"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.