Beating the Beaten Path

In order to get to Laos we had to first be shuffled around and pay our dues to the border crossing agencies and "farung" fees.  After dishing out our much guarded currencies, much to our surprise we were escorted from a tuk-tuk, through the Thailand exit station, across the Thai/Lao friendship bridge in a van, through the Lao visa entry station, and into another tuk-tuk taking us all the way to the capital.  Our escort was a very conspicuous plain-clothes woman who acted very sly with one of those "I'm-gonna-get-you-for-being-a-falung" smurks...but all was well and we were to the capital of Laos in no time.

Baguettes are addicting.  Stepping off a tuk-tuk and encountering mountains of baguettes in the central marketplace was our first impression with Laos.  We thoroughly enjoyed delicious Lao-style sandwiches (one was enough to sustain both of us) totaling at .50 cents, for the duration of our stay in Vientiane.  Since departing the otherwise standard SE Asia city, we have forever longed for more baguettes.

Back to the "this is why we travel" thing.  We happened to find ourselves in a cultural center with Tourism Malaysia offering all sorts of cheap and free goodies with tickets and a "lucky draw" offering two free tickets to from Laos to Malaysia.  We didn't win. BUT we did enjoy a free and phenomenal dance performance with hysterical intermissions of screaming Laos people over their "lucky draw" sessions. In order to prolong the "moment-we've-all-been-waiting-for" it took about 5 intermissions of extremely long high-pitched speeches where rice cookers, bank gift baskets and things of that nature were won by the screaming audience.  After the tickets were won they warned the audience to stay longer...because.....there were more prizes to be won!!  To our delight and dismay, we watched the audience flock around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to find these special seats with the prize numbers...and we were outta there immediately with big grins.

The Lao language, although having an abundance of similarities to Thai, has been an interesting journey so far.  Many times, I feel as if I'm and American in Mexico adding o's and a's to the ends of words in all desperation that they will end up being the means to communicate with the locals.  Always a gamble with new languages.

As if a chapter had been taken straight out of Lonely Planet, we wound up in Vang Vien for a few days.  Apparently this is a "must-do" location if you want to be part of the "Southeast Asia Backpackers Circuit."  We tend to stay away from anything that is a "must-do" but figured a day or two wouldn't totally compromise our pride. ;) With multiple caves embedded into mountains looming over a rushing riverside town full of bars, pancake vendors and lounge restaurants to watch re-runs of Friends, the main attraction of this backpacker-hub of Laos is tubing down the river.  Bars and lounge places sprinkle the river banks creating an atmosphere of spring break....every. day. of. the. year.  As you can see, wild partying with college-age falung isn't the reason we have ever traveled, but after being invited to go with a group of 10 Australian/English/Canadians we figured we'd dip our toes in..so to speak.

The day was spent in total awe and observation of riverside hopping bars complete with water slides, wooden-plank river surfing, rope swings, 40 foot high jumps....and a bunch of other wild ways for people to injure themselves by jumping into a rushing river with a head full of alcohol. After enjoying interactions with English speaking young people for a while, we eventually drifted away from the crowds as the sun set high in the looming mountains and darkness fell upon us.  A beautiful calm silence accompanied the two of us as we drifted under the stars on an empty stretch of river for close to an hour...leaving the money-hungry Tuk-tuk drivers behind to chase other falung still on the river.  Eventually we climbed up the river bank and found our own way home...aka: walking.

After days of feeling out of place in this town....we had one option.  Leave to find a place where we are the minority in an unfamiliar place.

And after hours winding through mountains on a bus that flirted relentlessly with the cliff edges on hairpin turn after hairpin turn....we stepped off the creaky bus with two tiny backpacks and entered what would become one of our first homes of the entire journey so far.

M