"There is no place I know to compare with pure imagination, Living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be."-- "Pure Imagination", Willy Wonka

Here we are now leaving Vang Vieng… yes, this is the only digi picture I have of this quiet little place. We then began our long journey northward towards Luang Prabang…

Along the way… our bus got a flat tire…

And let me tell you… there are worse places in the world to be broken down… friggen beautiful

Even had this little hut thing to keep out of the sun… here you can see Leela, Eliza, and our guide, Pauline.

We didn’t get in until pretty late, so it was just dinner… and an early night for me as I was in the trifecta of pain and agony… 1) blister that had taken over my entire little toe… convincing me I was going to get gangrene and lose my leg… I actually started splinting my toes apart using medical tape that I had brought for my foot… 2) the continuation of the earlier mentioned food poisoning 3) the sudden onset of severe allergies due to being surrounded by lots and lots of greenery…

The next day, however, I was up and out w/ Leela touring around. The first stop was the palace… which was a pretty incredible museum… lots of cool old stuff… pictures that told legends… and each room depicted a battle scene… often between men and mythical beasts… none of which I was allowed to take pictures of.

But just outside of it was nice little wat that had this cool dragon railing and this Buddha carving in the door.

We then hiked up Mount Phousi… yet another great view… and while we were up there… you could hear traditional music playing from bellow… making it an all too surreal moment… very much continuing the theme that being in laos is like being in a movie.

Climbing down the mountain there were buddha’s for each day of the week… these were the two best.

There was also this big fat Buddha, who I rather love.

Continuing down the steps… you see an Asian version of a unicorn w/ Buddha in the background.

The path then led into a mini cave, where a giant “foot print” is… said to be Buddha’s footprint.

After our little excursion up the mountain, we met up w/ the others and headed to the Tad Se Waterfalls.

If you look carefully, you can see a tiger in the cage. She was rescued from poachers and brought here to the falls… they also rescue bears… but those pictures didn’t come out.

And then there were the actual falls… which were absolutely incredible. I made it about halfway up, then realized two hills in one day is very very bad idea when you’re already under the weather…

So Jenni and I headed down to some of the pools and went swimming. And there was this 16 year old British kid that came over and started hanging out w/ us... Which was amusing... b/c he was kinda hitting on Jenni, but... well... he was 16... and with his mom... and his mom came over and started taking pictures... I can only imagine the poor kids embarrassment... SE Asian when your a young teenager is not the place you want to be w/ your parents.

And later that night… we went bowling…apparently bowling isn’t really big in the UK… which made for an amusing night… and the bowling here… was pretty interesting… as we were doing it barefoot.

The next day I headed out on my own… checkin out this quiet little town. This here is a picture of mount Phousi from behind.

I then found Wisunalat Visounarath… Now for some reason… as cheap as laos is… they kept charging at least $2 to get in to ever place. After a while you just start spending too much money each day. So when they told me $2 I was like, no, I don’t really need to see anything that bad right now… and the woman was like, $1, no ticket… and I was like… cool… I haggled w/out haggling. So I got in, it was painted with tons of cool stories, and had this huge alter. That also had that little demon guy… which I found brilliant.

As I was wandering out I saw that there was a red cross around the corner… where to raise money, they give $3 massages… which was actually pretty nice… so I typed well, and they were really excited about that… feels good to help out

We spent the night wandering around the night market… which had tons of beautiful things…scarves, jewelry, paintings.

The next morning we got up ridiculously early to see the monks collecting alms… This was an awing experience… to just see hundreds upon hundreds of monks lined up wandering down the road… oh, and i got yelled at for using my flash...

As a random filler… it was here that we found a bakery… and in this bakery was a newspaper… and its at this point I actually started looking at the job ads… and realized… I’m pretty qualified for just about everything listed…

"This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before...

...So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it." --The Beach

Hmm… trying to figure out how exactly to do this post is difficult… b/c I don’t have any pictures… at least not right now. The two days spent in Vang Vieng were some of the most fun that I’ve had the whole trip. However, I did not take my digital camera tubing w/me for obvious reasons… we were tubing. I did, however, bring a water proof camera… so when I get those pics developed, I’ll stick them on a disk and post them.

Vang Vieng is a little hole in the wall type of town. Its purpose is to cater to travelers… not tourists… the people who are looking for a little bit of adventure and freedom. I wouldn’t say that its lawless… but there really isn’t any enforcement.

Now I’ve been tubing before, in the states… so when our guide told us there would be tubing, you can only imagine my excitement… which I then passed on to the others… who had never been tubing before. Also due to the past experience, it promoted me and Leela picking up a box of wine for the ride. But this tubing was a little bit different… it wasn’t just floating down the river… as I briefly mentioned in an earlier post.

