Pai to Luang Prabang
Finally back in a wifi zone! I don’t think I’ve been away from Internet that long since the Internet was invented. Literally. This post written piecemeal on my iPhone. Get ready.
1/23/2012
After grudgingly leaving Pai at around 8pm on Sunday evening, we embarked on the absolute worst car ride in existence. Literally seven hours of curves with a driver who would speed up before turning. Coming from someone who never experiences car sickness except when I’m driving with Casey, I took two Dramamine before we left and still felt extremely ill. At about 3am, we arrive at our accommodations for the night, that is to say, until 7am. And by accommodations I mean… the room was… it had no door. The door was a sliding glass door- grocery store style. There was also a casual ant infestation in the bathroom and they sort of took over the doorknob. But at least we got to make use of the 60 dollar sheet protectors we bought! Cocoon that bitch. The next morning we are put into a truck and brought to another unexplained location where you descend two flights of stairs to little Thai women making eggs, which is what’s for breakfast. Since none of us eat eggs, we nommed on white bread covered in what is claimed to be strawberry jam but what I am quite sure is just red sugar goo. Breakfast of champions baby. Now we are fed and ready to travel. Time to get our visas. Warning to all those who want to travel southeast Asia: get your visas in advance. We trade in our Baht for dollars and then the guy writes something on our hand and tells us to go find his sister. Excuse me sir? At this point, I am sufficiently panicked. Luckily we met four lovely English boys on the way and we all sort of meandered around together until we found the immigration office. We waited for about an hour in the line (massive clump) of people, got to the front to find that the visas were being put together by two men using scissors and glue. Cute. If I knew it were craft time I would have brought my glitter and decoupage and jumped in to help! As is it, it was just them. This was the point when I turned to the person behind me and asked if they would stab me in the neck with the pen they were holding; an offer they respectfully declined. 2 hours later, we have our visas, and are then transported to another unexplained location where a man tells us that upon our arrival in the village we are staying at over night (the boat trip to Luang Prabang being two days) we will be offered drugs and accosted by fake police officers who will ask us for our passports and advised us to do neither. However, if we absolutely must do opium, we should wait until Viang Vieng. After sufficiently scaring us, the same man tells us about his lovely safe guesthouses with clean beds and hot showers and everyone jumped to pay the ridiculously overpriced fare. I didn’t realize there wouldn’t be an ATM anywhere near the border cross, so I have zero dollars in cash. Not a single kip. Word sauce USA, no ATM until Luang Prabang. Finally, we are on our boat and the weather is perfect and the scenery is lush and breathtaking and the company is good and all is well. Don’t worry Dad.
1/24/2012
After a lovely, scenic boat ride we arrive at the town/village/what is this place where we are spending the night. Watching the sunset from the boat was beautiful, but that also meant that is was dark when we arrived. So now we are climbing up a cliff in the dark with 30lb backpacks on. No problem. One would think, since tourists stay there every single night, there would be some sort of lit path leading up to the village. Not so. What did the older people do? The people with suitcases? At this point it’s do or die, Casey ditches her water bottle, Madison makes it but barely. As soon as we are off the boat, our new friend Matt is being propositioned by a half naked male Lao prostitute, Martin is being offered every drug that exists on gods green earth, kids we saw on the boat are wandering the streets out of their minds on the drugs they accepted, and I can’t help but feel that we are in some kind of purgatory. This little stretch of street, every shop offering “happy” (drugged) something or other, storefronts doubled as people’s living rooms where somber looking women hold their babies, a table of chips and cigarettes for sale in front of them.
We made the most of it. We went to go eat with our new English friends and briefly walked around. Our room only had two single beds so Casey and I ended up sharing, NBD. The room was only slightly less filthy than the one we stayed in last night, so we are all pretty happy now about the sheet protector investment. Now it is morning and we are about to get back onto the boat and I don’t ever want to see this weird little place ever again.
1/24/2012 PM
We have finally made it into Luang Prabang. The second day on the boat was lovely if not a bit too long. However, sitting on the ledge looking out at the sun set over the mountains, listening to The Crystal Ship by the doors was… really. Awesome. We scrounged up our last bit of kip for three sandwiches and some bananas. When we finally made it to an ATM we were joyous, and took out millions of Kip, which brought to mind many a rap song. With full money belts we walked though the night market and then to dinner with our new English friends- we are learning so much from them! Ex: how to seduce an English girl (talk about biscuits), what exactly biscuits are (not crackers, definitely not cookies), the correct pronunciation of pedophile, condom, and tomato. Learning about other cultures! Building bridges! Yay! Tomorrow we are going to walk around and explore and hit up dat night market. Pictures to follow.
