Lazy days on the Mekong...
After a frantic start in Auckland, I managed to negotiate the finer points of air travel and its respective beaurocratic red tape, and made it to Bangkok. It was a reasonable flight, in spite of the gibbering Australians sitting next to me. I looked like a swollen dumpling when I stumbled off. Bangkok airport is super-uber flash, it looks like a spaceship and has these walkways that would be escalators but are just like walking on a moving floor (crap description I know). I decided that they were the height of laziness until I realised just how fucking far I had to walk! For all mine (and mother's) paranoia, customs didn't even look twice at me. I guess I should be more worried going back to Auckland with all my smoking implements, ha ha.
Mother was right, after the 14 hour air conditioned transit tunnel I had become accustomed to, I stepped outside the airport and the heat nearly knocked me on my arse. And the smell. Bangkok smells like rotten cabbage, among other things. I actually thought when we landed that one of the Australians had farted, but I guess that's what people think when they arrive in Rotorua.
I found Michael pretty easily, and after that we Taxi'd to Khao San Road, the aforementioned backpacker's hellbroth where we were staying. It was too dark outside to make out any real evidence of life, but I was more interested in the taxi driver's vast collection of buddhist paraphernalia hanging\glued to every available space, along with a picture of the Thai king taped over the rear view mirror which worried me slightly. In fairness, Khao San probably wasn't the best introduction to Thailand, it's more of a gutter than a road, a 24 hour market crawling with opportunistic tuk tuk drivers (absolutely none of whom can be trusted, ever), extremely drunk farang, and a lurid haze of neon lighting. Immediately, locals from 7-70 were chasing us, being very obviously green farang (farang is foreigner, generally white), hawking their wares and making bizarre and utterly unrealistic offers. It is exhausting after five minutes, but also probably very invigorating if you haven't just stepped off a plane.
After a fitful sleep - the aircon seemed to have a mind of its own - we stumbled out to a dead Khao San. Relatively dead, anyway. We found what promised to be the "best amelican breakfast ever", and it was pretty damn good. In fact, I think throughout Thailand, Laos, and probably the rest of SE Asia, they probably make better scrambled eggs than I do. I am ashamed to say that I haven't tried much local food yet (and I'm nearly at the end of my trip), but it's difficult to be adventurous when they do western food so well. On the recommendation of a local, we Taxi'd to "MBK", expecting it to be some vast craft market, but what we found was a 7 storey (probably more), air conditioned shopping.. city. I have never, ever, seen so much crap in my life. And so cheap! It took us about 2 hours just to find a sheet.. and the escalators were arranged in such a way that I'm convinced they were trying to trap us. I think there were more going up than down.. and everyone was selling the same stuff! I have found that a lot, actually, like ladies with little thatched stalls in the absolute middle of nowhere all selling cucumbers and nothing else. Stalls and stalls of cucumbers. I'm sure there's a fabulous reason for that. Like how in Bangkok, there is a dairy or "7-11" for every three shops. Actually that's a bit like queen st I suppose.
Ever the daring and intrepid farang we are, we sought out some local cuisine and ended up at KFC. It was really quite good, but for the fact that your only choices are Zinger or More Zinger, and the chips are shit. Had to be done though. After that face filling exercise we headed to Siam Square, what I gather is supposed to be the centre of the city, but is nothing more than a fountain, a big screen, and more crap shops. We ambled further on and found another vast mall, which was definitely not MBK. Western prices, japanese customers, probably GENUINE lacoste shirts, I have never seen such an opulent shopping centre in my life. I'm surprised there wasn't a dress code. Lucky for me, my guts chose that mall to start playing up on me, haw haw haw. We took the monorail back from whatever strange and delightful part of Bangkok we had come from, and it amazingly clean, modern and efficient. Shame I can't say the same for their electrical wiring or construction. OSH would have a fucking field day here.
