Merry Christmas from Laos!

Though it's really surreal to be saying that. I'd sort of decided that if I couldn't be home for Christmas, then I'd rather Christmas just didn't happen. So the original plan was to head out of Luang Prabang and go up north somewhere that most people have never heard of Christmas. But then I got sick the night of our gourmet dinner which was a bit disappointing as well. It was good and as close to gourmet as I've seen traveling, but maybe I just hyped it up in my head too much. Ah well, it was even worse the second time around when I was sick all that night, then fevered and feeling crappy all the next day and couldn't get out of bed. I'm worlds better now, eating again, fever is gone and all, though I've still got a bad head cold. Grrr. Ah well, it kept me here which is probably good because now I'm with friends for Christmas. It's just so funny in Luang Prabang because it's such a tourist town, and the locals have put up trees and laid out decoratively wrapped boxes, and hung wreaths and Santas. But it's warm here, and I'm in a Buddhist country along the Mekong river surrounded by coconut trees. My friend Gen had an interesting observation. She said even the time she spent Christmas in Hawaii still felt like Christmas, so it must be something to do with having the holiday celebrated consistently for decades in a country that makes it feel more like Christmas. Here it just feels like the glitzy material part of Christmas without the spirit, and it's sort of like just another accomodation for tourists, which granted is in itself very sweet of the Laos people.

But that said, Merry Christmas to all!! I hope you're all able to be with family and friends and feel warm and loved this holiday season. Thank you to everyone who has written their holiday greetings to me on the road. It means a lot to me to have you all here virtually if I can't be there with you physically. Take care!!

I'm having a marvelously Laosy time!

Never fear to all of you who worry for my liver and personal safety - I have more than learned my lesson on the local drinking customs. The funny thing is that many many of the travelers here have very similar stories, so this must be a favorite Laos local activity - get the foreingers tossed on their bad strong booze. I've moved on to a much healthier activity, cycling! I'm in Luang Prabang now, which is a nice little French colonial town wrapped up by the Mekong river. It's quaint with great architecture and lots of fancy shops and restaurants. Not exactly my cup of tea though, so we'll see how long I last here. There are several functioning wats, here, and the young monks are itching to practice their English with foriengers, even though the locals don't seem to approve much. I actually woke up at 3:30 am yesterday to go listen to the monks in their morning chants, which was totally surreal. NO ONE is up that early besides the monks. So once they finished their chants, I walked around town for an hour or so waiting for sunrise, watching the old men do their excercises (and hack their morning phlegm) and watching people set up for the morning food market. At around 6:15 or so, the novices leave the wat to collect alms, so for an hour or so before that, there are all of these women walking around with baskets of food pachages and sticky rice trying to sell to tourists so that we can "feed the monks" like they're a bunch of monkeys (insert Michael's wise-assed comment here). Against my gut instinct and better judgement, I did buy a little bit just because I didn't have any sort of offering and wanted to be prepared if I felt the need to give. However when the monks come out, it's quickly obvious that we foreigners have no part in this ritual (other than to become completely obnoxious and stick huge telephoto lenses and video cameras right up in people's faces). In Bangkok, people just walk out of houses and shopfronts to place their food offering in the monk's bowl, but here it's much more of a ritual. It's mostly older Lao, the women kneel or sit on low stools, the men stand, and all are wearing a white scarf. There is some sort of prayer to bless the food before the monks come around, and the whole thing is very ceremonial with a devout respect. Some of these little novices are only maybe 8 years old, and you've got an 80 year old man treating this little guy with great reverence.

After breakfast, a friend and I rented bicycles and cycled around some of the villages around Luang Prabang. He's very proud of having been invited to a wedding in every country that he's traveled, so I figured it could be great fun. No weddings, but it was great fun. Toward the end of the day, we ended up at a more modern wat up on a hill (built between about 1960 and 1987). It was really strange because there were paintings of the life of the Buddha circling the top of the main hall, which is normal, but then below that were what seemed to be images of hell. Circling the entire room. And they were very graphic and disturbing. Scenes of people being staked, beheaded, tossed up on rocks to break their backs, eaten alive by wild animals, and the most disturbing was a scene of dozens of people cannibalizing themselves and each other. I knew that Buddhism (at least a modern interpretation of it) included a concept of hell, but it seems that it's not a prevalent motivating concept (as it is in more evangelical protestant religion), and this wat really surprised me. I'm going to ask one of the monks here in Luang Prabang to explain it to me. Let me know if any of you folk have insight. My best estimation is that it must have something to do with the fact that the wat was built in a really turbulent political time for Laos, so it might just be a manifestation of that.

I'm excited for tonight. A few of us are going to eat at the restaurant called 3 Nagas. It was apparently written up by the NYTimes as "perhaps the best restaurant in all of Asia" and yet I can afford it. Entrees are $5 or so, so we figure we could eat our fill and have a nice bottle of wine without breaking the budget too much. It should be a unique culinary experience at the least.

