...My Own Final Fantasy

Mui Ne

david_s — Sun, 9 Aug 2009 12:06:00 GMT

mui ne was this place we had to choose over dalat when we were buying our cross country bus ticket. it was the sand dunes that drew us to it. we were only there for 2 days i think.... anyways, the first day we got there was essentially relax day, mostly because our guest house had an awesome pool. the pool was pretty much right in front of the ocean but the ocean was crashing against the wall that our guest house was elevated on. a little too dangerous... we met an awesome family of four from new zealand at this guest house who we spent quite a bit of time with actually. the dad was from NZ but the mother was from vancouver. their two sons won a music compitetion that scored them a free trip to singapore and they figured they might aswell do a few more countries up in SE asia. oddly enough, these two kids taught me how to swim...

the day after we arrived we booked a tour to the fairy stream and the sand dunes. chances are if you're reading this you have me on facebook and should check out the pictures. http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=885085082#/album.php?aid=278680&id=885085082

those will describe them better than i can, probably. it took all day pretty much, and there were different kinds of dunes. the white dunes were way further from our guest house and we 'rented' these crazy carpets off kids and surfed them down the highest dunes we could find. the red dunes were much closer. i often imagined myself stranded in a vast desert because if you stare in one direction, it's all you can see.... makes me wonder how far it goes. if you turn most other directions you can seee the end, or the beginning. we all went back to the guest house later on and went for a late night swim with the NZ family and then went to nearby bar for beers and pool.

the next day i woke up and realized that some fuck took money from my room while we were at the dunes the day before. i think it was the equivalent to $40. i brought it to their attention, not expecting it back but letting them know i was pissed. vietnam is full of thieves, i haven't been robbed anywhere else as much as here. the only other place to rob me was cambodia.. for my flip flops. =(

anyways. we said goodbye to our friends and headed to saigon for madness...

Nha Trang

david_s — Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:06:00 GMT

beach town.... it's a strip town. basically one long strip along the ocean with hotels everywhere. if it were in season, i'd easily name this the tourist hotspot of vietnam. they even had mock hollywood style lettering on an island across the water on an island, spelling out 'vinpearl'. apparently you can take lifts or boats over the water to an amusement park. unfortunately we did not do this..... and in retrospect maybe we should have. the main problem was we had booked a flight to bangkok for may 1st and were kind of rushing down the country to saigon in time. it worked out okay, because landon and i agreed that we may have overstayed in many places early in the trip. particularly certain places in cambodia.... anyways. we didn't do the amusement park, but we did do a boat day trip involving snorkeling and drinking and watching a ghetto boy band. and we also went to an aquarium, which was a bitch of a walk across town. it was a fairly uneventful aquarium, although it did have a large collection of massive sea turtles and pickled specimens. i also really enjoyed teasing the sharks, which i believe landon has an embarassing video of me doing. oh, i forgot. it also smelled of paint. they were repainting everything blue, of all colours. blue. for an aquarium! what! the boating day tour was also good though i didn't think so at first. it started poorly because i was lazy with getting myself together and ate breakfast too late and the bus was waiting for little old me. landon was pissed. we made it anyways and it was long forgotten by the time we got our boat. our boat which was ghetto compared to the sweet boat we had in ko phi phi... it was so cramped for space. we made it to open water and the crew dished out snorkeling gear. a german woman and her son were wise and brought their own gear, where the rest of us suffered with the crap provided. i don't know, is my head too big? the damn goggles did NOT fit around my head. i kind of got one on and i tried to swim 3 times and each time sea water filled up my mask. so lame. i guess i sulked for the next little bit until they prepared food. it was a magnificent feast that pleased everyone. afterwards, they promised alive show featuring their very own boyband! hmmm., yes. well, this was basically the crew pulling out this rusty ghetto drumkit where the cymbals were empty milk bottles etc, and some really old, worn down guitars. they covered a bunch of songs. if i remember correctly, they did cocaine by clapton, hotel california by the eagles, roxxxxxxxanne! and so on and so on.... the beers came out at this point, which was a good primer for the next event. apparently, we were going to go have some wine in the ocean. one of the crew had a floating minibar that he threw into the water and swam to it with a milk crate full of bottles of wine. then they threw out lifesavers for everyone to float on while he served up each and every bottle free of charge. i drank and swam like a fish. we did a few jumps of the boat for fun and then moved on. we did some stop at an island, where you had to pay to get off the boat. a few of us didn't want to so we stayed on and made friends with each other. we met a really nice couple from austria that we met later on for bia hoi. i love meeting europeans because i've now established contacts with some all over europe. free couches to crash on! that was it for nha trang. good restaurants, good beach, good boat tour. our 2nd last stop is mui ne, and i'm looking forward to it. sand dunes!

