Vientiane: Another Surprise Meetup

1/12
I took another tuk tuk taxi back to Vientiane, but this time it was filled with foreigners who had all just taken a kayak trek from Vang Vien.  It seems like that would be really far, since a bus took 4-5 hours, but they had that fresh out of a wormhole smell, which explains it.  I got back to Vientiane, dropped off right across from the hostel I had been staying at, so I checked back in for another 3 nights, until my train to Bangkok.  Some people from my tuk tuk taxi followed me because I had recommended it.  But is it really worth a mention, because I never saw them again after checking in, except once at a breakfast place as I walked by from the street, and I just waved.  I got to my room and unpacked, then checked my email and found a message from Luke and Jo--they were in Vientiane and were looking for me, but the email was from two days before, so I hurriedly emailed back and told them I would be in the cafe at my hostel for the next hour, but I had no idea if they would get it.  It can be tough communicating on the road, without phones, in cities where most hostels don't have internet (the one I was at had internet but it was terrible so I had to use the wifi from the bar across the road).  I sat in the cafe, drank some tumeric tea, and tried to learn the Lao language by listening to the people working there gossip--at least it seemed like gossip.  After an hour, no sign from Luke and Jo, so I went back to my room to drop off my stuff and go out for some dinner.  As I got to the lobby I saw the curly hair of a gorgeous foreigner--Joanna, and behind her stood Luke.  They were surprised to see me because they had read my email wrong and thought I would be waiting at a different cafe and they were just coming back to their hotel room, which curiously was the room next door to mine.  We are getting used to the lack of likely events becomming common, but this was a bit of a behemoth on the scale of coincidences, since there are hundreds of guesthouses in Vientiane, what is the chance that we would have rooms next door to eachother.  Outrageous.   I mentioned that I was on my way to get some food at a night market I had found and they joined.
There wasn' t quite as much selection as the previous night market in Luang Prabang, but there was a lady who made spring rolls for 1000 kip each, or 8 for a dollar.  I ordered 10 and ate 9 of them.  I choked badly on one because I was looking at a ferris wheel and hit a pepper, but I recovered without people noticing.  There was a super old, possibly also crazy, Laos lady sitting on a stool, kind of in the middle of the sidewalk, who kept saying stuff in Laos and then laughing manically, almost hysterically, as if she had swallowed a hyena and absorbed its essence, at us.  We didn't think we were doing anything that was funny, but it could have just been the situation, of 3 White people sitting next to a ferris wheel on plastic stools eating spring rolls.  It was an infectious laugh and we didn't mind.  In fact we waved at her and then she laughed even more.
After the spring rolls I led us to the bowling alley, which was basically across the street.  Crossing the street in Laos is much less scary than in Vietnam since there is less traffic, but you actually have to wait for a break in the traffic wheras in Vietnam you can just go and dodge traffic as it comes.  I started to miss the Vietnamese way because you don't have to wait.  If you are an impatient person who needs stress reduction, you should definitely consider relocating to Vietnam.  The bowling alley was again mostly empty.  We bowled 3 games, but kept getting distracted by this super low budget tv show that had biker ninjas,  business wizards, concubines, and old men with eyebrow extensions.  It felt on par with those Hindu Myth shows from India, but this was more in the style of Laos, Thais, or Vietnam.   This was my fourth time being in this bowling alley too, so I had started to get to know some of the people working there.
After bowling we went back to our hostel, picked up some snacks (Laos Yogurt) from the M Point Mart, which was a Laos equivalent to 7-11 and went to our respective rooms for bed.  The street around our hostel was pretty empty, a few locals hanging out and some foreigners eating out in front of a Japanese restaurant with a sign advertising the best coffee in Laos, but when I got to my room, who's window faced that same street, it sounded like Mardis Gras out there.  Audio Wormhole? I don't know. It was strange, so I put on some Futurama to help me sleep--it always makes me tired.
I hung out with Luke and Jo for the next 2 days, until their flight to Thailand.  One of the days I showed them the US Embassy that yelled at me (for taking a picture of a wall) and led them back to the Laotian Arc De Triumph.  After that I showed them the Vegetarian restaraunt, but the food was less good that day and I felt bad because I had kind of talked it up.  My allergies were still not too good so I was eating HEAPS of pineapple, which I had read about online as being good for it.  Shake after shake was consumed, but then I started to realize that these shake places were adding a lot of sugar, so I switched to the street pineapple in a bag, which was cheaper and tastier.
We had some terrible Japanese food, but were lured in by the promise of Japanese pizza from their billboard.  It was really just Okonomoyaki, and not even a very good version, and it cost more than Okonomoyaki in Japan.  So we went and cheered our saddened stomachs up at a kind of foreigner bar, but it was full of probably prostitutes, a few of which were obvious ladyboys, the rest of which we could have guessed either way.  They were hanging out playing pool and Luke went over and schooled them all, winning so much that they were getting obviously frustrated.  Eventually they started cheating and one of them finally beat him.  While Luke was playing pool I sat at the bar with Jo and a friend we had made on the street named Boua.  She was a local who had been hanging out at the waterfront, laying on her motorcycle, that we started to talk to.  Eventually we asked her if she knew of any bars with pool and she took us.  After some time a foreigner came in who seemed to know a bunch of people in the bar.  He was Australian and not much of a listener, except when I told him that I thought Lao Lap would be good on pizza, to which he agreed to start doing at his restaurant.  He kept talking about how the pool women were all Ladyboys too, and it seemed to really excite him.  Eventually we got tired of this bar and moved to a small british pub that was playing live football matches.  It had a really cute logo of a beagle in a rabbit with a sherlock holmes style coat and a monocle, but I can't remember the name--probably "Hare of the" something.  After a few drinks we all went back and I said goodbye, but we knew we would meet up in Thailand (as I would be 2 days behind them).

