laos stories

too hard to write about everything that happened last weekend in any sort of neat fashion. i'm just gonna give you some tidbits.

the prado


maddy and i got in to vientiane, laos, right on time around 10 am. we needed to buy a ticket to vang vieng, our ultimate tubing destination still more than 100 km away, so we asked a couple people and ended up buying tickets for the 2 pm bus (60,000 kip, which is about $7) from the front desk of a semi-fancy hotel. the guy told us the bus would pick us up from the lobby at 1:30 pm and we were welcome to leave our stuff there while we explored.

so we went off, had some coffee and read some books, then came back to the hotel right at 1:30. no bus. nbd, this is southeast asia, "on time" is at least 15 minutes late. then it was 1:45...2 pm...no bus. maddy got up to ask the guy who sold us tickets where the bus was, and he reassured us it was coming. maybe 15 minutes later, the hotel guy lead us to a song tau outside and introduced us to another guy, who motioned to us to put our stuff in the truck. he drove us about a block away, stopped, and got out.

this was not the bus station. this was just some corner in town. it was now edging on 2:30 pm and whatever bus we were supposed to be on has probably left by now. we were just sitting there, essentially helpless and feeling kind of screwed. then a THIRD guy drives up in a fancy toyota prado, talks to the song tau driver guy, then looks at us and goes, "vang vieng?"

yeah, that's where we wanna go...the song tau driver guy took our bus tickets from us and escorted us into this fancy car. then it was just the two of us girls and this driver guy who spoke ZERO english. and i swear to god he didn't understand thai at all even though lao is super incredibly similar to thai. we were sure we were gonna get kidnapped. we only paid for bus tickets and now, for no reason, we're being driven away in this fancy car. our thai phones didn't work in laos and i was feeling really helpless. my heart was beating in that nervous, i-don't-know-what-the-fuck to do way. we stopped to get gas and maddy and i hopped out to as a gas station attendant person if we could borrow a phone. no dice. we were getting pretty far outside town now. it looked like we were going toward vang vieng on the map...but their crazy kidnapping sex trade lair could be on that road. we were fucked. this is how you die.

so we asked the driver if we could borrow his phone, and he said yes, which was a great sign but not 100% relieving. we tried calling the hotel but both the regular and fax number were out of service--MORE BAD NEWS. well, if this is it, then this is it. we turned on our ipods, i opened my lonely planet to the page with the laos emergency number, and we tried to not think.

about two hours into the drive, maddy asked the guy to stop to pee. "five minute," he said (ok, i lied when i said zero english). he stopped at this shack in podunk nowhere...where our friend megan happens to be standing! HOLY SHIT OTHER WHITE PEOPLE WHAT A JOY! so megan knew where we were and would be able to report us missing. i was 50% relieved and able to relax a little bit more for hte rest of the journey.

we ended up making it to vang vieng safely and we had worried for no reason at all. we're still not sure why we got this fancy, personal vehicle, but maybe that's just something we leave unanswered.

tubing


vang vieng is famous for its tubing. you rent a tube and a truck drives you about 20 minutes up the river, where you hop off into the open arms of at least four different bars. we played beer pong and swung off a 10-foot-high platform into the river before leaping in with our tubes. cuz we're in the middle of monsoon season now, the river was flowing pretty fast and was actually kind of dangerous. but lots of other people were still tubing so it must be ok (drink the kool aidddddd).

we stopped at a couple bars along the journey and met some hilarious folks (donal, sinead, dreads, guy with ugly glasses, a fellow nicky). huge limestone mountains jutted up around us, covered in tropical trees and generally looking phenomenally gorgeous. the four of us girls (me, maddy, megan, and bethany) couldn't help but laugh and wonder aloud what the hell we'd done in our lives to land ourselves in such a place.

we had a great time, but it was mostly due to timing. behind us on the river, a lao guy had jumped off a platform into the river and never came back up. we heard the next day that he'd died, which is not that uncommon on the river. (but i wasn't gonna tell you any of that earlier because you never would've let me go.)

ok ok i have to go teach now, but i'll try to get you more stories/pictures later. ah crap, i also gotta finish the regan pictures...geez, nicki, so internet busy lately.