Well! Seeing as it's September now and this update starts in January, and seeing as how I don't particularly want this to turn into some kind of memoir, I'm going to speed things up a little, which is easy, because little of note happened for the rest of my trip. Luckily I've been working in a roadhouse in Northern Territory, Australia for three months now, and literally nothing of note has happened in this time. It's a bit groundhog day, same shit, same day, so that should be coverable in all of one paragraph, bringing me right up to October 9th when I get back on the road - America and Asia, here I come (again).
January 24th - Myself and mike head back to Bangkok to see Joe before he heads home. He's come off his bike a week or so before in Laos and has to go back to recuperate. Lee and Sara, the welsh couple who were with him when he had the accident, are arriving the next day, along with Lisa who we'd travelled with before, and who'd gone to see Joe when he was still in hospital in the north east.
On a side note, I'm not going to go into Joe's accident or his condition in Bangkok because I think it's Joe's business and if he reads this, I'm pretty sure he won't want to be reminded of it or hear how I felt about it. If it seems like I'm skipping over a lot, it's intentional.
Me and mike check into a guesthouse a few streets over from Koh San (aka tourist city) and head off into the night to meet my friend Dawn. She'd arrived to Thailand a month or so after I had, but we hadn't managed to meet up yet. She was doing volunteer work with a program that aimed to get Thai prostitutes off the streets and teach them skills to start making money from less dangerous means. I get her on the phone and she says she's at a cool little bar named Hollywood.
We hop into a taxi and head over to find Hollywood is actually a gigantic club in the "rich kid" area of Bangkok. Hummers and Thai kids with huge gold "bling" necklaces abound. We pay the exorbitant entrance fee, check our jackets, and locate Dawn, who is there with some Americans from her program and some of the women they've got off the streets. Far from being a "cool little bar", Hollywood is a cavernous ballroom rammed with old Thai men paying exorbitant prices for imported whiskey by the bottle. On the huge stage, on ramps, is a band playing a mix of Thai pop and western pop standards. For each song a different singer comes out and either launches into the song, or does some rat pack type banter with the audience before singing something that gets everyone laughing. Every four or five songs, a singer comes on with a troupe of about twenty backing dancers, all female. At the end of the song, the women walk down the ramp that runs the middle of the room, and stand there swaying to the music while men in the audience pick and chose, pay their money, and disappear into a back room with them. Easily the seediest place I've ever been (at this point).
I ask dawn how her job is going and she says she's just quit/been fired because she's met this Thai dude and everything's going great, but his wife keeps coming to her work, with their eight month old kid, shouting about this foreigner who's stolen her husband. Seeing as her job is finished, she's planning on getting an apartment with her new boyfriend for the remaining time she's in Thailand.
It's good seeing dawn and all, but the whole scene is way too depressing in there, so me and mike head back to town, find a bar, and get good and drunk.
The next day we meet up with Lisa and amble around before running into Joe and his dad who's come to see him home safe. We have dinner with them before heading out for more drinks.
The next few days pass pretty similarly. We meet up with Joe, his dad, and lee and Sara for breakfast each day. During the day, Joe, Lisa and mike head off to go meet monks or check out markets, we meet again for dinner, and at night, mike, Lisa and i head out for drinks. I rarely did anything during the day because i was flat out sick of travelling. It wasn't so much homesickness, as being tired of Asia. It's an amazing place, don't get me wrong, but I got tired of living out of a backpack, staying in dingy, anonymous guesthouses, everything being hot, dirty, noisy... And what a place to get sick of it - Bangkok, possibly the most gaudy, loud, dirty, smelly place in the world. I was a pain in the arse to be around too, I’m pretty sure mike and Lisa thought i was annoyed at having to come to Bangkok and deal with the reality of Joe’s situation, but i was just tired of moving and very conscious that the group I’d been travelling in for the previous two months or so was finally fully disbanding - Joe was going home, mike was off to Australia and lisa to India. I couldn't imagine meeting better people than i'd already been with, and the thought weighed heavy on my mind that i was looking at another two months in asia feeling the isolation i did when i was without that gang or the first australian/kiwi/german gang i'd met in the islands. To say i was pessimistic would be an understatement, but i didn't really want to talk to mike or lisa about it because i felt it would be selfish considering we were here for joe and my worries were pretty minor considering what he'd been through. In retrospect, i think if i'd let them know what was going on with me, rather than just spending the days alone and the nights surly and withdrawn, giving the impression i was pissed at being "dragged" back to bangkok, it would have been easier but... C'est la vie....
Eventually, the gang breaks up. Mike leaves for Australia, that night Joe flies out, and the next day Lisa heads for India. My next stop is Cambodia so i buy a daytime train ticket with plans to stay a night on the Thai side of the border and cross early in the morning. I'd read up on it a lot and the crossing (at poi pet) seemed to be about as shady as tourist-scam crossings get. There's far more scams going for this crossing than i have time to go list, but in one way or another, i encounter all of them over the trip.
The train to the border town finds me sitting next to an American who's on some sort of Nicholas Cage Leaving Las Vegas trip, but with ten times the amount of prostitutes. He's spent so long drinking heavily, exclusively in the company of hookers that when i first meet him on the platform, drinking deep from a bottle of Jim Beam, i think he's Mexican, such is his pidgin grasp of English. Turns out he's headed to Siem Reap to meet with a lady who he'd spent a month with but who'd left him when he refused to keep paying her $800 a month for sex. He keeps on about her "beautiful soul" and how he has to meet her again (and pay the money). Sleaze to the max. I manage to ditch him when i get off the train, check into a hotel, and crash out.
The next morning i get a tuc tuc to the border, where i immediately meet my first group of scam artists. "The border no longer issues visas, you must pay for one here with me before crossing". Asking price: $50. Actual (like real) price of a Cambodian visa: $30. Length of line of gullible tourists: Approx 8 people. I keep walking. A few feet later a small man comes and offers to help process my visa quickly for $10. I ignore him. A few feet later, a man offers to take me in his taxi to siem reap for $50. This is actually pretty reasonable, but without seeing the taxi, it's too risky so i ignore him. Unfortunately, he keeps following me.
I get to the end of the Thai side, get my exit stamp, and walk into the kilometre of no man’s land between the Thai side and the Cambodian side. The border opens at 6am and i'd arrived "early" at 7am hoping to get in before the gangs of Thai gamblers hopping the border for the day to spend money in the legalised casinos of Cambodia. Not early enough though. The place is absolutely jammers with gamblers, horse carts, trucks full of scrap metal, women carrying jugs of god knows what, and, every so often, white faces like mine looking highly confused. There are no signposts and people appear to be just walking right through, so I’m not sure where I’m supposed to get my Cambodian visa. "Luckily", my taxi driving friend is still by my side so i ask him where the visa office is, and he leads me to tourist police dude who sits me down at a desk and begins to process my visa. I have my back to an area with closed information-style windows and a bunch of empty plastic chairs, which i presume is the proper visa office. I've heard a lot of stories of notices on these windows saying "visa now $50" and westerners sitting round for hours sulking until the visa officers agree to sell the visa for the correct price ($30), but today it's flat out deserted. I fill out the tourist police guy's forms, and he asks for $35. I remind him that the visa is actually $30, but he says it's gone up. I say i don't believe him, and he replies, with a big friendly smile, "please, i am tourist police, if you cannot trust me, who can you trust?". I have to laugh, slick bastard. I know I’m being took, but i figure it's only $5, so i give him the money, he goes and knocks on the proper window, buys my visa, pockets the $5, smilingly gives me back my passport, and sends me on my way.
I check into Cambodia and cross into the somehow simultaneously dusty and muddy shithole that is poi pet, without a doubt the shadiest town I’ve ever been to. It's said to be incredibly dangerous after dark - the reason i didn't cross after the train the night before. My "handler" (who's still following me since the hour before when i was in Thailand) passes me over to his friend who owns the taxi. He tries to sell me on the taxi but i say I’m getting a song thaw. He says he has these too, and offers to take me on his motorbike to see. I refuse, saying i'd prefer to walk (assuming this will make him finally bugger off), and he decides to join me for a pleasant stroll through the hundreds of scam artists that line this side of the border. To his credit, he keeps them all off me, no mean feat, but he does complain a bit about having to walk, and after about 500 meters, is visibly knackered.
Eventually we get to where the song thaws are, to find they're packing about twenty five people onto the back of a small flatbed truck. There's no bloody way i want to spend the next three hours packed like a sardine that’s sure to fall out on a tight corner, even for $5, so i share my concern with my new friend, who begins to kick a woman out of the cabin to give me her space. I'm not having that either, so i start walking away. The guy follows me and asks what i'm up to. I say i'm going to get a taxi, so he offers me a taxi for $25. I know this is way too cheap for a taxi, but decide to humour him. Long story short, i end up in the back of a sedan with about five more khymer people who look like they'd steal my eyelids if i fell asleep. I pay $20 and my friend asks for something for himself, but i'm out of good will so i tell him to get stuffed.
We drive through the Cambodian countryside for about an hour and a half before we pull over in some random town and i notice the driver pulling my bag out of the boot. I jump out and give him a "what the fuck" look, but he's actually transferring me to another taxi, this time with five people who are much thinner (thus more room for me) but far more pissed off looking. They argue amongst themselves, all the while gesturing to me, as if two of them want to kill me and eat me, two want to kill me and sell me for parts, while the other just wants to kill me. Another hour of this and we arrive into siem reap.
I'm dropped on the roadside in the middle of the nowhere (read: we stop, they dump my bag out of the boot, and while i go see what's up, they drive off) and after some guide book cartography, i meet a friendly tuc tuc driver who offers to bring me around to see as many guesthouses as i like for $1. I've heard about this before, the deal being he's all nice today so tomorrow i pick him to take me to see the Angkor temples for big money, which i have no intention of (I’ll see them, i just won't pick a random tuc tuc driver), so i play along, get a cheapo tour, and get checked into a fairly alright guesthouse.
When singing in, i see the names of two Australian girls i spent time with in vang viang at Christmas, but for some reason they've checked in and out, so i go facebook them and arrange to meet for dinner. It turns out they fell for another scam. They got an early (6am) bus from a nearby Thai island, which somehow managed to spend six hours making the two hour journey to the border, where they paid $50 for visas, before the two/three hour journey to Siem Reap became an eight hour ordeal of lunch stops and engine trouble. When they arrived, the bus brought them right to an (overpriced) guesthouse a few kms out of town, where they were too tired to argue and booked in. The next day they'd booked into my guesthouse, but were quilted out of moving by the guesthouse they were sold to, so they checked out again and were back 5km outside town. We met up the next few days for dinner - they're off seeing the temples each day, while i spend mine reading $2 photocopied books on Thai history in my guesthouse.
I find out two friends, Naj and Eliane are both coming separately to Siem Reap a few days later, so i elect to lay low for a few days until they arrive. The ozzie girls leave on Monday and i spend a few days reading books in my guesthouse. Naj arrives on a Thursday and eliane on Friday. We try out a few different restaurants (one with traditional khymer apsara dancing and some amazing curries) and have a few nights in the "traveller bar" Angkor What. On one such night, eliane and i are walking home (her guesthouse is across the road from mine) when somehow get talking to a young Thai tuc tuc driver outside the 7/11. He tells us he needs to make $5 a day to survive - $3 for three meals, $1 for petrol, and $1 for his living space. He says Cambodia is about as lawless as it gets, he once killed someone in his tuc tuc, a collision that he himself said he should have been jailed for, but he paid the police $15 and they put it down as a traffic accident. Eliane's been running around with some four or five year kids who are hanging out outside the 7/11, and at some point they go to sleep, one on a bench and one under it. The Thai guy tells us the kids are used during the day by their parents to beg money from tourists, but the money goes to the parent's gambling habits and the kids sleep on the streets. It was all about as grim as it gets, and we got the guy's number, telling him we'd like him to take us around the temples ($30 for the three of us) but the next day the number doesn't work and we never see him again.
We get up early the Monday morning and head for the temples for sunrise. I won't go into their history because, frankly, i'd be mostly making it up at this late stage (eight months later). All i remember for sure is they're old as the hills, they Khymer Rouge tried to knock them down some thirty years ago (pack a wankers they were), and a group of Germans are currently rebuilding them. We plan to get in early before they get too packed, but some eight or nine hundred people have the same idea so it's actually pretty packed. While Naj had gone for a three day pass, Eliane and i skimp for one day passes, so we are eager to get in and out, while naj wants to amble about and take in everything, so we split up.
The temples are spread over several sites, with one complex being the main base for seeing the sunrise, so we start there. The temples inside are spread over about two kilometres, with a twenty five foot ornate stone wall bordering the place. The walls themselves are a sight; a huge tunnel runs through with beautiful carvings and middle rooms at random spots. We move into the inside are which is a sort of long stone pathway to face another huge temple. The grounds around the pathway are dotted with other temples, a lake, and an area where hawkers have set up food and clothing stalls. We head into the temple directly in front of us which has several bathhouse type rooms, huge steep stairs to statues of different gods, huge open areas... Just huge anything-you-can-make-out-of-stone!
