I arrived to Luang Prabang, Laos no longer on speaking terms with my sister. I wouldn’t let her sit by the window on the plane, she threw a fit, I told her that is exactly why mom and dad didn’t want her to travel abroad, and she told me (and the entire plane) that mom and dad said I was “too big of a bitch to ever get married.” Isn’t it fun to travel with family. After I kicked her out of our hotel room, we met at some point the next day because, well, it’s a small town. And my mom would have killed me had I actually left my sister in Laos.
Luang Prabang
My first solo morning in Luang Prabang I climbed Mt. Phousi, a big hill in the middle of town. There are great views of the city and the mountain is full of golden Buddha’s in various shapes and sizes. At 6am before the town was awake, hanging out with Buddha was amazingly calming.
I then proceeded to have breakfast. Three times. The food in this town was so amazing that I could not stop eating. First, I ate fruit and granola on an outside patio overlooking the street. Then I had a baguette and coffee at another café. Then Lauren and I sat on the sidewalk eating banana and peanut butter crepes from a sidewalk stand. It was gray and misty but this did not diminish from the town. The architecture was beautiful and the streets were clean. The temples and palace were ornately decorated with gold and the “curly cue” design characteristic of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
We took a boat tour to the Pak Ou caves, which were full of thousands of little Buddha statues. Then we stopped at the Whiskey Village where locals were brewing up their own heinous concoctions. We actually bought a few bottles of whiskey and Lauren even managed to get hers home. As it turns out, the stuff was so nasty even her Milwaukee’s Best-loving friends wouldn’t drink it. They instead began using it to take stains off of the walls of their apartment after house parties. Not so shockingly, it worked wonders.
We went out to dinner with some fellow Canadian travelers and Lauren ordered the house special. Wasn’t she excited to find out that the “soft stuff” in her soup was actually pork fat and buffalo skin. I know I was, because I had ordered fish.
Lauren and I got particularly ambitious one day and rented mountain bikes to take what turned into a 30 mile bike ride to Kuang Si Waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Although it was raining, muddy, and uphill for most of the way there, it cleared up just in time for us to swim in the waterfalls.
Of course, such a long bike ride made us tired and so we decided to feast back at the Hmong Night Market in town. There we got an all you can eat buffet for 50 cents. Didn’t quite beat the grilled bananas we had for lunch, but the local beer helped everything to go down more smoothly. After our first dinner, we did a second one at a Lao BBQ restaurant. Because it’s a small world, we ended up running into a Harvard MBA who knew a Peruvian guy that worked at McKinsey with me. We roasted our own meat on a table top grill and occasionally the waitress would come over and rub buffalo fat all over the grill to keep things from sticking. Delicious.
As it turns out, we usually have early buses on the mornings after we drink too much. Our 5am wake up call to catch our bus was only bearable because 1. I was still drunk and 2. We got to see monks along the side of the road asking for alms on our way to the station. Long lines of young men with shaved heads and orange robes walk down the street holding out their baskets to be filled with food from devout locals and tourists along the street.
Vang Vieng
The spiritual experience of the monks was completely obliterated by our next activity, tubing down a river in Vang Vieng, Laos. I’m not exactly sure how to describe this place...Imagine there is this quiet town in Laos that no one has ever been to. The town has a really beautiful river that runs between idyllic village scenery on one side and large rock formations on the other. One day, someone decides it would be fun to get intertubes and float down the river. The next day someone gets thirsty floating down the river and opens a bar. Then someone else gets thirsty and opens 12 more bars. Then they realize that drinking is more fun when you can jump off of things so the bars add rope swings, bungee cords, and zip lines. You write this all up in Lonely Planet, and next thing you know you have one long river, 13 bars with dangerous activities, and 2,000 21 year-old foreigners who have lost their life jackets and are tubing down a river completely obliterated. Not surprisingly, the majority of tourists are Irish and British (come on guys, you KNOW its true).
Vientiane
I lasted about one day there and then Lauren and I took another bus ride to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Laos has the lowest population density of any country in Asia, and this is the town where you notice it. Not going to lie, it was kind of refreshing. Sometimes I would walk out of my hotel and not see a single person. This is unheard of in Asia. The sites were interesting and doable in 1 day. We visited the temple Wat Sisaket which had walls full of Buddhas. We visited Pautaxi, modeled after the French Arc de Triunf. And we visited the famous La Phat Thuang, the golden structure of Lao Independence.
We also visited an Indian restaurant for the second time on our trip. Oddly, the same man who had served us Indian food at a restaurant in Hanoi was sitting at the table next to us. No lie, we went over and asked him to verify. Small world, small world.
And finally, the trip is coming to an end. Lauren and I hopped a night bus back to Bangkok that had both air conditioning and a bathroom so we didn’t even care that it was running 5 hours late. Bussing in to Bangkok gave us the chance to see just how massive the city is. For hours before we reached the city center we passed by colorful lorries and busses, a great highway with lines and signs, and big Tesco stores.
Once in Bangkok, wee checked Lauren into the hotel and then shared a wine soaked dinner. I then headed off to the airport in a bit of a drunken haze, ready to relax and sleep on my flight to Africa…
Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airlines was not on the same page. While I wanted a quick and easy check-in so that I could go and lay my tipsy head down in the waiting area, Ethiopian Airlines wanted to know where my dad was. What? My dad? Apparently I had used his credit card to book the flight and so he needed to be there with me. Unfortunately, he was in Iraq. As I waited for an hour for the manager who “had to make every decision,” according to the women at the desk, I watched some of the Africans on my flight check their 10 to 15 massive market bags. They sowed them up using rope and the biggest needle I had ever seen. If anyone is wondering how counterfeit goods make it from Asia to Africa, now you know.
After an hour, a tantrum, a forged letter, and a call to Iraq, I finally convinced “the man who must make all decisions” that I was indeed allowed to travel to Africa. While waiting in line I was pumped up on adrenaline, kind of drunk, and going off a dream that told me I would mean someone important on the trip to Tanzania. Therefore, I started talking up some French guy who, as it turned out, was a merchant marine who guarded oil rigs off of the coast of Africa. And I thought my life was exciting.
I later lost him in the Ethiopian airport during a layover when I was checking email for $5 an hour and just as I was wondering why in the hell Mr. Merchant Marine was so important, I got in line for my flight to Tanzania and remembered the trip was not over yet…
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