Basically there were a lot of bars and things that you hold onto and plummet into the water from. This was a ton of fun…

The first stop was a zip line which I did a couple of times. (the first pic is me, the second is my ever so graceful landing and the third is a Leela) The guys there were giving us shots of Lao Lao wiskey… this stuff is wicked strong… *oh yeah… I was sick as a dog at this point… major food poisoning right before we left so I had been chowing down on pepto and things… so I wasn’t all that keen on drinking anything… luckily by the time we got to the rafting spot, I was feeling much better* I stayed away from the lao lao for most of the rest of the trip.

The next stop off was a good place to sit and have a drink… We were just going to chill here just a bit longer, but then they played the cure boys don’t cry, and we decided to stay until the song was over… this then turned out to be the whole album…it also had more of swing like jump…. As in your holding on w/ your hands above your head swinging back and forth… As we all know, I have real issues w/ the whole downward motion concept… so really jumping off of anything is the scariest thing ever for me… but after a while I got worn down and decided to give it a go… zip lines are fairly easy b/c its not a free fall… swinging ropes… a little harder… but sucked it up, did it, and actually did much better than I thought I would… just swinging back and forth, and back and forth… debating if you should let go at the highest point or lowest… I’m pretty sure I took the lowest… but on a sad note I lost my dollar store sunglasses… completely forgot to take them off, and they went flying through the air never to be seen again. The next stop off was the major place with a full restaurant and volleyball courts… and a wicked huge jump. After the awesome experience on the first jump… this didn’t seem that bad… but as your freefalling from a tree, and the angle of the jump is more of a straight drop than a swing, the rope suddenly snaps and… well… there’s a belly flop. I didn’t do anymore jumps after that one… but it was worth it.

As we continued down river it started to thunder and lightning… from the banks above use we could hear the welcomed call of “tuk-tuk?” so half of us took off, while the other half kept on down the river.

Still a little churny in the stomach I didn’t do much drinking that night, but rather just hung around with everyone else. This little town shuts down early for being such a hot spot for travelers… I ended up ducking out early… being too sober and ill to be amused by everything going on.

I have no pictures from the next day… but it was an excellent day.

"The Mysterious Cities of Gold"-- sweet 80's anime show I used to watch back in the UK... but was also on in the U.S. on Nick.

One of the great ironies of my trip is that the place I absolutely loved the most, I have the least amount of pictures of… and that place is Laos. I’m thinking this is b/c I was actually doing “stuff” while I was in Laos, or maybe I do have a lot of pictures and don’t realize it, but will once I start loading them. There are also a day of pictures missing b/c they are on my disposable waterproof camera… so I’m going to try and get those on a disc here, but it might have to wait till I get home.

I love Laos… heck, I got sick for the first time in Laos, and I still loved Laos. I actually opened up a news paper and started looking at job ads. Everything about Laos is just kind of out of this world, something from a movie like. That’s the best way that I can describe it. Now if you’re like me, you know very little about Laos… So I guess I should start with the bit that I’ve learned…

Laos is one of the worlds poorest countries, with one of the lowest GDPs. It’s a communist country… but it doesn’t have the blatant commi propaganda like in Viet Nam. Its not in any big rush to modernize… nor does it seem to need to. The people are the nicest and friendliest of all of SE Asia. And the food is awesome. They are constantly threatened to be swallowed up by Viet Nam or Thailand… During the Viet Nam War, the U.S. dropped an average of one bomb every 2 minutes… making it the most bombed nation in history. There isn’t a whole lot of people here. Maybe about 2 million. Most are agricultural workers… but something like only 30% of the land is agrible. So they don’t have a particularly large work force, nor do they attract much foreign investment. Enforcement of laws is minimal. There are only about 30 lawyers in the country… and they aren’t paid particularly well. But everything here is fairly cheap… Living on the bare minimum isn’t that hard.

Crossing into Laos is a bit of pain in the butt. You can only crass at a border that is about in the middle near Vientiane, which is way south of Hanoi… *this is the only place between Laos and Viet Nam where non Laos/Vietnamese are allowed to cross. It involves a really long train ride... great for getting to know new people in your group... a late late late night stop at a sketchy hotel with bad food, followed by an early morning rise and back on the road... This road is incredibly windy as it twists and turns around the mountains… It basically makes you really really car sick. This means you then travel north to Vang Vien and Luang Prabang… then if your headed to Bangkok, have to spend 2 days going down river south again. So the amount of ground traveled is another reason I lack tons of pics from Laos.

Things start to look different as soon as you cross the border from Viet Nam into Laos. Things are greener, calmer. There are packs of butterflies everywhere. Maybe swarms would be a better word. I never got a picture of this b/c at the time, whenever you see them, hundreds of them at once… you just kinda get stuck in a state of awe… but you first start seeing them within 20 minutes of crossing the border…

The villages are still fairly clean and traditional… Thatched roof cottages and things… and this is all the villages.