This place rules

Yeah, so I'm in Vang Vieng, which is cool - other than the fact that all the bars and restaurants play non-stop "Friends" episodes all day and all night long, which I just can't understand. The scenery is amazing with sheer limestone cliffs everywhere on mountains jutting up from the Mekong river. I'm staying in a nice and cheap guesthouse right on the river. Today four of us hiked about 6 km out of town through a couple of teeny little villages with oxen, cattle, pigs, and dusty little kids swimming in ponds. It's a lot like rural Cambodia actually, though maybe not quite as poor. The kids all get excited to see us and run right up to say Sahbaidee!! (hello) and give us high fives and big smiles. It's funny - kids in other places ask for candy or money if they ask for anything, but all of these kids were asking for pens - way better if you ask me. So I'm going to head to the market tomorrow to get a big bag of cheap ballpoints. The hike led us up to a really cool big cave with a reclining buddha.

So yeah, three days ago, I left Bangkok on the night train to Nong Khai, then crossed the border with no troubles. Got into Vientiene midday and checked into a $1.50 dorm bed (can't beat that!) It's a dusty small city with a huge expat community, and yet it's the capital of the country - so I knew I'd like Laos immediately if that's as frantic as it gets. Yesterday, 6 of us made our way up to Vang Vieng on the local bus (after crisscrossing the city and overpaying tuk tuk drivers just to "save" money on our bus ticket ;), and here we are! I think we're going innertubing on the Mekong tomorrow, then I'm going to head up to Luang Prabang on Sunday. I'm itching to get out into the countryside where there aren't so many other travelers and just chill on the river for a few days watching the locals fish. Sounds like bliss...

I'm in Laos!

And so much happier now. I think that a large portion of my pissiness was due to the fact that I HATE Bangkok, I miss Darren, and I'm starting to look forward to being home. So now I'm out of Bangkok and in a cool new place hanging out with cool new people (albeit not as cool as Darren), and not looking quite as forward to going home. I'm in Vang Vieng on the Mekong river. We're going to go tubing tomorrow, then I'll probably rent a bicycle and cycle around the villages in the area. I'll write more later when I've got a bit more time but here's a heads up that I'm alive and happy :)

Darren's gone and my leech bites itch

Whah. It's all good though because I'm getting the hell out of Bangkok tomorrow and heading for Laos!!! Should be a good time. I'm just planning to take it easy and go wherever my mood takes me, making my way back south again as it gets close to Jan 5th. I don't know where I'll be for Christmas or New Year's. It's kind of weird thinking that Christmas is less than two weeks away because it's over 90 degrees here, and there's not much of a sign of the holidays. The pharmacy was playing Christmas carols yesterday, and there are the odd Christmas lights around. However, it's difficult to tell how many of those are out for Christmas or leftover from the King's Birthday. I think that I've decided to buy a whole mess of cheap bracelets to give to people, wear a santa hat, and sing carols all day to put myself in the spirit.

Onto other randomness - Darren and I had decided that it would suck more than anything to be a dog in this country. Buddhist tradition doesn't allow the killing of animals, and it seems that expense prohibits them from getting fixed. So there are dogs everywhere. Most of them are mangy and missing much of their hair, lots are lame or missing limbs, and some are really scary vicious things. I've seen more than one with really nasty hernias, and we saw what must be the absolute ugliest (unitentionally) hairless dog in the world.

An actual conversation between me and Darren in Pak Chong on the way to the train station. Me: "Wanna stop here and get some fresh pineapple for the train ride?" Darren: "Is that a dead cat?" (in the rubbish basket at the fruit stall) Me: "Um, yeah, let's just go get on the train"

So yeah, that's about it for me. I've got to get my solo groove on and get on with things here. Write to me, folks, cause it's a little lonely on this side of the world ;)

Leeches suck

We've spent the last 4 days tucked peacefully away in the Khao Yai National Park, which was uber cool. Ayutthaya was really cool, too. We cycled around a bunch of the temple ruins, then hung out at the King's birthday party. The streets were full of people and killer vendor food. I finally got a nice big plate of sweet sticky rice and fresh mango that made me very happy...and lots of stuff on sticks. They even have something remarkably similar to a corn dog. So right around 9 pm or so, everyone lights up these yellow candles and sings the Thai equivalent of Happy Birthday as well as a bunch of other songs. A whole crowd of several thousand people all together in the streets, followed by fireworks, and partying into the night. It was a really neat community experience because this is one of their biggest holidays of the year.

So the next day, we made our way to Khao Yai. We caught the train in the morning to Pak Chong, and pick up to the park gates, then hitch hiked our way into the park to our campsite. That's how you get around this park, because there's not much in the way of public transportation. You can pay about $25 or more for 1 1/2 day package tours with a bunch of other white folk, or you can hoof it on your own with the Thais. Guess what we did. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The people here are super nice, and they get a big kick out of stopping to give us poor farang backpackers a ride. So we get to our campsite, set up camp, go for a hike, and sleep in our rented tent on the hard ground with just a wool blanket (we upgraded to thin foam pads and sleeping bags for the next few nights). When we got up the next morning and headed our way to the restaurant for breakfast, we said hello to a group of 10 thais who were having their morning coffee and were quickly invited to join them. So we had coffee, then breakfast with them, then hiked with the whole bunch to swim in a waterfall. This was just the first of many such invitations. It seriously got to the point where if we really wanted to go to the restaurant, hike by ourselves, or even make a trip to the bathroom, we couldn't make eye contact with ANYONE. Even to the point where we were so obviously packing and breaking down our tent to leave this morning and were invited to have coffee with another whole big group. Half our meals were with people camping near us. They're sooooo nice. It's funny too that when we got there on Wednesday, the campground was relatively empty with a dozen or so tents. Today it was shoulder to shoulder - I slept with two bits of nylon and 2 feet of space between me and the snoring dude in the tent next to us.