As is the custom, we headed to Pat Pong Road for some culture. Girls pulling needles and razors, squirting water, blowiing whistles, and popping ping pong balls from their nether regions. I think it was there, after some tequila, that the culture shock really hit me. I fell in love in with the old lady of the establishment who I thought had taken a shine to me, but In my heart I knew she just saw me as a dumb little fat farang and eventually conned me into buying her a drink.. what I found more peculiar than anything was seeing this girl pulling razorblades out of her crotch to a maudlin backstreet boys song.. weird irony there.
We had seen poverty, gluttony and filth, all very clichéd I know, but it's difficult to take much more in over the course of a couple of days. Thus, we decided to head north. We booked the overnight train to Nong Khai for 1200 baht, around NZ$50. First class aircon, of course, and what an interesting take on first class that was. Nothing but a sink and a couch contraption that, eventually, the porters folded out into an ingenious kind of bunk bed. The scenery was strange and foreign at night, rows of candlelit shantys punctuated by brightly coloured apartment buildings. They don't seem to have distinct suburbs here, just the city and then stuff wherever else. A cold singha and a fag down the end of the train next to the leaking squat toilet, and I was fast asleep (not next to the toilet). Out the window the next day was much what you would expect of rural SE Asia, water buffalo and ladies in funny conical straw hats picking rice. For miles. And periodically, some elaborate Buddhist shrine poking out of the foliage. Breakfast, at a horrendous 150 baht, was a decidedly plastic looking egg with some ham and stale bread. The porter seemed highly offended when we declined to eat it.. had I been able to speak thai I would have dared him to eat it himself.
Nong Khai, while being the end of the line, and a major border crossing into Laos was hardly a city. More like a dusty homage to Morrinsville. After getting royally ripped off by a tuk tuk driver (250 baht for a 2km ride) we somehow managed to stumble into what transpired to be the only western eatery in town. We were greeted with delight by a couple of lecherous old british ex-pats, one of whom claimed to be an action movie producer, the other spent most of the time complaining about how hard it is to launder money, and the rest of the time making condescending gestures at his Thai wife. She looked like she gave as good as she got though.
After some enthusiastic haggling with another tuk tuk driver (I swear they were all in collusion and could smell farang a mile off) we made our way to the border into Laos, to the "friendship bridge" across the mighty Mekong river. Crossing the border was a mysterious and convoluted affair. Evidently if you are American it costs you twice as much as everyone else to get a visa, presumably because they bombed the fuck out of Laos once upon a time. I read that they dropped more bombs on Laos in the space of a few hours than in the entire first world war. That sounds ridiculous and is probably wrong but there must be some truth to it. We werent' even on the visa list, so a mere $30 bought us a ticket across the friendship bridge and into the People's Democratic Republic of Laos, my new second favourite country (which given how few I have been to means very little). It is supposedly a communist country, a term which I don't fully understand or appreciate, but suffice to say the country seems to run on rumours.. and Beer Lao, the national drink, which costs about $1 for a huge bottle, and is really not a bad drink. Immediately, Laos was different. Most notably for the fact that they drive on the right hand side, and their currency is Kip, NZ$120 = 1000 baht = 1000000 kip, give or take. Very confusing. The people in Laos seem happier, at least the gap between the rich and the poor is less obvious, and the innumerable stray animals are a lot better fed. They also seem to be free of giant tumours and skin diseases like the ones in Bangkok.
Our Tuk Tuk took us to Vientiane, the 'capital city' of Laos, a dusty, slow town where they make the beer lao and some kind of foul local brand of cigarettes. I am lucky that I smoke Marlboro, they seem to be the most universally available brand of cigarettes. And at between NZ$2-$1.50 per packet, I'm probably going to have lung cancer by the time I get home.
Vientiane is, at first glance, and according to the backpackers guide, a boring nothing town. It is a transit stop on the way to Vang Vieng (drugs) and Luang Prabang (temples). It is, however, the best beach holiday you can have without being at the beach. Even if the river is brown. Little thatched huts line the riverside looking out towards Thailand, all selling beer lao (and Carlsberg?!), and there is plenty of evidence of the French colonial days, as there is right throughout Laos. But in Vientiene they still have the fantastic restaurants. $10 for chicken cordon bleu, a variety of salad and bread accompaniments, and three martinis. Fuck the temples, all we did was eat. And drink beer lao. And the service!! It takes the waiters approximately 3 seconds to put each piece of cutlery down, which could become irritating but for the fact that we quickly learned to work at Laos speed = slowwwww. I read that they estimated it would take eight months to lay a median strip along a tiny village road.