Hoi An, city of tailors

david_s — Wed, 3 Jun 2009 17:38:00 GMT

and guess what? i didn't get a thing made! i think i'm the 1st person in history to not have a thing made in hoi an. when we got off our bus, we took a few looks around at hotels until we found the perfect one. and by perfect, i mean it had a swimming pool and an awesome room. vietnam wins for best accomodation, aside from the odd thief here and there. we could also rent a dvd player at our hotel so we could watch our pirated copies of 'deadwood' and 'trueblood' in our rooms. johan also arrived on a different bus and it turns out he lost his iphone somewhere along the way...... oops! so this is this precise moment i kissed my phone goodbye for the duration of our vietnam trip. figured, with landon and i sharing a room and johan wherever he was..... why would we have 2 phones when he could borrow mine? damn, i'm such a thoughtful guy... onto hoi an! well, it's a blur. this is one in particular i wished i covered in this blog right after i left. i'll cover it the best i can. bia hoi was prevalent in hoi an, but the price went up a whopping 1000 dong from hanoi's 3000 dong. a difference of 8 cents maybe? no big deal. and there are tailor shops EVERYWHERE. i think if i were to name the tourist spot of vietnam (at least at this time of year) it would be hoi an. in the evening, the 3 of us went out to a restaurant by the river that was highly touted by the book. i guess alot of people figured this because it was packed with people, despite it's nasty appearance. it looked like a dungeon and there were cockroaches crawling around openly. there was on table left with no chairs, so we went to this table where there was a party of fat americans and took their 3 free chairs, and they got upset, saying there were more people coming. we ended up getting these crappy stools and it turns out those fat bastards that were being waited for (and they WERE fat) didn't show up until we were just about done. thee fatties proabably would have preferred the stools because the chair's backing would have just been an obstacle for their large asses. anyways, the food was sub par and i think we found ourselves in a bar later on called then and now. behind the bar was a pictured of bono from U2 wearing a superman outfit. the place was alright, we met a pair of german girls playing table soccer and drank with them for the evening until we were joined by the three german guys we met in hue! it was a german mix mash with the dutch and canadians! the girls were unbeatable at table soccer until a pair of the german dudes dethroned them. lando and i teamed up to challenge the champs and actually defeated them while johan taunted the germans by singing o cananda..... good times in hoi an. (which is an anagram of hanoi. vietnam needs to get more clever with naming their cities...) homeways is bestways as the night grows drunker, and a dark walk home on streets littered with rats and cockroaches made for a pleasant one. hoi an wins most cockroaches award. (luckily not in the hotel) the next day my facebook told me that some friends i made while traveling in laos were staying at the EXACT SAME HOTEL as me. what odds.... we rented bikes and met them down on the beach, which was a good 20 minute bike ride out of town. the waves were amazing, but it was way too windy to truly enjoy yourself, what with the sand always blowing everywhere. in the water, all the girls and johan were stung by jellyfish except for me... all the girls were stalked by creepy mcbaseballhat, who actually grabbed a cheap feel on one of the british girls we met there. aside from these unfortunate events for them, everything else was fine. i loved the waves. i was never actually much into beaches and shit like that before, but i also suppose that canada kind of sucks for that. i mean, we're in the tropics here! different beaches. i was bobbing up with the uncoming waves, or diving into them head first. so fun... the beach day didn't last long on account of it being windy and all so we venturted back into town and all reconvened at this place called the mango room. landon really wanted to go and talked everyone into it. holy hell, was it expensive.... everything was priced as though we were in north america. even a bottle of water rung up a nasty 50,000 dong. forget it! i refused to order anything, but everyone else ordered but kept it as cheap as possible. i waited it out until we went out for drinks later on and ordered a tasty pizza. apparently, all i eat is dough.... i said goodnight to lando who was tired and partially walked her home when it started to pour. excellent! johan, the british girls and i ventured back to the bar we played table soccer at the night before and it was like a laos reunion! we bumped into a pile of people that we all met in laos.... weird times in hoi an. the night ended sour unfortuantely, as there was a misunderstanding with the bill. the staff overcharged us for 2 beers and the americans we were with made a huge deal about it. the beers cost a little over a dollar.... next day.... oh right, the walking tour. what a bust! you buy a ticket and gain access to a few places, but it's a bit of a choose your own adventure. you can choose one museum of 2 or 3, 1 heritage home of a few etc etc. everything we saw was mostly ho hum material. at this point, i am through with museums! it's always same same but different! most of the rest of the day was spent playing cards, drinking bia hoi, saying goodbye to the british girls and anticipating our upcoming trip to nha trang. i also forgot to mention, we were walking down a street at one point and landon was wearing her vietnam hat previously purchased at the market. there were some locals working on a bike on the sidewalk and were like, "ahhh vietnam" and we were like, "yeaaa"... then out of nowhere one of the guys face twisted and he said "FUCK YOU!". what the hell?

