North Korean in Beijing

I've seen some crazy things in Beijing.  A dog park filled with figures of Santa Claus, in March.  A 50-foot statue of Shaq, towering over trees in a random parking lot.  A cafe, almost sold out of their durian cheesecake.


This ancient traffic-filled futuristic city was a place of awesomeness until a few nights ago.  A few nights ago, we went for North Korean. 

Someone made a joke, the old yawner about Ethiopian: "They have food?" Evidently.  My mom refused to call in the reservation, and instead asked a Chinese friend to do it.  "Tell them it's for Mr Dee," she insisted.  "We don't want them to poison the food."  She was joking... kinda. 

Then, when we arrived, someone pushed Mimi, my Chinese-American sister-in-law, in first.  "Just in case," they muttered under their breath.

And we walked in. 

The walls were bare -- blank, empty, like the plates of North Korea.  Lights glaring bright (all the better to see us with.)  One scrawny fellow swerved around in his booth, eyes wide at the four gwailo sauntering in.  His face screamed a silent "WTF!"  (Or maybe it was a signal to his comrade, who was furious tapping morse code missives with a toe.)  Three 1960s-style stewardesses, clad in Dear Leader red and blue suits, whispered and approached us.  (Approached? Cornered! And stewardesses?  Not a chance!  A trio of furious lesbian killers, trained to assassinate with shivs shaped from the slivers of chopsticks!)  They guided us to a booth in the very back, and I couldn't help wondering why -- my eyes searched for alternate exits.  (Does the bathroom have windows?)




I paranthetically jest.  But I don't lie.  It was weird.  People did give us big old double-takes.  But while old NK dramas played out on a vintage tv, our dining soundtrack was pure Broadway.  The dulcet tones of Cats, The Theme From Love Story, even Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's played out in an instrumental Casio cover.  Elevator music and the land of Kim.

The English-language menus were huge hardback tomes, drenched in garish photos of old Korean favorites: bi bim nyeng mun (pretty damn good), pyongyang kimchi sampler (awesome kimchi, wrapped up into in tight groovy circles), dog.  (Yeah, dog.  We didn't order it, but the menu was dripping with photos of all the great canine dishes available: dog kalbi, bul-dogi, bi bim dog.  Dog on a stick.  It was sick.)

We did order meat, though.  Good ol' bulgogi.  Nice, family favorite.  But when the meat came, we all stopped and stared.  Cautiously, Dad tried a piece, and growled "It's okay."  I picked up a thick grey slice, and took a chew.  "Yeah, it's not bad," I lied.  Aaron gave a "Hmmm" after his bite, and Mom just watched. 

"I think it's dog," she finally said. 

"No, no, no, it's not dog," Dad countered.  "How would you even know what dog looks like?"

"Remember when your friend Handel tricked me into eating it?"

"Yeah, but this could be horse.  I mean, it could be anything at all.  You don't know."

"Relax, guys," Aaron offered with no confidence whatsoever.  "It's just cheap meat.  I think it's fine." 

I kept silent.  From the moment this dish appeared on the table, I could think nothing but "woof."  But I couldn't stop eating.  Bite after bite, I thought, "This is disgusting," and I kept going.  I wrapped it in kimchi to mask the taste, as I chewed through the tough, ugly, sick grey meat.  (*People muse that once you've tasted human flesh, you can never stop eating it.  And while this tasted terrible and horrible and awful and ugly and I wanted to vomit, I still picked up yet another piece, smeared it in thick red kimchi drippings, and ripped off another bite with my teeth.)

Instead of vomiting, which I really wanted to do, I laughed.  This was a moment.  A gorgeous pure untouched moment.  North Koreans, glaring at a table of Crazy Yanks, eating dog, while the theme from Breakfast at Tiffany's played.  It was awful.  Horrible.  Amazing.  I hated it.  It was the best.

"You know those days when you get the mean reds?," Audrey Hepburn asks in Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

"The mean reds?," George Peppard returns, confused.  "You mean- like the blues?"

"No," Audrey sighs, in that way she does so awfully well. "The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?"