After our lazy days on the Mekong, we thought we should do something mildly intrepid and hired a motorbike (much to my terror) with the intention of seeing.. stuff.. and that we did. It is hard to get lost in Vientiane, but we found the end of the road and a shanty town, full of bewildered locals. You don't have to go far to escape the throngs of fellow farang and start scaring the locals. We were still pretty pale at that point. We beat a hasty retreat and stopped further up the road for a fag, to discover that we had been followed by a fascinated young local girl (I say young but she was probably 30, you never can tell) on her bike (with no brakes) who giggled and pointed and garbled things at us. Our brief interlude with her garnered more attention from passers by than we had ourselves. Two dangerously pasty farang next to a coy little village girl. Fuck, it was time for more French food. And beer lao. And local music! We found a rotten, seedy little 50s inspired bar that claimed to have a local band playing. We expected some kind of hillbilly lao music, or maybe some thai pop, but when the band eventually started I was blown away. I have never been so happy to hear a whitney houston cover (eh heh). They did some Thai pop too, but a lot of great western covers with almost no detectable accent, the cranberries, the red hot chilli peppers... They weren't fantastic, but the standard of music in this part of the world is.. yeah, it's all really really really bad. Most of their pop songs seem to be bits of western songs tacked together beneath some out of tune wailing, and the videos always involve boy racers crashing and dying, or girls coughing and dying of consumption or something. I'm sure there's a really awesome underground indie scene.. nah.
One particularly cool night (still fucking hot), our beer lao session lasted longer than usual. Everything shuts at midnight, so looking confused and thirsty some british ex-pat directed us to the "Don Chan", a giant monstrosity charging western prices on the outskirts of town. They had a disco, plenty of whores, and hordes of raging drunk Japanese tourists. After the sleepy centre of Vientiane, it was an abrupt and unexpected teleportal back into Auckland, or Bangkok , or wherever. I lost Michael briefly, and the bouncers, noting my terror, pointed and cackled viciously. It seems like nothing, but these rich, arrogant farang must give us a terrible name. Why anyone would want to stay in such a palatial hotel in the middle of nowhere is beyond me. But we found ourselves throwing our cigarette butts wherever and behaved like animals, because we were angry. Maybe everyone else was doing the same thing, maybe it's a vicious cycle, or maybe that kind of excess breeds vile people. God, listen to me getting all righteous.
After the don chan, we had seen and done the little that Vientiane has to offer, so it was off on a "VIP Bus" (an occasionally air conditioned minivan) to Vang Vieng, the beginning of the opium trail. Legend has it that backpackers arrive and forget to leave for weeks, months, years… Legend also has it that all the cafes in town have big screen TVs and play re-runs of friends episodes 24 hours a day, seven days a week for all the hippies stumbling around in a daze. (stop reading now, Mummy) That wasn't entirely true, one cafe was showing the simpsons and the family guy. We weren't convinced that we would actually find any drugs, they were outlawed about 4 years ago and there are now a few vague punishments in place. Still, we wandered the streets looking into the dingy, seedy buildings, hoping to find a bunch of farang very obviously comatose and sprawled about, but in the end we sat in a thatch bar and had a beer lao, contemplating how to tap into the underground of Vang Vieng. We sat there for an hour. I pulled out my cigarette papers, which were apparently in short supply and a useful bartering tool, and noting the papers, our lovely bar tender very thoughtfully bought us the "other" menu. AHA! Happy shakes with opium or weed, joints and bags, baked treats, things like that. It wasn't a proper den and he wasn't prepared to let us smoke in his bar, but he sold us a few grams of opium for a mere 100,000 kip (about $10 US). He suggested we smoke it or make it into tea, and since we didn't have the appropriate smoking accoutrement, or a source of boiling water, we just scraped it on some biscuits and hoped for the best. I have never tasted anything so foul in my life. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous. Still, I felt lazy, sleepy, lazier, mellow, happy, silly, and I must have dozed in bed until 5am having incredibly strange dreams. It wasn't fantastic, but we didn't do it right I guess. All good and well, but it didn't go away.
