D is for Dangerous

September 16, 2008.

After a night in a border town which vaguely resembled the South East Asian version of small town USA, we crossed the border into Laos, and embarked on a 2 day trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, where we spent 6 days jumping off waterfalls, missing sunsets, drinking Lao Lao whisky, and adopting local wildlife, notably a pink plastic swan named Hans whom I felt it necessary to carry under my arm everywhere we went. We met some new friends on the boat, and picked up a few more at Spicy Laos, the hostel we stayed at in LP. The 7 of us headed by nauseating minivan to Vang Vieng two days ago, on a dirt road which wound its way through the most majestic scenery I have ever seen, stopping only briefly in a village endearingly named "The 3 Next Clean Village." It is here, in Vang Vieng, where we encountered our first, and hopefully last, near death experience of the trip.

Vang Vieng, Laos

Fun and sun seekers flock to Vang Vieng for the tubing experience. You get your tube, lifejacket optional, and float down the river. Sounds easy. Without stopping, the lazy ride should take about an hour. We managed to cover about 15 minutes of this said hour in about 6 - this is because every 20 feet, a little Lao man is waiting to fish you out of the river with a long stick and lure you to his makeshift bar and fill your soul with whisky out of a bucket. There are makeshift ziplines, volleyball courts, opportunity at every corner to mudfight with friends old and new, and if you were lucky enough, someone would create lewd art using your body as a canvas.

By the time it occurred to us that maybe we should head on, dusk was setting in, and it was starting to rain. "It wasn't pitch black out yet," Steph recalls. "Just dark navy." Dusk turned to dark, and rain turned to lightning and thunder, which turned into power outage along the banks of the river, the lights of which were our only guide. We were wasted - there is no sugar coating the state of our irresponsible intoxication. We floated down the river, no idea where to go, or how to get out. The current was strong, and it was cold. Someone told me once that it's not safe to be in the water during a thunderstorm. We held each others' extremities and stuck as close together as we could, some exhibiting more fear than others (guess who?) About 4 or 5 people die on that river every year, or so I've been told, and that's a lot in my books. "Over here!" we heard, suddenly, out of nowhere. Two fellow tubers appeared, and they had done this the day before, they said. It was all going to be ok, as long as we could swim. "Now!" one of them shouted, and we all jumped out of our tubes and swam furiously for the riverbed, clawing at the muddy earth and hoisting our scared asses to safety. 

And then they were gone. "Our tubing angels," one of my travel mates suggested. We didn't know their names, and we hadn't seen their faces. The power shut off for good at this point; so as we ran barefoot through the streets to our guesthouse, happy to be alive and able to drink more Beerlao, I couldn't help but wonder if they really were. 

Oh My Buddha!

September 6, 2008.

I came up to Chiang Mai, in the heart of Northern Thailand via 13 hour bus - the trains have stopped running due to the worsening civil unrest. The bus driver assured me that once the vehicle was running, the bathroom would be unlocked - I've never believed in magic, and have endured many an Asian bus ride on busses with locked toilets, avoiding laughter and sometimes conversation entirely, clutching my explosive bladder for dear life, so I don't know why I thought this would be any different. Lies. House of lies. The door was locked but about an hour into the trip, the bus started halting to a stop every hundred metres, and I figured that the driver was either distributing our backpacks to needy people on the side of the superhighway, or stopping to relieve himself (I was no fool, I'd seen the empty cans of Singha accumulating under his seat) but luckily for me he was indeed resolving the bathroom dilemma and the rest of the ride was a breeze. 

I'm teamed up with Steph again, and while we haven't been robbed or scratched by stray dogs this time around, so far we have seen a Muay Thai boxing show, the highlight of which was the "Special Show", consisting of blindfolded teenagers going at each other and also at the ref. We've taken a trip out to an organic farm and learned how to cook tasty Thai dishes, but our most noteworthy adventure as of yet has certainly been our "eco" trek through the Thai jungle - we rode an elephant named Bountia, who refused to move forward unless fed a banana every twenty seven seconds, and endured a rigorous 4 hour climb up a giant mountain. We camped out for the night with the Lahu village tribe and met Jack, local funny man, who showed us many games, most of which involved rubbing the charcoal from the bottom of a dirty wok all over our faces.  

Bountia

Jack Sparrow

In the morning we hiked down to a waterfall. "No ploblem!" our guide, Moonshine, had told us the night before. "Tomorrow easy. All downhill!" Oh my Buddha. I spent the morning with my eyes glued to my crappy Puma sneakers and tried not to fall. "Too SLOW!" Moonshine's brother, Good, told me, and dragged me screaming through the mud behind him. I rinsed the mud out of my crevices in the waterfall, and then followed the stream to the starting point of my next adventure - whitewater rafting, which, for the record, rocks, even if all normal safety measures aren't necessarily in place. 

In short, Thailand is pretty cool. Tourism is a mixed blessing here, and I feel a lot of sadness towards the hungry baby elephants that they force to walk around the streets in order to extort money from rich white people, and am still processing my feelings about visiting the hill tribe - it's amazing how our money serves to both preserve and completely destroy their culture, at the same time. So far Steph and I have avoided evils such as leeches, dengue fever, and obnoxious British law students, but tomorrow we head towards Laos, and it is a whole new day.