After an hour or so we head for the next site about 2km down the road which is far more packed than expected. I try to take pictures but there's always fifteen or twenty people in the shot. There's a sort of shanty site setup there with stalls for food, drinks, clothes, art, souvenirs - all the usual. I stop to get a drink and get chatting with an old khymer dude. Turns out he was an officer in the khymer rouge, but left Cambodia when the regime was falling and moved to America. This was his first time back in years. I'm all too aware that as a khymer rouge soldier he'd been complicit in a genocide on his own people. I wanted to ask him about it but lost the nerve.
We zip around to a few more temples, including one used in the tomb raider movie which trees had grown into to the point that it was hard to tell if the trees or stone blocks had come first. After a few hours, me and eliane are pretty templed out. I think we took on too much too quickly, though at the time i never wanted to see another temple again.
We go out for dinner that night and say our goodbyes. Naj is off to Vietnam, eliane to Thailand, and i'm headed to the beach town of Sihanoukville for a few days of doing nothing with the Canadian girls from Don Det.
For the sake of easy reading, i'll leave it there, expect the next update in the next few days!!!
Monday, September 22, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Malaysia - nazis, hindus and butterflys
Jan 19th - I arrive into Malaysia knowing absolutely nothing about the place - everywhere i'd been so far i'd researched until I knew the name and phone number of most of the population. Malaysia had, for no particular reason, never been on the cards, but a couple from San Francisco, Zan and Matt, had convinced me to come see a Hindu festival called Thaipusam where people stick kebab sticks through their cheeks (or something) so here i am. I fly into Kuala Lumpur airport and get a bus into town. Having been on an island with a population of about 50 for the past few weeks, the modern metropolis of KL is quite a shock. I get out at the main bus station, all too aware i have no idea where i am, and fall for the first tout i meet, a scraggly bearded, beatnik looking Malaysian with great English and a folder full of hotel brochures. He brings me a hop and a skip to a gigantic hotel overlooking Chinatown where the management looks at him suspiciously and tell me, once he leaves, that he's been bringing people to the hotel for the last week, and they still have no idea why. My room is small and sparse, though it has a bathroom and a TV with seven channels, all of which, crucially, are in Malay.
After a quick shower, i head out to see some of the town. I stop off and buy a SIM card at a stall on the street (two dollars - egads!) and give Matt and Zan a quick ring. They're up in the Camaroon Highlands and tell me i can get a bus in the morning right across the street from my hotel. Matt is a chef and Zan has been a waitress for aeons, so of course we have a long conversation about what i should get in McDonalds (we decide on the "Prosperity Burger". It turns out to be shite). I head off into Chinatown but unfortunately everything is closing. There are still plenty of stalls with everything from socks to knives to DVDs but the main shops (and main bargains) are closed. I walk around some more of the area before heading back towards my hotel. Nearly there, i spot a gang of Hindus lining up and chanting. I start chatting with some random Canadians who tell me it's preparation for Thaipusam. As i get to the top of the line, i see men smashing coconuts off their heads, and little girls setting coconuts on fire before smashing them with gigantic blades. Very odd. I head back to my hotel where i ring my brother in law Slatts, and realise Malay mobile to Irish mobile calls are around 1c a minute. Result! I proceed to ring pretty much everyone i know for about $2.
The next morning i go online before i leave and find a short email from Dane, the Lithuanian guy from Don Det, to say Joe's come off his bike and messed up his teeth. I email back asking if Joe's still arriving to Malaysia the next day and head for the bus station, where i get a $2 ticket to the highlands. A few hours of winding hills later, and I’m 4500 meters above sea level, in a town where they grow flowers and tea. The scenery is amazing, gigantic mountainsides covered in patches of white and red. I meet up with Zan and Matt and check into their hostel where they have a strange appropriation of a hammock - a half eggshell hanging vertically from the ceiling which you sit into and rock. Noisily. A bite to eat and a few beers later and i'm right at home. We spend the night up at the hostel's bar, which has a pool table, a bonfire and, crucially, a large table where we rope in two Germans, some English, and a Dutch guy named Mark for a gigantic game of shithead (backpacker card game). A good night is had by all, with the exception of mark, who is repeatedly crowned shithead.
The next day we decide to go see a butterfly farm. We have breakfast with Mark who tells us he's been out for a run with the Malay Olympic running team that morning - they left at six, ran up and down mountains until nine when they stopped for breakfast. Mark, ready to drop, says thanks for letting him come along and they say "but we've only started, it's now time for the afternoon 25k run!". I go to check my email quickly to find out when Joe’s arriving. I have an email from Dane with a phone number for Joe, which i ring. The phone is answered by Sara, one half of the welsh couple who went on the bike trip with Joe and Dane. I won't go into specifics but she says Joe's in hospital and in fairly bad nick. I offer to come up to help out, she says it's up to me, but at the moment there's not much i can do. I go talk it over with Matt and Zan and we decide best thing to do is go visit him in Bangkok after the festival. I arrange to meet matt and zan at the butterfly farm and go back to email a few people. Somehow i get in touch with Lisa quickly and she says she's in Bangkok and will try head over to see Joe.
I head back onto the main stretch and hail a cab for the butterfly farm. The driver is an old Indian man who looks about 100 years old. He's driving this huge old BMW/Merc looking car, and on the dashboard is a small swastika. I get talking to him he tells me he came to Malaysia in the late 40's and bought the car imported from Germany. He's very proud of the car and, seeing my camera, asks me to take his picture with it.
I arrive up to the butterfly farm and meet matt and zan. We expect a farm with hundreds of butterflies flapping around the place, but it seems it's only a title - the place has every type of garden non-animal you could imagine, from stick and leaf insects, to snakes, lizards, spiders, and of course, butterflies. The guy who shows us around is a young Indian who lives here on the farm. He says he's not paid very well, so keeps a secret vegetable patch on the hills and lives from that. After a long tour of every insect, we decide to tip him $10, and his eyes go wide. He thanks us in a variety of languages and we head out. Seeing no taxis, we decide to hitch, and get picked up in about four seconds by a huge Lexus. The driver tells us he lives in Kuala Lumpur and drives down many weekends to see his son and grandchildren. He says the area is 50% holiday makers and 50% Muslim, evidenced by the number of robed, turbaned, bearded dudes ambling about.
We pass another day or so playing cards and having the odd drink before heading back down to KL. The journey is set to take 3 hours, but after about an hour we pull into a garage and a mechanic hops in and strips the gearbox apart. I get out and chat to some of the people outside who say the gearbox has cracked and will need replacing. Sure enough, a small crane is wheeled in through the door of the bus, the gearbox is lifted out, and a new one is craned in. After about 25 mins we're back on the road... for about 3 minutes, when the driver pulls in for his lunch. We spend half an hour at a road stop before heading back on the road.
We get into KL, meet up with London Mike who's come down for the festival from Thailand - a 24 bus ride. Poor sod. We try to find the skytrain station to take us to Matt and Zan's friend Chrissie’s apartment, but after a spell, give up and ring a taxi. Eventually we get to the Chrissie’s place, a huge sky scraping apartment block, and hop into the lifts. 80 odd floors later and we're at our adopted home for the next few days. The lads had met Chrissie a few weeks beforehand and after a night's drinking, she'd offered to let them (and whoever was with them) crash on her floor for the weekend of thaipusam. A Malaysian herself, she'd never been to the festival, and would accompany us the second night. We dropped our bags and headed out for food and drinks, ending up at Chrissie’s new job as a hostess where we sat around playing cards and watching mike's (astounding) range of card tricks before heading back to the apartment for a few more drinks.
The next day i decided it was time to get my first tattoo. We get the name of a good tattoo shop from Chrissie and head off. For a long time I’ve wanted to get something related to The Fest, the punk festival I’ve been attending religiously for the last few years and had a year before settled on the logo of the label that puts it on, No Idea, but never had the guts to do it. I print off the logo from the internet and go to the shop, a small booth in a very big shopping mall. The tattooist is pretty sound, a short Malaysian with huge dreads and tattoos on his face. He goes off to sketch out the stencil as mike gets more and more giddy at the prospect of seeing me in pain. Eventually we’re ready to go and i head off into the back room, take off my t-shirt, and he presses the stencil onto my back between my shoulder blades, just low enough so it can‘t be seen. After a few minor adjustments, he’s ready to start. Mike’s foaming at the mouth at this stage, and has his camera out videoing me, waiting for the squeals. The needle buzzes, i wince, it touches my skin and... I smile. It’s like being drawn on with a pen (albeit a pen being pushed rather hard). As soon as i smile, mike closes up his camera and leaves mumbling to himself about life being unfair. Zan goes off shopping and Matty, trooper that he is, stays on, talking away to keep my mind off the increasing pain of the needle on my shoulder blades. After about 45 minutes we’re all done. I thank the tattooist and get my photo taken with him before he hands me back the printout of the logo, saying "i give you this to assure you i will never copy this design for anyone else - no two people should have the same tattoo". I don't have the heart to tell him i know probably twenty or thirty people who have the exact same tattoo!
That night is the first night of the Thaipusam festival, the Hindu festival that we came for. Mark's already been over for the day and says it's pretty nuts but is supposed to go crazy at midnight with a fireworks display followed by most of the gory stuff that we're there to see. The location for the festival is the Batu Caves, about 20km outside KL central, so we hitch a cab (BATU CAR TO THE BATU CAVES!!) and arrive to find the place absolutely teeming with people. I later find out the attendance this year is a paltry 600,000 people, half the normal attendance. How they fit in 1.2 million people i've no idea, the place is jammers and getting around is an absolute mission, but worth it when we see our first participant outside the main gate. At first it appears to be a mad turbaned guy walking along with a Buddha and various incense sticks on a cart being pushed behind him, until we realise the cart is actually attached to him - he has approx 30 hooks run though the skin in his back with ropes hanging off them, with which he's pulling the cart. I catch a look at his face and his eyes are bulging out of his head, though not so much in pain. He stops briefly and someone hands him a huge machete, the blade of which he runs along his tongue a few times and smacks off his back a few times before going back to dragging his cart.
We head into the main area to find there are actually two lines for the participants heading from the front gate up to the steps of the caves and back. Alongside run two more lines for visitors. We stand around to watch the participants expecting more hooks and such, but there's actually a wide range of things the participants are doing, from carrying small urns on their heads, to carrying 12 foot wide floats of peacock feathers that suspend above their heads from huge steel structures affixed to their wastes, many with forty or fifty small hooks coming off them. Some of the participants are in weird trances, screaming and smoking cigarettes, or laughing and dancing around. All the while the air is thick with incense and most people are either praying or chanting.
At 12 the place goes a little quieter and the fireworks begin. People start to chant and cheer, but the fireworks are actually pretty bland, and go on for about ten minutes. Then a huge line towards the main cave appears. We join the line and shuffle along until we get to the entrance where robed ladies are handing out goat’s milk and putting incense stuff on people's foreheads. We get a small cup of goat’s milk each into our hands, drink half (which tastes horrible) and rub the rest on the first step, get our forehead incense, and begin the climb. It's about 1200 steps to the top, and i feel every one! The steps are about five feet wide and about a foot deep, so it's a precarious climb, especially seeing as the steps are absolutely rammed with people - you always have one hand on the person in front of you so as not to fall forwards, and you always have one hand on your shoulder from the randomer behind you. Every so often the line splits into two where someone has collapsed or someone is taking a rest. There are actually three sets of steps, one going up on the left, one down on the right, with the middle reserved for participants carrying the giant floats of steel and peacock feathers. Those things must have weighed about 250 pounds, but each participant had members of their family around them chanting "ray ray" (or something that sounds like that), and if they falter, the family chants harder, everyone around them joins in (including us), and they get the strength to continue.
At the top of the steps is the entrance to the main cave, a huge cavernous opening in the cliff face. The first part is about a fifty feet wide and a hundred feet high, but you're soon into the main cave, about five hundred feet high and just as wide. At the centre are the participants, getting "de-tranced" and having the hooks removed from backs/shoulders/faces/chests. Further on is a third, smaller cave, with the alter that the participants deliver their floats or urns to. We walk around a while before heading back down to the main area below.
On the way down, myself and mike somehow get on to the subject of the song we want played at our funerals. Mike wants some Stevie Wonder mush, whereas i want Truth Is a Menace by my friend's band North Lincoln. He asks if i've actually told anyone and, realising i haven’t, i decide i should put it in my blog. Job done! I mention we don't generally play songs at funerals in Ireland, so we decide i should be buried with a small ipod with the song on repeat. Ha, costing my family money even in death.
Malaysians are incredibly friendly, often starting conversations out of nowhere with passing strangers, especially if it means they can practice their English. One such conversation is with a local Hindu dude who we ask about the ubiquitous "ray ray" chant. He says the main Hindu god reputedly crossed India in one step, using his giant stick/staff, which was called something that sounds like "ray ray". The chant goes up when people are faltering, to remind them of their leader’s great journey. He also explains that the reason for the comparatively low turnout this year is an act of political protest - despite the huge Hindu population of Malaysia, the government never puts any money towards the festival. This year being an election year, the government has made a huge deal of contributing funds towards it’s running and advertising, but has actually funnelled the money through bogus organisations who have instead spent it on the re-election campaign. Naturally, Hindus are incensed and thus are protesting by not attending the festival. Hence, the previous year’s attendance of around 1.2 million people has been halved for this year’s event.