The next day I couldn't move without wanting to puke. Even by checkout at lunchtime I was barely capable of having a shower. I spent most of the next day puking, looking sick and pallid in spite of my sunburn. After lots of sleep and some fruit shakes I perked up, though, and we hired another motorbike to venture off into the wilderness. We headed along the road we would be taking to Luang Prabang, and very quickly looked out of place. Every so often we would pass a little village of thatched shantys, and the half naked kids would run out shrieking "farang" "sawadee" and waving. I liked that, but then I'm really vain. Some of the villages/villagers seemed more receptive than others, which, understandably, seemed to correlate with evidence of world vision work in the area. Yes, they do you use your money to build wonderful water pumps out in the styx, and then the local children do nothing all day but play under them and waste all that precious water. That being said, all of the kids I've seen have been EXTREMELY well behaved. Our government would do well to sponsor a few school trips here. I digress. Further into the mountains we periodically saw shaggy looking men wandering around with AK47s. Most of them glared at us, but occasionally they smiled so we figured we were safe. They were probably just protecting their drug crops. Although later on, Michael cheerfully explained that some rebels had boarded a VIP tourist bus and shot a bunch of people on the very road we were on. Time to head back to relative civilsation. After a beer lao in some remote village, of course.
There were a lot of lovely things to do in Vang Vieng, such as tubing down the river to stop at various bars (where they apparently also offer you drugs to complement your evening), elephant treks, kayaking, your standard eco-adventure fare. Still, it is an amazingly picturesque town, butterflies and mountains and streams and all kinds of lovely hippie shit. Had I not been i'll I'm sure I would have found it vastly more rewarding, but the Amelican breakfasts were deteriorating and the friends re-runs were getting boring, and we were dangerously behind schedule.. not that we really had one.
Anyway, we booked a VIP bus to Luang Prabang, which is a UNESCO world heritage city, I'm too ignorant to have really figured out why, it seems to be a much more religious city than the others in Laos, the temples are very old and intricate. Again there is a lot of very old french colonial influence. We went to a couple of temples, which were pretty, nothing more, nothing less. I wasn't terribly impressed until we unwittingly started climbing a horrendously steep (and very old) flight of stairs up a hill, past ancient trees and found what I can only assume is the real deal, and it was breathtaking. Literally and figuratively. The stairs took us past the buddha's footprint, giant gleaming replicas of buddhas for every day of the week, and eventually led to a temple at the highest point of the city. Where the monks were playing silly buggers and taking pictures of each other on their cellphones.. yeah. A couple more touristy things were in order, which involved hiring a private boat to take us up the river. Our driver was a jolly fellow, and after some serious negotiations (I really enjoy this haggling business) we got our boat trip for 200,000 kip, about $20US. He took us to the LaoLao factory, where they make some nasty ass rice whiskey, and the old ladies were giving us shots and cackling as we gasped. Yes I am bringing samples of that home. After that it was off to the "buddha caves", where they store all the old broken buddha statues. I wish I could say it was really interesting but it wasn't. Or maybe it's just that it's almost midnight and I'm sitting in the lobby of an extremely seedy hotel guzzling red bull. We flew out of luang prabang today back to bangkok, and decided to stay at "the malaysia" after reading about it in a book about a guy who wandered around south east asia in the eighties. I use the word seedy a lot don't I... Anyway, it's basically a really nasty old hotel where all the lecherous old farang men come to bring their whores, since it is largely discouraged in the "nice" hotels. We thought it would be very funny, and it is, kindof. Right now there are a lot of pale old men skulking around behind me. The weird thing is, I haven't seen many girls here.. mostly gay boys, needless to say we got some pretty strange looks at the immigration booth when we said we were staying here, and from the taxi driver, from the porter, and from the reception staff. I don't think we are meant to be here. BUT, it is just down the road from the bangkok mclarens young office, so I'll be paying them a visit tomorrow morning. I'll take photos, etc.
