tourist architecture, which was pretty cool. The french colonialism shows, with a roadside looking like
The experience was so good I got Taylor to grab a bike and go out today. We were gone for 5 hours, heading south at random. The handheld GPS is a great security blanket - we can lose ourselves but as long as there is a sky overhead we can find our way home. We rode for what seemed a REALLY long time and finally, as we were about to turn back, saw a sign that said "Waterfall 3.2 km" along a dirt road. Well, we had to do it, so we did. It was hilly to the extreme, and we ended up walking our bikes most of the way. 300 m from the actual waterfall was a guy in a tiny bamboo booth taking 10,000 kip for tickets. Well, we had come most of the way. In broken English, we found out that the falls were pretty low now, and would be at their prime in October. When we got there, the waterfall was nice, but not really the highlight. You know what was?
UNEXPLODED BOMB SHELLS!
Supposedly Laos is one of the most-bombed countries in the world, all during the Vietnam war. There are landmines all over the place if you go too far off the beaten trail - I think I heard 400 Laos die per year this way. I was secretly hoping that I would find something like this, but I never expected it would actually happen.
The bombs where 250-500 pounds, empty of any explosive material and just lying there on the side of the road. There was some construction nearby, so I assumed that they had been moved out of the way. Looking at the pieces of iron they are made of, its disgusting how much explosive force they must have had to blow even the cases apart.
The coords where we found them is: [N 19deg50'13.4" E102deg07'52.0"]
I decided to get serial numbers off the bombs, in some crazy hope that they would mean something to someone:
I felt pretty disgusted by the time I went through this. However, for the sake of satire, I had to do one more thing. Here's my impression of Slim Pickins' at the end of Dr. Strangelove:
Taylor says this is the most tasteless thing he's ever seen.