Yeah -- I had that feeling.  I was afraid I'd been poisoned by Kim Jong-Il with a plate of Fido.  These mean Reds fed me dog!  Of course they're horrible!!!

But, unlike Audrey and George, I couldn't very well jump in a cab and head to Tiffany's.  I'd left the closest branch in Singapore.  So instead, Mom and I climbed in a cab and went to the Apple store.  Which, ultimately, worked just as well.

xo
andy

Singapore, Singapore

I had a blast in Singapore.

Maybe it was the bizarro mall culture.  When I found old friend Abeer at Paragon Shopping Centre, she complained, "This city is nothing but malls."  And she was right: twelve thousand miles from the midwest, Singapore reminds me of one sprawling Mall of America.  Everywhere, there were malls!  And food courts!  And shopping centres!  But while crowds stood ten-deep outside the Swensens and Andersens chains, and parents carried Starbucks as they trawled thru Guess Kids, this was still Singapore.  For every McDonald's there was a nasi lemak stand, selling mounds of rice surrounded by piles of peanuts, dried fish, fried chicken, an egg.  And stands that specialized in beef rendang, hainanese chicken, thick gorgeous laksa -- dishes I'd travel an hour to find in New York.  And for those looking for international food, it was everywhere: bulgogi and ramen and even Chippy's British Takeaway, which did brisk service in Cheesy Curry Chicken with Cheese Sauce, Original Cheese Sausage with Mash Potato Dip, and Deep Fried Mars Bars.  (I didn't join the queue only because it was way too long.)

Then, up on the top floor of the malls, hidden away from most white eyes, sat the crazy geek shops.  I felt propelled here, every time.  "Cosplay" shops stocked six-foot swords beside Sailor Moon schoolgirl outfits and Hello Kitty purses.  One focused entirely on adult-sized props from the computer game Warcraft, with armor, daggers, cloaks, and capes for sale.  It was weird.  Really weird.  Fetish weird.  I wanted to record it all, but surrounded by high school girls, I already felt like a pervert.  To whip out a camera would surely be cause for Singapura Security.  

One awesome freako shop sold USB-powered eye massagers (for the sleepy hacker), "Gun O'Clock" (for the agro-freak), Custard Egg Tart wrist rests (to stave off RSD), and bakery-scented food products made from foam rubber (I don't know what these were for, but the croissants smelled just like croissants, the doughnuts like Dunkin' Donuts.  The baguette?  Yep, like a big ol' freshly-baked loaf of French bread.)

Maybe it was the food.  I've already mentioned the nasi lemak, which could be found anywhere, but we found the best at Adam Hawker Center.  At the huge Indian buffet at Raffles Hotel's Tiffin Room, a dining room straight from Graham Greene, we dined while tiny birds soared back and forth above our heads.  Best beef rendang I've ever tried, at True Blue Peranakan -- rich, deep, salty as hell.  Insane otek (oteh?) at 328 Katong Laksa.  Roti Kaya -- a crepe filled with eggs and sugar and butter and something green and awesome.  It was so delicious, I ignored my allergies and ate and ate and ate, then found Toast Kaya -- toast smeared with the same green beauty -- in the Paragon basement just a few hours later.  And probably my favorite, Roti Prata and Tandoori Chicken at the United Mall, feet from Pete and LeeAnn's apartment.  Everything I'd ever want in my belly, within steps.

The most unique meal was at the dive, Sin Huat Eating House.  Squat plastic chairs at dirty tables on a sidewalk in the red light district.  None of the waitresses spoke English (the language of Singapore,) and scowled at us like a table of intruders.  When we asked our server for rice, she glared, stormed away, and didn't returned.  Meanwhile, gaggles of hookers paced up and down past our table, walking their stretch of dirty massage parlours and "KTV" shops.  ("KTV places in this area," Pete mused, "don't even bother buying the karaoke machine.")  Scores of shops, with names like "King of Durian," "Durian Best Shop," and "Durian Empire," competed to sell the most durian.  If you don't know, it's an ugly fruit that tastes like car exhaust and smells far, far worse.  Less of a fruit than it is a scourge.  It's specifically banned on the Singapore subway, and I understand why.