Nam Lik: Crazy Eco Villiage

I booked an overnight stay at an Eco villiage after I got back from my failure at a Thai Visa.  It was advertised on a cardboard laminate billboard in front of almost every tourist travel store, and it had a pretty cool art nouveou logo of a tiger face.  It was a bit more expensive than other tours, but I felt like it was worth it because this place is trying to change the community to be more environmental friendly.  I also booked my train ticket to Bangkok, which was incredibly cheap (35$ with comission).  I had 2 days until my eco trip, which I spent mostly bowling and eating street food.  One night I  walked up and down the waterfront, which was still being constructed, and was really cool.  It had a Colossus of Rhodes style statue of a Laos King with monkey long arms wielding a deadly sword at one end.  A Dam or something had been built upstream because the river had receeded quite a bit.  The newly exposed land was perfect for playing sports on, which the local children were keenly taking advantage of.
The trek to the Eco Villiage began by taking a tuk tuk to a small local public bus terminal.  They then guided me onto a Pickup truck taxi with a tuk tuk styled cage around the back.  It was a taxi actually, as it drove down the road stopping for people who waved at it.  I road it for a while, having no idea if I was actually going to the right place as I was he only foreigner aboard.  It was a bit cold and a girl who was sitting next to me tried to give me her jacket.  It was as if she wanted me to have it though, but it really didn't look like it would fit.  She tried to give it to me again as she got off, which meant she really wanted me to have it, which was incredible, but I didn't take it.  Finally the truck taxi stopped at a random spot on a dirt road and pointed down an even more rugged dirt road that ran through a wooden gate with a sign for the eco villiage on it.  I was relieved that I was in the correct place but a bit surprised at how lifeless it looked.  I had to walk down the path for a few minutes before I got to the buildings.  I followed the signs to reception and found a small treehouse looking building with 2 beatnik looking guys playing guitar at a table drinking beers.  One was the hotel owner and the other was a guest who worked part time to pay for his living expenses, both were French.  They greeted me and checked me in to my hut, which was also treehouse like, but nicne.  After checking in they fixed me an herbal tea concotion to help my stuffy nose, which was noticeably bad.  I hung out in the reception area, lobby, or dining area, as they were all the same, for a bit.  There were 2 monkeys tethered to some trees just over the railing, that I began to watch.  Eventually I went down and tried to play with them but the male monkey liked to bite and would get jealous if you picked up the female, so it was sort of difficult, unless someone else distracted the male, who was totally a jerk.
There were a few other guests who showed up not long after I gave up playing with the Monkeys--maybe 4 others.  2 German guys, and an elder Israeli man with a Ladyboy.  We all had lunch together and I asked them about their stay at the Eco Villiage.  It sounded like they thought it was ok, but not worth the price, which was sort of the impression I already had.  The facilities were much more meager than they were made to believe.  You can't really call a 6 foot high fence a climbing wall and there was nothing to be seen that made this place look eco-friendly.  Still, it was nice to be out of the city and out in the woods, and there were Monkeys.