Hue

david_s — Mon, 1 Jun 2009 18:41:00 GMT

Hue was actually the first city in Vietnam we arrived in. The first time was a quick quarter-day stop over en route to Hanoi where johan, lando, sean, jessica and me all felt so dirty after the worst bus ride ever that we actually rented a hotel room for the 3 hours between then and our departing bus. the hotel staff understood our purpose and didn't mind renting the room out to the 5 of us. We were all so pleased with the room! it was a massive corner suite with a wrap around balcony with an excellent city view. i think what really separated this hotel from the others is that it actually had a computer in room. this is kind of exciting for me because it was at this point where i was starting to really worry about falling behind on my blogging. anyways, that was the first time. upon leaving Hanoi and Halong Bay, lando and i knew exactly where we were going to stay on arrival in Hue. leaving hanoi was kind of sad because this is where our group finally disbanded. sean and jess were going north to sapa and johan had booked a train to hue whereas we booked the sleep bus, so we knew we'd eventually see him but we were pretty excited anyways to be on our own again. we just about immidiately booked a bike tour of hue. on the itinerary: (excuse my forgetfulness with some of the names)Thien Mu Pagoda, Tu Duc tomb, a hill overlooking the perfume river and The Forbidden City. at the pagoda, they had the car that the monk (burning himself alive) on the cover of rage against the machine album drove to his demonstration. the tomb was pretty nice but i think that the day we did this ranks among the hottest of this vacation so far. it really contended with the day we cycled to siem reap for the hottest. we were absolutely roasting! if we thought the tomb was hot, we really started to burn at the forbidden city. in the older days, only the higher status figures were allowed within these walls. now it's filled with fat white tourists and japanese tour busses. in fact, i was told about this place so often that i was really disappointed by it. i think landon was too. it was nice, but i guess after 3 previous countries of temples and similar shit it just got boring. it kind of hurts to say that because it really is impressive... after this, we called it a day due to overheating. sticking to a budget as landon's funds were getting dangerously low, we spent the rest of the day in the hotel drinking beer, watching TV and updating my blog! i think i wrote my vang vieng and vientianne updates in that room. the next day we visited the hue local market. landon was trying to beat the heat too so she bought a vietnam ball cap and we purchased a few more bottles of sunscreen. otherwise a bit of a wasted trip. it was all same same but different and the walk across the bridge was deadly hot. we eventually got in contact with johan again and met up with him for sushi in the evening. we ended the night by taking pictures by the river and drinking with a few germans in some neat little bar in the alley where our hotel was located. the germans were drunk and crazy.... and friendly as usual. we would see them again in other places.... we all planned a trip to hoi an the next day. what's with places in vietnam that start with "H"? i've only been to places that start with "H"....

Halong Bay

david_s — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:28:00 GMT

halong bay was... well, let's just say it's probably in the top 3 events of my entire south east asia experience. north est coast of vietnam, littered with spires portruding from the water and junk. (the boats are called junk, but are far from our usual interpretation of the word. quite the contrary, in fact)

we boarded our junk and it was a fantastic piece of work. the rooms we had on this boat were cleaner and nicer than most of the places we stayed in laos and cambodia! the dining room was top notch and the weather was foggy, which i didn't mind. very atmospheric. another bonus this boat had was that the kitchen staff catered to my every need as a vegetarian. and i'm a picky one! johan FINALLY lucked out because anything that was meaty at our table belonged to just him. sean, jess and lando usually had the fish foods. our first adventure was to head to a cave cleverly dubbed "amazing cave". indeed it was, however it was totally done up for the tourists. colour tintd floodlights illuminated the more interesting formed rock walls in this wide open cavern. it was massive. our guide continually pointed out with a laser pointer the rocks that resembled penises or people having sex. gee...

at the entrance and exit of this cave was an awesome overview of the bay we were in. some folks even had floating houses out here.... and they owned pets. can't imagine that's a good life for some of them. maybe they weren't pets? maybe they were dinner.... can't tell with the vietnamese! =p

we finished with the caves and then began our kayaking adventure. lando and i were team fail 2009 and had a hard time at first. we kayaked around some bend and then through this neat cave in a wall that just led us into a dead end cove. it was pretty cool that there happened to be a small passageway to kayak through, because otherwise there'd have been no way in. that basically did it for the kayaking. we went back to our big boat and got ready for dinnner and karaoke. never done karaoke before but some large australian took the stage and sort of instilled in me the courage to step up. well, that and a few beers... ha. i began with doing "knowing me, knowing you" by ABBA with him and proceeded to do a whole lot more through the night. can't remember them all but there ARE videos. ....

sean broke his wine glass around 1 am and that spelled the end of the evening. the next morning, we finally found a weakness of this trip: their inability to make good breakfasts. dinners, lunches... excellent. breakfast? crappy microwaved white bread and eggs. i didn't eat much. this is where the trip changed for everyone on board. 3 day trippers continued on to catba island and me and my friends stayed on with a few others on our way back to the coast to catch a bus back to hanoi. alot of reading on the top deck and watching the scenery before we got back.

this was really my only 'small world' experience in asia but in the parking lot while waiting for the bus, i literally bumped into an old co worker from subeez in vancouver. weird? yea.,...

that was it, though. halong bay was gorgeous and i'd highly recommend spending the extra dough on a good boat and check this out! easily one of the top highlights of my vacation!

