A story split in two, part one: Thailand into laos.

So........ It's over a month since I've been on here and I'd be lying if i said it hadn't played on my mind a little. At first i had no interest in keeping it updated because i wasn't sure any more than three people were reading it (my mother, Sara, and Helena) but i started getting emails from people asking "where's the update" and that gave me encouragement. It also made me think about how to write it to make it more interesting, and that probably put me off even longer. Then it got to the point where I'd not blogged in over a month but by then i was on an amazing island where i didn't feel like sitting in front of a computer for two hours prattling on about myself (plus the internet cost a tonne there and i was living super cheap).

So here's the compromise. I'm going to do this in two parts, with the second part in about a week. If you want to read the whole thing, more damn power to you. If you want to dip in and out, it's all yours. If you're as lazy as me, here's the main points from both parts, in no particular order, and if you want bigger explanations, go find them yourself.

First: The "where's your head at" stuff.
1) I started smoking again. Yeah i know. If it's any consolation, I've started losing weight. In fact, that deserves a point of it's own.

2) I've started losing weight. For anyone who knew me three years ago, you'll know i used to be a skinny fucker, far from the fat bastard i am now, so I'm happy as all hell. Thank you cigarettes, i owe you one.

3) I started getting homesick last week but i think I'm out the other end of it. I've made some amazing friends here and I'm about to see a bunch of them tomorrow in Malaysia so that makes it easier, plus i loaded some photos of Eva and Jamie (my niece and nephew) onto my MP3 player so they keep me going.

Second: The salacious stuff
4) I chatted up a prostitute for two hours. To my defense, i didn't know she was a prostitute.

5) I danced with a gang of prostitutes in a bar. To my defense, it was a ridiculous situation and i decided to make the most of it. Also to my defense, i never laid a finger on any of them.

6) I had to leave a town in northern Laos less than 24 hours after arriving. To my defense, it wasn't my fault.

7) I spent a load of time in opium dens. To my defense (and probably to my parent's relief), i didn't do any drugs there (or anywhere else for that matter).

Third: The travel stuff

8) I spent two days on a boat floating down the Mekong river. It was more awesome than i could possibly put into words. From a distance, we got to see people who lived on the hills with no money and no electricity. Insane.

9) I took a whole bunch of sleeper buses. Two of them have stories, one mildly amusing, one mildly maddening. You'll have to dig them out yourself.

10) I spent four hours on a local bus with an Australian who works for an NGO that does human rights watch on Burma, alternately hearing what's going on there (stories that i think of every few days and make me pretty depressed and sick), and telling the dirtiest jokes we could think of. Then he brought me through rush hour chiang mai traffic on his scooter with my backpack on and my day bag in my hand which was the closest i've come to death on this trip so far.

11) I went on a two hour dinner cruise. Yes, i am now officially posh.

12) I bribed a policeman. That's all i have to say about that for now.

Four: The future stuff

13) The USA road trip is in full effect. My friend john is buying us a camper van (with a bed and cooking facilities) and we'll be going from michigan, up into north east Canada, right across the way to the west, down the rocky mountains, into the US, down the coast to new mexico, up route 66 to chicago, over to maine in the north east, and down the east to Fest. So far it's me and timmy and possibly an awesome canadian named sadie. But probably not.

14) While there, I'm making a documentary about No Idea records and the Gainesville music scene and Fest, which pretty much everyone who's ever met me knows is as close as i come to organized religion. They (No Idea) are psyched that i'm doing it and I am psyched to be doing it (whatever the opposite of exaggeration is, that part back there, about me being psyched - that was that).

15) I got a working visa for Australia and will be there from probably mid march to save money to fund said documentary.

Five: The bit that doesn't fit in anywhere else.
16) I got to hang around with a six month old monkey for about a week, and the owners let me take him out for two full days where we slept in a hammock together and went on walks and climbed trees and stuff. It was ABSOLUTELY AWESOME.


Ok, so onto the blog part.

When i blogged last, i was getting ready to head off on a mammoth bike ride for a week. Each morning I'd get up to go, and it just never happened for one reason or another - too hungover, meet too many new people the same day, too hot, too cold, too tired, no mood to ride bikes all day - i just flat out didn't want to leave Pai, even though i had this niggling feeling in my head that i only had about ten days left in Thailand. On the Sunday, everyone in my gang was going to a Buddhist monastery up the road to chill out and find themselves or some such hippy crap, and it came to the crunch. Ozzie Mick, Limey Joe and i were sitting in a wheatgrass bar on the saurday and i stood up and said "fuckitt, i'm flipping a coin". Being that i decided to go on this trip on the flip of a coin, i figured i should let it up to the coin, and the coin said don't go on the bike ride, so that was it, bike ride over. I made plans to head back to chiang mai (site of my week's sickness at the end of November) and go over to the east of Thailand for a week to relax and recover from Pai.