After lunch the guests I had just met had to go, leaving me alone with the two French men and the two Monkeys.  They (the French men) told me I could take out a kayak down on their dock that was made from a few chunks of sheet metal balancing on bobbing barrels.  They gave me a 2 person craft but it was ok.  Unfortunately I had to paddle upstream because they were unable to provide transport back.  I paddled for about 20 minutes until I ran into some rapids.  They were  a force field that just repelled me.  I was a bit let down that this was the kayak "adventure" they were advertising.  More of a kayak stroll.  I returned to the hotel and explained that the rapid was too much.  They laughed in a way that showed they weren't surprised.  The owner French Man suggested I take a hike through the jungle and then meet them at the local wedding that had been going on all day for some drinks.  Now this sounded pretty cool, but I was a bit confused why the people getting married would want some stranger at their wedding.  He assured me it was cool, since his wife was from the same villiage.  So I went for the hike, accompanied, or led, by the guys dog and then popped out on a gravel road.  I actually wasn't 100 percent sure on my direction so I followed the dog.  After 10 minutes of walking on the gravel road I heard music.  Then I saw a building full of people.  I was a bit nervous about just showing up alone--some strange guy just walking into a wedding in the mdidle of nowhere Laos, but I didn't have to.   As I approached the building I was literally grabbed by 2 older women and dragged inside.  I feebly waved to the dog behind me, who seemed sad that he wasn't also being dragged in.  The French guys weren't there, but that didn't matter, they didn't seem to care who I was.  They shoved drinks at me and then dragged me out to the dance floor.  It was quiet a spectacle.  It was also pretty obvious that some people had been drinking for 10 hours.  Noone really spoke English, except maybe a few words.  I felt like I was recieving too much attention though, as it was not my wedding;  I couldn't even tell who's wedding it was.  Finally the 2 French guys showed up;  I told them how crazy it was, this party.  They weren't surprised.  After some arranged Laos line dancing, the French guy played some music on guitar, a little classic rock.  Then they pulled us over to drink from a giant urn filled with rice wine.  The urn could have swallowed a 2nd grader, easily.  The straws were made from bamboo, and there was tons of rice floating in the opening.  They would fill a glass with water and make you drink until they could pour the entire glass back into the urn, thus replacing the volume you had displaced.  It seemed like a lot of alcohol to be drinking.  It didn't taste very strong, but that is no indication that it isn't strong.  It most definitey was strong, we all found out about an hour later, when we (me and the 2 French guys), had to run away from the grasps of the Laos, who were still pressing us to drink.  The eco villiage was about a 15 minute walk, but we drove.  Normally, in America, I would not get in a car if the driver was so drunk he could barely stand up, but this was Laos, and we were in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't want to walk.  We got back and they cooked up some eggs, then the younger French guy went down to annoy the Monkeys, who had been sleeping.  It was revenge for stealing his hat earlier.  After this, I stumbled off to bed.  The experience of the Laos wedding was completely random, totally unexpected, and absolutely the best part of my eco-villiage trip.  It was the best local culture experience I had in Laos.