Hanoi

david_s — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:35:00 GMT

we arrived in hanoi really early in the morning. we were dropped off in the old quarter and were immidiately bombarded as usual with cab drivers.... wait. did i say cab driver? yes. cab drivers. vietnam does not do the tuk tuk thing. one of the major differences between vietnam and the rest of south east asia i noticed is that they seem way more advanced and 'western'. our search for a guest house was futile. they don't do 'guest houses'. they do 'hotels'. luckily, the prices are still reasonable. the place we eventually found, prince hotel had some of the nicest rooms i've ever seen for $20. it also just happened to be across the street from wide eyed tours, run by an australian friend of jessica's. what chance! after settling in and all that we went out for a bit of a walk, checked out a nearby park and shopped for a new camera for sean and jess. oh, i forgot to mention, on the bus ride from hell, they lost their camera. oops. that really sucked. anyways, they bought a far superior camera this day and all was well. the rest of these details in hanoi are probably going to be jumbled, so i'll try my best to convey them in chronological order to the best of my ability. we embarked on a walking tour of the old quarter and noticed that each street was a street of specific professions. example: one street is all tailors, one street is all shoes, one street makes cabinets and mirrors etc etc... this has it's advantages i guess. in canada, if i want one specific thing, sometimes the only 3 places in town you can get this are in 3 different corners. what a pain...
i also saw my first roast dog and tried my best to not let it get to me. couldn't help but think of poor kobe back home. night fell, and i found it amazing how fast they turn the streets in to markets. hanoi is busy, bustling and exciting. it may very well rank as my favourite city in asia. the traffic is crazy, you just have to walk slowly across the street and let the bikes go around you.

we also discovered a junction close to our hotel something called 'bie hoi', which i believe translates to draft beer. this is where i was on easter. bia hoi rings in at a hefty 3000 dong. 1 canadian dollar is about 14,000 dong. basically, we got drunk on less than $2 cdn before a water puppet show at the theatre. what a mistake! it was such a relaxed show and we were all wired. it was interesting and i bought a book about how they do it, but overall it wasn't what i expected. what did i expect? i don't know how to explain that.... but i thought the performance was meh anyways. we also checked out the ho chi minh masoleum. a huge 1 hour line led us into this building where you get to see the enbalmed corpse of their beloved revolutionary leader, ho chi minh, aka uncle ho, aka kernal sanders from kfc. it's bizarre. and they ADORE him in vietnam. which confuses me because keeping his corpse there makes no sense, because uncle ho wanted to be cremated. why don't they carry out his wishes!? after all that we went to the ho chi minh museum. probably the coolest, most modern museum i've seen in asia. maybe... the world? vietnam continues to impress and surprise me.
we also went to see the temple of literature. around this time on my trip i started to get really sick of temples. it's all same same.... but different. it was a really cool temple, but.... you know. more bia hoi... i met a local who was very kind. i bought him a few beers and he gave me a nail clipper/bottle opener in return. what a kind guy!

later, me and landon's room became infested with termites so we had a guy clean the room of them while we went out for dinner. when i got back, there was 2000 baht missing from my money belt. i decided against action because in guest houses and hotels always, they say they are not responsible for anything that goes missing. so are they basically giving themselves the right to steal? i couldn't be sure when that went missing though, but that seemed about right. i only noticed because we were packing up for halong bay the next day. so, when it comes down to what's been stolen from me so far, just a pair of flip flops in sihanoukville and 2000 baht in hanoi.

hanoi is awesome! go there!

next up, i'm covering our 2 day trip to halong bay.

Worst Busride Ever...

david_s — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:16:00 GMT

after leaving don det, it was a very slow and hot boat ride to the mainland. then we're stuffed in a minibus and as i recall the aircon doesn't work.... back to pakse, to the bus station where we will wait 4 long hours until our overnight bus departs for hue, vietnam. of course we don't wait at the station, we catch a tuk tuk into town and grab so food for the wait and for the bus later. when we actually saw the bus we had to sit on for the next many hours, we were all very disappointed. when we actually looked on the bus we realized it was filled with huge bags of rice and clay pots. the clay pots were all placed under seats so we couldn't put our feet anywhere. the bags of rice where all over the back of the bus and people who didn't get seats sat on them. the seats were falling apart, there was no air-conditioning... we were mainly pissed off because when we booked these tickets we were told it was a VIP bus. after taking local busses the whole time in laos, we were ready to pay a bit more for an expensive, comfortable ride. instead, we got a lousy, expensive 'worst ride of the trip' ride. we moved the stupid claypots around so we had room. we noticed that, before we left the station, they had lots of room in the compartments under the bus. i have no idea what kind of crack these people are smoking...