We decide to check out where the trance dudes are coming from, so make our way towards "the source" (a name we made up ourselves, obviously), which is about a kilometre from the main area, through stalls and, oddly, a funfair complete with dodgems and two gigantic Ferris wheels. When we get onto the main thoroughfare, it's jammed, with people literally shoving each other to get through. There are two loose lines of participants, one for people in light trances, carrying urns, and another for heavy trances, carrying floats or dragging carts. It's not long before we see our first spiritual freak-out.
One guy of about 25 has been pulling a cart with a statue and some candles via about 50 hooks in his back. When we get there he is hunched down spitting out what looks like blood, with a crazed look on his face, while people chant lightly around him. A member of his family takes the ropes off the cart and holds them in his hand. After a minute, the "mobile chant crew" shows up. This is about eight guys with various drums, and a guy with a megaphone. The drums go off, the megaphone guy starts some weird chanting/singing/screaming and the guy on the ground stands up. Someone rubs red incense on his tongue and pours water down his throat (hence, the spitting blood), and he leans forward hard as the guy holding the ropes leans backwards hard, holding the ropes in each hand, while the skin on his back stretches out off each hook. It's an incredibly intense sight, and it quickly gets a lot more so. The guy gets more and more into his trance until his face looks like he's heavily drugged, at which point people line up to have incense rubbed on their foreheads by him. He does three or four until, with some randomer standing in front of him waiting for incense, he suddenly starts screaming. He puts his two hands up parallel to his face, fixes the guy in a stare and starts a low growl. They lock hands and butt heads. The hooked guy's growl turns into a low scream, which gets higher and higher. Suddenly the randomer reels off him, screaming with his eyes rolled right back in his head. The hooked guy crouches and stares with his tongue out (think: Hakka) as the randomer rolls around the floor screaming, before passing out and being carried off. All the while there's drums and singing and chanting. The hooked guy starts to lean into his hooks, and takes several steps forward, with his family member trying to pull him backwards, but to no avail. He reattaches the hooks to the cart, they set off, the mobile chant crew disappears, and we're left looking at each other thinking "Christ, did that really happen?"
We make our way down the road and every so often, we hear the mobile chant crew start up, and, along with everyone else, start running in that direction. Nothing is as intense as above, but there are some crazy sights. A woman near one freak-out suddenly goes into a trance and starts flailing around, sticking out her tongue and staring at people, before collapsing and being dragged off. Another woman suddenly starts screaming and wailing before passing out. Several men rolling naked along the street with family members pouring water on their wounds as they go by. It's all very surreal and i'm acutely aware that i wouldn't believe any of it had happened had i not seen it myself.
We finally get to the source, which is about a square kilometre of grassland surrounded by a river. Hundreds of men and women are bathing in the river, and there's a makeshift barbershop set up with plastic chairs where people are having their hair, beards and eyebrows shaved off. There is a white canvas sheet covering the ground, but it's hard to see underneath all the hair. We see a group circled around, and go check it out. A man is crouched down, his face in pain as another man is putting fifty or so hooks into his back, each with a small fruit about the size of an avocado hanging off it. Eventually he signals to the man that he has as many as he can bare on there. He stands up slowly, and the chanting begins. Someone arrives with a platter of incense and puts some on the man's face. The chant is slow and rhythmical, eventually getting faster and louder. The man bounces on his heels with his head down. After a few minutes he stops bouncing, his head snaps back and he screams into the air. His face is completely changed. He starts "spitting blood" around and staring into peoples faces. He is turned towards the path and his family accompany him as he makes his way to the caves.
We split up as there's too much going on to stay together. I see a young guy of about 18 try in vain to get into his trance for about five minutes, until he is abandoned by the people with him who leave him, standing there with twenty five ropes hanging off his back, to get into his trance alone. He stares at me a long time, making mad faces, but i have nothing to give him back so i wander off. I meet matt and zan who have just seen another guy go into a trance, motion to a pile of burning coals on the ground, and then his tongue. Someone picked out a white hot coal with a set of tongs and placed it on his tongue. He growled as it hissed on his tongue, then tipped his head back and swallowed it whole. I'm super pissed that i missed it, but there's too much going on to dwell on it. We see more people go into trances, people scream and collapse, mobile chant crews with people going off one on.... Intense doesn't cover it.
At about 5am we head back to the main area. Hundreds of thousands of people have travelled to Malaysia for the festival, and many are too poor to have somewhere to stay, so there are thousands of people stretched out sleeping on the floor. We pass hundreds of couples standing with a sheet held out between them, where passing people donate money to cover their expenses. At around 7am we make for Christine’s place, and pass out.
The next day we get up very late, mooch around the neighbourhood for a while getting food and essentials, before heading back to this caves, this time with Christine and her boyfriend Matthew. We get there after midnight, and much of the madness is over - it's mostly just people carrying urns or floats. We head back to the source, but now it's just drums and chanting, with the odd dancing freak-out. In the main area i pass a beggar with no hands and, feeling immensely sorry for the guy (Christ, no hands) give him ten dollars. Half an hour later we're in the incredibly overpriced convenience store (7/11 in the city sells chocolate for about 10c, here it's around $4) and i see the man drinking a can of coke, tilting it with his wrists. I'm a little annoyed that probably the whole $10 i gave him has paid for a coke (rather than food or stuff for his kids), but it's his money now, so it's none of my business. We hang around for a few more hours, going back up to the caves, before heading home around 6.
The next day is camp relaxo. We get a pizza breakfast, hang out by the pool playing cards, have a few quiet beers, and watch some DVDs. The following day, myself and mike are due for Bangkok. We say goodbye to Matt and Zan as they're off to the Philippines, which zan is especially excited about as that where her mother is from. We thank Christine profusely for her hospitality, hop on a bus, and off to the airport we go.
Next stop - Bangkok, Round III!
After a quick shower, i head out to see some of the town. I stop off and buy a SIM card at a stall on the street (two dollars - egads!) and give Matt and Zan a quick ring. They're up in the Camaroon Highlands and tell me i can get a bus in the morning right across the street from my hotel. Matt is a chef and Zan has been a waitress for aeons, so of course we have a long conversation about what i should get in McDonalds (we decide on the "Prosperity Burger". It turns out to be shite). I head off into Chinatown but unfortunately everything is closing. There are still plenty of stalls with everything from socks to knives to DVDs but the main shops (and main bargains) are closed. I walk around some more of the area before heading back towards my hotel. Nearly there, i spot a gang of Hindus lining up and chanting. I start chatting with some random Canadians who tell me it's preparation for Thaipusam. As i get to the top of the line, i see men smashing coconuts off their heads, and little girls setting coconuts on fire before smashing them with gigantic blades. Very odd. I head back to my hotel where i ring my brother in law Slatts, and realise Malay mobile to Irish mobile calls are around 1c a minute. Result! I proceed to ring pretty much everyone i know for about $2.
The next morning i go online before i leave and find a short email from Dane, the Lithuanian guy from Don Det, to say Joe's come off his bike and messed up his teeth. I email back asking if Joe's still arriving to Malaysia the next day and head for the bus station, where i get a $2 ticket to the highlands. A few hours of winding hills later, and I’m 4500 meters above sea level, in a town where they grow flowers and tea. The scenery is amazing, gigantic mountainsides covered in patches of white and red. I meet up with Zan and Matt and check into their hostel where they have a strange appropriation of a hammock - a half eggshell hanging vertically from the ceiling which you sit into and rock. Noisily. A bite to eat and a few beers later and i'm right at home. We spend the night up at the hostel's bar, which has a pool table, a bonfire and, crucially, a large table where we rope in two Germans, some English, and a Dutch guy named Mark for a gigantic game of shithead (backpacker card game). A good night is had by all, with the exception of mark, who is repeatedly crowned shithead.
The next day we decide to go see a butterfly farm. We have breakfast with Mark who tells us he's been out for a run with the Malay Olympic running team that morning - they left at six, ran up and down mountains until nine when they stopped for breakfast. Mark, ready to drop, says thanks for letting him come along and they say "but we've only started, it's now time for the afternoon 25k run!". I go to check my email quickly to find out when Joe’s arriving. I have an email from Dane with a phone number for Joe, which i ring. The phone is answered by Sara, one half of the welsh couple who went on the bike trip with Joe and Dane. I won't go into specifics but she says Joe's in hospital and in fairly bad nick. I offer to come up to help out, she says it's up to me, but at the moment there's not much i can do. I go talk it over with Matt and Zan and we decide best thing to do is go visit him in Bangkok after the festival. I arrange to meet matt and zan at the butterfly farm and go back to email a few people. Somehow i get in touch with Lisa quickly and she says she's in Bangkok and will try head over to see Joe.
I head back onto the main stretch and hail a cab for the butterfly farm. The driver is an old Indian man who looks about 100 years old. He's driving this huge old BMW/Merc looking car, and on the dashboard is a small swastika. I get talking to him he tells me he came to Malaysia in the late 40's and bought the car imported from Germany. He's very proud of the car and, seeing my camera, asks me to take his picture with it.
I arrive up to the butterfly farm and meet matt and zan. We expect a farm with hundreds of butterflies flapping around the place, but it seems it's only a title - the place has every type of garden non-animal you could imagine, from stick and leaf insects, to snakes, lizards, spiders, and of course, butterflies. The guy who shows us around is a young Indian who lives here on the farm. He says he's not paid very well, so keeps a secret vegetable patch on the hills and lives from that. After a long tour of every insect, we decide to tip him $10, and his eyes go wide. He thanks us in a variety of languages and we head out. Seeing no taxis, we decide to hitch, and get picked up in about four seconds by a huge Lexus. The driver tells us he lives in Kuala Lumpur and drives down many weekends to see his son and grandchildren. He says the area is 50% holiday makers and 50% Muslim, evidenced by the number of robed, turbaned, bearded dudes ambling about.
We pass another day or so playing cards and having the odd drink before heading back down to KL. The journey is set to take 3 hours, but after about an hour we pull into a garage and a mechanic hops in and strips the gearbox apart. I get out and chat to some of the people outside who say the gearbox has cracked and will need replacing. Sure enough, a small crane is wheeled in through the door of the bus, the gearbox is lifted out, and a new one is craned in. After about 25 mins we're back on the road... for about 3 minutes, when the driver pulls in for his lunch. We spend half an hour at a road stop before heading back on the road.
We get into KL, meet up with London Mike who's come down for the festival from Thailand - a 24 bus ride. Poor sod. We try to find the skytrain station to take us to Matt and Zan's friend Chrissie’s apartment, but after a spell, give up and ring a taxi. Eventually we get to the Chrissie’s place, a huge sky scraping apartment block, and hop into the lifts. 80 odd floors later and we're at our adopted home for the next few days. The lads had met Chrissie a few weeks beforehand and after a night's drinking, she'd offered to let them (and whoever was with them) crash on her floor for the weekend of thaipusam. A Malaysian herself, she'd never been to the festival, and would accompany us the second night. We dropped our bags and headed out for food and drinks, ending up at Chrissie’s new job as a hostess where we sat around playing cards and watching mike's (astounding) range of card tricks before heading back to the apartment for a few more drinks.
The next day i decided it was time to get my first tattoo. We get the name of a good tattoo shop from Chrissie and head off. For a long time I’ve wanted to get something related to The Fest, the punk festival I’ve been attending religiously for the last few years and had a year before settled on the logo of the label that puts it on, No Idea, but never had the guts to do it. I print off the logo from the internet and go to the shop, a small booth in a very big shopping mall. The tattooist is pretty sound, a short Malaysian with huge dreads and tattoos on his face. He goes off to sketch out the stencil as mike gets more and more giddy at the prospect of seeing me in pain. Eventually we’re ready to go and i head off into the back room, take off my t-shirt, and he presses the stencil onto my back between my shoulder blades, just low enough so it can‘t be seen. After a few minor adjustments, he’s ready to start. Mike’s foaming at the mouth at this stage, and has his camera out videoing me, waiting for the squeals. The needle buzzes, i wince, it touches my skin and... I smile. It’s like being drawn on with a pen (albeit a pen being pushed rather hard). As soon as i smile, mike closes up his camera and leaves mumbling to himself about life being unfair. Zan goes off shopping and Matty, trooper that he is, stays on, talking away to keep my mind off the increasing pain of the needle on my shoulder blades. After about 45 minutes we’re all done. I thank the tattooist and get my photo taken with him before he hands me back the printout of the logo, saying "i give you this to assure you i will never copy this design for anyone else - no two people should have the same tattoo". I don't have the heart to tell him i know probably twenty or thirty people who have the exact same tattoo!