Vientiane: Part II

1/6-1/10 Vientiane Part II
Got back to Vientiane in the middle of the afternoon.  As the bus was making its final turns towards the drop off point I spotted a bowling pin totem;  clearly a bowling alley.  I marked this spot for later.  The bus dropped us off right in the backpacker district.  I recognized where I was, which was only 4 blocks away and ignored the scabbly tuk tuk drivers and started walking.  I got about a block away when I spotted 2 backpackers that look a bit familiar: Alex and Nikola!  They had their packs with them because they were getting on the train to Bangkok in a few hours, so I hung out with them until they left.  They had been to Bangkok before and were really selling me on it.  Given what I had heard from a couple other travelers, Bangkok didn't sound very appealing, but Alex and Nikola changed that.  Alex even drew me a little map with his points of interest.   I saw them off and took a breather in my hostel.
After resting a bit I decided to walk over to the bowling alley.  It wasn't very far.  I got there and it was pretty empty--maybe 2 or 3 of the 15 lanes were in use.  The price was 10,000 kip per game, which is about 1.25.  I started with 4 games.  I was so excited.  I ended up bowling 6 total games that night.  While I was bowling I realized that the other people bowling around me were very, very good.  In fact, my scores, averaging 130-150, were the lowest in the room.  But when you consider how inexpensive a game is, a person could get in quite a bit of practice.  I bowled more in 4 days in Vientiane than I have bowled in the last 10 years.
I walked around looking for some food after bowling.  I had a tough time.  Most of the street food that I was finding was desert stuff.  So I had some Taro Milk tea, which was served out of Apothecary jars on an aluminum wagon and some steamed buns that were similar, or identical, to the ones from Vietnam.  I got back to the hostel and discovered that I couldn't use the internet because they turn it off after 9PM.   This is entirely ridiculous.  The evening is an important time to use the internet--especially for people who are traveling from locations with large time differences.  I had paid for 2 nights already, so I decided to switch after my 2nd night.
My next few days in Vientiane were kind of lazy.  I discovered that if I took the train to Bangkok, I would only get 15 days there, and I had already booked my flight out of Bangkok for the 31st, so unless I got a visa in advance, I couldn't leave Vientiane until the 17th.  This wasn't so bad, as I had come to like Vientiane , and it was pretty inexpensive.  I did a lot of bowling, of course.  One day I was browsing around the supposed, largest shopping center in Laos, Talat Sao--if Laos was in China, though, it would be the 10,000th largest shopping center--when I bumped into a group of guys I had met in Dalat, Vietnam.  I ended up meeting them later that evening and took them, and some people they had met in their hostel, to the bowling alley.  It was sort of scary for the poor girls who worked there, to have a rowdy group of 12 foreigners coming in like we did.  They handled it fine though.
My 2nd hostel was a little better than the first--at least the internet didn't shut off at night.  I stayed there for 3 days and then switched to another place that had a cafe at the bottom.  The internet at my 3rd place also stayed on all night but it was terrible, so I had to start using the free wifi from the bar across the street.
I did a lot of walking while I was in Vientiane.  It isn't a very big city anyway--plus there really isn't much public transportation, and the weather was generally really nice.  And it had nice wide sidewalks.  The only danger was the ocassional missing sidewalk tile, which if missed, could land ones leg in a few feet of water or sewage, or a mixture--my smell wasn't too great so I couldn't tell really.  I think it was better not to know.  I found a monument that was like the Arc De Triumph in France.  I haven't been to the one in France but this one was cool--you could walk up inside it and come out on top--great views and lots of ladies selling cheap Tshirts.  One day I took a trek to a fitness center and used their gym for about 4 dollars.  It was full of mostly ex-pats though.
Finally after a few days of doing nothing touristy I decided to try and challenge myself and make a trip outside the city to a place called "Buddha Park", which was a small area with artistic scultpures of Hindu and Buddhist icons.  Getting there required taking a bus from the public bus station.  I found the bus, got on,  and showed the driver the name of the place I wanted to go in Laos (to which he nodded).  It took about 45 minutes.  The bus got incredibly crowded--mostly full of older women with bags of food.  They would scream out whenever they wanted to get off, crawl over the heaps of people, and throw some money at the driver.  By the time I got off, the bus was practically empty.  The park was beautiful, but a bit small.  There was a wierd pumpkin like cave in the center that you could enter (through a dragon like sculpted mouth).  It was kind of interesting in there, like spelunking a bit.  The scultpures weren't as artistic as I was imagining though--I had expected to see something that would stand out as being unique, but what was there would fit in at any temple or palace.  I caught a bus back and chatted with a thai ladyboy, who had just crossed the border and kept showing me pictures of "her" baby.  I was really getting excited to go to Thailand now.  I thought maybe I would attempt to get a visa at the Thai consulate instead of waiting out another week in Vientiane.  My journey to the Thai consulate was less than enjoyable--far less.  On my first attempt, arriving there a little after lunchtime, I discovered that they only accept Visa applications for a 3 hour window in the morning;  the window had just expired mere minutes ago.  No big deal--I can come back the next day.  I got an application to pre-fill out anyway.  The next day I went back and found the counter open and got a numbered ticket from the machine.  They had a display above the line listing numbers, but they would call out 10-20 numbers at a time and everyone would queue up.  This started confusing people, so they instead just started to line up before their numbers were called, which then caused other people to complain and yell because they were being jumped in position.  I finally got the counter but they told me I needed to glue my pictures to my application and photocopy my passport--requirements which werent actually listed anywhere.  I did that and lined back up, go to the counter again, and was told now I needed to put in a better address than just "Bangkok".  I was annoyed.  I gave up.  Boy are they picky.  I convinced myself on my long walk back that it was better to stay in Laos anyway and give them more of my tourst dollars, because they are nicer and more helpful.

