Week 34 - Vientiane Prefecture, Laos
1. THE LONG GOODBYE
IT'S TIME. After eight months - thirty-four weeks - we have left Thailand for the very last time. An end to the heat and humidity and crowds and smells of Bangkok; an end to the mountains and beaches and parties and soft breezes of everywhere else. A final end to circling and backtracking; we are aiming ourselves on a straight shot to Tibet, through Luang Prabang, Kunming, Shangri-La, Chengdu, Golmud, a dozen names both mythically familiar and wilfully obscure. We are on the great north road and only poverty or frozen-to-death-ness will stop us.
Our relationship with Thailand has been a turbulent one; she flirts with us, showing us wild jungle and beautiful people and islands that you thought only appeared in dreams. She gives us food heaving with spices and flavour, mountains crisp with cold air, train rides full of light and wind. But Bangkok looms constantly in the background, that ominous vacuum, and she drags us through its smog-filled cesspits and recesses each time we get too close. But I could ask for nothing more of my experience in that country: I was amazed, I was frustrated, I was ecstatic, I was awakened, I was sick with Dengue fever, I was chased by wild elephants, I was thrown off a mechanical bull at a strip club. I shat on the trains, rode rings around the valleys, swam in the lush clearness of the ocean, bathed in the warm breeze as I hitched rides in the back of pickups. And just because I hated Bangkok does not preclude me from having loved it as well - the food and the action, the people and the noise. Thailand was our everything and now it is banished to memory. We do not leave her easily.
Kevin flew in from Singapore to visit us for our last week; there are few better feelings than seeing an old friend after many months adrift. And after some seven years of university the guy's full of sage-like wisdom: we spent most of the week listening with slack-jawed awe to his explanations of everything we thought we knew about the world. What can I say? Dude's a genius. He should change his name to GoogleKev, or, at least, use his brains to con elderly pensioners out of their life savings. He just knows everything about everything.
Together the four of us headed north to the river town of Tha Ton, where we had planned to commandeer a bamboo house-raft complete with a cook and a guide for three days. That turned out to be a little optimistic; we only had the money to jump in a long boat for the day as we floated down the majestic river through rocks and rapids, stopping at temples overgrown by jungle and hill-tribe villages surrounded by water buffalo bathing in the thick mud. Some ninety kilometres downriver we were dropped at a set of hot springs where we bathed in the heat under the incessant buzz of fluorescent pink dragonflies, ignorantly dropping their larvae into the pool where they quickly died and sank to the bottom.
We planned to stay with an Akha tribe in a nearby valley, and attempted to hitch a ride there with a friendly Japanese man who drove by. He drove us for several kilometres to the wrong village, whereupon it was revealed that he was actually a Christian missionary building a church for the heathens. Oh. So, basically, he was a fuckwit, and we wanted no more to do with him. Except: he was our only way out. So we spent a while chatting to the village girls (who spent a while trying in vain to get Adam to hold a chicken; Adam has a weird phobia about those kind of things) and watching with smug grins as a large crucifix brought to the village was thieved by a snotty three-year old and used to dig canals through the mud. And then we asked to be taken back.
We made it there in the end, to the Akha village in the valley, and spent a couple of truly amazing days bathing under ice-cold waterfalls, working up great sweats walking up and down the hills of the tea plantations, trading swear words and bad jokes with the tribespeople in a variety of languages, and just genuinely loving everything about Thailand. And then the comedown: we arrived in Chiang Rai, a blurred dullness of a city, all overcast skies and roaring traffic and glaring light. We had planned to spend a couple of nights there but after about three hours we were aching to leave; the next day we caught a bus back to Chiang Mai.
Which is where things got ugly.
2. CLENCHED ANUS, STUFFED PENIS AND OTHER CULINARY DELIGHTS
SO LET'S: just say that Thailand's public transport system is not terribly forgiving to what we would consider normal bodily functions. Case in point: on a different bus to Chiang Mai (to pick up Kevin from the airport), I had what you could call a rumbling; I did precisely what I'd done for the previous eight months and put it to the back of my mind. An hour later, still without having stopped, it became a little more serious. A lot of clenching went on. Twenty minutes after that I approached the bus driver and, in sheepish, faltering Thai, explained that it would be really, really great if he stopped the bus soon so that I didn't shit all over my seat and the small lady sitting with her groceries beside me.
He looked at me gravely.
"Mmm. Five kilometres," he said.
I sat down with the look of a man who's been told the date of his execution, while the bus driver turned to the Thai women behind him and explained the situation in hoots of laughter while pointing with hands that should really have been on the steering wheel. I stared straight ahead as five kilometres came and then went. The Thai woman turned to me and said, "Ten minutes."
By the time we stopped I was tightening every muscle in my body with so much effort that I couldn't even walk. It was another half hour until the trembling ceased.