So Sin Huat was a real dive.  But a dive with such food, I've never seen!  Scallops served on their shells, drenched in a delicious thick brown goop, littered with obscene chunks of garlic.  Giant prawns, sliced down the middle and perched upright up on a plate, front-to-butt like an Oxbridge crew, but soaked in a grand butter-garlic sauce instead of The Thames.  The crab bihoon?  I don't even remember it.  I remember struggling against a claw, and drenching myself in the deliciousness that seduces both Dad and Anthony Bourdain back time and again.  But I remember little more, falling into a deep food coma.  Until the bill arrives, and shocks me up again.  The price for this dirty rude roadside-seat hooker-filled durian-flanked two-beer three-dish meal?  SG$240.  Which is US$160.  Which is insane.  I was shocked.  Outraged!  I waved my hands in the air, and made goldfish moves with my mouth.  And I let Pete and LeeAnn pay.  Heh.

But most of all, I loved hanging with the kids.  Felix kicked my ass in Mario Kart Racing twice a day.  Nora used drawer handles as a ladder, and climbed up onto the kitchen counter, grinding the coffee beans, and fixing me a perfect espresso.  She leapt down, balanced the cup, and carefully carried it to the table.  And Loulou insisted on calling me Grandaddy all week.  She tried Uncle Grandaddy on for size, but it didn't fit.  "Where's Uncle Andy's nose?," I'd ask, leadingly.  "Grandaddy nose!," she'd exclaim as she pointed.  So frickin' cute.

We toured the night zoo.  Raced luge carts down a hill.  Hid from the wild tesla coil at the science museum.  Felix and Nora posed with a chirpy dolphin, fed vicious flapping stingrays, and wore snakes as long as they were tall.  The three of us even paid for pedispa treatments, dangling our feet in aquaria for fish to feed on our dead skin.  I was the most popular entree -- masses of tiny tickling fish gobbling away at my callused post-Lao trotters, as Felix and I howled with laughter.  Loulou asked "What does it feel like, Uncle Andy?," and I couldn't even answer, my face so contorted with laughter.

I think Pete and LeeAnn were present for some of these things as well.  I think they paid for it all.  

But the best was stealing away with Felix and Nora to the Pokemon show at the mall (yes), where a sexy Singapori in short-shorts danced on stage with Pikachu, Felix's favorite, singing about the joys of math and hosting an add-off.  ("That is soo Singapore," Pete later chuckled.)  We scored the last ticket for this sweet photo-op with Pikachu and his math-buddies, Plusle and Minus.

On the last day, walking into the subway, I heard a busker.  Softly, along the tunnels, he sang with a chuckling, dry voice, something like Lee Hazelwood.  "So listen very carefully," he sang, "Closer now, and you will see, what I mean."  I heard a glorious irony, and classic Americana sound.  "The only sound that you will hear, is when I whisper in your ear..."  As I quickened my pace, I scrawled lyrics down.  It recalled Bobby Bare, or Arlo Guthrie -- someone full of California goodness.  I'd never heard a busker like this before -- it was gorgeous!  "I love you, forever and ever," he drawled, and I loved him.  Then, rounding a corner, I got my first sight of this amazing, passion-drenched busker: and he was a lank, scruffy Tamil, with bad hair and bad teeth and a cheap guitar.  He sat, squatting on a small plastic seat, shit-eating smile on his face as he sang Herman's Hermits' big hit.  And he was awesome.  I wanted to stay there forever.  Of the dozen versions I later found on iTunes, not one had his heart.  I regret not taking out my camcorder.  But now I have a mission for The Return to Singapore.

What I Loved Most About Chiang Mai (Videos)

Videos

I've finally been able to edit a couple of short videos together.

A day in Old Sukhothai (Why they changed it, I can't say! People just liked it better that way!)


The illegal border crossing between Myawaddy, Burma, and Mae Sot, Thailand:


The Party that is Bangkok:

Si Pan Don, Laos

Also known as 4000 Islands.  Mat called it "as close to paradise as anything I know."  His wife almost died there, dengue fever in a land without real doctors. It's 18 hours from the closest second world city, a series of remote islands in the middle of nowhere in one of the poorest countries there is.  So I took it as a recommendation.