1/2
Got up early and hopped on a tuk tuk to the bus station.  Our tuk tuk picked up Alex and Nikola on the way--yay!  We got off at a building with 5 vans parked side to side, with luggage being thrown on top of each.  Cristina was there too.  Unfortunately I got placed in a different Van than my friends, so I had to spend the 5 hour ride watching Supernatural in my lap.  We got to Vang Vien around 4pm.  It was hot.  We ignored the tuk tuk drivers asking for business and tried to walk to town, but didn't have a really good map--thank you Lonely Planet.  So Cristina and I relented and grabbed on--while Alex and Nikola toughed it out.  Having been soured a bit by the hostel march we did in Luang Prabang, I took the first hostel that looked good.  Cristana kept going, but it turned out she didn't make it far, and was at a place across the street, that was owned by the same people.  We walked around for a bit.  Vang Vien is very touristy.  It looks like a tropical French Quarter that was built by the guy in charge of sitcom syndication.  Every bar had tvs blasting episodes of either Friends or Family Guy nonstop--I had read about this before and heard that you can sit in one bar and watch an episode of Friends, but simultaneously hear 2 other episodes in the distance.  This was the complete ironclad truth.  We plopped down in one of the few bars that didn't play sitcoms, but had the same menu as those that did.  It had a row of tables that overlooked the river;  this means great view, but wall of mosquitos!  Luckily they lit up some incense and quickly the problem went away.  I ordered a "glass" of "Lao Whiskey" from the menu.  It cost about 25 cents.  I figured it would be no different than ordering a shot of Whiskey from a bar.  Instead it was probably half a bottle of whiskey in a glass and it was as rough as moonshine.  Cristina and I shared it--having to mix it with various juices--and got completely wasted.  We sat there for 3 hours drinking and chatting.   Eventually tiredness sat in and we went off to sleep.