That night is the first night of the Thaipusam festival, the Hindu festival that we came for. Mark's already been over for the day and says it's pretty nuts but is supposed to go crazy at midnight with a fireworks display followed by most of the gory stuff that we're there to see. The location for the festival is the Batu Caves, about 20km outside KL central, so we hitch a cab (BATU CAR TO THE BATU CAVES!!) and arrive to find the place absolutely teeming with people. I later find out the attendance this year is a paltry 600,000 people, half the normal attendance. How they fit in 1.2 million people i've no idea, the place is jammers and getting around is an absolute mission, but worth it when we see our first participant outside the main gate. At first it appears to be a mad turbaned guy walking along with a Buddha and various incense sticks on a cart being pushed behind him, until we realise the cart is actually attached to him - he has approx 30 hooks run though the skin in his back with ropes hanging off them, with which he's pulling the cart. I catch a look at his face and his eyes are bulging out of his head, though not so much in pain. He stops briefly and someone hands him a huge machete, the blade of which he runs along his tongue a few times and smacks off his back a few times before going back to dragging his cart.
We head into the main area to find there are actually two lines for the participants heading from the front gate up to the steps of the caves and back. Alongside run two more lines for visitors. We stand around to watch the participants expecting more hooks and such, but there's actually a wide range of things the participants are doing, from carrying small urns on their heads, to carrying 12 foot wide floats of peacock feathers that suspend above their heads from huge steel structures affixed to their wastes, many with forty or fifty small hooks coming off them. Some of the participants are in weird trances, screaming and smoking cigarettes, or laughing and dancing around. All the while the air is thick with incense and most people are either praying or chanting.
At 12 the place goes a little quieter and the fireworks begin. People start to chant and cheer, but the fireworks are actually pretty bland, and go on for about ten minutes. Then a huge line towards the main cave appears. We join the line and shuffle along until we get to the entrance where robed ladies are handing out goat’s milk and putting incense stuff on people's foreheads. We get a small cup of goat’s milk each into our hands, drink half (which tastes horrible) and rub the rest on the first step, get our forehead incense, and begin the climb. It's about 1200 steps to the top, and i feel every one! The steps are about five feet wide and about a foot deep, so it's a precarious climb, especially seeing as the steps are absolutely rammed with people - you always have one hand on the person in front of you so as not to fall forwards, and you always have one hand on your shoulder from the randomer behind you. Every so often the line splits into two where someone has collapsed or someone is taking a rest. There are actually three sets of steps, one going up on the left, one down on the right, with the middle reserved for participants carrying the giant floats of steel and peacock feathers. Those things must have weighed about 250 pounds, but each participant had members of their family around them chanting "ray ray" (or something that sounds like that), and if they falter, the family chants harder, everyone around them joins in (including us), and they get the strength to continue.
At the top of the steps is the entrance to the main cave, a huge cavernous opening in the cliff face. The first part is about a fifty feet wide and a hundred feet high, but you're soon into the main cave, about five hundred feet high and just as wide. At the centre are the participants, getting "de-tranced" and having the hooks removed from backs/shoulders/faces/chests. Further on is a third, smaller cave, with the alter that the participants deliver their floats or urns to. We walk around a while before heading back down to the main area below.
On the way down, myself and mike somehow get on to the subject of the song we want played at our funerals. Mike wants some Stevie Wonder mush, whereas i want Truth Is a Menace by my friend's band North Lincoln. He asks if i've actually told anyone and, realising i haven’t, i decide i should put it in my blog. Job done! I mention we don't generally play songs at funerals in Ireland, so we decide i should be buried with a small ipod with the song on repeat. Ha, costing my family money even in death.
Malaysians are incredibly friendly, often starting conversations out of nowhere with passing strangers, especially if it means they can practice their English. One such conversation is with a local Hindu dude who we ask about the ubiquitous "ray ray" chant. He says the main Hindu god reputedly crossed India in one step, using his giant stick/staff, which was called something that sounds like "ray ray". The chant goes up when people are faltering, to remind them of their leader’s great journey. He also explains that the reason for the comparatively low turnout this year is an act of political protest - despite the huge Hindu population of Malaysia, the government never puts any money towards the festival. This year being an election year, the government has made a huge deal of contributing funds towards it’s running and advertising, but has actually funnelled the money through bogus organisations who have instead spent it on the re-election campaign. Naturally, Hindus are incensed and thus are protesting by not attending the festival. Hence, the previous year’s attendance of around 1.2 million people has been halved for this year’s event.
We decide to check out where the trance dudes are coming from, so make our way towards "the source" (a name we made up ourselves, obviously), which is about a kilometre from the main area, through stalls and, oddly, a funfair complete with dodgems and two gigantic Ferris wheels. When we get onto the main thoroughfare, it's jammed, with people literally shoving each other to get through. There are two loose lines of participants, one for people in light trances, carrying urns, and another for heavy trances, carrying floats or dragging carts. It's not long before we see our first spiritual freak-out.
One guy of about 25 has been pulling a cart with a statue and some candles via about 50 hooks in his back. When we get there he is hunched down spitting out what looks like blood, with a crazed look on his face, while people chant lightly around him. A member of his family takes the ropes off the cart and holds them in his hand. After a minute, the "mobile chant crew" shows up. This is about eight guys with various drums, and a guy with a megaphone. The drums go off, the megaphone guy starts some weird chanting/singing/screaming and the guy on the ground stands up. Someone rubs red incense on his tongue and pours water down his throat (hence, the spitting blood), and he leans forward hard as the guy holding the ropes leans backwards hard, holding the ropes in each hand, while the skin on his back stretches out off each hook. It's an incredibly intense sight, and it quickly gets a lot more so. The guy gets more and more into his trance until his face looks like he's heavily drugged, at which point people line up to have incense rubbed on their foreheads by him. He does three or four until, with some randomer standing in front of him waiting for incense, he suddenly starts screaming. He puts his two hands up parallel to his face, fixes the guy in a stare and starts a low growl. They lock hands and butt heads. The hooked guy's growl turns into a low scream, which gets higher and higher. Suddenly the randomer reels off him, screaming with his eyes rolled right back in his head. The hooked guy crouches and stares with his tongue out (think: Hakka) as the randomer rolls around the floor screaming, before passing out and being carried off. All the while there's drums and singing and chanting. The hooked guy starts to lean into his hooks, and takes several steps forward, with his family member trying to pull him backwards, but to no avail. He reattaches the hooks to the cart, they set off, the mobile chant crew disappears, and we're left looking at each other thinking "Christ, did that really happen?"
We make our way down the road and every so often, we hear the mobile chant crew start up, and, along with everyone else, start running in that direction. Nothing is as intense as above, but there are some crazy sights. A woman near one freak-out suddenly goes into a trance and starts flailing around, sticking out her tongue and staring at people, before collapsing and being dragged off. Another woman suddenly starts screaming and wailing before passing out. Several men rolling naked along the street with family members pouring water on their wounds as they go by. It's all very surreal and i'm acutely aware that i wouldn't believe any of it had happened had i not seen it myself.
We finally get to the source, which is about a square kilometre of grassland surrounded by a river. Hundreds of men and women are bathing in the river, and there's a makeshift barbershop set up with plastic chairs where people are having their hair, beards and eyebrows shaved off. There is a white canvas sheet covering the ground, but it's hard to see underneath all the hair. We see a group circled around, and go check it out. A man is crouched down, his face in pain as another man is putting fifty or so hooks into his back, each with a small fruit about the size of an avocado hanging off it. Eventually he signals to the man that he has as many as he can bare on there. He stands up slowly, and the chanting begins. Someone arrives with a platter of incense and puts some on the man's face. The chant is slow and rhythmical, eventually getting faster and louder. The man bounces on his heels with his head down. After a few minutes he stops bouncing, his head snaps back and he screams into the air. His face is completely changed. He starts "spitting blood" around and staring into peoples faces. He is turned towards the path and his family accompany him as he makes his way to the caves.
We split up as there's too much going on to stay together. I see a young guy of about 18 try in vain to get into his trance for about five minutes, until he is abandoned by the people with him who leave him, standing there with twenty five ropes hanging off his back, to get into his trance alone. He stares at me a long time, making mad faces, but i have nothing to give him back so i wander off. I meet matt and zan who have just seen another guy go into a trance, motion to a pile of burning coals on the ground, and then his tongue. Someone picked out a white hot coal with a set of tongs and placed it on his tongue. He growled as it hissed on his tongue, then tipped his head back and swallowed it whole. I'm super pissed that i missed it, but there's too much going on to dwell on it. We see more people go into trances, people scream and collapse, mobile chant crews with people going off one on.... Intense doesn't cover it.
At about 5am we head back to the main area. Hundreds of thousands of people have travelled to Malaysia for the festival, and many are too poor to have somewhere to stay, so there are thousands of people stretched out sleeping on the floor. We pass hundreds of couples standing with a sheet held out between them, where passing people donate money to cover their expenses. At around 7am we make for Christine’s place, and pass out.
The next day we get up very late, mooch around the neighbourhood for a while getting food and essentials, before heading back to this caves, this time with Christine and her boyfriend Matthew. We get there after midnight, and much of the madness is over - it's mostly just people carrying urns or floats. We head back to the source, but now it's just drums and chanting, with the odd dancing freak-out. In the main area i pass a beggar with no hands and, feeling immensely sorry for the guy (Christ, no hands) give him ten dollars. Half an hour later we're in the incredibly overpriced convenience store (7/11 in the city sells chocolate for about 10c, here it's around $4) and i see the man drinking a can of coke, tilting it with his wrists. I'm a little annoyed that probably the whole $10 i gave him has paid for a coke (rather than food or stuff for his kids), but it's his money now, so it's none of my business. We hang around for a few more hours, going back up to the caves, before heading home around 6.
The next day is camp relaxo. We get a pizza breakfast, hang out by the pool playing cards, have a few quiet beers, and watch some DVDs. The following day, myself and mike are due for Bangkok. We say goodbye to Matt and Zan as they're off to the Philippines, which zan is especially excited about as that where her mother is from. We thank Christine profusely for her hospitality, hop on a bus, and off to the airport we go.
Next stop - Bangkok, Round III!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
New Years in Laos: Pommes, Canucks, Yanks and a monkey.
First thing new years day, people start leaving. Mike gets an early bus to Don Det in the south, and Jim, jo and Joe get their tickets to follow him a few days later. I go to an internet place and apply for my Australian visa, which arrives the next day (how fast is that!!). On the 2nd, Mick decides to head off to Vientiane and then back to Thailand, and myself and Joe accompany him to the bus station, which is a huge field where the airport used to be. There are two private buses heading for Vientiane, but both are full, so we head for the "office", which is basically four old men sitting around a table with chalk boards behind them covered in times and prices. Mick ques up to buy a ticket for a bus a few hours later that costs about $3 when I notice a bus that only costs $1. A quick enquiry reveals that it is in fact a pickup truck with a cover and some bench seats that takes about as long as the normal bus at a third of the price and a third of the comfort. However, one pickup leaves every 15 mins, so within a few minutes, Mick’s on the back of a pickup with about eight Laotians, a cage full of chickens and a dog. There are also about five kids on the roof of the pickup, and with everyone shouting we make hurried goodbyes and off he goes!!
A few hours later Jim, Jo and Joe head off to don det, and myself, matty, zan and Elaine head for the river to relax in hammocks for the day. In the evening we go to a restaurant to watch a movie, but there's a gang of Israelis there before us watching Braveheart, so we sit and wait. Me and matty are reading the menus as they leave, and a very tall one says something in some language i don't understand and all his friends laugh. Then Matty says something back in some language i don't understand and they all look shocked, turn, and practically run out the door. Turns out the tall guy said, in Hebrew "those two fat bastards don't need to look at a menu, looks like they've eaten enough already". Matty, having thought Hebrew in a Jewish school in San Francisco, turned back to him and said, in Hebrew, "us two fat bastards could kick your skinny arse any day". Sweet! We pick out Team America and settle in. As the film gets to the final scenes, the owner, who's usually very friendly, closes up the blinds to the street, turns down the volume, and generally scurries about looking worried. It's only then we realise the Kim Jung Il character's fake Asian accent is pretty insulting to any Asians walking around outside, and of course to the owner too, so we make a hasty exit.
The next day the four of us head to the bus station, pay our $1 each and get on a pickup bound for Vientiane. It's a great journey as always, and for the last hour, myself and Elaine stand on the back of the truck (it has a sort of flat cattle bar thing to fit more people standing) and enjoy the scenery coming into the city as Matt and Zan watch High Fidelity on an ipod. We try to find some cheap accommodation but everything is either expensive or booked out, so we head back to the same place i stayed with Joe and Mike and we get the five bed room again. We stick around Vientiane for about three days, eating, drinking, bowling and playing cards. On the last day, Matt and Zan head for the airport to fly down to Malaysia, where they tell me there's an amazing festival called Thaipusam a few weeks later, and i agree to follow them on. Me and Elaine mooch around for the day, and in the evening i get a sleeper bus south to Paxe where I’ll get a connection to Don Det.