It took fourteen hours to reach the island from Vientiane.  First there was a sleeper -- a narrow bus crammed with dank inch-thick mattresses and itchy sheets.  The curtains hinting at privacy were useless -- people were sandwiched in at your head and your feet, and officials would jerk open the curtains unexpectedly.  I asked for any bed, "as long as it's far from the toilet."  So the agent reserved the three beds flanking the commode, just for us.  ("The other beds," he insisted, "they sized for Lao people.")  But it didn't matter: some pharmacy in Bangkok sold cheap knockoff xanex, so I slept like a lamb for ten hours.  Second was the minibus -- three dusty hours on an unpaved, uneven dirt road.  We followed the deep tracks of thousands of cars before us, veering left and right in a slalom, as if to avoid UXO.  Or to keep us awake and queasy.  And finally, in a small shack-filled town, we hopped a long-tail, and set off down the Mekong again.

Forty minutes later, the boat-driver shoveling bucket after bucket of water overboard, we arrived at Don Khon.  Rooms for a dollar a night.  Electricity for four to six hours a day.  You could check your email, of course, but it took an hour just to get there.  The ATM was a half-day's journey away, and involved phone calls, your passport, two men in bad suits, and half-a-dozen forms in triplicate. Hot water was never, but you didn't need it -- you were drenched in sweat by the time you'd toweled off, anyway.

And, about as far removed from the rest of the world as you could get, it was pretty close to paradise.  

 

We felt high-class, so rented a slick pair of bungalows for $12 each, with private hammocks sitting out over the Mekong.  Sit-down toilet.  A single electric outlet, useful only for a few hours.  Local women washed their hair in front of our balcony, while kids swam naked except for goggles and wooden guns.  We drank Beerlao out there to the sounds of birds and cicadas, but it was the chickens, dogs and pigs all over town that I loved the most, darting up to you and then bolting away at your strange smell.   Eden, this was.

We rented bikes, and took them out to the waterfalls.  Two mammoth falls where only tourists are fools enough to climb in.  (The locals know the falls are traps for spirits of the dead.  The few tourists that have tried, so we heard, didn't make it out.)  They were amazing to behold.

(*Maybe ignore the next paragraph if you like pets.  Or balked at Poultrygeist.  Or are named Mari or Gubba.)

I witnessed my second food-pet of Laos at the waterfalls, as some Chinese lady searched for the best lunch she could find.  Waiters in a stretch of restaurants would open their coolers of fresh fish -- begging her to come inside.  At the sight of a fat fish in one cooler, she did a double-take, but then kept walking.  The Lao waitress grabbed her. "Come back, you didn't see it all," she demanded. Or that's what she maybe said. It was in Lao.  She reached into the same cooler and hefted out a heavy plastic bag, revealing the drenched dripping fur of the dead cat inside.   The Chinese woman dismissively turned and walked away, while I resisted the urge to vomit on my flipflops.  It was horrible.  (The first food-pet was at the day market in Luang Prabang. A woman was selling her offerings from a plastic mat: one bunch of bananas and one roasted whole dog.  She wasn't to be confused with the woman selling one bunch of bananas and one dead rat, who was down another street the day before.)

(*Gubba or Mari can start reading again)

We got lucky in Don Khon -- we hit two of the island's annual celebrations the weekend we were there.  By big celebrations, I mean everyone gets mad drunk and hits the temples.  

Friday night, the Wat laid out a huge spread: hand-driven carousels, dart gambling, bands on a stage, dancing, and tons of food and drink.  

Old ladies lay inside the temple, minding babies and sucking on massive joints, while fifty kids crowded around a small TV watching brutal Thai kickboxing flicks.  They were mesmerized.

At the side, in a small tent lit by a hundred strings of christmas lights, a young monk told fortunes.  Fortunes?  Booze?  Kickboxing and doobies?  I didn't think any of this seemed too Buddhist, but I don't know much about much, so I thought "Why the hell not?"  You already know I got my fortune told.

