A Short Venture Into Lao

Holy smoke! Smoke smoke smoke! I can't even see across the Mekong which is 100 m wide! Agricultural slash and burn is smogging this city! It's muggier and more humid and I need another shower already. The longtails on the Mekong are using lights! It's 5:15 in the afternoon, sunset isn't for another hour and a half! It's so hazy I feel like I'm stumbling through a drug trip. I write this after 10 short days in Lao, and I want to tell you guys what my experience was with the three different cities I was in.

The current one, (smokey Luang Phabang) is a UNESCO World Heritage city, with small brick lanes and alley ways of families - kids playing, women grilling chicken and men riding up on motorbikes. Hazy market stalls in every glance selling mahjong sets, opium pipes, ancient coins, Hmong silver, handwoven silks, of Lao sandwiches, stir-frys, and shakes. Coffee and pastry shops lining main street with wooden chairs and tables on the terraces. Lao used to be a French colony and that is still represented in the food. Lattes and baguettes everywhere. The most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen in my life. Wine bars! Old wrinkled women selling birds in cages and families (women with three children) setting up their stalls. Two dark skinned Lao girls selling Hello Kitty helium balloons to overjoyed pigtailed kids. Since it's a World Heritage Site, everything must close down at 2300 - bars included - which means there are a lot less drunk people - or people drinking to get drunk, and the town is quiet at night instead of thumping loud disco music. Twice I've returned to my guesthouse around midnight and the front gate and doors were locked, with the front desk boy asleep on a mattress behind the desk on the floor and huge pink mosquito net strung across the room. How charming - I love it here!

The capital city, Vientianne, has the same coffee and pastry shops but without the charm. Dirty guesthouses but a wide variety of cuisine. Nothing to sight-see but bulldozers running along the dried up bank of the Mekong. What do they do in the wet season? Mostly I was here for a visa (the Thai embassy is here). There is a 3 storied mall with a crowd of goldsmiths pounding, burning and cooling small trinkets into toothpicks of gold outside. So much French food around! Who would have thought I'd be eating ratatouille and salmon rillette, all after a sweaty cramped 12 hour bus ride where I was cuddled by the drunk guy next to me? I thought Asia was all about tea, but here it's coffee - Lao coffee, latte, and the ever popular NesCafe - with sugar and Carnation goodstart. This city is the site of the most amazing sauna I have ever been in. I now regard the herbal sauna as almost a holy experience, bringing me to the depths of my consciousness and leaving me dazed and peaceful. When I open the door to step inside, I push aside a heavy, drenched curtain keeping the steam in, and immediately I start to cough because the steam is so thick. Not only thick, but fragrant. Like walking into a pot of chai. After 15 minutes my breathing becomes very labored. In between showers and sauna sessions, I am served a hot, bitter red tea. Men and women are separated, and while I only saw local women, I did see two Western men visiting the sauna. The women were all rubbing their skin with a lightening solution - some were even homemade from tamarind, milk, and honey. I have never sweat so much in my life I kid you not. The YMCA sauna has absolutely nothing on this place.

Babylon, Sin City, Gomorrah, or Vang Vieng. I felt like Ulysses with the Lotus Eaters, you can't leave once you arrive, you are gravitationally held in an apathetic emotionally dulled limbo of no ambition and a desire to get more fucked up. There really are a few things to do here besides party, but the town sapped my enthusiasm by surrounding me with pretentious zombies high on the power of their money, behaving badly because no one is frowning upon them here (Lao people expect Westerners to be assholes). The scenery was beautiful, huge mountains straining up in pillars of rock hovering over the town, but I couldn't separate myself from the debauchery and it made me sick. I really didn't like Vang Vieng and I wouldn't want to go back there.

All in all, the beer is cheap and good in Lao, they have delicious local coffee, the people are friendly and speak Thai (whew!), the landscape is probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. It's just a tiny bit more expensive than Thailand, and they accept US dollars, Thai baht, or Lao kip. When I returned to my guesthouse today around 5 pm, the front desk boy was letting his friends play FIFA on his Xbox or Playstation in the lobby. How endearing is that? A bunch of teenage boys greeting me at my guesthouse by jumping up to help me open the fridge. How sweet. I'm sad I didn't get to spend more time in Lao but I made my choice of what I want to do next and I'm very excited for it. I'm going to the south of Thailand (think beaches) to do a 10 day Anapanasati meditation retreat at Wat Suanmokkh. I hope I learn how to clear this mind and find some inner peace, wish me luck... woo hoo!!!!!

A Day In The Life

Wow. My last week has been amazing. It's almost impossible not to be healthy and mindful where I am. I'm staying on an organic farm just outside of a really hippie/tourist town called Pai. I want to describe it but it's just better to tell you about a typical day.