On the bus i meet an Australian girl named Maia who knows some people who know some people i know in Florida. She's also heading to don det and i convince her to make the connection in Paxe with me. We wake up in the bus station where we're transferred to a little restaurant in town, where another bus will take us to Don Det a few hours later. We wander around town for a while, see the remains of a bike crash and check a little internet before heading back to the bus. I fall asleep as soon as the bus pulls out, and wake up when we stop somewhere for food, the food being some sort of mystery meat that the locals were calling chicken but I’d swear was dog. A few hours of sleep later, we make it to 4000 Islands, a big delta of islands at the end of the Mekong. The last part of our trip is a tiny boat across to don det, and as it arrives to pick us up, mike steps off, uttering "been there, don det". We chat for a minute and i tell him about the festival in malaysia. He says he's off to Vietnam for a while, but will try make it down. We get on the tiny boat (basically a two foot by fifteen foot kayak with a motor on the back) and after circumnavigating a few islands for a while, pull onto Don Det.
The arrival point on Don Det is a small beach with a restaurant overlooking. We walk down the track from the beach which turns out to be the "main street" - a tree lined dirt path with two bars, two restaurants, an internet cafe and a small shop. As the island has no electricity save two hours in the evening from seven to nine, the shop has a large red cooler outside containing tonnes of chopped ice with the odd can of coke or beer poking it's head out (each morning, boats come from the mainland with blocks of ice for the shop, the bars and the restaurants, and they chop them up to use as "refrigeration"). As we walk the path, one of the bars has a monkey tied to it's front gate, and we stop to say hello. Further down i meet Jim and jo. The path leaves the trees and follows the river for about half a kilometre before the guesthouses start. Maisa quickly meets the Canadians she's been looking for (Sadie, Michelle, Audrey and Winnie) and we rent a small hut with a porch and a hammock for $2 a night. I go off and find Joe who shows me around the island (this takes all of three minutes) and later we all meet up for dinner and drinks at a bar renowned for it's sunset views, and for good reason - it's seated area looks over about four kilometres of tiny islands in the delta, where the sun setting behind it all is an amazing sight.
The next day, everyone is up early (easily done when everything shuts at 11pm) and a plan is hatched over breakfast to build a raft from whatever's going and sail over to the small island about 30 meters across the water from our hut. Everyone's game but me, seeing as i can't swim and drowning in a river in Laos has always been one of those things I’ve never been interested in. At some point three English guys enter the equation (Keith, Dan and Andy). Maya cuts down some bamboo tubes to form a seated area for the raft, Joe rents some tractor tubes to float them on, someone comes up with some rope, god knows how, and around lunchtime, the raft is ready to go. I settle into my hammock with a Slash biography Mick gave me in Vang Viang (though sadly not my MP3 player which at this point had all but stopped responding) and watch them make their way across the river. Michelle has a festering bike wound on her leg (i have the same from stepping off my bike the wrong way the week before and burning my right calf on the white hot exhaust pipe), so she sits on the raft while everyone else swims alongside it like bodyguards on a presidential motorcade, albeit one where everyone's half drunk and laughing like loons. I meet jim and jo for dinner and spend most of the evening reading my book, swaying in my hammock (without doubt the most relaxing thing in the world), and feeling more than slightly jealous about the loud laughing/screaming coming from the island across from me.
All arrive exhausted the next morning - having forgotten to bring any kind of blankets and wary of the thousands of bugs that were falling on them at all times, they slept in a strange type of konga line, each facing the back of someone else's head. (A few days later, Joe and i talk with one of the local restaurant owners who says they're all mad for staying there over night - he went over about a month before hand and got bit on the leg by a snake, his leg then going black for six months. Egads!!) All are suitably exhausted and retire to beds and hammocks. In the evening we have a large dinner at the Indian restaurant (where i beat the owner in a Lai off - best explained in person) and i challenge Joe and the english lads to a century, a curious backpacker game where you have to drink 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. We head to the sunset bar, find three oddly sized shot glasses (which due to their odd shape have to be used in a rotation) and settle into the challenge. And a challenge it is. The glasses seem to average about 12 to a pint, which means we're looking at eight pints in an hour and a half. After ten shots/minutes, everyone is jovial. After twenty five everyone is almost throwing up beer foam. At around forty five everyone's back on form. At sixty everyone's a jibbering mess. At seventy i bow out and head back to the girls who are chatting on the floor, a floor which unfortunately won't stop moving, so i head back to my room and crash, presumably (my memory being, to put it mildly, slightly hazy).
The next day is Audrey's birthday, so we organise a makeshift cake and a bottle of whiskey for her big night, and head back to the sunset bar. We meet a really nice Welsh couple named Leigh and Sara and all make for Reggae bar, where i'd spotted the monkey on the first night. I spend most of the night either playing with him or letting him sleep in my arms. He wakes up occasionally and freaks out, biting the inside of my arm, but he's only about 6 months old so has no teeth. What he does have however is a rather large burn across his hand - apparently while tied to the fence he reached up for the electrical wire and burned right across his palm and deep into his thumb, a thumb now almost gone as he refuses to stop eating the scab. The owner of the bar says his name is simply Laotian for monkey, so Sadie renames him Burrito, though i vow to only ever call him bob (a reference to Black Adder and the name of the last couch i'd had in Ireland). It also turns out the owner is a prick to him (to the point where bob runs off whenever the owner approaches) and that he doesn't feed him, assuming punters will give him enough to get by. We hatch a harebrained/drunken plan to buy him and smuggle him across the border to Cambodia where he can go in a sanctuary, and the owner agrees to sell him for $30. The next morning i come back with my $30 but the owner has upped the price to $100. Knowing the scheme was a bit daft to begin with, i spend a long time trying to convince the owner to let me take poor Bob on a tour of the islands. For some unknown reason, the owner is wearing a Cork football jersey so i make up some story about knowing half the squad (laughable to anyone who's even met me) and he agrees that i can take Bob from sunrise to sunset each day while I’m on the island.
Myself and Bob set off down the path towards my hut. I've been hanging out with him on and off for the last few days so he trusts me, but i keep one end of his leash (a small piece of string tied around his neck) tied to my left index finger at all times. Having seemingly never been around the island before, he's more than a little freaked out, and holds onto me tightly, alternating between looking around and looking at me, eeping. I get him back to the hut and first order of business is putting some antiseptic drops on his hand. Next order is swinging in the hammock, where he falls asleep pretty quickly, but doesn't freak out when waking. I bring him out to eat berries from the trees but he's dying to climb them, so i let him off. A few times he gets out of his depth (having only one usable hand) so he looks to me and eeps, i put my arm up, and he climbs down it onto my shoulder. A few times i get bored while he's swinging around and make to leave, and he legs it down the tree, up my leg and into my arms. We go back to my hut for more hammock time, and as i read my book, he climbs up to my shoulder and grooms my hair, eating anything he can get his hands on.
In the evening i bring him back to the bar and it's an absolute mammoth effort to get him back on his perch - the banister at the front of the bar where they have him tied with enough string to get up to his bed on the roof. If i try to put him down, he clings on tightly, or climbs onto my back where i can't reach. If i try to walk away hoping the string will pull him off, he freaks out as soon as it gets tight around his neck. If i try to calm him down, he just falls asleep. It takes time but we get him off and i head off for dinner and drinks.
The next few days continue the same. I book a flight for Malaysia for the 17th to go see Matty and Zan for the Thaipusam Festival. The group leaves bit by bit as the Canadians and Maya head for Vietnam, the English lads head for the south of Thailand, and Joe and Jo head for somewhere i can't remember. Joe is the last to go, hatching a plan with the Welsh couple and a Lithuanian guy named Dane to go on a bike ride in the mountains near paxe. The morning they're leaving a flip a coin to see if i'll come with but the coin says no so i watch them leave and go play with bob before going out for a few drinks with a Mexican guy i meet in the evening, on to a party in one of the huts at night, and eventually to sleep.
The next day i get on a boat and leave Don Det. I get a bus to paxe with an english couple and some Nigerian guys before being dropped with a Japanese couple in a remote bus station to get my connection to Vientiane. I get my ticket sorted (it's already paid for) and call a tuc tuc to go into town to an ATM when i realise i can't find my bank cards. And i've only about $0.08 on me. Shit. I unpack my bags on the floor and go through every single pocket but nothing. Shit. I try my phone but realise i have no credit and nobody to call. Shit. I sit on a chair and think shit shit shit - i've no money, no way of getting money, and no way of contacting anybody. Screwed doesn't even cover it.
Luckily, they have internet at the station and i convince the woman at the counter to let me use it for four minutes with my remaining $0.08. I go on the Vodafone website (my old mobile phone provider from home who let you send free texts to Irish numbers off their website) and text my brother and my mother. A few minutes later mam rings and we hatch a plan for her to wire some money to me for collection in Vientiane. She rings back a few minutes later with an ID code for western union and i'm safe again. Thank god for mothers!
I talk a bit with the Japanese couple and the guy lends me a few dollars to get a drink and a ride from the bus station in vientiane to the town. The bus journey to Vientiane is long and relaxing, save for two mid-fifties Danish guys who give some old Laotian woman grief for not wanting to sit next to a man. I cuss them out and fall asleep. The next morning i get into town around six, but the Western Union doesn't open until nine, so i find a hotel who'll take my bags as a deposit on a room and sit across the street from the WA office. Outside is a young soldier of about 15 with a machine gun that's about twice the size of him. He stares at me menacingly for three hours, never once looking away. About every fifteen minutes a tuc tuc pulls up between us, turns off the engine and does what i call the Vientiane Tuc Tuc Hustle:
Driver: Hello sir! Tuc Tuc?
Me: No thank you.
Driver: Marijuana?
Me: No thank you.
Driver: Opium?
Me: No thank you.
Driver: Lady boom boom?
Me: No thank you.
The driver then guns the engine and speeds off, and i swear to go, each time the machine gun toting teenager, gives a slight smile and a nod of the head in the direction of the departing driver (which i take to mean "Tuc Tuc drivers, mad bastards aren't they!") before returning to his menacing, unending stare. Eventually the office opens, i get my cash (the woman at the desk comments on my beardless passport photo saying "No beard in passport! Very handsome. With beard, very ugly!") and head back to my hotel. I meet the Japanese guy in the afternoon, refund his money, buy him lunch, and crash out early in my hotel. The next day i get up early do a long blog, and catch a taxi to the airport - Malaysia here i come!
A few hours later Jim, Jo and Joe head off to don det, and myself, matty, zan and Elaine head for the river to relax in hammocks for the day. In the evening we go to a restaurant to watch a movie, but there's a gang of Israelis there before us watching Braveheart, so we sit and wait. Me and matty are reading the menus as they leave, and a very tall one says something in some language i don't understand and all his friends laugh. Then Matty says something back in some language i don't understand and they all look shocked, turn, and practically run out the door. Turns out the tall guy said, in Hebrew "those two fat bastards don't need to look at a menu, looks like they've eaten enough already". Matty, having thought Hebrew in a Jewish school in San Francisco, turned back to him and said, in Hebrew, "us two fat bastards could kick your skinny arse any day". Sweet! We pick out Team America and settle in. As the film gets to the final scenes, the owner, who's usually very friendly, closes up the blinds to the street, turns down the volume, and generally scurries about looking worried. It's only then we realise the Kim Jung Il character's fake Asian accent is pretty insulting to any Asians walking around outside, and of course to the owner too, so we make a hasty exit.
The next day the four of us head to the bus station, pay our $1 each and get on a pickup bound for Vientiane. It's a great journey as always, and for the last hour, myself and Elaine stand on the back of the truck (it has a sort of flat cattle bar thing to fit more people standing) and enjoy the scenery coming into the city as Matt and Zan watch High Fidelity on an ipod. We try to find some cheap accommodation but everything is either expensive or booked out, so we head back to the same place i stayed with Joe and Mike and we get the five bed room again. We stick around Vientiane for about three days, eating, drinking, bowling and playing cards. On the last day, Matt and Zan head for the airport to fly down to Malaysia, where they tell me there's an amazing festival called Thaipusam a few weeks later, and i agree to follow them on. Me and Elaine mooch around for the day, and in the evening i get a sleeper bus south to Paxe where I’ll get a connection to Don Det.
On the bus i meet an Australian girl named Maia who knows some people who know some people i know in Florida. She's also heading to don det and i convince her to make the connection in Paxe with me. We wake up in the bus station where we're transferred to a little restaurant in town, where another bus will take us to Don Det a few hours later. We wander around town for a while, see the remains of a bike crash and check a little internet before heading back to the bus. I fall asleep as soon as the bus pulls out, and wake up when we stop somewhere for food, the food being some sort of mystery meat that the locals were calling chicken but I’d swear was dog. A few hours of sleep later, we make it to 4000 Islands, a big delta of islands at the end of the Mekong. The last part of our trip is a tiny boat across to don det, and as it arrives to pick us up, mike steps off, uttering "been there, don det". We chat for a minute and i tell him about the festival in malaysia. He says he's off to Vietnam for a while, but will try make it down. We get on the tiny boat (basically a two foot by fifteen foot kayak with a motor on the back) and after circumnavigating a few islands for a while, pull onto Don Det.