As I kneeled in awkward prayer before him, hands wai'd before my face, the monk juggled a cup of chopsticks.  I plucked one out, he grabbed a microphone, and boasted my fortune to the entire temple.  It was in Lao.  I didn't understand a word.  And, being in a small Wat in a small town on an island in the middle of nowhere, not one person spoke English.  If they did, they were too drunk to remember any.  But he handed me a printout of my fortune, and I had someone translate it for me a few days later.

"This mean you will win everything in your life, you know," the guest-house manager proclaimed with a smile.  "Very good!  This like a Buddhist game, but is not game.  You will have nice wife, she is very nice.  You are like Pan, you know Pan?  He very old man, he have young wife.  You like Pan.  You are very proud to do that!  You are a very lucky man.  If you lost something, you will get it back."  Someone distracted him with a question about their laundry, and he walked away.  I picked up my discarded fortune.

Of my fortunes told, I liked this one the most so far.  Even if the monk might have been drunk.  I'd actually plucked a "6", and -- from what I can read -- he gave me a fortune for a "5."  I'd handed it back to him, saying "Ba ha, hok!"  But this might not have meant what I wanted it to, and he'd shoved the fortune back towards me, almost jubilant, and an old lady smiled, pushing it into my hand.  Maybe it was rigged.  Maybe his mistake was divine intervention.  Or maybe I can't read Lao and didn't know the rules of the not-game.  So I bought a bottle of warm beer instead, and watched teenagers dance to psychedelic Lao rock into the night.

Two days later, Don Khon was just about recovered from its hangover, and the calendars turned to International Women's Day.  And they celebrated again, with beer and whisky and singing and dancing in the temples, all day long.  A truck drove up and down the single road, generator and speaker strapped to the back, playing pop while drunks trailed and barking dogs gave chase.

I was sad to leave Don Khon.  Sad to leave my friends from Quebec.  Sad to scarper just as I was learning to suffer the incredible heat, developing a darker tan, and remembering the turns of the rocky path by the light of just the moon.  But it was time to get back to Bangkok, and civilization.

Vientiane, Laos

France is in evidence everywhere in Lao.  Countryside schools were labeled "Ecole" and government buildings "Bureau."  All of Luang Prabang felt like a quiet arrondissement.  In Vientiane, the capital, we stayed on "Rue de François Nginn."  And almost every tourist spoke French.

But sitting right in the middle of Vientiane is the boldest evidence of the colonial history here: the Lao tribute to the Arc de Triomphe.  Well, maybe not a tribute.  Maybe, much like Nashville's "better-condition!" Parthenon, this should be called a one-upmanship.  With four arches, it's twice as traversable as the original.  A few feet taller, it's that much more impressive.  And, as if to go so far as to mock the former occupants, the devilish Lao even named their arch "Patuxai," or Pas Touché.  A brilliant slight!  I was awed by such audacity!  (I was then told my theory holds no water, and my pronunciation is very wrong.  But I was also told this by Quebecois, and -- ahem -- what do they know about pronunciation!?!  heh heh.)

 

A long slow dusty bus-ride (20 cents) from the city, the duration of which I resisted repeat offers of let's-three-to-a-seat from the old Lao woman and her pregnant daughter, and instead squatted in the aisle, we found the awesome Buddha Park.

A little Buddha Park history: forty or so years ago, some loony Lao was hiking along a remote mountain trace, accidentally tripped, and fell deep into a hole.  A lot like Alice, I guess.  But instead of the quick and bloody death you might expect (especially after watching Touching The Void), believe it or not, he actually fell into the padded lap of a meditating guru.  The two became quick buddies, and traveled Laos and Thailand spreading their unique word.  Part of this unique word was the need for more outsider Hindu-Buddhist art, created under the divine tutelage of the tripping faller, and artistically-inexperienced acolytes were suddenly creating hundreds of bizarre masterworks.  Like this:

Which represents Heaven.  Meanwhile, I'm sitting several floors below, in Hell.

And while you can't see much art in the photo below, you can see me with my friend Chloe's cousin Jennifer, who I found on the sidewalks of Vientiane.   (One of several random meetings in town.  After dinner, late, heading home before the midnight country-wide curfew, a lonely voice calls out "Andy?!!")