we finally left. the bus was so top heavy from stuff on the roof aswell that we all feared if we took a sharp corner at a high enough speed we'd topple. suffice it to say we sped along anyways and the driver was very liberal with the horn, to let people know he wasn't prepared to make any deft maneuvers. we actually stopped not even one minute up the road. gas. yep. didn't think to fill 'er up in the 5 or 6 hours it was waiting at the station earlier. oh, here's another stop 30 seconds later. what exactly are we waiting for? oh... it must be that pick up truck that's speeding at us with urgency.... they didn't want us to forget..... the.... CHEAP PLASTIC WATERGUNS. wouldn't wanna forget those. we finally get moving. 1 hour later we stop again, and they just get out and rearrange (unecessarily, i may add) the roof set up. eventually me and lando take out our food and try to eat. this local woman sitting across from us starts rooting through her garbage bags and pulls out a very thick, girthy dead snake. it stank. the woman in front of her looked back and was interested. turns out she had her own. somehow we all did eventually get to sleep., despite the awful smell, the terrible music blaring from the stereo and the complete lack of physical comfort.

we woke up arriving just outside the border. absolutely no one gave us instructions as to how we go about this, so johan, sean and i went ahead of the rest of the bus and just processed our passports ourselves. the crossing into vietnam was such a stark contrast. vietnam was beautiful, clean. emerald green grass, clear blue skies. i think from this and what we just went through, we all fell in love with it right away. i can honestly say i don't think i've ever seen such picturesque scenery before.... after a few hours of dropping off the clay pots at random stops on the road we arrived in hue. they just stopped in the middle of the city, we had no idea where we were and they just said: "YOU! YOU! YOU!" pointing at us, and then pointing outside of the bus... after some harsher words we all were left to our own devices here in hue. now it was actually the worst bus of all time. but, now that i look back on it, it was certainly an experience. and i understand that i caught this bus in one of the poorest countries in the world. so that said, it really wasn't that bad. i was standing in hue, and alive.

yep. we immidiately got food and then booked a bus to hanoi for that day. it was also an overnight bus so we made certain we got a good bus this time. by the way, i think this adds up to over 2 days of pure travel time. the bus we got was not only significantly cheaper than the one we took before, but it was waaaay better! it was a proper sleeper bus. the seats were not seats. they were beds. it was clean. air conditioned. i'll have to post pictures. it was such a change, we felt like royalty. off to hanoi!

Pakse and 4000 islands

david_s — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:37:00 GMT

pakse was super uneventful for me. this is the point when the size of the group started getting me down. i guess i just missed the freedom to be able to go where i want when i wanted, or at least only had landon to answer to/vice versa. the group always made group decisions which was fine but it did get to me after a while. sometimes it seems like we never relaxed so when they all made a decision to see some khymer ruins out of town i decided against it. they're basically ruins from the angkor kingdom that managed to be within lao borders and i saw a weeks worth of angkor in cambodia and to be honest, didn't care. i just relaxed all day in my guesthouse while everyone went out. i'm happy because the transportation wasn't cheap and upon their return they told me it wasn't REALLY worth it. basically didn't make me feel bad for not going. like i said, pakse was uneventful and after drinking a beerlao tower at a nearby beer garden we left for the 4000 islands, which is hyped by people i've met on the way almost as much as vang vieng. we arrived in a short 2 or 3 hour minibus ride on the shores of the mekong river, which widens significantly and makes room for... well, 4000 islands. not sure if there are actually 4000 but there's quite a bit. the first one we did was don khong. also uneventful, but man did it have some awesome thunderstorms. i ran out of money and should have known better that, in a country so poor where they turn the power off even in bigger towns to save money, they wouldn't have an ATM on these tiny islands. luckily they had a western union and i had some american and thai baht to exchange. nothing else really happened on don khong. just watching movies and thunderstorms. it wasn't long before we headed over to don det. don det comes highly recommended by everyone. i was expecting the world of it, and maybe that was the anti-hype working against it then? it was a let down.

