t-t-t-tubing...

sabaidee! (hello in laos...)

when we last left you, jen and i had arrived in luang prabang. we spent two nights there, which largely consisted of massages, facials, trying to bargan with little laos women at the market, (seriously, they are fiesty over here! i can't wait to get back to the western world where bargaining doesn't exist. or maybe i could introduce it to america...like, walk into the Gap and take a $100 dress to the counter and be like..."i'll give you $7"...and see what happens...), and visiting perhaps the coolest temple we've seen yet. the budhas were HUGE and plentiful, and we also spoke to a 19 year old monk for a good 45 minutes and learned all about the monk life. after i get home, i'll put the video i took of it on here. i felt very doing-a-documentary-for-pbs-ish as i sat there with my little video camera with the mountains and temples and river in the background as jen asked him all sorts of interesting questions.

our last night in luang prabang, we headed to the local (and only) disco a little out of town with our two friends stacey and jayne. there we rocked it out on the dance floor with the laos people, and i may or may not have even pulled out the worm. those who've seen this rare and highly unpleasant move know that in no way do i actually know how to do the worm, but anyway, it was a big hit. after the disco (which closed promptly at 11:30 as the laos people have a curfew), we headed to the local and also very obscure and "where-did-this-come-from" bowling alley, which was ofcourse packed as it's the only place open past 11:30. there i bowled a whopping game of 16, but more importanly had oodles of fun with all the other travellers.

the next day we took off for vang vienne in the afternoon in quite possibly the DODGIEST bus ride of my life! laos is absolutely one of the most beautiful countries i've been to, big mountains and giant rock formations everywhere, but this makes for very difficult driving co0nditions. the bus ride took about 7 hours, winding, curving, up, down, stuck in mud, almost hitting a girl on a bike in a village we traveled through, and several times, i looked over the edge at the vertical drop off and tried to figure out what our chances of survival would be should we fall off the edge. fortunately, we didn't, and made it to vang vienne in one piece.

so this is where we find ourselves at the moment: vang vienne! we've been here 3 nights and have decided that this is absolutely the craziest place we've ever experienced! the big draw for travellers here is tubing down the river. i really don't know how to explain it, and i'm afraid if i try all my readers will just do a head tilt, hair scratch, and say "huh?", but what happens is, every single day, about 250 people rent old tubes, get dropped off by tuk tuk up the river, and float from bar to bar (6 in total), all day. so really you tube for about 15 minutes in total (except at the end which is about a 20 minute tube ride back to town), and when you get near to one of the little bungalow bars, little laos kidsthrow tires and long sticks to you to try to pull you in. the river is as high as it gets at the moment, so believe me when i say if you miss what is thrown to you, there is no hope to getting to shore. anyway, so they pull you in, and each stop has rope swings, zip lines, dance floors, mud volleyball, or something of the adreneline rush sort. it's just. absolutely. nuts. i've never in my whole life experienced anything like it! all these random people in the most random place in the world doing the most random things on a river in laos. so we did two full days of tubing, and needless to say, my entire body feels like one giant bruise. jen's entire body IS one giant bruise. but quite possibly the most fun i've ever had!

this morning we tried to trek out to some caves and a lagoon and after about an hour of wadding through mud up to our thighs, turned back. and now we leave for bangkok in an hour on an overnight bus, then we take another overnight bus/boat to the island of koh tao in thailand! there we will be doing a 4-day scuba diving course (GET READY TO BE LOVED COLORFUL FISH!!!!), and then heading to koh-pha-ngan, another island, before heading back up to bangkok on september 10. i can't wait to chill on the islands, but i'm quite sad leaving laos. we've been travelling with the same bunch of people from place to place for about a week now, and now we're all sort of headed in different directions.

my next entry may be written with a view of the ocean!!!