 But when it came down to it, my favorite side of Vientiane was the least exciting or foreign.  In fact, it was the American-owned chain of Laotian cafe's, Joma, which we fell in love with in Luang Prabang, and continued our embarrassing and indiscreet affair with here.  The coffee was fantastic, but it was the banana bread (omg!) and apple croissants (a terrible thought and a beautiful crispy pleasure -- no matter how pale they were, the best croissants I'd had in years) and ham and cheese sandwiches (I cursed myself with each bite, and smiled afterwards -- the next Larb Gai could wait) that kept us sneaking back time and again.

It was at the Northern Joma that I met Debra, an incredible 40-something woman who'd moved unexpectedly from Harrisburg, PA, to Luang Prabang, Laos.  "I had a vision, you see."  "A what?"  "A vision.  I'm a devout Christian.  And I know it sounds crazy, but I woke up one night having a vision, and had to move here."

It takes a few minutes to pry the full story out of her, and when she tells it, her eyes really do start to well up with tears.  "There was a little girl, and she was being held in a cage.  A small cage - it was only this big.  And it broke my heart to see her like this.  I didn't know who she was, but I knew she was in Laos.  I didn't even know what Laos was, where it was.  I didn't know anything, except that I had to help her.  I'm a feminist, and a Christian, and I knew it was my mission to help her.  So I sold everything I owned - I mean everything - and bought a ticket to Laos.  I didn't even have a passport before this.  My friends thought I was crazy.  They thought I'd be back immediately.  But that was four years ago."

"So you're a missionary?"

"No, it's not my place to preach.  I don't want to push my religion on these people.  I don't even go to church, here.  I have private prayer.  When you go to the churches, because you're white, it's suddenly about you.  It's not about Christianity, it's about you.  So I have quiet prayer, and help the girls here in my own ways.  I teach them.  I don't speak Lao to them - I make them speak English, to pull them out of their comfort zone, and help them to learn."  

I wanted to ask about her comfort zone -- "You're in Laos, why not learn Lao, crazy lady!" -- but quickly realized she was coming from a completely different place than I. She'd never left the US before. She moved to Lao because of a single vision. She'd left her comfort zone long ago. 

"So what happened when you moved here?"

"I did what I could, but my money eventually ran out.  After two years.  I didn't want to ask anyone for anything, because I knew Christ would take care of me.  I believed 100% in Christ.  I only had 1000 kip left, a single dollar, and didn't know where I could sleep.  So I slept on the street.  And then I used that money to check my email.  And you know what? I had an email.  Without asking, without anything, someone had just deposited money into my account.  So I knew this was right."

"And now?"

"I'm the manager at Joma.  It's great here.  We help the girls.  We train them, and give them education they wouldn't get elsewhere.  And we don't let the men get away with the shit they normally do.  Here at Joma, everyone's equal.  You know how the newest employee gets the worst jobs?  Well, here, that's cleaning the toilet.  One day, I told a new man to clean the toilet, but when I checked up on him, a woman was on her hands and knees.  I asked 'what are you doing?'  And she told me, she told me, 'it's not a man's place to clean a toilet.'  'Oh yes it is,' I told her!  And I marched over to him, handed him the brush, and watched while he cleaned it."

Such passion, such devotion.

But that was Luang Prabang. Here in Vientiane, Catherine and I sat at a pub discussing Debra, and the conversation segued on to monks.  An eavesdropping Lao leaned in, and interjected.  "Hey, I was a monk, once," he said.  "Twelve years!  Twelve years no sex, no drugs!  You know what I mean?  I MEAN NO BOOM BOOM!"

Vang Vieng

What is Vang Vieng?

Imagine the most pristine, untouched, slow-moving river.  A place that seems from a dream.  It carefully wraps around banks of green, where water buffalo and cows nap in the shade, and wake to sip from small pools.  Four novice monks hold umbrellas for shade as they cross a rickety old bridge.  A fisherman slaps his bamboo rod in the water to punt himself a few feet upstream.  Up above, two volcanic mounts bring Mordor to mind.  Beauty.  Absolute pure remote beauty.  You float through this serenity on an inner tube, and smile.