The arrival point on Don Det is a small beach with a restaurant overlooking. We walk down the track from the beach which turns out to be the "main street" - a tree lined dirt path with two bars, two restaurants, an internet cafe and a small shop. As the island has no electricity save two hours in the evening from seven to nine, the shop has a large red cooler outside containing tonnes of chopped ice with the odd can of coke or beer poking it's head out (each morning, boats come from the mainland with blocks of ice for the shop, the bars and the restaurants, and they chop them up to use as "refrigeration"). As we walk the path, one of the bars has a monkey tied to it's front gate, and we stop to say hello. Further down i meet Jim and jo. The path leaves the trees and follows the river for about half a kilometre before the guesthouses start. Maisa quickly meets the Canadians she's been looking for (Sadie, Michelle, Audrey and Winnie) and we rent a small hut with a porch and a hammock for $2 a night. I go off and find Joe who shows me around the island (this takes all of three minutes) and later we all meet up for dinner and drinks at a bar renowned for it's sunset views, and for good reason - it's seated area looks over about four kilometres of tiny islands in the delta, where the sun setting behind it all is an amazing sight.
The next day, everyone is up early (easily done when everything shuts at 11pm) and a plan is hatched over breakfast to build a raft from whatever's going and sail over to the small island about 30 meters across the water from our hut. Everyone's game but me, seeing as i can't swim and drowning in a river in Laos has always been one of those things I’ve never been interested in. At some point three English guys enter the equation (Keith, Dan and Andy). Maya cuts down some bamboo tubes to form a seated area for the raft, Joe rents some tractor tubes to float them on, someone comes up with some rope, god knows how, and around lunchtime, the raft is ready to go. I settle into my hammock with a Slash biography Mick gave me in Vang Viang (though sadly not my MP3 player which at this point had all but stopped responding) and watch them make their way across the river. Michelle has a festering bike wound on her leg (i have the same from stepping off my bike the wrong way the week before and burning my right calf on the white hot exhaust pipe), so she sits on the raft while everyone else swims alongside it like bodyguards on a presidential motorcade, albeit one where everyone's half drunk and laughing like loons. I meet jim and jo for dinner and spend most of the evening reading my book, swaying in my hammock (without doubt the most relaxing thing in the world), and feeling more than slightly jealous about the loud laughing/screaming coming from the island across from me.
All arrive exhausted the next morning - having forgotten to bring any kind of blankets and wary of the thousands of bugs that were falling on them at all times, they slept in a strange type of konga line, each facing the back of someone else's head. (A few days later, Joe and i talk with one of the local restaurant owners who says they're all mad for staying there over night - he went over about a month before hand and got bit on the leg by a snake, his leg then going black for six months. Egads!!) All are suitably exhausted and retire to beds and hammocks. In the evening we have a large dinner at the Indian restaurant (where i beat the owner in a Lai off - best explained in person) and i challenge Joe and the english lads to a century, a curious backpacker game where you have to drink 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. We head to the sunset bar, find three oddly sized shot glasses (which due to their odd shape have to be used in a rotation) and settle into the challenge. And a challenge it is. The glasses seem to average about 12 to a pint, which means we're looking at eight pints in an hour and a half. After ten shots/minutes, everyone is jovial. After twenty five everyone is almost throwing up beer foam. At around forty five everyone's back on form. At sixty everyone's a jibbering mess. At seventy i bow out and head back to the girls who are chatting on the floor, a floor which unfortunately won't stop moving, so i head back to my room and crash, presumably (my memory being, to put it mildly, slightly hazy).
The next day is Audrey's birthday, so we organise a makeshift cake and a bottle of whiskey for her big night, and head back to the sunset bar. We meet a really nice Welsh couple named Leigh and Sara and all make for Reggae bar, where i'd spotted the monkey on the first night. I spend most of the night either playing with him or letting him sleep in my arms. He wakes up occasionally and freaks out, biting the inside of my arm, but he's only about 6 months old so has no teeth. What he does have however is a rather large burn across his hand - apparently while tied to the fence he reached up for the electrical wire and burned right across his palm and deep into his thumb, a thumb now almost gone as he refuses to stop eating the scab. The owner of the bar says his name is simply Laotian for monkey, so Sadie renames him Burrito, though i vow to only ever call him bob (a reference to Black Adder and the name of the last couch i'd had in Ireland). It also turns out the owner is a prick to him (to the point where bob runs off whenever the owner approaches) and that he doesn't feed him, assuming punters will give him enough to get by. We hatch a harebrained/drunken plan to buy him and smuggle him across the border to Cambodia where he can go in a sanctuary, and the owner agrees to sell him for $30. The next morning i come back with my $30 but the owner has upped the price to $100. Knowing the scheme was a bit daft to begin with, i spend a long time trying to convince the owner to let me take poor Bob on a tour of the islands. For some unknown reason, the owner is wearing a Cork football jersey so i make up some story about knowing half the squad (laughable to anyone who's even met me) and he agrees that i can take Bob from sunrise to sunset each day while I’m on the island.
Myself and Bob set off down the path towards my hut. I've been hanging out with him on and off for the last few days so he trusts me, but i keep one end of his leash (a small piece of string tied around his neck) tied to my left index finger at all times. Having seemingly never been around the island before, he's more than a little freaked out, and holds onto me tightly, alternating between looking around and looking at me, eeping. I get him back to the hut and first order of business is putting some antiseptic drops on his hand. Next order is swinging in the hammock, where he falls asleep pretty quickly, but doesn't freak out when waking. I bring him out to eat berries from the trees but he's dying to climb them, so i let him off. A few times he gets out of his depth (having only one usable hand) so he looks to me and eeps, i put my arm up, and he climbs down it onto my shoulder. A few times i get bored while he's swinging around and make to leave, and he legs it down the tree, up my leg and into my arms. We go back to my hut for more hammock time, and as i read my book, he climbs up to my shoulder and grooms my hair, eating anything he can get his hands on.
In the evening i bring him back to the bar and it's an absolute mammoth effort to get him back on his perch - the banister at the front of the bar where they have him tied with enough string to get up to his bed on the roof. If i try to put him down, he clings on tightly, or climbs onto my back where i can't reach. If i try to walk away hoping the string will pull him off, he freaks out as soon as it gets tight around his neck. If i try to calm him down, he just falls asleep. It takes time but we get him off and i head off for dinner and drinks.
The next few days continue the same. I book a flight for Malaysia for the 17th to go see Matty and Zan for the Thaipusam Festival. The group leaves bit by bit as the Canadians and Maya head for Vietnam, the English lads head for the south of Thailand, and Joe and Jo head for somewhere i can't remember. Joe is the last to go, hatching a plan with the Welsh couple and a Lithuanian guy named Dane to go on a bike ride in the mountains near paxe. The morning they're leaving a flip a coin to see if i'll come with but the coin says no so i watch them leave and go play with bob before going out for a few drinks with a Mexican guy i meet in the evening, on to a party in one of the huts at night, and eventually to sleep.
The next day i get on a boat and leave Don Det. I get a bus to paxe with an english couple and some Nigerian guys before being dropped with a Japanese couple in a remote bus station to get my connection to Vientiane. I get my ticket sorted (it's already paid for) and call a tuc tuc to go into town to an ATM when i realise i can't find my bank cards. And i've only about $0.08 on me. Shit. I unpack my bags on the floor and go through every single pocket but nothing. Shit. I try my phone but realise i have no credit and nobody to call. Shit. I sit on a chair and think shit shit shit - i've no money, no way of getting money, and no way of contacting anybody. Screwed doesn't even cover it.
Luckily, they have internet at the station and i convince the woman at the counter to let me use it for four minutes with my remaining $0.08. I go on the Vodafone website (my old mobile phone provider from home who let you send free texts to Irish numbers off their website) and text my brother and my mother. A few minutes later mam rings and we hatch a plan for her to wire some money to me for collection in Vientiane. She rings back a few minutes later with an ID code for western union and i'm safe again. Thank god for mothers!
I talk a bit with the Japanese couple and the guy lends me a few dollars to get a drink and a ride from the bus station in vientiane to the town. The bus journey to Vientiane is long and relaxing, save for two mid-fifties Danish guys who give some old Laotian woman grief for not wanting to sit next to a man. I cuss them out and fall asleep. The next morning i get into town around six, but the Western Union doesn't open until nine, so i find a hotel who'll take my bags as a deposit on a room and sit across the street from the WA office. Outside is a young soldier of about 15 with a machine gun that's about twice the size of him. He stares at me menacingly for three hours, never once looking away. About every fifteen minutes a tuc tuc pulls up between us, turns off the engine and does what i call the Vientiane Tuc Tuc Hustle:
Driver: Hello sir! Tuc Tuc?
Me: No thank you.
Driver: Marijuana?
Me: No thank you.
Driver: Opium?
Me: No thank you.
Driver: Lady boom boom?
Me: No thank you.
The driver then guns the engine and speeds off, and i swear to go, each time the machine gun toting teenager, gives a slight smile and a nod of the head in the direction of the departing driver (which i take to mean "Tuc Tuc drivers, mad bastards aren't they!") before returning to his menacing, unending stare. Eventually the office opens, i get my cash (the woman at the desk comments on my beardless passport photo saying "No beard in passport! Very handsome. With beard, very ugly!") and head back to my hotel. I meet the Japanese guy in the afternoon, refund his money, buy him lunch, and crash out early in my hotel. The next day i get up early do a long blog, and catch a taxi to the airport - Malaysia here i come!
Friday, May 23, 2008
A story split in too many parts: Part Christmas: Laos
So it's been forever since i've updated this, and i've had enough people giving out to me about it that i figure it's time to get stuck back in. I'm in australia now, just finished work at an avacado packing shed in Queensland, heading off in about two days for a 6000K drive to ayers rock, then on to darwin. Is good.
So, we were in Luang Prabang, Laos, just before christmas, and i'd just got a strange phone call off 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".
Mick and joe come over to meet kev, jax, eliane and myself and tell us what happened the night before. On leaving the bowling alley (latest place open in luang prabang), they convinced a tuc tuc driver to bring them home for about $0.20 each. The driver picked up three or four more people who he dropped off together around half way to the guesthouse. He then told the lads he was upping the price to $0.40 each. Mick being a complete miser (and a little inebriated) told him where to go and jumped out of the tuc tuc, followed by a bemused/confused joe. The driver then jumped out, shouted at them a bit, picked up a rock, and went to throw it at them. Thinking better of smashing up some tourists, he said he was going to call the police and the other tuc tuc drivers instead. The police would be trouble enough, but luang prabang has a "tuc tuc mafia" in place that are scarier than any machine gun clad copper. The guy drives off, attempts to run over the people he's already dropped, misses, turns around, tries again, and disappears into the night. Laos has a 12am curfew and this is about 2am so the lads know they're in a tight spot. The decision is reached to make it back to the guesthouse via backstreets, which results in jumping fences, hiding from the cops under cars, falling in the mekong more than once, and eventually getting back to the guesthouse covered in mud where the owner is asleep in the foyer, necessitating knocking and yelling until he gets up to let them in.
So the lads are scared shitless (naturally enough) which means we have to leave town ASAP. We spend the day going through backalleys looking for a private bus company to take us to Vang Viang (public buses in laos are, we heard, shockingly bad) and booking accomodation for that night. Eventually, when everything's come out too expensive, we hop into a tuc tuc and head for the bus station. On the way, we spot the tuc tuc driver that scared the lads the night before, and simultaneously realise the bus driver is in no way headed towards the bus station. Someone suggests we're being taken off to a back alley for yer man to beat the shite out of us, and just as the fear grips us, the tuc tuc pulls over and the guy says his friend will take us to vang viang in his van for about $3 each (half the price of the decrepit public bus). Turns out his mate is the coach of the local table tennis team, and for some reason they have a spang new air conditioned bus. We pay our money and the guy seems to be waiting for more people to hang up so mick, ever the negotiator, plays some hardball (which involves us taking our bags back out of his bus) which results in our leaving immediately, just the six of us - luxury all the way!
It's dark when we leave and the driver is a maniac so it's a hairy drive, but once we get up into the mountains i immediately wish we'd gone during the day instead - we go insanely high up into the hills and the views, even by moonlight, are spectacular. It's definitely a drive i'll make by bike the next time i'm in laos. After about two hours the driver pulls over at a random roadside crapshack where we stand around looking at the "food" on offer. Mick and Joe, ever the adventurous/hungry types, buy something that's allegedly chicken, take about two bites, and go green. Eventually we pull away and about two hours later arrive to Vang Viang.
Having heard so much about the place, we're expecting a little more than we get - a street of about two flashing neon signs and even less people. We check into our hotel and head out to get food. We pick the only place that appears to be open, Falconi Pizza, and settle around a table. The owner buzzes down the back and brings us a food menu each and a "happy menu" between us. The happy menu is basically a drug menu - weed, magic mushrooms and opium in various guises such as "Mushroom Milkshake", "Happy pizza" or "a joint of opium"! Insano! I later find out the reason the owner is able to get away with it is he sits at the front door all the time and when the cops show up he refuses to let them in as it's private property. Unsurprisingly, the guy looked like a nervous wreck. After eating we head towards the hotel and run into no less than Matty the san franciscan from pai. I spend about an hour chatting it up with him, then head back to me and eliane's room where we spend about an hour playing cards, which in our short time sharing a room has become a welcome tradition.