So, like I said, not very forgiving. This time, coming back from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai, I'll spare the buildup. Let me just say that all four of us were suffering from bloated bladders, and that, at one point, Erin turned around in her seat to the sight of me, seated in front of an orange-robed Buddhist monk (I swear, I didn't know he was there), desperately trying to stuff my penis into the neck of a plastic bottle I'd found on the floor of the bus while simultaneously trying to cover up the entire wicked deed with Erin's nicest sweater. Not my proudest moment; it didn't even work. I still had to wait the two hours to the rest stop.
SIDENOTE: I have no idea what I planned to do with the bottle after I'd finished peeing. It didn't even have a lid.
We arrived in Chiang Mai, one way or the other. We spent a couple of lovely days motorbiking around the province as we had on our last visit; we got the cheapest massages we could possibly find and then complained that they weren't very good; we got viciously drunk at a rooftop bar and ended up at a place called Mike's Burgers, where I only remember using my Cheezy Fries (TM) to scrape as much of the disgusting, goopy Cheeze (TM) out of my Cheezy Fries (TM) box as I possibly could and dripping it all over my mouth and shirt in what was possibly an even lower moment than the stuffing-my-penis-in-a-bottle thing.
SECOND SIDENOTE: We also ran into Gerard "Not-Gerard" the Belgian. This time, he was sporting a mysterious foot injury, he invited us to play World of Warcraft with him at 3am (who knew James Bond is actually a fat thirteen-year old with no friends underneath that suit?), and the Thai Boxing Stadium was promoting an upcoming bout with a picture that looked suspiciously like him. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser...
Kev flew back into the bowels of Singapore (and props to him - it was great fun having him out here for a week and we all enjoyed his company immensely); and we loaded ourselves up on beer and antidepressants for the twelve-hour bus ride to Laos.
And now we are here, back in perfect Vientiane, where we cycle the wide boulevardes to the gentle bubbling of conversation erupting from the cafes and spilling out over the streets. We drink wine, we eat fine French food (at $2 a pop), we watch the sunset over the Mekong (again).
Laos is the guy at school that nobody ever says a bad word about; he never dates your ex-girlfriends, he always brings beer to parties, he thinks that your taste in music is excellent and he covers for you in front of your parents without even having to think about it. Laos even does your homework for you when you're feeling sick. Basically, Laos is a total fucking dreamboat.
We love it here, but we've got to be going. Tomorrow we head to Vang Vieng.
Lachie
1. THE LONG GOODBYE
IT'S TIME. After eight months - thirty-four weeks - we have left Thailand for the very last time. An end to the heat and humidity and crowds and smells of Bangkok; an end to the mountains and beaches and parties and soft breezes of everywhere else. A final end to circling and backtracking; we are aiming ourselves on a straight shot to Tibet, through Luang Prabang, Kunming, Shangri-La, Chengdu, Golmud, a dozen names both mythically familiar and wilfully obscure. We are on the great north road and only poverty or frozen-to-death-ness will stop us.
Our relationship with Thailand has been a turbulent one; she flirts with us, showing us wild jungle and beautiful people and islands that you thought only appeared in dreams. She gives us food heaving with spices and flavour, mountains crisp with cold air, train rides full of light and wind. But Bangkok looms constantly in the background, that ominous vacuum, and she drags us through its smog-filled cesspits and recesses each time we get too close. But I could ask for nothing more of my experience in that country: I was amazed, I was frustrated, I was ecstatic, I was awakened, I was sick with Dengue fever, I was chased by wild elephants, I was thrown off a mechanical bull at a strip club. I shat on the trains, rode rings around the valleys, swam in the lush clearness of the ocean, bathed in the warm breeze as I hitched rides in the back of pickups. And just because I hated Bangkok does not preclude me from having loved it as well - the food and the action, the people and the noise. Thailand was our everything and now it is banished to memory. We do not leave her easily.
Kevin flew in from Singapore to visit us for our last week; there are few better feelings than seeing an old friend after many months adrift. And after some seven years of university the guy's full of sage-like wisdom: we spent most of the week listening with slack-jawed awe to his explanations of everything we thought we knew about the world. What can I say? Dude's a genius. He should change his name to GoogleKev, or, at least, use his brains to con elderly pensioners out of their life savings. He just knows everything about everything.
Together the four of us headed north to the river town of Tha Ton, where we had planned to commandeer a bamboo house-raft complete with a cook and a guide for three days. That turned out to be a little optimistic; we only had the money to jump in a long boat for the day as we floated down the majestic river through rocks and rapids, stopping at temples overgrown by jungle and hill-tribe villages surrounded by water buffalo bathing in the thick mud. Some ninety kilometres downriver we were dropped at a set of hot springs where we bathed in the heat under the incessant buzz of fluorescent pink dragonflies, ignorantly dropping their larvae into the pool where they quickly died and sank to the bottom.