.....

maybe it wasn't when i think about it. it was natural and beautiful. i think me and lando were just not used to staying in crappy budget bungalos. which is pretty much all they offered. our first night, i woke up out of deep sleep because i felt something crawl on my arm. tiny little feet! i immediately sprung out of sleep and spun around onto my hands and knees looking frantically for the source of legs. lando woke up abruptly aswell and we were both scanning the area with my cell phone flashlight. "what is it...?" asks lando. i finally see it, a bloody cockroach. not down with sharing a bed with cockroaches. we both slept in the hammocks on our porch, which wasn't actually that bad. and a bonus is that it was cooler to sleep outside, because in the room it was roasting. no fans or AC on this island! the next morning i woke up with enough time to see lando's hammock break and see her smack on the ground. pooor lando! we all grabbed bikes and took a nice and very hot bike ride to another island that was connected by a bridge. we ventured out to this waterfall, which was alright i guess. not much else happened on don det. i washed in the mekong river one afternoon with johan. i was kind of frightened about being penetrated by a fluke worm, as it turns out i'm okay. or.... am i? anyways. our last day was a whole lot of deliberating on how we get to vietnam. we were at the south most point of laos and we wanted to start in hanoi, which is north vietnam. we could have started in ho chi minh city, but that would have resulted in a journey through cambodia. it came down to 2 decisions. go to vientianne and then bus to hanoi through north laos from there. or go to pakse and then take a bus from pakse to hue, which is mid- vietnam. and then from hue to hanoi. i don't know why we chose the latter. but we did.

....that's an entry for itself.

Savannakhet

david_s — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:21:00 GMT

laos was the country of local busses. where they pack on as many people as they possibly can with whatever they want. i'll get to horror stories regarding that in due time. at the moment i'll just bypass the busride from vientianne to savannakhet. as i recall it was uncomfortable but for the most part uneventful.

arriving in savannakhet! if i didn't have a previous knowledge that we were coming here to do a homestay i probably would have left right away. it looked terribly dull... and i was right. we checked into some place, can't recall the name. it was actually a decent guesthouse. after arriving, we dumped our bags and immidiately hunted down the tourist office, where we were going to book our homestay. after a bitchin' time trying to figure out "maps in asia" (which always suck, the directions are wrong, distances are wrong, the street names are wrong etc) we located the place and payed about uhmm.. $40 maybe? decent deal, i think. it was a two day excursion into a 'jungle' and then out into a remote town where we would stay with a local family. they would house us and feed us and entertain, blah blah! anyways,the first here was in our guesthouse. we didn't start the trip until tomorrow so we just ventured out for dinner. all of us are vegetarians except for johan (poor guy) so we managed to locate some strange hole in the wall place that had fake EVERYTHING. i mean it. fake squid, fish, meat, chicken and so on and so on. sadly the food was still sub par, much like savannakhet on the whole. i'll just skip to the next morning, where we left to do the trek. hopped in a tuk tuk quite a ways out of town and the beginning of this trip actually had a trip to a salt factory, where they bagged it up by the shitload. it was actually really interesting, but i'd probably need to look at the pictures to remember the details about it. i'm currently cursing myself for delaying the updates of this blog for so long. after this we met our jungle guide. he was dressed in army fatigues with a canadian flag on and actually had a machete. he spoke to us in lao, thinking we understood him. our other guide, don tried his best to interpret but his english was so-so. don was a funny guy. always with the high pitched giggle and says "just kiiidding" after everything... we started through. our guide was cutting branches in half and showing us that we can drink water out of them, showing us all kinds of neat forest fruits and plants we can eat... they were all actually good. aswell we saw a dead scorpion being consumed by an army of ants, and spider as big as my head... it was a long trek.

we came out into a clearing and our guide left us. we took a short breather and then don led us to the town. we finally got to the home we would be staying at and found that our beds were up in this room with cockroaches and silverfish. basically, landon's nightmare. we went and checked out a stuppa and got some beerlao on our way home and basically drank until dinner time. the family was nice and kept trying to speak french with me. the food was alright and they were all nice. singing and playing instruments came later, and they asked us to sing something, so a very uncomfortable 'o canada' between lando, jess, sean and i and poor johan did his national anthem solo. after it was said and done it was bedtime. we set up the mosquito nets and promptly fell asleep after a long day. a long day but nothing as long as the next.... and the heat... it was unbearable! we woke up early so we could give balls of rice and wafers to the monks. i don't know if they're actually gunna eat those wafers...

yep. a lovely word from our host and we are off! off across some crazy field with farmers, water buffaloes and no shade. we eventually come into another town where don shows us local people making all sorts of neat things. basically all the shit you see in the markets in town. the bags, the clothing, the souveneirs all that! more walking, more walking, went to see the old town or something, whcih was basically a forest. after that we ended up at some lake where we finally got to relax, eat, have a beerlao and watch some underage kids wipe out on a motorcycle. they just laughed of course and got back on. crazy world, i tell you...

finally back into savannakhet on a tuk tuk. we stayed one more night at the same guesthouse as before. our last night before we headed to pakse saw us all getting pizza at some place in town with a new addition to our party. teena, the chinese-australian. our gang just keeps getting bigger! that was it, we all left for pakse the next day for a whole lot of nothing.