Mother was right, after the 14 hour air conditioned transit tunnel I had become accustomed to, I stepped outside the airport and the heat nearly knocked me on my arse. And the smell. Bangkok smells like rotten cabbage, among other things. I actually thought when we landed that one of the Australians had farted, but I guess that's what people think when they arrive in Rotorua.
I found Michael pretty easily, and after that we Taxi'd to Khao San Road, the aforementioned backpacker's hellbroth where we were staying. It was too dark outside to make out any real evidence of life, but I was more interested in the taxi driver's vast collection of buddhist paraphernalia hanging\glued to every available space, along with a picture of the Thai king taped over the rear view mirror which worried me slightly. In fairness, Khao San probably wasn't the best introduction to Thailand, it's more of a gutter than a road, a 24 hour market crawling with opportunistic tuk tuk drivers (absolutely none of whom can be trusted, ever), extremely drunk farang, and a lurid haze of neon lighting. Immediately, locals from 7-70 were chasing us, being very obviously green farang (farang is foreigner, generally white), hawking their wares and making bizarre and utterly unrealistic offers. It is exhausting after five minutes, but also probably very invigorating if you haven't just stepped off a plane.
After a fitful sleep - the aircon seemed to have a mind of its own - we stumbled out to a dead Khao San. Relatively dead, anyway. We found what promised to be the "best amelican breakfast ever", and it was pretty damn good. In fact, I think throughout Thailand, Laos, and probably the rest of SE Asia, they probably make better scrambled eggs than I do. I am ashamed to say that I haven't tried much local food yet (and I'm nearly at the end of my trip), but it's difficult to be adventurous when they do western food so well. On the recommendation of a local, we Taxi'd to "MBK", expecting it to be some vast craft market, but what we found was a 7 storey (probably more), air conditioned shopping.. city. I have never, ever, seen so much crap in my life. And so cheap! It took us about 2 hours just to find a sheet.. and the escalators were arranged in such a way that I'm convinced they were trying to trap us. I think there were more going up than down.. and everyone was selling the same stuff! I have found that a lot, actually, like ladies with little thatched stalls in the absolute middle of nowhere all selling cucumbers and nothing else. Stalls and stalls of cucumbers. I'm sure there's a fabulous reason for that. Like how in Bangkok, there is a dairy or "7-11" for every three shops. Actually that's a bit like queen st I suppose.
Ever the daring and intrepid farang we are, we sought out some local cuisine and ended up at KFC. It was really quite good, but for the fact that your only choices are Zinger or More Zinger, and the chips are shit. Had to be done though. After that face filling exercise we headed to Siam Square, what I gather is supposed to be the centre of the city, but is nothing more than a fountain, a big screen, and more crap shops. We ambled further on and found another vast mall, which was definitely not MBK. Western prices, japanese customers, probably GENUINE lacoste shirts, I have never seen such an opulent shopping centre in my life. I'm surprised there wasn't a dress code. Lucky for me, my guts chose that mall to start playing up on me, haw haw haw. We took the monorail back from whatever strange and delightful part of Bangkok we had come from, and it amazingly clean, modern and efficient. Shame I can't say the same for their electrical wiring or construction. OSH would have a fucking field day here.
As is the custom, we headed to Pat Pong Road for some culture. Girls pulling needles and razors, squirting water, blowiing whistles, and popping ping pong balls from their nether regions. I think it was there, after some tequila, that the culture shock really hit me. I fell in love in with the old lady of the establishment who I thought had taken a shine to me, but In my heart I knew she just saw me as a dumb little fat farang and eventually conned me into buying her a drink.. what I found more peculiar than anything was seeing this girl pulling razorblades out of her crotch to a maudlin backstreet boys song.. weird irony there.