We planned to stay with an Akha tribe in a nearby valley, and attempted to hitch a ride there with a friendly Japanese man who drove by. He drove us for several kilometres to the wrong village, whereupon it was revealed that he was actually a Christian missionary building a church for the heathens. Oh. So, basically, he was a fuckwit, and we wanted no more to do with him. Except: he was our only way out. So we spent a while chatting to the village girls (who spent a while trying in vain to get Adam to hold a chicken; Adam has a weird phobia about those kind of things) and watching with smug grins as a large crucifix brought to the village was thieved by a snotty three-year old and used to dig canals through the mud. And then we asked to be taken back.
We made it there in the end, to the Akha village in the valley, and spent a couple of truly amazing days bathing under ice-cold waterfalls, working up great sweats walking up and down the hills of the tea plantations, trading swear words and bad jokes with the tribespeople in a variety of languages, and just genuinely loving everything about Thailand. And then the comedown: we arrived in Chiang Rai, a blurred dullness of a city, all overcast skies and roaring traffic and glaring light. We had planned to spend a couple of nights there but after about three hours we were aching to leave; the next day we caught a bus back to Chiang Mai.
Which is where things got ugly.
2. CLENCHED ANUS, STUFFED PENIS AND OTHER CULINARY DELIGHTS
SO LET'S: just say that Thailand's public transport system is not terribly forgiving to what we would consider normal bodily functions. Case in point: on a different bus to Chiang Mai (to pick up Kevin from the airport), I had what you could call a rumbling; I did precisely what I'd done for the previous eight months and put it to the back of my mind. An hour later, still without having stopped, it became a little more serious. A lot of clenching went on. Twenty minutes after that I approached the bus driver and, in sheepish, faltering Thai, explained that it would be really, really great if he stopped the bus soon so that I didn't shit all over my seat and the small lady sitting with her groceries beside me.
He looked at me gravely.
"Mmm. Five kilometres," he said.
I sat down with the look of a man who's been told the date of his execution, while the bus driver turned to the Thai women behind him and explained the situation in hoots of laughter while pointing with hands that should really have been on the steering wheel. I stared straight ahead as five kilometres came and then went. The Thai woman turned to me and said, "Ten minutes."
By the time we stopped I was tightening every muscle in my body with so much effort that I couldn't even walk. It was another half hour until the trembling ceased.
So, like I said, not very forgiving. This time, coming back from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai, I'll spare the buildup. Let me just say that all four of us were suffering from bloated bladders, and that, at one point, Erin turned around in her seat to the sight of me, seated in front of an orange-robed Buddhist monk (I swear, I didn't know he was there), desperately trying to stuff my penis into the neck of a plastic bottle I'd found on the floor of the bus while simultaneously trying to cover up the entire wicked deed with Erin's nicest sweater. Not my proudest moment; it didn't even work. I still had to wait the two hours to the rest stop.
SIDENOTE: I have no idea what I planned to do with the bottle after I'd finished peeing. It didn't even have a lid.
We arrived in Chiang Mai, one way or the other. We spent a couple of lovely days motorbiking around the province as we had on our last visit; we got the cheapest massages we could possibly find and then complained that they weren't very good; we got viciously drunk at a rooftop bar and ended up at a place called Mike's Burgers, where I only remember using my Cheezy Fries (TM) to scrape as much of the disgusting, goopy Cheeze (TM) out of my Cheezy Fries (TM) box as I possibly could and dripping it all over my mouth and shirt in what was possibly an even lower moment than the stuffing-my-penis-in-a-bottle thing.
SECOND SIDENOTE: We also ran into Gerard "Not-Gerard" the Belgian. This time, he was sporting a mysterious foot injury, he invited us to play World of Warcraft with him at 3am (who knew James Bond is actually a fat thirteen-year old with no friends underneath that suit?), and the Thai Boxing Stadium was promoting an upcoming bout with a picture that looked suspiciously like him. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser...
Kev flew back into the bowels of Singapore (and props to him - it was great fun having him out here for a week and we all enjoyed his company immensely); and we loaded ourselves up on beer and antidepressants for the twelve-hour bus ride to Laos.
And now we are here, back in perfect Vientiane, where we cycle the wide boulevardes to the gentle bubbling of conversation erupting from the cafes and spilling out over the streets. We drink wine, we eat fine French food (at $2 a pop), we watch the sunset over the Mekong (again).
Laos is the guy at school that nobody ever says a bad word about; he never dates your ex-girlfriends, he always brings beer to parties, he thinks that your taste in music is excellent and he covers for you in front of your parents without even having to think about it. Laos even does your homework for you when you're feeling sick. Basically, Laos is a total fucking dreamboat.
We love it here, but we've got to be going. Tomorrow we head to Vang Vieng.
Lachie