That night (the Saturday) we all went out for the lads last big bash before heading to the monastery. It was a long night and at the end of it (about 5am) i found myself in this bar drinking Tiger beer with the English expat owner and this Australian expat asshole. There was also an Asian looking girl there with a strong American accent and an english guy, playing pool. The bar owner was a prick and I got sick of listening to the Australian so got talking to the asian, who told me she was actually from Bangkok and had the accent from teaching english. She said she was in the process of applying for a USA visa to go to college so we got talking about getting citizenship/visas, seeing as Elisa, my brother's girlfriend had gone thorough that process. We were hitting it off pretty good so we start playing pool and we're talking about going to college in the US for a good while, as I'd spent a good deal of time looking into it myself about a year ago when i wanted to go there to study photography. I mentioned how expensive the fees there are and she agreed, then looked me straight in the eye, and said "but I'd do anything to get the money together to go there".

So there it was, I'd been played by a seasoned professional, the hooker with a heart of gold. I tried to finish up the game as quick as possible but i was too drunk to play well (if i'd been any bit soberer i probably would have figured out she was a prostitute much quicker too, but whatever). She was seriously pulling her shots to let me win (something I'd already pointed out, and but had never associated with my being "played"). Then i spent a while trying to pot the black just to get out of there, but that wasn't working either, so i excused myself to go to the toilet and never came back. That incident finally made it very very easy to leave pai.

The next day we all went out for breakfast to this burger joint owned by an Alaskan guy. Interesting side story, he finally told me why thai people had been pointing and laughing at me for the last few weeks - in Thailand, having a beard means you're a criminal slash asshole slash idiot with a beard. It made sense seeing as how, when i'd stopped at the night market the night before to ask whether this delicious looking chunk of meat on a stick was beef or pork, the owner burst out laughing and ran off. Go figure.

So this place does delicious but gigantic burgers, and as it's the lads last proper meal for a week (and because I'm a bit of a bastard), i tell joe and mick that if they can eat two half pounders, with all the extras, I'll pay for the whole lot of them (i was expecting both of them to end up throwing up or at the very least give up in shame) . I ordered a quarter pounder with bacon and sat back to watch. But they did it. The hungry bastards actually managed to eat the whole lot, with bacon, veggie sides, fries - the whole lot. They suffered afterwards which was kind of worth it, but disappointing for me.

The lads hitchhiked off to the monastery, and i headed for the bus station. In a ridiculous stroke of luck,i got the last bus out of town and got seated next to an Ozzie named Sean who lived in Chiang Mai. He works for a human rights organization that monitors Burma (he earns $250 a month, which seemingly is enough to live on there), and told me some stories that really turned my stomach - if you want to know them, email me, but i guarantee they'll upset you and their retelling has made a few people cry and one guy throw up. We evened it out my telling each other some dirty/sick/disgusting jokes and actually had a great time on the bus. He also told me about when his old man used to own an opal mine in oz, and how when they'd catch people stealing from them, they'd chuck them down the mine. Sean's brother also works in human rights work, so i think there's some sort of familial karma thing going on there.

When we got to Chiang Mai, he brought me to his favorite local eaterie, and offered me a lift to my "guesthouse". Now, when i came away i made a promise I'd stay somewhere nice once a month, and tonight was that night. This guy was living on $250 a day, and my hotel cost $50, so i felt like a bit of an asshole, but what can you do. He got his scooter out of the parking lot and i hopped on the back, with my 40lb bag on my back, and my (fairly heavy) day pack (camera, MP3 player, scrapbook, notepad, bunch more heavy crap) in one hand. That ride was by far the scariest thing that's happened to me in Thailand, how i got out of there alive is a mystery. I had one hand to hold onto the bike with, and we swayed the whole way because Sean, god bless him, drives like a maniac, swinging in and out between cars, flying through red lights, all the kinds of things that should have seen my brains make a Jackson Pollack work with the pavement.

Somehow we got to my place, said our goodbyes, and i entered, hands down, the poshest hotel I've ever stayed at. There was a 24 hour band in the lobby for chrissakes. It cost e30 but at home, the minimum room charge would have been about e400, no problem. I rocked in with a week's worth of dirt all over my clothes, smelling like a pigfarm and a tshirt that had SATAN written across it in big letters (to be fair, it does say "satan has your nose" so it's not THAT bad). Once i got into my room i looked out the window and saw the amazing view over the city. I was on the 45th floor and could see for miles. That alone was worth the money.