One of the first places we stopped is known as “Rock Forest” if you look closely at the pictures you can understand why… The kids in the picture are Kim, Sam and Jenni.

The first place we stayed was in the capital Vientiane. Leela and I rented bikes and decided to see everything that way.

The first place we went to was Wat Si Saket—but we got kind of a late start, so we weren’t able to go inside b/c it was closed for lunch. So we went and got food, then hit up the museum… which basically had a lot of cultural stuff in it… nothing too thrilling.

So we kept on biking towards the main icon of Laos, Pha That Luang, which translates into something like “Worlds Precious Stupa”. Now Vientiane is flat, making this a pretty nice bike ride. Its really really hot and sunny. Probably one of the only really sunny days I had seen since I’ve been here. Then quite suddenly out of the middle of no where is this hill. Now we aren’t on particularly fancy bikes… no gears or anything like that. I definitely ripped up my knees trying to get up this hill (oh, and by the way… the traffic here, nothing like in Viet Nam, which was nice). Then, as your coming up over the hill you catch a glimpse of something shiny… something gold and shiny… then something big gold and shiny… and that would be Pha That Luang.

As you can see… it really is big gold and shiny, like I said in the last post…. And its like the supermodel of stupas. It must have its picture taken from every angle and each time it’s a little bit different and totally beautiful. Oh and that’s a picture of me and Leela thrown in there… but as you can see, its still in the background. (Oh and just a side note... these are the pictures i have left after I deleted a few).

While wandering around this awesomeness… we were stopped by a monk. Now all of your guidebooks talk about how monks aren’t supposed to talk to women, or touch them or anything like that. And despite curiosity, I’d been pretty good about respecting that stuff… But this kid actually stopped us and talked to us for about an hour. He told us about how his family lived about 8 hours away and he only saw them a couple times a year. How he was living at a monastery about an hour outside of town. How the way things work in Laos is that if your family is too poor to send you to school, you become a monk and get your education that way. He also told us about how his goal was to become a tour guide one day or maybe a history teacher; and how much he hoped he could travel someday. He was quite possibly one of the most interesting kids I’ve ever met… and by kid I mean I think he was like 16 or something like that… he was young… and I believe his name was Thom. The lesson here is that monks are awesome.

Our next stop was a photo op at the Patuxay Victory Monument… aka the vertical runway. As the story goes, after the war Laos was given money to rebuild a runway for the airport, but instead they used it to build the monument.

At this point we headed over to the closing morning market, where we ended up running into the others. Leela took them back to Pha That Luang, and I split to go get myself a massage. Quite possibly the best decision I have ever made, as it is still the greatest massage I have ever gotten… and the best tea ever… unfortunately when I asked what kind it was… the girl tried to describe some kind of fruit… but I was pretty clueless as to what it was. The weird part is it wasn’t a normal massage at all. They gave you some clothes to put on, no oils…but the best part is is that she stretched me… which I really needed.
After that we had dinner, then me, Richard, Eliza, Anna, Jenni, and Justine went out for drinks… when we got to the bar we realized it was full of old ex-pats and young Lao women… It was a bit disturbing and the first (but definitely not the last) time I got to experience it. Then it got weirder when some Lao guys came and joined us… and just blatantly lit a joint… in a restaurant/bar… I think that its at this point that marks the changeover in our movie… from here on out things became far more like a scene from some movie or one of many books about what all goes on in SE Asia. Reality just kinda gets tipped on its head at this point… and the best you can do is go along with it in a strange state of aw.

*Ok here comes the disclaimer* We all know that drugs have never been my thing, but its not something that’s ever really bothered me either. We all have our friends that have dabbled in something or another, and whether you do or don’t, I’m not really gonna judge. However I am fascinated by the culture that pops up around it… the music, the movies, the books, etc. Its just tends to be a concept so alien to my own little world that its fascinating to fall into as an outside observer… but here that culture actually becomes life… you aren’t just reading about charcters in a book, your watching them walk down the street…. Or hearing their stories right from them. And I’ve considered editing the blog to just kind of circumvent the prevalence of it… But the fact is that its so in your face and its genuinely a part of what makes SE Asia incredibly surreal that the stories still have to come out… so I’m not going to tip toe around stories and details too much… You’ve been warned*

So after drinks, we decided to head to the whole 1 night club in all of the city... which is on top of the roof on a motel... and seems super sketchy as you go up to it, and have to pull around back and up some back stair case. It was a lot of fun watching the brits dance. And accidentally stumbling down a hall that was full of "VIP" rooms in search of a bathroom. Overall it wasn't half bad... no Matrix... but considering where we were... it was fun.

A bit of amusement is how every single tuk tuk driver will try and sell you weed. They aren't sly about it or anything... Crazy weird place... We opted to walk home.

Of course since we were walking, we detoured to a park, and played on the swingsets by the river. It was a good end to a good day.