Now hold that prior image.  Jam twenty barts that resemble frat parties into this river, each jutting out, perched over the water, each with their own pounding '90s techno or hiphop soundtrack.  At one bar, thirty muscled drunk jarheads dance in a sweaty circle to "boys who like girls who like boys" as four girls in bikinis pretend to be bored.  A screaming couple fly over our heads, suspended on a zipline, and bellyflop into the river behind us.

Now try and retain the images of the four monks and the rickety bridge and the fisherman and the water buffalo.  It's hard, but do it.  It was all there.

"Free shots of laolao, man," some body-painted guy shouts to us, as a Bob Marley tune comes on, and I smile.  He throws out a rod of bamboo, attached to a fishing line, and drags us in from the current.  We sit beside a girl who's dancing by herself, fixated on her own hands as she draws traces in the air with her fingers.  She's tripping hard. "A big bottle of beer," I order.  "No free shot?," the bartender asks. "No!?  Man, I ain't never heard nobody turn down a free shot of laolao before."

Two fat drunk Canadians, on leave from Afghanistan, drag us in.  Both of them were unbelievably sunburned.  "Long as I keep moving, dude, it don't hurt.  But I gotta keep moving -- and drinking!  You fall asleep on the roof of a boat, maybe one of your buddies gonna wake you up, right?  But no!"  "Hell, man, I passed out too!  Shit!"  They would pause only to suck at the large bottles of beer tied to strings around their necks.

Besides not being incredibly drunk, something else that set us apart was our virgin skin -- everyone else sported serious temporary tattooes: a gorgeous sunset above the promotion "sunset bar," a guy's name scrawled down a girl's arm, one man with a moustache and bow-tie both Sharpied on.  "Were you passed out, or concious, when those happened," I asked, sure the answer would be about passing out.  "Dude, they're sweet, right?  I wanted to look real smart!  Nice, huh?"  Smart was about the only thing he didn't look, but as he kept dancing, I thought it was mildly awesome.

As a crowd of Japanese kayaking revellers approached our bar, we fled to the river, and slowly floated past empty bars playing rock, jam-packed bars playing Snoop, and a dozen bars playing Fatboy Slim.  Finally, around a long bend in the river, we found a submerged restaurant playing soft Thai/Cantopop, and I grabbed a table.  This was more my scene.  A crowd of Thais wobbled around at a table balancing twenty large bottles of beer, and a group of well-tanned Persians sat to our right.  I liked it.  Sitting below water-level, we could perch our beers and Lao shish kebabs above the current, while cheesy love songs made me smile.  A pair of flip-flops, twenty feet apart, passed us by.

This was Vang Vieng.  It was amazing and terrible and awesome and horrible and the best of times and the worst of places.

I wanted to move here and to run screaming.  I wanted to order happy pizza and to urgently call the DEA.  I didn't know what I wanted.  But I did consider the sign, perched above the water, that read "free meal and three buckets of whiskey for 3 hours work at river's edge finding customers for bar."  I really did.

Back in town, Lonely Planet had mentioned the "Friends" bars, where stoned Farangs would order "Happy Pizzas" and sit and watch an endless stream of reruns of Friends.  I thought it was a joke.  But when our tuktuk pulled into town, I was greeted with a clumsy "ey'up mate!" from some kid I'd met on the slow boat.  He was so stoned, at lunchtime, he couldn't remember his hotel's name.  Or where it was.  Nor could his friend.  Instead, they turned back to the tv, and joined the dozen other zombies watching Ross and Chandler argue the merits of midget wrestling.  It was a parody of itself, and awesomely so.

At night, we would explore the myriad bars, most of which were deserted, a few of which were jam-packed with sweaty kids balancing plastic buckets filled with cocktails and straws.  (Some of them apparently filled with opiates or mushrooms or speed.)  Ours were only filled with red bull and coke and vodka, but still packed a serious punch.  The Dutch kids didn't think it was serious enough, so ordered rounds of M150, while we played makeshift UNO without UNO cards, and I watched a tuktuk full of blind-drunk Australians pounding on the roof as it drove along.  "Oi Oi Oi Oi Oi!" they shouted. 