The macaques rule too. They were all over around our campsite and making off with stuff that people stupidly left sitting outside their tents. Sort of like marmots in Washington, but a lot smarter. For that matter, we saw tons of cool animals - birds, giant squirrels, monkeys. We didn't see the gibbons because they never come out of the trees, but its super cool to wake up in the morning to the sound of them whooping and howling to each other. We hiked on a couple of days through the monsoon rainforest, and we were the only people on the trail for most of it. It was fun - except for the freaky looking spiders and constant fear of leeches. We were hiking along on Thursday and lost the trail for a bit, jumped a stream, then were walking along a little animal track through some tall grass when I felt a sting on my ankle and looked down to see two leeches on me. I tweaked, which sent Darren tweaking, and we dropped everything to coat ourselves with DEET and rub our legs down with tobbacco. It's a trick I learned from Dan Gottschling and heard from some of the Thais here. Don't know if it works, but those are the last leech bites we got. I was also super paranoid of them after that, which may have contributed. They're nasty suckers - we had one appear out of nowhere in the candlelight on our mat last night while we were happily sipping whiskey with some of our new Thai friends.

Anyway, hiking was really cool - we were making our way along the trail when Darren suddenly stopped because there was a huge pile of fresh elephant poo on the side of the trail. Khao Yai has about 200 wild elephants living in the jungle. We didn't see any, but that pile of poo made us a little nervous about what we'd do if we did run into an elephant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience puts hiking in a new perspective - as we were leaving the park we saw a sign that read "Beware Tiger Area", then "Beware Elephant Crossing", then "Beware Guar Territory", then "Beware Cobra Crossing". But it was really nice hiking, and all of the colorful tropical birds were awesome.

We're on our way back to Bangkok today to spend one day in the city, then Darren flys out to Seattle on Monday. Y'all have to hit him up for stories and some photos from our trip. I'm off to Laos after he leaves, so stay tuned for more stuff!!

I am queen of the road!!!

Well, maybe just a 100 m stretch of flat paved road with no traffic, but still... We rented another motobike in Sukothai to get around the temples there, and Darren gave me a driving lesson. I didn't get above second gear, and I did almost run through a fence and into a pasture, but all in all it wasn't so bad. The almost running off the road part is because someone brilliantly designed these things so that the gas and brake are on the same handlebar, so when I went to pull the break, I didn't do such a good job and pulled the gas instead. But I managed to calmly get myself stopped, switched into neutral, and backed away from the side of the road. Not too bad for a first lesson. It's going to come in handy in Laos if I can get comfortable driving one of those because it gives you so much more freedom to get away from other travelers. We took a nice little side road through a village along the canal, and I love the looks on people's faces when they realize we're foreigners. They get so excited to see us here and give us great big grins.

We're in Ayutthaya today, going to rent bicycles and cycle around to see the temple ruins here. Today is the king's birthday too, so there's all sorts of pomp and circumstance around the whole country. There's going to be a great big street party right around the corner from our guesthouse with fireworks and everything, so we're going to whoop it up with the locals tonight ;) Wish the whole country celebrated MY birthday ;)

We got our shop on!

Chiang Mai is a pretty cool place. Darren and I spent yesterday on a Wat tour of the city - just walking around all day, saying "no" to every befuddled driver who wanted to take us somewhere and couldn't understand why we "with all out money" would want to walk. We stopped at Wat Chedi Luang and had a "Monk Chat". Seriously - you just walk up to these monks sitting under a tree with a sign that says "monk chat - free" and start chatting away about whatever. So we did for awhile. The guy was really nice, and he and his monk buddies were giving Darren Thai tongue twisters to practice his intonation and pronounciation. It was pretty funny. We went by Wat Pra Singh where the school kids were all in service for the holiday (it's the King's birthday this week). It was really cool listening to the monks chant - it's still one of the eeriest and skin tingling sounds, I think. The kids were just like kids in any church anywhere - listening to headphones, giggling and talking, taking pictures of each other with their camera phones, sleeping. It was really funny.

We spent the last two nights at the night bazaar and got a good bit of our christmas/souvenir shopping done. I've been on a pretty big shop fest this whole trip, but it's SOOOO cheap. I think the most I've spent on anything is about $12. But then again, we're not going for high end antiques and original artwork, either. It's nice stuff, though, and I've gotten my bargaining skills honed here :) Too bad there's no car or house shopping on my horizons. We're in Sukothai now, and we're going to spend the next couple of days cycling around ruins. Darren's only got 9 days left before he leaves, and still so much more to see!