0630 - wake up - watch the sun rise over the mountains sitting on the porch with kitty in lap
0730 - breakfast of bananas from farm, green tea and homemade soy chai
0900 - hitch a ride into tow on top of a water tank truck
0930 - return books to library, run into Canadian friend on his way to get a tattoo from a famous French rock star (whom I've never heard of)
1000 - yoga and meditation overlooking the river
1230 - wheatgrass shot and fresh coconut
1300 - internet and skype
1400 - internet connections shuts down
1430 - buy and eat fresh ripe papaya for 10 baht
1445 - browse, return and buy used books
1530 - eat coconut sesame scone
1545 - resume interneting
1800 - hitch a ride back to farm
1830 - go for short swim in pond
1930 - eat fantastic dinner of greens, veggies, bananas and rice
2015 - dishes, clean kitchen
2030 - hang around fire talking about The Life Of Pi and hot springs
2100 - retire to bungalow to read my new used book

Man... and that doesn't include the waterfall hikes, bamboo classes, or homebrewed kombuchas! How will I ever leave Pai?

Defying Gravity

"She flies through the air with the greatest of ease..." and then she slams into the guide, who is waiting to catch her on the platform. "Kaw toot! Kaw toot!" Excuse me sorry! The dude weighs 110 pounds and all my weight comes flying at him down a zip cord. I hope he gets paid well.

Jungle flight is an experience not to be missed if traveling in Northern Thailand. The guides are entertaining, the adrenaline rush is unbeatable and the scenery... I can't find a word that's not a cliche, but since it's true I can sincerely say it's beautiful.

I'm on a day trip with Jungle Flight - 7 hours of ziplining, abseiling and sky walks through the Thai canopy. I chose the longer course (the obvious choice) with 30 some platforms but there is a shorter 5 hour course with 23 platforms for $7 less.

The four guides - Jack Sparrow, Tom Cruise, Boston and Ting Tong (Thai for "crazy") are a mischievous riotous bunch. On the first abseil, Boston whips out a book with a handwritten cover titled "Jungle Flight Training Manual" and nervously flits his eyes back and forth between the book and the equipment. "Wait Wait WAIT!" he screams as he drops a Swedish girl straight down, while she squeals with glee and adrenaline the entire way.

The joking attitudes of the guides created a kind of summer camp feel - making us feel less like individual customers and more like a big group of friends on a camping trip (Swiss family Robinson style!) Even with all the joking, it was obvious these guys really knew what they were doing and that we were in good hands. I was always attached to some line or thick cable wrapped around a tree.

There had to be huge trust in these guys too. They clip you on and say 'go' and sometimes the only confirmation of your attachment is the whispered 'click' the carabiner make (you can't see them clip you when the line is attached to your back) and you are expected to jump off the platform faceforward...WAH!! The rush when you just let go, fall, and speed over the trees is intoxicating. Most people screamed with laughter the whole way and dazedly stared back down the line trying to catch their breath once they reached the next platform.

I can honestly say that the view is breath taking because I really did let out a sob while flying down the line, being so moved by the shapely mountains blanketed by green and tinged with a hazy cloud. Going through the lush forest could have been a multi-day adventure - there was so much beautiful climbing green, intertwining limbs, gray trunks with pale lichen patches. It took an hour long drive up a windy (thankfully paved) road to reach this place, but just an hour away there were no signs of being that close to a city while we were up in the treetops.

The only disappointment I suffered was the lack of wildlife. No exotic birds, gibbons or snakes. A lot of sparrows mainly. We were there for the hottest hours of the day when most animals would be smart to lay low, and probably the amount of human traffic through their habitat kept them at a distance from the track we were on. Other than this, the experience was phenomenal.

I would have guessed the whole group to be staring out our windows on the way back, looking up to the canopy marveling at how two hours earlier we were up there swinging through the branches. Instead, the whole group passed out in the air-con bus ride back to town, where we were delivered to the Chiang Mai Sunday Walking market. All that adrenaline really wears a person out! If you are ever in the Chiang Mai province of Thailand, make sure that you don't miss this chance to fly through the air :)

I feel like an asshole

In response to my last post, "The Old One". I feel like an asshole for going on that trek and riding an elephant. Obviously I had a blast and I really enjoyed being so close to such a great animal, but in retrospect I am just a jerk tourist who dishes out dollars without asking where did this animal come from (did they capture it from the wild to use for tours?) or how much does this animal work each day? A lot of the elephants used in these package tours are attained using illegal methods, are over worked, and are given amphetamines so that they can work longer. Yuck. I'm disgusted that I was part of that. A part of me knew it was wrong to partake in this tour but I ignored that small voice because the idea of sitting astride a huge elephant was so exciting. I hope that in the future I can be more objective and be the eco-tourist I'd like to call myself. By participating in this trek I was just one of thousands of foreigners that have no regard for the impact their vacation is taking on an animal, a country, or the environment. Shame on me.