photos from lao.

piglets. i could watch them frolic for hours.

i pondered this shack in the little pond for a while in tad lo.

bus to tad lo. part cargo transport, part human transport. before boarding i watched a few guys chase down loose chickens.

atomic bomb cloud over don det

one of ang's many buddies who came to swim with us.

victory monument, vientiane lao

description of monument. some of the great english translations you are privy to in southeast asia.

farewell to lao

i'll back track a bit in an attempt to redeem my lack of blogging. 

we went from the friends and family guy fest of vang vieng on to vientiane, the capital of lao. we had to pull ourselves away from vang vieng, yes it is tourist, and it was hot, but you really can't beat the tranquility and view of lounging about by the river. the scenery didn't get old, but the constant barage of the rembrandt's "i'll be there for you" starts to wear you down. 

vientiane is a nice little town but you wouldn't expect it to be the capital of a country. there's not much to it, but it has its charm. there is a several hundred year old stupa, an arc du triumphe replica, and some decent restaurants and bars. we went the the national history museum and gained some sort of an understanding of lao history, though i'm not sure which sort. only about half the signage was in english and the chronology of it all (after you got past the dinosaurs and pre history section) seemed a bit off. during the vietnam war era the museum signs refer to the u.s. only as the imperialist and their puppets. at the end of the museum is an odd display case of old medicine bottles and pills. the one next to that is full of confiscated drugs, including a good couple of kilos of heroin. we gathered, as there were no signs in english, it was a showcase of various governmental departments that had been established. though we didn't fully understand all the exhibits, it is interesting to view the current country, and then consider how quickly a countries can progress when they have a functioning system of government and are not battling colonization.

from there we went to don det, part of the four thousand islands, a hot and rather primitive group of islands. it's a sleepy, laid back kind of place with a lot of chickens and cows. we stayed in a bungalow for less than three dollars a night. by day we rented bikes and rode along the muddy, dirt paths, looked at waterfalls, spotted some rare breed of river dolphins, and relaxed and swam at a beach. there wasn't much else to do, incredibly hot, but it was great. we had electricity for two hours a night, which we were never around for, so no fan at night. at five in the evening it was 116 degrees in the sun. it didn't matter though, it cooled and rained at night and we were too tired anyway to care.

then we stopped for a few nights in tad lo and didn't do much of anything, and it too was great. we looked at waterfalls, watched piglets and chicks frolic, played cards and read and relaxed.

with our lao visa running out, we spent a night in a border town and then headed back to thailand. we spent a month in lao and as soon as we got into thailand i began to miss the ubiquious "sa ba dee" that works as hello, goodbye, how are you and probably a dozen other things. the lao people say this in an incredibly friendly way whether it be an old lady trying to sell you grilled bananas, a young kid riding past on a bike, or even the grumpy looking man on the tuk tuk. and also, i can no longer order big beerlao which i had become  rather accustomed to.

so we left lao and spent the next 28 hours on buses, waiting for buses, or on tuk-tuks, waiting for tuk-tuks, or on a boat, or waiting for a boat. 

we made it to the island koh chang. it is nice. today we swam in the ocean and built a sand castle. 

travel theory

high crests and low troughs; up, down, around, and over i smash and crash through the seas of travel. 

after you travel long enough, go long enough sans gainful employment, you really start to travel. it takes a few months. after you've seen enough things and people and places everything starts to blend and blur together; this mountain looks like that one other mountain, this city like that one, this stomach ache feels like that one i had a few years ago. things stop being new, going somewhere solely for the sake of saying you've been there becomes less important, and you stop looking for some great profundity in every temple you see, in every bowl of noodles you eat, or in the eyes of every local person who is just living their life. you look at things and accept them. you stop comparing things to back home, or third world country to third world country and just accept them for what they are. 

i find myself in tad lo, a small laid back place in laos, sitting outside my bungalow watching a cow eat grass and a big black lactating pig take off to a gallup for no apparent reason. and i feel happier than i have in some time.

i walk along the one dirt road through the town. it's in a forest, it smells like up north wisconsin. i cross a bridge over the river, take a look at the giant waterfall that will lull me to sleep. i take nothing with me on the walk because the clouds were getting gray and threatening rain. i walk for about ten minutes and it starts to drizzle. i cut through the trees to the river and watch the water flow over the rocks and the rain speckle the surface. it thunders, and then it starts to rain harder, and then harder, and then it really couldn't rain much harder. i'm instantly soaked but i don't mind. for no reason i start running. it feels good, i find myself laughing as i run slower and slower, my sandals getting weighed down by mud. i get back, change my wet clothes and watch the rain until it stops.

 

vang vieng

beneath towering limestone cliffs that stand stalwart in the distant soft gray humid haze and along a softly bubbling river is vang vieng. it is a two street town, one along the river, and one parallel, full of guesthouses and restaurants advertising pizza and sandwiches for ten thousand kip. listen closely and i guarantee you will hear the "ber ner ner ne ner ner ner ner" of the friend's theme song, or the "birrampa ta damp" of the family guy theme song. there are at least a dozen restaurant/bar type of places with tables and blankets and pillows perfect for lying around. on their televisions they show either friends or family guy, all day, every day. 

at dusk the extraoridinarily drunk return from their tubing trips and walk around town shirtless and barefoot and talking loudly and boisterously about all the things that can't be expressed when calm and sober.

and in the morning the same people are walking around shirtless and barefoot and visibly hungover.

luang prabang to vang vieng

from luang prabang we headed west up and up and down around up and down twisty squiggly mountain roads towards the plain of jars. the road wasn't straight for longer than ten meters at any point during the six plus hour drive and I was constantly sliding back and forth across the seat. the driver went fast, zipping around the constant swerves and turns of the mountains, left and right back and fort--somehow we were on every side of the mountain at the same time. he only slowed down to avoid running over the chickens and cows and dogs that were invariably crossing the street at every village we came to. he avoided all animals but one, a fluttering chicken that flew into the van's path, it couldn't have been avoided. sorry chicken. 

the villages were frequent, bamboo and straw houses and always one or two stone brick houses only half completed. there are always naked children running around with the puppies and cows and chickens on the road, barely blinking when the driver beep beeps the horn. every villag,e, or group of buildings rather, is set strictly against this cement road on one side, and a deep vast valley on the other. i imagine the long twisty paved road has taken the place of the long twisty rivers as an appropriate place to start a town. 

the plain of jars is, as the name suggests, a plain of jars. these jars are said to be some two thousand years old, they are big and made of rock, and how they got where they are and what they are there for is still a mystery. though there are a few theories out there, such as the jars being big bins for dead bodies, but i like the giant theory the best. that is the jars were drinking cups for giant people. our tour guide was of the opinion that the jars were brought there by the same giants who moved on to create stonehenge.  no normal sized man could have carried such giant boulders from the mountains to where they lie, so they must have been brought there by giants. it's the only logical solution really, in a kirk cameron midnight televised christian sort of logic. 

lao pdr