I needed one more day in Luang Prabang to rest up from the previous night's experiences. I walked in at 7 AM, paid for another night, then went to bed. I think I woke up around 1. I had let Jo borrow my computer the night before, so I was going to head to their hostel to see if I could find them and get it back. On my way, I bumped into Alex and Nikola, the friends we made at the food market the previous night--they were on a quest for soup. I couldn't offer advice, but we arranged to meet up again at the same spot in the night market. I left them and started to walk past Jomas and out burst Jo. I had told Cristina I would be in Jomas that afternoon too, so eventually she showed up--the party hath assembled itself. Jo was feeling a lot better since last night too, but still neither her or Luke were 100 percent. We went to the pharmacy to medicate ourselves. I broke down and bought some allergy meds--they got some, uhh, stuff for the digestive tracks, and then we went to the night market for amazing flll your own plate to heaven vegetarian buffet and skewers of chicken, for under 2 dollars. Alex and Nikola were there too. Alex had spend a lot of time studying brain functions and was really into facial recognition technology. He and I started to nerd it out so much we got scolded from the rest of the group. Singularity type stuff, ya know. After food we went back to Jo and Luke's hostel to play some card games. Oh how I wish I had brought Munchkin with me. I didn't stay long because I had to catch a minivan to Vang Vien tomorrow, as did Alex and Nikola. We lost Cristina, but she might also be on our minivan.
Showing posts with label Luang Prabang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luang Prabang. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Luang Prabang: New Years Day
1/1
I needed one more day in Luang Prabang to rest up from the previous night's experiences. I walked in at 7 AM, paid for another night, then went to bed. I think I woke up around 1. I had let Jo borrow my computer the night before, so I was going to head to their hostel to see if I could find them and get it back. On my way, I bumped into Alex and Nikola, the friends we made at the food market the previous night--they were on a quest for soup. I couldn't offer advice, but we arranged to meet up again at the same spot in the night market. I left them and started to walk past Jomas and out burst Jo. I had told Cristina I would be in Jomas that afternoon too, so eventually she showed up--the party hath assembled itself. Jo was feeling a lot better since last night too, but still neither her or Luke were 100 percent. We went to the pharmacy to medicate ourselves. I broke down and bought some allergy meds--they got some, uhh, stuff for the digestive tracks, and then we went to the night market for amazing flll your own plate to heaven vegetarian buffet and skewers of chicken, for under 2 dollars. Alex and Nikola were there too. Alex had spend a lot of time studying brain functions and was really into facial recognition technology. He and I started to nerd it out so much we got scolded from the rest of the group. Singularity type stuff, ya know. After food we went back to Jo and Luke's hostel to play some card games. Oh how I wish I had brought Munchkin with me. I didn't stay long because I had to catch a minivan to Vang Vien tomorrow, as did Alex and Nikola. We lost Cristina, but she might also be on our minivan.
I needed one more day in Luang Prabang to rest up from the previous night's experiences. I walked in at 7 AM, paid for another night, then went to bed. I think I woke up around 1. I had let Jo borrow my computer the night before, so I was going to head to their hostel to see if I could find them and get it back. On my way, I bumped into Alex and Nikola, the friends we made at the food market the previous night--they were on a quest for soup. I couldn't offer advice, but we arranged to meet up again at the same spot in the night market. I left them and started to walk past Jomas and out burst Jo. I had told Cristina I would be in Jomas that afternoon too, so eventually she showed up--the party hath assembled itself. Jo was feeling a lot better since last night too, but still neither her or Luke were 100 percent. We went to the pharmacy to medicate ourselves. I broke down and bought some allergy meds--they got some, uhh, stuff for the digestive tracks, and then we went to the night market for amazing flll your own plate to heaven vegetarian buffet and skewers of chicken, for under 2 dollars. Alex and Nikola were there too. Alex had spend a lot of time studying brain functions and was really into facial recognition technology. He and I started to nerd it out so much we got scolded from the rest of the group. Singularity type stuff, ya know. After food we went back to Jo and Luke's hostel to play some card games. Oh how I wish I had brought Munchkin with me. I didn't stay long because I had to catch a minivan to Vang Vien tomorrow, as did Alex and Nikola. We lost Cristina, but she might also be on our minivan.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Luang Prabang: A Laotian New Years
12-31
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!
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!
Luang Prabang: Haunted by the spirit of Sesame Street, probably
We got to Luang Prabang at around 6AM. I shared some a tuk tuk ride to the center of town with some other backpackers and then we searched out a hostel together. It was kind of early so not all the hostels had people there, but we were kinda led by this British-French girl who kept saying you knew of a "good place" because she was very particular about having a single room at a good price. I wasn't motivated too much by the promise of saving a few extra bucks, so I took a room for 100,000 kip, or about 12 dollars. The motivated girl did find a room for 50,000 kip, but it sounded a bit less comfortable, with smelly shared bathrooms and walls that don't go all the way to the ceiling. In other words, it was a dorm room with pre-walls between the beds.