We had seen poverty, gluttony and filth, all very clichéd I know, but it's difficult to take much more in over the course of a couple of days. Thus, we decided to head north. We booked the overnight train to Nong Khai for 1200 baht, around NZ$50. First class aircon, of course, and what an interesting take on first class that was. Nothing but a sink and a couch contraption that, eventually, the porters folded out into an ingenious kind of bunk bed. The scenery was strange and foreign at night, rows of candlelit shantys punctuated by brightly coloured apartment buildings. They don't seem to have distinct suburbs here, just the city and then stuff wherever else. A cold singha and a fag down the end of the train next to the leaking squat toilet, and I was fast asleep (not next to the toilet). Out the window the next day was much what you would expect of rural SE Asia, water buffalo and ladies in funny conical straw hats picking rice. For miles. And periodically, some elaborate Buddhist shrine poking out of the foliage. Breakfast, at a horrendous 150 baht, was a decidedly plastic looking egg with some ham and stale bread. The porter seemed highly offended when we declined to eat it.. had I been able to speak thai I would have dared him to eat it himself.
Nong Khai, while being the end of the line, and a major border crossing into Laos was hardly a city. More like a dusty homage to Morrinsville. After getting royally ripped off by a tuk tuk driver (250 baht for a 2km ride) we somehow managed to stumble into what transpired to be the only western eatery in town. We were greeted with delight by a couple of lecherous old british ex-pats, one of whom claimed to be an action movie producer, the other spent most of the time complaining about how hard it is to launder money, and the rest of the time making condescending gestures at his Thai wife. She looked like she gave as good as she got though.
After some enthusiastic haggling with another tuk tuk driver (I swear they were all in collusion and could smell farang a mile off) we made our way to the border into Laos, to the "friendship bridge" across the mighty Mekong river. Crossing the border was a mysterious and convoluted affair. Evidently if you are American it costs you twice as much as everyone else to get a visa, presumably because they bombed the fuck out of Laos once upon a time. I read that they dropped more bombs on Laos in the space of a few hours than in the entire first world war. That sounds ridiculous and is probably wrong but there must be some truth to it. We werent' even on the visa list, so a mere $30 bought us a ticket across the friendship bridge and into the People's Democratic Republic of Laos, my new second favourite country (which given how few I have been to means very little). It is supposedly a communist country, a term which I don't fully understand or appreciate, but suffice to say the country seems to run on rumours.. and Beer Lao, the national drink, which costs about $1 for a huge bottle, and is really not a bad drink. Immediately, Laos was different. Most notably for the fact that they drive on the right hand side, and their currency is Kip, NZ$120 = 1000 baht = 1000000 kip, give or take. Very confusing. The people in Laos seem happier, at least the gap between the rich and the poor is less obvious, and the innumerable stray animals are a lot better fed. They also seem to be free of giant tumours and skin diseases like the ones in Bangkok.
Our Tuk Tuk took us to Vientiane, the 'capital city' of Laos, a dusty, slow town where they make the beer lao and some kind of foul local brand of cigarettes. I am lucky that I smoke Marlboro, they seem to be the most universally available brand of cigarettes. And at between NZ$2-$1.50 per packet, I'm probably going to have lung cancer by the time I get home.
Vientiane is, at first glance, and according to the backpackers guide, a boring nothing town. It is a transit stop on the way to Vang Vieng (drugs) and Luang Prabang (temples). It is, however, the best beach holiday you can have without being at the beach. Even if the river is brown. Little thatched huts line the riverside looking out towards Thailand, all selling beer lao (and Carlsberg?!), and there is plenty of evidence of the French colonial days, as there is right throughout Laos. But in Vientiene they still have the fantastic restaurants. $10 for chicken cordon bleu, a variety of salad and bread accompaniments, and three martinis. Fuck the temples, all we did was eat. And drink beer lao. And the service!! It takes the waiters approximately 3 seconds to put each piece of cutlery down, which could become irritating but for the fact that we quickly learned to work at Laos speed = slowwwww. I read that they estimated it would take eight months to lay a median strip along a tiny village road.