1/3
Got up late and switched rooms in my hotel to one that was 1 dollar more per night, but had a bathroom.  I wandered around for most of the day.  I walked across a rickety bamboo bridge into the horizon and found a cool hilltop to climb--you had to pay to climb it though, but cool views.  Then I treked further away, follwing some signs towards a "cave with a natural swimming pool".  I walked for a while and didn't find anything.  My water was getting low too, so I asked some people on bicycles and decided I should probably come back another day.  I went back and rested in my room for a bit and then suddenly it was dinner time.  I walked down the road for a bit and bumped into Alex and Nikola!  It was their last night in Vang Vien.  They didn't like it too much, feeling it was too touristy, but they did the tubing and thought it was worth it.  Vang Vien is famous for the tubing route, which lets you float down the river and end up in town.  There are tons of bars on the banks of the river that sell mixed drinks by the bucket.  I went back to the food joint from the previous night with Alex and Nikola and ordered Lao Lap, a dish of meat mixed with spices served with sticky rice in a little woven basket.  My taste was very diminished due to my allergies, but it tasted amazing.  As we were finishing up our meal Cristina randomly walked in--we called her over and hung out for the rest of the night.

1/4  -1/5
Cristina and I finally managed to do the tubing today.  Now I know why there are so many people hobbling around Vang Vien in bandages and crutches.  The first bar on the river has a rope swing that doesn't leave a lot of room for error.  Also, there was a bungee cable that was attached to the swing that was used to pull it back to the platform that sometimes people got caught up on.  Later someone told me a few weeks ago it had gotten snagged on a girl's neck!  She was ok, but it was a scary moment for her.
Cristina and I just stayed for one drink then got in the water.  Most people don't actually make it all the way into town.  Instead they get caught up at the bars, lose track of time, and have to take an overpriced tuk tuk back because the tubing place charges a ridiculous fine if you bring your tube back late--a nice money-making scheme, no?  I seemed to be either more buyant or aerodynamic, or Cristna had a spectral black hole with her, because I started to drift way ahead of her.  I looked back and saw her getting out at a bar, probably to pee, but I couldn't wait, so I left her.  I floated for a while and stopped at one more bar--falsely listed as "Last Bar".  Then I floated the rest of the way to town.  It was relaxing and a lot of fun--absolutely worth the 6 dollars that it cost.  The water had gotten a bit colder as the sun went down, so I was glad I had hurried my pace a bit.  I got out and walked my tube back then turned around and there was Jo!  She and Luke had literally just arrived in town and she was on her way to an internet cafe to email me!  We couldn't believe how many times we had bumped into eachother when we needed to find eachother!  Jo and I walked back towards my place to wait for Cristina, but bumped into her along the way!  She had taken a tuk tuk back.
The four of us met up at Cristina's hostel to go to dinner.  We made friends with 2 Korean girls and a Brittish guy, who joined us.  We went to, you guessed it, the same place.  My review of the Lap was so convincing that half the table ordered it.  We also ordered another glass of Lao Whiskey and mixed it with Lime juice.   After dinner we went to some of the island bars to see what the fuss was about.  There was a group of people in costume.  They all kinda had this zombie look going on--blood and tattered clothes, but they also were covered with some neon green paint splatters, so, rave zombies?  The guys in the group had superhero clothes on, in addition to the neon zombie attire, superman, batman, and spiderman.  When the cotton eyed joe song came on, we all did webslinger movements instead of the traditional do-se-do.
I got up early the next day and treked on my own back to that cave I failed to reach on my first attempt.  There was this sudden transition in environment as I walked there, from sucky dry sahara like climate to jurrassic parks and fields.  I was certain the cave would be guarded by velociraptors.  After a lengthy stroll through archaic wilderness I made it to the gave and was told by the Velociraptor guard that I just missed the tour to the lake and would have to take the wimpier tour.  It was still incredibly cool.  Our guide pointed out lots of cool rock formations.  He was a bit too excited about the phallic looking rock, however.  After the cave I got back to town, booked my bus ticket back to Vientiane.  I got back to my hotel and found a goodbye note from Cristina, who had found a bus for Pakse.  Seems like she would have enough of buses at this point, having traveled almost non stop on them for the last week.  I went to dinner with Luke and Jo at a different place this time, but technically the menu was identical to our usual place.  They were playing friends.  Seinfeld would have been better, but friends was ok.

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.

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!

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.