Vientiane

david_s — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:24:00 GMT

Vientiane is bloody expensive. It's the capital of Laos and it's probably the most boring capital city i've been to in asia so far. the rent for hotels/guesthouses is ridiculous! we didn't do much here, i don't think, so i'll keep the next few entries short and sweet. too many to catch up on...

ok, so we found this one place that would do. it was clean, had a good bathroom and had a fan. it's all i need. it took landon a day and a half to get over a few minor details. (no window mostly) we also had our guest house get our vietnam visa all sorted out. costly, but as i sit typing in vietnam, worth it. i don't know, nothing really happened. johan, landon and i met sean and jessica again at a sub par mexican restaurant then went to another patio later for a night cap. next day we jumped on a tuk tuk for a long ride out of town to buddha park, which seemed alot more like hindhu park to me, but what do i know? it was pretty neat. i'll have to post some of the pictures sometimes. some are just funny and some are downright freaky. like that big ball with the demon's mouth you could enter. inside the ball are 3 levels until you emerge on the top from a tiny hole. within the 3 levels are heaven (the highest), earth (middle) and hell on the bottom. no lights in hell. when i flashed my light around in the darkness there were statues of large people impaling smaller people and other such torturous things. it was certainly bizarre.

what else happened in vientiane? oh right, joma, that awesome cafe from luang prabang in in the countries capital too, and we.... 'capitalised' on it, often. tasty sandwiches! we also tried in vain to find this chinese market, but absolutely no one knew anything about it. oh well, it was a good wander through the city anyways...

also went to the museum. just shows a recent history of the french colonials entering and being cast off by lao people and russians and americans (americans who bombed the bloody hell out laos). some awesome pictures of a crashed american plane shot out of the sky by a loa riflewoman. basically the museum seemed like a big hate on americans, french and russians.

well, i guess that sums up vientiane. dull, but worth it to know, i guess. next up, savannakhet.

Vang Vieng

david_s — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:36:00 GMT

i had been anticipating vang vieng since i left vancouver. it seemed like a rite of passage for SE asia backpackers. anyone who i talked to about SE asia: "make sure you hit up tubing! it's THE SHIIIIIT!" landon, johan and i arrived on an overcast day and met up with sean and jessica who were traveling a day ahead of us. we opened the night at babylon, a restaurant owned by a ladyboy. we chose babylon for it's free wifi... well, that and it refused to play 'friends'. about that... vang vieng is kind of a one road tourist town for the most part. and lined all along the main road are 'TV bars'. you can't walk by any of them without hearing that awful laugh track that thankfully died with the 90's. the laugh track belongs to 'friends' mostly. otherwise, you're likely going to be seeing 'southpark' or 'the simpsons'. 'southpark' i can deal with but 'friends' is inexcusable. "chandler, that shirt is to big!" *fake laughter* it's terrible to be walking down the street with amazing natural beauty all around you and you see these assholes zombified to 'friends' all day. did i ever tell you that i hate 'friends'? i tried to avoid it, but once fell prey during a pizza craving. anyways, we all agreed to go to this place called bucket bar after babylon. it was what they call a 'gong show', with drunk tourists drinking cheap ass rice whiskey and beerlao. a whiskey bucket was 20,000kip while my preferred vodka bucket rung in at a ridiculous 50,000kip. whiskey is made locally so it's real cheap. in fact, i saw some american and a brit buying bottle after bottle of straight up whiskey and just doing shooters all night. that's about $3 for a 26oz approx. btw... real cheap. i don't envy their next morning... i ended up bumping into my english friends from luang prabang by the end of the night and johan and i finished the evening drinking with them. if memory serves me well, the next morning was our plan to go tubing. you find this garage in town where the lao people have set upa table where you sign something and they hand you an inflated innertube from the piles behind them and stuff you on a tuk tuk with a load of other people. they drive you about 10 mins out of town along the river and dump you at the insanely loud bar. the music is actually painfully loud, and terrible if i made say so. but everyone seems to love it... there are some lunatics there who 'represent' by writing slogans or whatever else on their bodies with a jiffy marker. a common one is letting everyone know how manydays straight they've been tubing. i see some that say well over 100 days. alright.... another was "i fucked the olson twins before they were famous". i believe i have photo proof of this one. anyways, trashy tourists, loud music, beerlao, sunshine and....... (my favourite) the swing. looks dangerous! ok, you climb a tree where they've set up a platform where you take hold of the bar and swing off over the river that lays below this bar. it's kind of scary because it's low season. the water isn't that deep in certain places. i wanted to try it out but no one else would with me so i chickened out. other people were doing it plenty, and even doing triple flips and all kinds of fancy moves. we just jumped in our tubes and went along. there appeared to be plenty more bars that seemed way less popular along the river... this seemed more appealing to us. you just float along and lao people throw out water bottles attached to ropes that you grab onto and pull you in to their bars. the first bar we stopped at also had a swing. in fact most of them do. we picked up some beerlao here and i decided to check out this swing. it was pretty awesome... exhilerating. however, tall guy that i am, my feet touched the riverbed. it ALMOST hurt. i think if i was a bit taller or the water was a little lower, it could have sucked ass. i don't think anyone else did the swing except me out of our group. we carried along until we found a bar with a zip line instead of a swing. the girls were more down with this one so we stopped. you don't swing you just let gravity take you. there is an end to the line though and if you're still gripping the handles when you hit it, you will go flying whether you like it or not. i saw this from the people who went before me. i went and let go a little early and my feet hit the ground and again, and i suffered a minor cut on my toe. no big deal. then after another beerlao, johan, landon and jessica decided to go. johan went first and held on until the end of the line and did a spectacular double fliptype thing and it brought out 'wows' and whoas' from the watchers. next up landon went, her body hanging limp and screaming. it was real fun to see her do this kind of thing. i forgot to mention she did the rope swing at the waterfalls in luang prabang aswell. i have her doing the zip line on video, which i should upload to facebook sometime. after went jess, but as she was going johan was emerging from the water complaining about his shoulder. he looked as if he was experiencing alot of pain. clearly nothing broken, though he thought so. we told him he'd know it if it was broken. after alot of consideration he decided to go to the hospital instead of carrying on. this was unfortunate and we all felt bad that we got to keep going. well, we did. next up was the giant slide.

