100 Kip for your Thoughts

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.