After our lazy days on the Mekong, we thought we should do something mildly intrepid and hired a motorbike (much to my terror) with the intention of seeing.. stuff.. and that we did. It is hard to get lost in Vientiane, but we found the end of the road and a shanty town, full of bewildered locals. You don't have to go far to escape the throngs of fellow farang and start scaring the locals. We were still pretty pale at that point. We beat a hasty retreat and stopped further up the road for a fag, to discover that we had been followed by a fascinated young local girl (I say young but she was probably 30, you never can tell) on her bike (with no brakes) who giggled and pointed and garbled things at us. Our brief interlude with her garnered more attention from passers by than we had ourselves. Two dangerously pasty farang next to a coy little village girl. Fuck, it was time for more French food. And beer lao. And local music! We found a rotten, seedy little 50s inspired bar that claimed to have a local band playing. We expected some kind of hillbilly lao music, or maybe some thai pop, but when the band eventually started I was blown away. I have never been so happy to hear a whitney houston cover (eh heh). They did some Thai pop too, but a lot of great western covers with almost no detectable accent, the cranberries, the red hot chilli peppers... They weren't fantastic, but the standard of music in this part of the world is.. yeah, it's all really really really bad. Most of their pop songs seem to be bits of western songs tacked together beneath some out of tune wailing, and the videos always involve boy racers crashing and dying, or girls coughing and dying of consumption or something. I'm sure there's a really awesome underground indie scene.. nah.
One particularly cool night (still fucking hot), our beer lao session lasted longer than usual. Everything shuts at midnight, so looking confused and thirsty some british ex-pat directed us to the "Don Chan", a giant monstrosity charging western prices on the outskirts of town. They had a disco, plenty of whores, and hordes of raging drunk Japanese tourists. After the sleepy centre of Vientiane, it was an abrupt and unexpected teleportal back into Auckland, or Bangkok , or wherever. I lost Michael briefly, and the bouncers, noting my terror, pointed and cackled viciously. It seems like nothing, but these rich, arrogant farang must give us a terrible name. Why anyone would want to stay in such a palatial hotel in the middle of nowhere is beyond me. But we found ourselves throwing our cigarette butts wherever and behaved like animals, because we were angry. Maybe everyone else was doing the same thing, maybe it's a vicious cycle, or maybe that kind of excess breeds vile people. God, listen to me getting all righteous.
After the don chan, we had seen and done the little that Vientiane has to offer, so it was off on a "VIP Bus" (an occasionally air conditioned minivan) to Vang Vieng, the beginning of the opium trail. Legend has it that backpackers arrive and forget to leave for weeks, months, years… Legend also has it that all the cafes in town have big screen TVs and play re-runs of friends episodes 24 hours a day, seven days a week for all the hippies stumbling around in a daze. (stop reading now, Mummy) That wasn't entirely true, one cafe was showing the simpsons and the family guy. We weren't convinced that we would actually find any drugs, they were outlawed about 4 years ago and there are now a few vague punishments in place. Still, we wandered the streets looking into the dingy, seedy buildings, hoping to find a bunch of farang very obviously comatose and sprawled about, but in the end we sat in a thatch bar and had a beer lao, contemplating how to tap into the underground of Vang Vieng. We sat there for an hour. I pulled out my cigarette papers, which were apparently in short supply and a useful bartering tool, and noting the papers, our lovely bar tender very thoughtfully bought us the "other" menu. AHA! Happy shakes with opium or weed, joints and bags, baked treats, things like that. It wasn't a proper den and he wasn't prepared to let us smoke in his bar, but he sold us a few grams of opium for a mere 100,000 kip (about $10 US). He suggested we smoke it or make it into tea, and since we didn't have the appropriate smoking accoutrement, or a source of boiling water, we just scraped it on some biscuits and hoped for the best. I have never tasted anything so foul in my life. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous. Still, I felt lazy, sleepy, lazier, mellow, happy, silly, and I must have dozed in bed until 5am having incredibly strange dreams. It wasn't fantastic, but we didn't do it right I guess. All good and well, but it didn't go away.
