New years eve day began with a triple trek of triumphant travelers--Kristina and I signed up for a tour that included biking, elephant riding, and kayaking. This trollish guy at this bridge-like coffeeshop attempted to scare us from going with cautionary advice about how far away it was, the condition of the roads, and the wrecklessness of truck drivers on it. Perhaps he liked to scare travelers crossing the metaphorical bridge of adventure.
The bike ride was pretty challenging, but we had good quality bikes. Those fixed gear bikes with meteorite textured seats from Vietnam would have been problems, however, so thank you, Laos. Cristina did pretty well despite her worries of not being very fit. We had an older German guy with our group also, who was a retired superhero. He led the pack. And he demonstrated excellent superhero patience with the rest of the groups' dawdling. The ride was about 15 Kms. Next we got on some kayaks for about 10 minutes to this little spot that had the elephant rides. We named our elephant Colonel Babar Theodorus Babarrus. He was a champ. After the ride we had lunch and hung out for a bit. The third part of our trek was a 3 hour kayak down a hardly moving river. It was pretty tiring. Cristina and I challenged the strength of the German was-superman, but were never able to overcome his lead. We suspsect he was barely exerting himself.
We planned to meet up at the Joms coffeeshop in the early evening to begin our celebration of the new year. It works well as a Starbucks substitute with less suprerior coffee but more superior baked goods. I got there early so I could do some internet since my hostel has no wifi. Soon Jo and Luke showed up and then Cristina. Luke thought his banana shake was made with rotten bananas as it was brownish in color, but it was actually a chocoalate banana shake, which he didn't like and gave to Jo. There could have been darker arts at work as Jo suddenly got ill, probably from the shake. It was food poisoning from the future having travelled back in time. It was quite devilish, as it put Jo in bed for the rest of the night. It was the first in many unusual experiences of the night.
After Luke brought Jo back to their room he came back and He, Cristina, and I went to the night food market we had heard about. It was a small Alley with numerous vendors selling grilled meats and all you can fill on a plate vegetable buffets. It was my favorite food in Southeast Asia. I got a fish skewer and a huge plate of vegetables for about 3 dollars.
We met a Brittish couple at our table and invited them to meet us later at the bar we planned to go to, except I remembered the name incorrectly--Osasis is not Utopia--woops. Luke gave me a late Xmas gift--a bottle of snake whiskey, which we used to wash down our amazing night market food.
We thought we would scope out the bar next after dinner, the bar I wrongly thought was Oasis. We knew the area of the town it was in so we walked around until we saw a flyer then realized, then we knew the way to the bar for real, and it wasn't very far. It was an outdoor bar. It had a very Triassic period feeling, and there was a sand pit with a grill that was made from the shell of a missile. We got a drink and chilled out for a bit. Then Luke checked on Jo and came back--she was so sick she was passing out in the hallway and hallucinating spectres of herself. It was about 11:20 and Oasis just didn't feel very festive, so we moved to another bar, Hive. It wasn't very festive either but we got a drink and took a seat in outdoor area in the back. At least we could watch the paper lantern rocket ships the locals were launching. Luke needed to go be with Jo for the countdown, so it was just Cristina and I. The bar wasn't keeping official time though, so all of a sudden I looked at my watch and it was 2 minutes to go and Cristina had just walked off for the bathroom. Each group in the bar did their own 10 second countdown. They were overlapping eachother and causing confusion. It was chaotic and uncoordinated. Cristina got back to find out she was probably peeing when 2011 started.
We waited around until Luke came back and then finished off the bottle of snake wine. Next we ventured back to Oasis. Now it was a bit crazier with music and fires and some dancing. We hung out there in the sand getting warm by the fires for at least two hours. Our friends from dinner found us despite my telling them the wrong name of the place. We watched a shirtless guy almost fall into the fire from dancing like a gummy bear. Then he got tossed out of the bar, probably for being hazardous. We left around 4, just as the place was starting to clear out.
As we walked back we decided that since it was possibly too late to get into our hostels and given that sunrise was not too far away, it would be cool to hike up the hill to the temple in the center of town and watch the sunrise. On our way there we were ambushed by ladies who seemed in desperation over some sort of trauma. The trauma was that they needed people to feed the monks at 5AM. Every day the monks walk through town to recieve food donations. The monks aren't allowed to grab the food themselves, so they need people--generous people, to give it to them. We wanted to be those generous people today. The ladies gave us each a bowl of sticky rice and a plate of bananas and show us how to 'deliver' the food. Then they asked for 60,000 kip from us, or about 9 dollars. This is where it got a bit wierd--now it felt like a scam, and we told them we only had 40,000 kip, so they took it and took away about 1/3 of the food. Then we sat there and watched 5 AM pass by--no monks. We asked around and found out it wasn't until 6 or 6:30, so we left. We are not generous enough to sit on the street for 2 hours in the cold, so that we can sit there for 5 minutes to give food to some monks. Not cool, Laos.
So now we were walking down the main road looking for the staircase to get to the top of the hill for the sunrise, when suddenly we hear someone in the darkness ahead say Luke's name. "Uh does someone in this town now you Luke", I began, but as soon as I said this I realized who it was, Jo, and she did not look happy. She had thought Luke was coming right back and started to get worried when he didn't, so she went out looking for him. Cristina and I walked further down the road to give them some privacy and eventually they were gone--not a surprise. We were still determined to make the sunrise, but just before we started up, we had a delivery. While we had been sitting waiting for the Monks a guy had walked by selling pot. Cristina really wanted pot, so she bargained a price out of him and he ran off to get it, but we had left, but he managed to find us just now. He opened the package to let her smell it. Acceptable. Then we were on our way.
It probably would have taken 10 minutes to get up the mountain if it was light out, instead it took us about 25. We got up there and found the East side and sat down and waited, and waited. It was really cloudy so no sunrise. We began to replay the night and laugh at how things had deviated from their intentions. We couldn't say it was perfect, or even imperfect, but either way, it would be memorable.
We walked down the mountain and went to get some breakfast. Cristina had to stop by her room though, and she came out laughing. She had opened up her bag of weed to discover it wsa a bag of tea wih a little bit of pot on top. Of course it was. We went for breakfast and went to bed before anything worse could happen. Happy New Year!
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