Living in the lap of luxury as i was, i decided to eat it up in similar fashion, so i went across the street to the local Burger King and got a triple bacon cheese burger meal (Burger King and McDonalds here cost the same as home, so it was, comparatively, pretty expensive) and ate it while watching Harrison Ford movies on the free cable TV, sitting on the bed in my gigantic room, a bed i should mention that was twice the size of my room at home. I made some calls to home and crashed out with the blackout curtains pulled and honest to god, had the best 12 hours sleep I've ever had (no morning sun, no roosters, no construction sounds, no smell of thai morning food. Thank you jesus).

The next morning i checked out and to make up for my splurge, stayed in the cheapest, shittiest place in town - "Julie's Guesthouse". It's the kind of place that Ahane MacGowan wakes up and realizes he needs to get off the booze. My room was more like a box, it had a window that opened onto a wall and a camper bed that was slightly less comfortable than the floor, but for e1.50, who's complaining.

That day i rented a bike (can you see i'm already getting sick of typing?) and headed off into the hills to see Doi Suthep, the main monastery attraction in northern Thailand. There's pictures on my flickr but all i'll say is there's about 450 steps to get up there and i felt every one of them. When i got to the top i had to buy my ticket in sign language as i almost literally couldn't breathe. It was really peaceful there and it was cool to see the locals worshiping the buddahs and stuff, ringing bells, and just generally getting their religion on. They get pretty into it to say the least.

After that i headed back into town and drove around for a while, something i realized pretty quickly i love doing. Chiang Mai's traffic is pretty intense, but the Thais are great drivers, they honk their horns a lot to let you know they're there, or coming close, or turning off, or even just to say hi, so you can zip around between cars and never get hit, and believe me i tore the arse out of it.

That night i went out with two english guys and killed them at pool, but they were a little distracted as one was dating this thai girl (not sure if there was money involved but i chose not to ask) and while the other guy was friendly, we just didn't all get along so well so i made my excuses early and left.

The next day i had a bit of a freakout. I'd been in Thailand for about seven weeks and only seen about seven places, all of them what are known as "typical tourist/backpacker fare". I'm REALLLY REALLY not into this whole "I'm not a tourist, i'm a backpacker/traveler" bullshit discussion that people seem to want to get into endlessly (my opinion, if you're visiting someone else's country and not working, you're a tourist, end of story), but at the same time i was worried I'd squandered my time and not seen enough of "the real Thailand" (it pains me to write that sentence, but you get the idea). I went to the bus station in the morning and booked a ticket for the farthest away place i could find - Nong Khai. I'd heard it was nice there, it was right on the laos border across from Vientiane with just the Mekong seperating you, and i heard they had a Buddha park designed by this guy who took way too much acid. Sounds good to me.

After a quick haircut and beard trim (so as to not get laughed at too much), i went to the bus station for my overnight bus. These things are huge, and there's huge leg space and the seats go right back, so i was ready for the 14 hour journey. I settled into my seat and figured me and a normal sized Thai guy could get a proper night's sleep here without too much hassle. How wrong was i. The only 300lb guy in Thailand got on, squeezed into the window seat and pulled his blanket over him to get to sleep (a sleep that came complete with snoring. Like serious snoring). Funny story - as he fell asleep his hand slowly curled, while turned my direction, into what's known as "the finger". Yep, the guy slept for 14 hours flipping me off. I read for a few hours, and spent most of the journey listening to the Thai top 40 karaoke they insist on playing at top volume on every VIP bus until i could take no more. I dropped the last of the sleeping pills I'd got when I'd got sick in Chiang Mai last time and fell asleep listening to Small Brown Bike.

In the morning there was a minor panic when i ended up going to the wrong bus station (a story not worth telling save for the fact i got to see a small Thai town come to life, which was amazing), but eventually i got to Nong Khai and to my guest house, Mut Mee. It's a beautiful place owned by a Kiwi guy and an English guy that has a shaded garden full of tables to read and relax, amazing and amazingly cheap food, loads of yoga courses and that kinda hippie crap, a fairly good bookshop, and best of all, and amazing view of the Mekong. For the next few days i hung out there, reading books, almost not drinking, and taking in the good atmosphere. On my second last day i was off looking for an internet place when i ran into this French Canadian girl named Elian (hereafter referred to as The Alien). The Alien was/is a super cool girl with great taste in music as boyfriend in a band that sounds just like my favorite bands at home, so we got on super well. We rented bikes and headed to the Buddha park. We got lost a few times and had to make some sketchy crosses of highways but eventually got there.