The next day I couldn't move without wanting to puke. Even by checkout at lunchtime I was barely capable of having a shower. I spent most of the next day puking, looking sick and pallid in spite of my sunburn. After lots of sleep and some fruit shakes I perked up, though, and we hired another motorbike to venture off into the wilderness. We headed along the road we would be taking to Luang Prabang, and very quickly looked out of place. Every so often we would pass a little village of thatched shantys, and the half naked kids would run out shrieking "farang" "sawadee" and waving. I liked that, but then I'm really vain. Some of the villages/villagers seemed more receptive than others, which, understandably, seemed to correlate with evidence of world vision work in the area. Yes, they do you use your money to build wonderful water pumps out in the styx, and then the local children do nothing all day but play under them and waste all that precious water. That being said, all of the kids I've seen have been EXTREMELY well behaved. Our government would do well to sponsor a few school trips here. I digress. Further into the mountains we periodically saw shaggy looking men wandering around with AK47s. Most of them glared at us, but occasionally they smiled so we figured we were safe. They were probably just protecting their drug crops. Although later on, Michael cheerfully explained that some rebels had boarded a VIP tourist bus and shot a bunch of people on the very road we were on. Time to head back to relative civilsation. After a beer lao in some remote village, of course.
There were a lot of lovely things to do in Vang Vieng, such as tubing down the river to stop at various bars (where they apparently also offer you drugs to complement your evening), elephant treks, kayaking, your standard eco-adventure fare. Still, it is an amazingly picturesque town, butterflies and mountains and streams and all kinds of lovely hippie shit. Had I not been i'll I'm sure I would have found it vastly more rewarding, but the Amelican breakfasts were deteriorating and the friends re-runs were getting boring, and we were dangerously behind schedule.. not that we really had one.
Anyway, we booked a VIP bus to Luang Prabang, which is a UNESCO world heritage city, I'm too ignorant to have really figured out why, it seems to be a much more religious city than the others in Laos, the temples are very old and intricate. Again there is a lot of very old french colonial influence. We went to a couple of temples, which were pretty, nothing more, nothing less. I wasn't terribly impressed until we unwittingly started climbing a horrendously steep (and very old) flight of stairs up a hill, past ancient trees and found what I can only assume is the real deal, and it was breathtaking. Literally and figuratively. The stairs took us past the buddha's footprint, giant gleaming replicas of buddhas for every day of the week, and eventually led to a temple at the highest point of the city. Where the monks were playing silly buggers and taking pictures of each other on their cellphones.. yeah. A couple more touristy things were in order, which involved hiring a private boat to take us up the river. Our driver was a jolly fellow, and after some serious negotiations (I really enjoy this haggling business) we got our boat trip for 200,000 kip, about $20US. He took us to the LaoLao factory, where they make some nasty ass rice whiskey, and the old ladies were giving us shots and cackling as we gasped. Yes I am bringing samples of that home. After that it was off to the "buddha caves", where they store all the old broken buddha statues. I wish I could say it was really interesting but it wasn't. Or maybe it's just that it's almost midnight and I'm sitting in the lobby of an extremely seedy hotel guzzling red bull. We flew out of luang prabang today back to bangkok, and decided to stay at "the malaysia" after reading about it in a book about a guy who wandered around south east asia in the eighties. I use the word seedy a lot don't I... Anyway, it's basically a really nasty old hotel where all the lecherous old farang men come to bring their whores, since it is largely discouraged in the "nice" hotels. We thought it would be very funny, and it is, kindof. Right now there are a lot of pale old men skulking around behind me. The weird thing is, I haven't seen many girls here.. mostly gay boys, needless to say we got some pretty strange looks at the immigration booth when we said we were staying here, and from the taxi driver, from the porter, and from the reception staff. I don't think we are meant to be here. BUT, it is just down the road from the bangkok mclarens young office, so I'll be paying them a visit tomorrow morning. I'll take photos, etc.