I met up with Cristina in the early afternoon for a late breakfast. Then we went and booked a tour for the following day--a biking, kayaking, elephant riding fantastic voyage. Next we ambled around for the bit and were soon drawn into a temple that had some ridiculous silver dragon railing that spoke "Big Trouble and Little China" to me. The coolest part of the temple were these paintings of stories, in a series of panels, like a comic. We couldn't read the text so we could only craft a story from the pictures. Based on said pictures, the story was wild, exotic, and packed with head severings. Cristina, being much more knowledgeable of Bhuddism than I, explained some of the strict rules that monks have to follow, such as being unable to touch women, which led to a reflection of her childhood when she would chase after them and try to make them touch her. She was able to restrain herself this time and refrain from running after the monks. I can't belp but think of Ang from Avatar when I see a monk now.
It was hot so we popped into the first indoor cafe we found. It was another Joma--just like the one in Vientiane and it also had free wifi, so we got some drinks and I got online to email Jo and Luke and tell them where I was, but before I could even boot up my computer, I looked up and saw Jo standing in line at the counter! This was my 3rd time meeting up with Jo and Luke (eventually I would see Luke); First Xi'an, then Hong Kong, and now Luang Prabang. We sat there for a bit and chatted, me sharing stories of Vietnam and Jo sharing about Thailand and Cristina, about her 4 days of non stop bus rides. Luke had food poisoning again and was back in their room. The last time I saw them they were both just getting over food poisoning and then I suddenly had it. I hoped the same wasn't going to be the case on this encounter. We left and tried to get Luke out of bed but were unable, so the three of us walked around the town for a bit then found a little Palace, or maybe a museum--that perhaps used to be a palace. We couldn't bring in our cameras in the main building, but they gave us free locker storage for them.
Finally in the evening Luke had enough energy to come out, so we all went to dinner together. Not being that picky, but incredibly hungry, we chose something reasonably touristy. I ordered 2 dishes and got served both first. The kitchens cruel way of making me look like some super glutton--maybe they knew of Galactus. While we were eating a little kitty came up to our table and managed to crawl into my open backpack and take a nap. After dinner we had some beer and crepes on the street, then went to bed.
I met up with Cristina in the early afternoon for a late breakfast. Then we went and booked a tour for the following day--a biking, kayaking, elephant riding fantastic voyage. Next we ambled around for the bit and were soon drawn into a temple that had some ridiculous silver dragon railing that spoke "Big Trouble and Little China" to me. The coolest part of the temple were these paintings of stories, in a series of panels, like a comic. We couldn't read the text so we could only craft a story from the pictures. Based on said pictures, the story was wild, exotic, and packed with head severings. Cristina, being much more knowledgeable of Bhuddism than I, explained some of the strict rules that monks have to follow, such as being unable to touch women, which led to a reflection of her childhood when she would chase after them and try to make them touch her. She was able to restrain herself this time and refrain from running after the monks. I can't belp but think of Ang from Avatar when I see a monk now.
It was hot so we popped into the first indoor cafe we found. It was another Joma--just like the one in Vientiane and it also had free wifi, so we got some drinks and I got online to email Jo and Luke and tell them where I was, but before I could even boot up my computer, I looked up and saw Jo standing in line at the counter! This was my 3rd time meeting up with Jo and Luke (eventually I would see Luke); First Xi'an, then Hong Kong, and now Luang Prabang. We sat there for a bit and chatted, me sharing stories of Vietnam and Jo sharing about Thailand and Cristina, about her 4 days of non stop bus rides. Luke had food poisoning again and was back in their room. The last time I saw them they were both just getting over food poisoning and then I suddenly had it. I hoped the same wasn't going to be the case on this encounter. We left and tried to get Luke out of bed but were unable, so the three of us walked around the town for a bit then found a little Palace, or maybe a museum--that perhaps used to be a palace. We couldn't bring in our cameras in the main building, but they gave us free locker storage for them.
Finally in the evening Luke had enough energy to come out, so we all went to dinner together. Not being that picky, but incredibly hungry, we chose something reasonably touristy. I ordered 2 dishes and got served both first. The kitchens cruel way of making me look like some super glutton--maybe they knew of Galactus. While we were eating a little kitty came up to our table and managed to crawl into my open backpack and take a nap. After dinner we had some beer and crepes on the street, then went to bed.
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