And what a sight. To say this guy took a lot of acid was an understatement. They had this sculpture of an elephant surrounded by barking dogs doing different things, some playing cards, some flying planes, some throwing rocks. There was one sculpture that was about two hundred foot tall that was seven hissing snake heads, about ten feet tall a piece, with a Buddha in the middle. You can see the pictures on my flickr, but it barely covers how mad it was.

Anyways, that evening me and the alien took a dinner cruise along the mekong and went in search of a bar to have some drinky drinks. We found this once place with a cool pool table and some fairly good 80s metal (priest, maiden, that kind of thing) on the stereo, but everyone was drinking coffee. Weird. I went up to the bar to figure out the story and found out it was run by an english guy. The deal was that there was an election two days later, so by thai law, everyone had to stay sober for two days to "make the right choice". Never one to be kept away from a drink, the owner was serving beer in coffee cups. So we played pool for a while, drinking beer from coffee cups, at some point the alien headed home and i got into a bacon buttie eating competition with these gigantic scousers. Somehow i won, but somewhere along the way, i left without my bag. Go figure (i got it back the next day from a guy who seemingly knew me pretty well but i had no idea who he was. It also took me 35 minuts to find the bar, even though it was less than a minute from my guest house. I guess i must have drank too much coffee).

The alien was planning on heading for Laos but i managed to convince her we had a cool gang of people going on the slowboat expedition in Laos, so we headed for Udon Thani (local bus depot) and bought more night bus tickets. We spent the day in Udon Thani (note: complete and utter shithole) where i had sushi for the first time (just as horrible as i had guessed), ate a spoonfull of wasabi (i was told it was aubergene, it burned the shit out of my mouth), and learned to play the card game shithead. I also had my first meal at a restaurant recommended by the legendary "Lonely Planet", basically a bible for travelers. Halfway through a lasagna that consisted solely of pasta sheets and half cooked pork (and that cost me about five times the price of a lasagna in any other thai restaurant), i got my first hint that the Lonely Planet is a complete piece of toss. More on that later.

So we got our bus back to Chiang Mai (there's a side story where we spend half an hour going the wrong way down a highway in a tuc tuc, but this is getting too long already), chat about crap and fall asleep. As luck would have it we run into all the Pai crowd (English Joe, Aussies Mick, Mike, Lisa and her new friend Sam) and check into this fairly nice but really cheap guesthouse. It's Mike's last night before heading home so we have a big night out. Highlights including but not limited to: mike passing out in probably the second bar we go to and having to be carried home, a bar that served laughing gas (but was dry by the time we got there), me dancing on a table (how it held me i'll never know), a nightclub full of seedy guys and thai girls/hookers that we left in about five minutes, joe falling in the moat, seeing a dehydrated/nearly dead elephant collapse but be revived with a water hose, a tuc tuc race, a ride in some random thai guy's SUV, and finally trying to wake a completely passed out Sam for his bus in a way that i won't put in here, but suffice to say, he was totally freaked out when we told him the next day. Also notable, i had my first cigarette in three years. I don't know why or how, but i remember it was really nice and just as good as i'd thought it would be after three years of no cigarettes whatsoever. How i thought i'd get away with just one, i've no idea, but there it is. More on that later.

The day after was pretty quiet, we walked around town a bit, said some goodbyes, ate, bought books and called it a night early. We all had places to go the next day and the night before had taken it out of us.

Around 7am, me, the alien, joe and mick headed for the bus station for what we were told was a VIP (aka sleep in comfort) bus but what turned out to be the most piece of crap old local bus you could imagine. Mick, joe and i got into a seat designed for three thai people and it was pretty quickly obvious it was never going to happen - i got the asile seat and had about a quarter of a buttcheek worth of room, which meant i had to stand up every time someone wanted to pass. After a hot minute me, mick and the alien headed for the back of the bus, found some empty seats, and passed out.

Five horrible hours later we got to the thai/laos border in Chiang Khong, officially departed Thailand, and officially entered laos at Huay Xai. Funny story: every country has to pay a different amount for the laos visa (ireland was $30) and mick filled out all his forms on his Australian passport, before realizing he could get it on his UK passport for $5 cheaper, so went through the whole process again. Suffice to say, Mick's a tight bastard. Somewhere along the way we met an english couple, Kev and Jax, and spent the evening wandering around Huay Xai, which is a town of absolutely nothing to speak of other than it's the starting point of the famous Mekong Slow boat.