For dinner, the best bet was pizza.  "What's in the pizza?" Catherine asked.  "Vegetables," came the reply.  "Yes, but what kind of vegetables?"  The waitress looked confused.  "Tomatoes?  Peppers?  Mushrooms?"  "No!  No mushrooms here!"  What a town.  We left after 36 hours. 

Bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

The ride to Vang Vieng is so fast and furious and windy and crazy that most bus drivers hand out vomit bags as you leave the bus station.  We took anti-sickness pills, snapped on our iPods, and crossed our fingers. 

 

It wasn't as bad as I'd expected, but it was a trial. 

 

Warning -- kinda gross story:  After a few hours, unable to hold the pee any longer, I made my way carefully to the bathroom, holding on to every seat-back I passed for security.  In the tiny bathroom, the seat and floor were both drenched.  I couldn't bear to sit down, so braced myself -- my back against one wall, an arm securely shoved against the far wall, just two feet away.  The bus buckled around a corner, and another, and swerved around another.  Finally, ten minutes later, I managed to pee.  It was terrible.

 

But the view and scenery were amazing.  We only stopped once, so these were taken from my seat as we sped along and veered around on the 6-hour mountainous road.

Luang Prabang

A cute, quiet colonial town on the banks of the Mekong, and so absolutely gorgeous.  Among the lanes of antique shophouses, on a quiet tres-francais side street, we found the Pakam Guesthouse, surely the most expensive guesthouse in town at $15 a night.  But what a guesthouse it was!  The balcony, where I wrote in my journal as monks walked by, locals squeaked by on old bikes, a neighbor plucked quietly at his bass guitar, was worth the price alone. 

 

But I'm way behind on the blog, so a quick rundown.

 

1. Mount Phousi

A billion steps up and down.  Topped by an ancient Wat and offering a great view of all of Luang Prabang.  Hence the occupying Russians' decision to stick an anti-aircraft gun up there.  It's rusted up and mostly dismantled, but you can still make machine-gun sounds and play Capture the Wat on it.  Quite awesome.

 

The monks now reuse and recycle the ammo, which is so San Francisco and so Readymade Magazine.  Again, awesome.

 

2. Khao Soy

Les Quebeqoises and I rented bikes and explored beyond the walls of the old city, discovering a sprawling city of shacks and autorepair shops and government buildings.  We left the main street and followed a small unpaved road which became a path which became a footpath which became an old woman's kitchen.  It was awkward, to say the least. 

 

We lunched at the main Phousi market, where I'd read tales of an amazing Laotian khao soy.  Exploring the food stalls, a mixture of oozing, bleeding meat, fish flopping on the floor, stray dogs, and so many flies that some cuts appeared black, we finally found an old lady selling khao soy.  A gang of workmen looked up skeptically from their bowls of soup, and then ignored us.  The fans kept away some flies, but not the dogs.  "Are you okay with this?" I asked, and received a very skeptical "Okay."  "Sweet.  Nyong khao soy gai,"  I shouted.  "Bo gai, moo!"  "Okay -- nyong khao soy moo!"  The lady went to work.  And it was okay.  Little more than chicken broth with noodles and pork.

 

I didn't mention to them that the money I'd paid for the meal, a handful of frayed, dirty notes adding up to a dollar, had been casually thrown by the chef into the piles of ingredients.  Nice.

 

3. Tamarind

Awesome family-style meal with a collection of Quebequoise and Dutch folks.  Most of whom I didn't know.  I guess Luang Pabang is awash in them.  The most expensive meal to date, at a shocking $8 a person.

 

4. Alms for the monks

Every morning at 6am, old ladies line the streets to respectfully pay respect to the monks by donating home-cooked food, a simple, honest, meaningful ceremony.  Something that's existed for generations.  And now busloads of tourists show up to buy buckets of pre-made food from vendors, stand in line, and flash-photograph it (and each other.)  We didn't flash-photograph it, or join in, but did sit back and snooze a little.

 

5. The waterfall

Like a expensive multi-tiered resort oasis spa.  Absolutely incredible. 

Except when it was more like Coney Island on a hot summer day.