The next morning, matty books us into his hostel and we spend the day meeing the gang we'd convinced to come to vang viang for christmas/new years - in full - myself, Mick from oz, Eliane from Canada, Matty and Zan from San Francisco, and Joe, Mike, Kev, Jax, Najma, Jim and joanne from the UK. The next week isn't really worth going into in depth, as it was more or less the same thing every day with a few minor alterations. Vang Viang is best known to backpackers as the town where you rent out a tractor tire's inner tube, get dropped about 5-10 kms up the river, and spend the day floating down, stopping off at swings and makeshift bars along the way. Seeing as i can't swim, i was reluctant enough, but when all the lads went tubing the second day we were there and ended up very sick as a result, i crossed it off my to do list. Instead, we rent bikes and spend most days off on bike rides in different directions - hills to the north, plains to the south, waterfalls and gigantic rock/mountain things every which way - there's always somewhere to while away the day. Eliane got sickest out of everyone and discovered a bar/restaraunt where they showed Family Guy DVDs all day, so we usually meet there for breakfast, watch a few episodes, then go on a bike ride or chill in hammocks by the river, meet up for dinner, usually head for falconi where the lads indulged a bit, then across the river to the bar/nightclub to have a few drinks and meet people. Good fun all in all, but if it wasn't christmas i'd have left after a day or two - the place was just a bit mind numbing. Having the tubing angle meant once the sun got a bit low, the town was teeming with drunken idiots coming home from tubing and heading out on the town, and the main strip was a bit of a tourist trap nightmare. Fair enough we watched a good share of Family Guy, but EVERY restaraunt in town was known by what TV show they had on (Simpsons, Friends, Seinfeld, Everyone Loves Malcolm etc) and so many people with just sit all day watching telly, then head out at night, which is fair enough but not really my scene. Sealing the deal, the only bar open past 11pm is covered in signs saying "live DJ from ireland", DJ roughly translating to "50 year old northern irish prick who sticks on mix cds on random (sample playlist, Chemical Brothers followed by Dolly Parton followed by Prodidgy followed by I'm having the time of my life) then goes around abusing people over the PA for things better handled with a quiet word". The bar itself is pretty cool, never a que for drinks, covered in huts with multiple hammocks, all set around a giant campfire, but being christmas it's full of drunken arseholes, with the music/DJ pushing it over the bearable edge.
Christmas day was much like any other, went up into the hills for a bike ride, zan's tire punctured in the middle of nowhere but luckily some random local fixed it for free using a lighter and a small bucket of water. We also saw some bandits rocking around with machine guns on their backs - no threat to us though! Myself, eliane, matt and zan went out for a christmas dinner of (kinda) roast (possibly) beef with some sort of potato things before meeting up with the rest of the gang for a quality night out.
About two days after christmas, joe, mike and i decide to take a proper bike ride. We pack up with enough water and sunscreen to cover the five hour ride down to Vientiane, Laos' capital city. As we're leaving, i meet Zan at the foot of the stairs. It's the day the cast on her leg is due to come off (she'd broken it a week before i met her, having attempted to jump off a waterfall into Matty's arms, only to hit the ground due to Mattys reflexes being less lightning fast and more Lada fast). Zan not being a fan of hospitals, she was cutting off the cast herself with a swiss army knife. I took some photos as a crowd of Laoations gathered to see the crazy lady cut off her cast. I later put the photos up on my flickr page, and after two days they'd had about 1500 views each. It later turned out some germans had happened across the photos and posted them on a cast fetish website. Germans... Weird.
Anyways, the drive to vientiane was a highlight of asia for me, winding through mountains, along rivers, through tiny towns, met with smiles and waves all the way. We stop a few times to get food or just to admire views, and by nightfall pull into Vientiane. We get a bite to eat before scouring the town for somewhere to stay. Compared to the $4 a night we were each paying for aircon'd double rooms in Vang Viang, Vientiane was a splurge. We eventually settle for a fairly central hotel for about $25 for a room with five beds.
Having heard the riverside is where all the locals eat, we head off in search of some Laoation goodies. The riverside is covered in food stalls selling everything from fresh fish to "pick 'em, kill 'em, eat 'em" chickens to bugs and rats, but also crafts stalls, miniature galleries... Just about anything you could need of an evening. We eventually pick a random stall, sit by the river with some beers and order food. What we get is... An experience. I won't get into it but i'm pretty sure the meat wasn't even a relative either chickens or pigs and i think joe's fish wasn't dead (not that it'd bother him). We head off in search of bars and get our first taste of Vientiane's bar culture. While any asian cities' bars usually feature an undercurrent of prostitution, Vientiane throws it right in your face. It was hard to find a bar where 85% of the women weren't on the game, and we eventually give up trying, settling into a corner of a rooftop bar where the lads watch football while i tell stupid jokes and generally insult them (as is the custom). The bar kicks out around ten so we go in search of somewhere to get a late drink. We ask a few tuc tuc drivers, and at about $0.50 a ride (for the three of us) we can afford to try a few options, but everywhere's either insanely expensive (selling no beers, only bottles of imported american whiskey (usually jim beam) for above american prices) or jammed full of dodgy looking women. Eventually we hear there's a hotel where the bar stays open until 3am, so we make the trek and run into some weird young american kid who's dad put him in the penthouse of the hotel and given him an allowance of $1000 a day. We head up to the nightclub and surprise surprise, it's 99% hookers, just joe, mike, me, and a small gang of american kids playing pool, versus around 200 asian women doing their best to look sexier than the lady next to them. We get a few beers and try having a bit of a dance, but any movement other than bringing a bottle to your mouth lands you with eight to ten women surrounding you, whispering prices in your ear. Eventually we give up and call it a night.
The next morning we head out to get a bite to eat across town. I forget my helmet and, of course, get nabbed by the cops for it. I'm driving along and all of a sudden there's a laoation police man standing in the middle of the road in front of me. I pull over and he asks for my registration. I tell him the bike is rented and he asks me to step over to the traffic cop booth on the side of the road, where about eight guys in police uniforms are mooching around. I give a quick "sabidee" as i walk up (hello in laoation) which sets them all off laughing sarcastically - i'm obviously in a lot of trouble. The main cop asks to see my licence, which i produce, before he points out i don't actually have a bike licence, only a car licence (why i have no idea). "So, you have no helmet, no registration, no evidence of insurance and no licence. This will cost you big fine. Maybe $200. I give you address of police station where you go pay fine". Innocently, i ask if there's any way i could pay the fine at his booth instead. He looks nervous/excited and says "five dollar", which i produce from my pocket and he conceals beneath his book. "Have good day!!". He looks happy as larry with his five dollars, and well he should - a laoation policeman's monthly salary is $25 so i gave him the bulk of a weeks pay.
After breakfast, we head off on a drive to a local sculpture park, which turns out to be directly across the river from Nong Khai where i'd spent a week relaxing a few weeks before - in fact i can actually see my guesthouse across the river! We get to the sculpture park which turns out to be a stripped down version of the famous park in Nong Khai - apparently the sculptor started his park in laos, got kicked out as it was all too weird, and finished off the whole operation across the river in thailand. There's a big gang of school kids at the park and mike, hearing them saying "falang" in hushed tones (it's the asian derogatory slang for white people), hisses "falang falang" at them mock menacingly, and before we know it, him and joe are chasing them around the park shouting "falang falang", a game that keeps everyone amused for a good hour. We walk around for another half an hour taking photos of the sculputres, at all times surrounded by about 50 giggling schoolkids before getting back on the bikes and heading back to Vientiane. That night we go out for dinner and a few drinks with some vang viang people we randomly ran into before heading back to the hotel.
In the morning we set off early for vang viang. I assume the early hour will mean we can take it a bit slower and see more scenery, whereas joe thinks "early to rise, early to vang viang" and sets off at bloody warp speed. After about two hours we stop off at a roadside bar for a breather. The bar itself is literally a shack with music pumping out of it and about 15-20 heavily inebriated but friendly laoations inside. We settle at a table, get a beer, and instantly feel we're about to be kidnapped or worse. One of the dodgiest looking people i've ever seen comes over and introduces himself creepily before introducing us to half the bar, who are all looking at us like we're edible. Our drinks quickly downed, we're back on the road, but after about 20 minutes of winding up hills, i tell the lads that i'm going to go at my own pace - driving at 150kph through beautiful scenery isn't my idea of a great bike ride, so if they want to get boy racer, they can do it without me. I wind my way through the hills for about an hour before i meet them again - at which point they'd been waiting for about 45 mins (allegedly). We get home in the evening and head out for a few beers, as usual.
At some point in the night, we get chatting to two australian girls, one of whom is being stalked by a very creepy looking laoation guy. Apparently they've been trying to lose him all day but to no avail. He's keen on the girl, so she asks me to put my arm around her, assuming he'll get the hint and bugger off. Unfortunately, it's has pretty much the opposite effect, and he decides i'm to be dealt with physically. He starts shouting at me, and having heard loads of stories of the "argue with one laoation and 50 show up out of nowhere" variety i keep repeating "i have no problem with you friend". For some reason, this makes him angrier and we find out he picks fights with westerners every few days and, being a wrestling champ, usually beats the shite out of them. His threats escilate to include one of the girls with us, naj, who he tells he's beaten up many women and has no problem punching her if she doesn't get out of his way. Naj, being tough as nails, bless her, gets in his face and we eventually make our way out of the bar as it's closing. Weirdo follows us so we ask the dj/owner guy if we can hang back a little until the guy leaves, but, being a prick, he refuses. We hang back as much as possible anyways, but the weirdo is about 75 meters ahead of us doing stretches. There's a bridge between the bar and the town that's made of sticks and ropes and sways when you cross it, and it took us a good while to get yer man across, but when we get to the other side of the river, we split into a few groups and lose him. The next night, i'm at the bar again with Kev and Jax and the guy walks up to me and says "i sorry i so angry last night". I clink bottles with him and tell him it's no problem, fearing a reprise (the guy still looking like he'd pull the heart out of my chest, temple of doom style), and, of course he continues with "normally i not get jealous woman, but why you make jealous woman, WHY YOU MAKE JEALOUS WOMAN?" I keep saying "is no problem" and he keeps shouting and shaking his fist in my face until after a minute he loses steam and heads away. He spends the rest of my time there trying to stare me down, and one night even does a few menacing drive by's at about 2am when we're hanging outside our hostel, but nothing more comes of it.
For new years, Jim and Joanne convince one of the bars that's staying open late (and has a bonfire and tonnes of sweet cabins with hammocks in them) to let us play our own music as long as we do some fliers. Result!! We get down there early and people mill in from time to time from the previously mentioned late bar next door, the bar gives us free food and a few shots a piece, at some stage we move from the campfire to one of the huts (along with some randoms we pick up) and around midnight we realise it's new years because everyone at the bar next door's cheering. Seeing as i hate new years because everywhere's packed and there's always some sort of drama, this was probably the best new years i've ever had, sitting in a hammock in the asian heat with a really great gang of people, no worries in the world, happy as larry.
So i'll leave it there, that's enough for one sitting. I'll get another part done in about a week. Until then...
So, we were in Luang Prabang, Laos, just before christmas, and i'd just got a strange phone call off 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".
Mick and joe come over to meet kev, jax, eliane and myself and tell us what happened the night before. On leaving the bowling alley (latest place open in luang prabang), they convinced a tuc tuc driver to bring them home for about $0.20 each. The driver picked up three or four more people who he dropped off together around half way to the guesthouse. He then told the lads he was upping the price to $0.40 each. Mick being a complete miser (and a little inebriated) told him where to go and jumped out of the tuc tuc, followed by a bemused/confused joe. The driver then jumped out, shouted at them a bit, picked up a rock, and went to throw it at them. Thinking better of smashing up some tourists, he said he was going to call the police and the other tuc tuc drivers instead. The police would be trouble enough, but luang prabang has a "tuc tuc mafia" in place that are scarier than any machine gun clad copper. The guy drives off, attempts to run over the people he's already dropped, misses, turns around, tries again, and disappears into the night. Laos has a 12am curfew and this is about 2am so the lads know they're in a tight spot. The decision is reached to make it back to the guesthouse via backstreets, which results in jumping fences, hiding from the cops under cars, falling in the mekong more than once, and eventually getting back to the guesthouse covered in mud where the owner is asleep in the foyer, necessitating knocking and yelling until he gets up to let them in.