What to say about the slow boat. Well, it's a boat, and it goes really really slowly down the mekong, for two days in fact. We got a nice gang of us going down the back by the engine and strapped in for seven hours of amazing scenery and good chats. Every so often the boat would pull over for locals to hop on and hop off, we visited tiny villages, and through the trees we could see little settlements where people live off the land on gigantic mountains. Imagine that, if you lived in a village of about twenty people with no money, no cops, no electricity, no refrigeration, no TV... To say it must be an alien existence is putting it mildly. Top marks to the drivers too, the Mekong seems to flow about seven directions at once and every so often there would be areas with huge rocks and small rocks, which means there's tonnes of rocks just under the water. Couple that with swells, whirl pools, and diverging flows and you have a situation where a three hundred foot long boat full of fat white people must be an absolute miracle to keep afloat. At one stage the boat pulled in and these kids got on with crates full of drinks and snacks to sell to us. One kid of about six had a crate of beers, so i picked up a can of Beer Laos and asked how much. When the price was too high (and the beer was warm) i put it back and said "thank you no", he cocked his head and shouted "GET FUCKED" and walked off. We all fell about laughing, and that being one of my favorite phrases, getting it off a laoation hill tribe kid cracked me up for about half an hour.

After seven hours we stopped in a town called Pakbeng for the night. The boat stops at the bottom of a steep sand dune, so getting up was a nightmare, especially as it was covered in touts trying to sell guesthouses, marijuana, and opium (just about everyone in Laos will, at some point, try to tell you marijuana or opium, even the cops). We picked one guy and he brought us to a reasonably decent guesthouse which was cheap as hell. Me and the alien got a room (two single beds) that cost about e0.50 each and we headed out to a great Indian place for dinner. After a quick pint we all headed for bed, ready for another day's slow boating.

The next day we got to the pier to find out they planned on putting two boat's worth of people on one boat. We all hopped on and sat on the ground near the front (not as bad as it sounds) until the lads spotted what looked like airline seats on the roof. They all jumped up and settled in (i skipped out, knowing full well they'd never let them stay there - i was right, they lasted about four minutes up there) and there was a stand off between the last forty people left to get on and the slow boat people. Some prat with a lonely planet started on about "well the Lonely Planet says if you protest they'll give you a new boat" and started waving it at the boat people. They shrugged and pulled the boat out and headed off without them. I met a Slovenian couple who were on a mammoth motorbike ride and only taking the slowboat for two hours as there was no roads on the opposite side of the river to Pakbeng and we laughed at the lonely planet prat for a while. They told me about getting a flat tire in remote Laos and walking for a mile to a village to get someone to repair it, all the while people coming out of their houses and following them, having never seen white people before. By the time they got to a guy who could repair it, there was a crowd of around 300 people (i saw the photos, it was insane) and when they paid they guy two American dollar bills for fixing the bike, people went insane, they'd never seen so much money before. Madness.

The second day was more relaxed than the first, as we were at the front and so had no engine noise. The scenery was no less beautiful and around seven we docked in Luang Prabang, Laos' second city. We found some cheap digs (me and the alien splitting a twin room again) and the lads went for dinner. I went off looking for an ATM as i had no local currency (kip), only to find the ATMs in Laos don't accept VISA. Shite. I found a guy with a counter who did however and set about getting e100, a small amount i thought. How wrong was i. Get this - e100 is one million, three hundred thousand kip. And the guy paid me in five thousand kip notes. It was the biggest wad of cash you've ever seen (i later took a photo of me covered in it, i'll put it on flickr soon). He packed it in a double sized Agfa bag (the ones you get photos in) and i set off down the street with my eyes darting everywhere.

We had dinner (which for four people, including a bunch of beers, came to about e4) and headed off for a bar, where i ran into some friends from pai, Joe and Jim. The bars in laos close at 11:30 sharp so while myself, the alien, and Jax and Kev headed for home, Mick and Joe decided they'd head to the bowling alley, which is the latest opening place in Luang Prabang. Alien and i played cards for a while and crashed out.

In the morning i met Kev and Jax for breakfast and we started talking about what we'd do for the next few days in Luang Prabang. At around 10:30 i got a call from Mick.

Me: "Morning Mick, how're you?"
Mick: "Not too bad brian. Are you at your guesthouse?"
Me: "Yeah, just having breakfast. What's up".
Mick: "Hahaha, not too much. Um, we have to leave town. Today. Like right now".



That's where i'm leaving it folks, it's 10pm and i have a flight in the morning to Malaysia. I'll try get the rest of this done in a week. See ya soon.