So the lads are scared shitless (naturally enough) which means we have to leave town ASAP. We spend the day going through backalleys looking for a private bus company to take us to Vang Viang (public buses in laos are, we heard, shockingly bad) and booking accomodation for that night. Eventually, when everything's come out too expensive, we hop into a tuc tuc and head for the bus station. On the way, we spot the tuc tuc driver that scared the lads the night before, and simultaneously realise the bus driver is in no way headed towards the bus station. Someone suggests we're being taken off to a back alley for yer man to beat the shite out of us, and just as the fear grips us, the tuc tuc pulls over and the guy says his friend will take us to vang viang in his van for about $3 each (half the price of the decrepit public bus). Turns out his mate is the coach of the local table tennis team, and for some reason they have a spang new air conditioned bus. We pay our money and the guy seems to be waiting for more people to hang up so mick, ever the negotiator, plays some hardball (which involves us taking our bags back out of his bus) which results in our leaving immediately, just the six of us - luxury all the way!
It's dark when we leave and the driver is a maniac so it's a hairy drive, but once we get up into the mountains i immediately wish we'd gone during the day instead - we go insanely high up into the hills and the views, even by moonlight, are spectacular. It's definitely a drive i'll make by bike the next time i'm in laos. After about two hours the driver pulls over at a random roadside crapshack where we stand around looking at the "food" on offer. Mick and Joe, ever the adventurous/hungry types, buy something that's allegedly chicken, take about two bites, and go green. Eventually we pull away and about two hours later arrive to Vang Viang.
Having heard so much about the place, we're expecting a little more than we get - a street of about two flashing neon signs and even less people. We check into our hotel and head out to get food. We pick the only place that appears to be open, Falconi Pizza, and settle around a table. The owner buzzes down the back and brings us a food menu each and a "happy menu" between us. The happy menu is basically a drug menu - weed, magic mushrooms and opium in various guises such as "Mushroom Milkshake", "Happy pizza" or "a joint of opium"! Insano! I later find out the reason the owner is able to get away with it is he sits at the front door all the time and when the cops show up he refuses to let them in as it's private property. Unsurprisingly, the guy looked like a nervous wreck. After eating we head towards the hotel and run into no less than Matty the san franciscan from pai. I spend about an hour chatting it up with him, then head back to me and eliane's room where we spend about an hour playing cards, which in our short time sharing a room has become a welcome tradition.
The next morning, matty books us into his hostel and we spend the day meeing the gang we'd convinced to come to vang viang for christmas/new years - in full - myself, Mick from oz, Eliane from Canada, Matty and Zan from San Francisco, and Joe, Mike, Kev, Jax, Najma, Jim and joanne from the UK. The next week isn't really worth going into in depth, as it was more or less the same thing every day with a few minor alterations. Vang Viang is best known to backpackers as the town where you rent out a tractor tire's inner tube, get dropped about 5-10 kms up the river, and spend the day floating down, stopping off at swings and makeshift bars along the way. Seeing as i can't swim, i was reluctant enough, but when all the lads went tubing the second day we were there and ended up very sick as a result, i crossed it off my to do list. Instead, we rent bikes and spend most days off on bike rides in different directions - hills to the north, plains to the south, waterfalls and gigantic rock/mountain things every which way - there's always somewhere to while away the day. Eliane got sickest out of everyone and discovered a bar/restaraunt where they showed Family Guy DVDs all day, so we usually meet there for breakfast, watch a few episodes, then go on a bike ride or chill in hammocks by the river, meet up for dinner, usually head for falconi where the lads indulged a bit, then across the river to the bar/nightclub to have a few drinks and meet people. Good fun all in all, but if it wasn't christmas i'd have left after a day or two - the place was just a bit mind numbing. Having the tubing angle meant once the sun got a bit low, the town was teeming with drunken idiots coming home from tubing and heading out on the town, and the main strip was a bit of a tourist trap nightmare. Fair enough we watched a good share of Family Guy, but EVERY restaraunt in town was known by what TV show they had on (Simpsons, Friends, Seinfeld, Everyone Loves Malcolm etc) and so many people with just sit all day watching telly, then head out at night, which is fair enough but not really my scene. Sealing the deal, the only bar open past 11pm is covered in signs saying "live DJ from ireland", DJ roughly translating to "50 year old northern irish prick who sticks on mix cds on random (sample playlist, Chemical Brothers followed by Dolly Parton followed by Prodidgy followed by I'm having the time of my life) then goes around abusing people over the PA for things better handled with a quiet word". The bar itself is pretty cool, never a que for drinks, covered in huts with multiple hammocks, all set around a giant campfire, but being christmas it's full of drunken arseholes, with the music/DJ pushing it over the bearable edge.
Christmas day was much like any other, went up into the hills for a bike ride, zan's tire punctured in the middle of nowhere but luckily some random local fixed it for free using a lighter and a small bucket of water. We also saw some bandits rocking around with machine guns on their backs - no threat to us though! Myself, eliane, matt and zan went out for a christmas dinner of (kinda) roast (possibly) beef with some sort of potato things before meeting up with the rest of the gang for a quality night out.
About two days after christmas, joe, mike and i decide to take a proper bike ride. We pack up with enough water and sunscreen to cover the five hour ride down to Vientiane, Laos' capital city. As we're leaving, i meet Zan at the foot of the stairs. It's the day the cast on her leg is due to come off (she'd broken it a week before i met her, having attempted to jump off a waterfall into Matty's arms, only to hit the ground due to Mattys reflexes being less lightning fast and more Lada fast). Zan not being a fan of hospitals, she was cutting off the cast herself with a swiss army knife. I took some photos as a crowd of Laoations gathered to see the crazy lady cut off her cast. I later put the photos up on my flickr page, and after two days they'd had about 1500 views each. It later turned out some germans had happened across the photos and posted them on a cast fetish website. Germans... Weird.
Anyways, the drive to vientiane was a highlight of asia for me, winding through mountains, along rivers, through tiny towns, met with smiles and waves all the way. We stop a few times to get food or just to admire views, and by nightfall pull into Vientiane. We get a bite to eat before scouring the town for somewhere to stay. Compared to the $4 a night we were each paying for aircon'd double rooms in Vang Viang, Vientiane was a splurge. We eventually settle for a fairly central hotel for about $25 for a room with five beds.
Having heard the riverside is where all the locals eat, we head off in search of some Laoation goodies. The riverside is covered in food stalls selling everything from fresh fish to "pick 'em, kill 'em, eat 'em" chickens to bugs and rats, but also crafts stalls, miniature galleries... Just about anything you could need of an evening. We eventually pick a random stall, sit by the river with some beers and order food. What we get is... An experience. I won't get into it but i'm pretty sure the meat wasn't even a relative either chickens or pigs and i think joe's fish wasn't dead (not that it'd bother him). We head off in search of bars and get our first taste of Vientiane's bar culture. While any asian cities' bars usually feature an undercurrent of prostitution, Vientiane throws it right in your face. It was hard to find a bar where 85% of the women weren't on the game, and we eventually give up trying, settling into a corner of a rooftop bar where the lads watch football while i tell stupid jokes and generally insult them (as is the custom). The bar kicks out around ten so we go in search of somewhere to get a late drink. We ask a few tuc tuc drivers, and at about $0.50 a ride (for the three of us) we can afford to try a few options, but everywhere's either insanely expensive (selling no beers, only bottles of imported american whiskey (usually jim beam) for above american prices) or jammed full of dodgy looking women. Eventually we hear there's a hotel where the bar stays open until 3am, so we make the trek and run into some weird young american kid who's dad put him in the penthouse of the hotel and given him an allowance of $1000 a day. We head up to the nightclub and surprise surprise, it's 99% hookers, just joe, mike, me, and a small gang of american kids playing pool, versus around 200 asian women doing their best to look sexier than the lady next to them. We get a few beers and try having a bit of a dance, but any movement other than bringing a bottle to your mouth lands you with eight to ten women surrounding you, whispering prices in your ear. Eventually we give up and call it a night.
The next morning we head out to get a bite to eat across town. I forget my helmet and, of course, get nabbed by the cops for it. I'm driving along and all of a sudden there's a laoation police man standing in the middle of the road in front of me. I pull over and he asks for my registration. I tell him the bike is rented and he asks me to step over to the traffic cop booth on the side of the road, where about eight guys in police uniforms are mooching around. I give a quick "sabidee" as i walk up (hello in laoation) which sets them all off laughing sarcastically - i'm obviously in a lot of trouble. The main cop asks to see my licence, which i produce, before he points out i don't actually have a bike licence, only a car licence (why i have no idea). "So, you have no helmet, no registration, no evidence of insurance and no licence. This will cost you big fine. Maybe $200. I give you address of police station where you go pay fine". Innocently, i ask if there's any way i could pay the fine at his booth instead. He looks nervous/excited and says "five dollar", which i produce from my pocket and he conceals beneath his book. "Have good day!!". He looks happy as larry with his five dollars, and well he should - a laoation policeman's monthly salary is $25 so i gave him the bulk of a weeks pay.
After breakfast, we head off on a drive to a local sculpture park, which turns out to be directly across the river from Nong Khai where i'd spent a week relaxing a few weeks before - in fact i can actually see my guesthouse across the river! We get to the sculpture park which turns out to be a stripped down version of the famous park in Nong Khai - apparently the sculptor started his park in laos, got kicked out as it was all too weird, and finished off the whole operation across the river in thailand. There's a big gang of school kids at the park and mike, hearing them saying "falang" in hushed tones (it's the asian derogatory slang for white people), hisses "falang falang" at them mock menacingly, and before we know it, him and joe are chasing them around the park shouting "falang falang", a game that keeps everyone amused for a good hour. We walk around for another half an hour taking photos of the sculputres, at all times surrounded by about 50 giggling schoolkids before getting back on the bikes and heading back to Vientiane. That night we go out for dinner and a few drinks with some vang viang people we randomly ran into before heading back to the hotel.
In the morning we set off early for vang viang. I assume the early hour will mean we can take it a bit slower and see more scenery, whereas joe thinks "early to rise, early to vang viang" and sets off at bloody warp speed. After about two hours we stop off at a roadside bar for a breather. The bar itself is literally a shack with music pumping out of it and about 15-20 heavily inebriated but friendly laoations inside. We settle at a table, get a beer, and instantly feel we're about to be kidnapped or worse. One of the dodgiest looking people i've ever seen comes over and introduces himself creepily before introducing us to half the bar, who are all looking at us like we're edible. Our drinks quickly downed, we're back on the road, but after about 20 minutes of winding up hills, i tell the lads that i'm going to go at my own pace - driving at 150kph through beautiful scenery isn't my idea of a great bike ride, so if they want to get boy racer, they can do it without me. I wind my way through the hills for about an hour before i meet them again - at which point they'd been waiting for about 45 mins (allegedly). We get home in the evening and head out for a few beers, as usual.
At some point in the night, we get chatting to two australian girls, one of whom is being stalked by a very creepy looking laoation guy. Apparently they've been trying to lose him all day but to no avail. He's keen on the girl, so she asks me to put my arm around her, assuming he'll get the hint and bugger off. Unfortunately, it's has pretty much the opposite effect, and he decides i'm to be dealt with physically. He starts shouting at me, and having heard loads of stories of the "argue with one laoation and 50 show up out of nowhere" variety i keep repeating "i have no problem with you friend". For some reason, this makes him angrier and we find out he picks fights with westerners every few days and, being a wrestling champ, usually beats the shite out of them. His threats escilate to include one of the girls with us, naj, who he tells he's beaten up many women and has no problem punching her if she doesn't get out of his way. Naj, being tough as nails, bless her, gets in his face and we eventually make our way out of the bar as it's closing. Weirdo follows us so we ask the dj/owner guy if we can hang back a little until the guy leaves, but, being a prick, he refuses. We hang back as much as possible anyways, but the weirdo is about 75 meters ahead of us doing stretches. There's a bridge between the bar and the town that's made of sticks and ropes and sways when you cross it, and it took us a good while to get yer man across, but when we get to the other side of the river, we split into a few groups and lose him. The next night, i'm at the bar again with Kev and Jax and the guy walks up to me and says "i sorry i so angry last night". I clink bottles with him and tell him it's no problem, fearing a reprise (the guy still looking like he'd pull the heart out of my chest, temple of doom style), and, of course he continues with "normally i not get jealous woman, but why you make jealous woman, WHY YOU MAKE JEALOUS WOMAN?" I keep saying "is no problem" and he keeps shouting and shaking his fist in my face until after a minute he loses steam and heads away. He spends the rest of my time there trying to stare me down, and one night even does a few menacing drive by's at about 2am when we're hanging outside our hostel, but nothing more comes of it.
For new years, Jim and Joanne convince one of the bars that's staying open late (and has a bonfire and tonnes of sweet cabins with hammocks in them) to let us play our own music as long as we do some fliers. Result!! We get down there early and people mill in from time to time from the previously mentioned late bar next door, the bar gives us free food and a few shots a piece, at some stage we move from the campfire to one of the huts (along with some randoms we pick up) and around midnight we realise it's new years because everyone at the bar next door's cheering. Seeing as i hate new years because everywhere's packed and there's always some sort of drama, this was probably the best new years i've ever had, sitting in a hammock in the asian heat with a really great gang of people, no worries in the world, happy as larry.
So i'll leave it there, that's enough for one sitting. I'll get another part done in about a week. Until then...
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
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.
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.
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