skipped it because you needed to buy a drink to use it and we bought too many at the other bars. we just tubed on from there. no mare bars... the further we got though, the more shallow it got until it got pretty uncomfortable. uncomfortable as in, rocks grazing your ass. lame. we had to get the tubes back before 6pm or we lost our deposit on them, so we got off the river before the end and just took a tuk tuk back into town. did i mention that johan left his tube behind? that also sucks for him. when we did get back to town we bumped in johan with his brand new arm sling. turns out he just traumitized the muscle and the doctors orders were to "drink beer". oh, laos. tasty pizza and beer later, we crashed for the night after a long day.

next day johan, landon and i ventured out to find a cave and some blue lagoon. we walked 2 km across a massive field (with the sun beating down on us, heavily) and our shirts were sticking to our bodies. we followed the signs to the cave and the lagoon but we only found a crappy small cave and a mountain, so we climbed it instead. not anticipating a mountain as we were only wearing flip flops. ugh... it was easy enough though, and the panoramic view was spectacular. i have a video of that too. after a few poses with the flag atop the mountain, we went back down and headed back into town and took a dip in the river to cool off. that evening we went out of town to visit sean and jessica at the organic farm they were staying at. tons of conversation later we went to a local bar after sean and jessica went to bed so they could get good sleep before their trip to vientianne the next day. the local bar was really dark and had terrible music at a really high volume. over priced beer lao to boot. and this is a bar for the locals? they're poor... did we get the special tourist price? we left when the DJ was playing that really annoying akon song and started rapping over it in lao.
just.... just terrible. we went bar hopping and found bucket bar again because it was the only bar that was still kicking. bumped into the brits again and then went home. next day we went tubing again. this time i tried the crazy swing at the first bar and for once did NOT touch the river floor. this swing was intense. also this time around we jumped in a mud pit and i tried the big slide. the big slide was also scary at first but you actual get alot of distance on it. have a video of this too. not much else happening here, lazing along the river same as before until it got shallow and we said screw it. the night was relaxed. i felt kind of shitty so it was another crazy night at bucket bar with me just sitting there. after 2 beers i couldn't stand it anymore and went home. i think that was the end of vang vieng. good riddance, 'friends'. next up: vientianne.

Luang Prabang

david_s — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:38:00 GMT

really, really not looking forward to this. luang prabang seems like an eternity ago. the internet is really expensive in laos and has crappy speed to boot. i'm already in vietnam and i saw much of laos. well, here goes.

i arrived off the slow boat and landon was waiting for me, which i did not expect at all. i was still with my group of new friends from the slow boat and saw them off to their guesthouses before nesting in the one landon had already. i relaxed for a bit as the boat isn't the most comfortable place in the world. luang prabang was actuallly alot smaller than i anticipated, but it was really nice, what with the french colonial buildings and all. it was also a bit tidy and i was sometimes reminded of vancouver a bit. something i can't quite describe. anyways, the night begins with a scheduled meeting with a couple we sort of knew in vancouver. sean and jessica. limited meeting with either in the past, it proved to be an interesting night. it was mostly me being really tired from a slowboat trip filled with beer drinking, listening to stories of their recent trip to india. interesting enough, though i soon retired to bed.

the next day i went out and met landon's slow boat gang. a british guy, a german girl, a dutch guy and a french dude. we ate at some cafe called joma which became an excellent staple in our northern laos experience. the plan was to check out the local waterfalls. along our way in the haggling for a better price, we picked up an adorable korean girl who had an unfortunate motorcycle accident and sported a plastic bag on one foot. we eventually got going and arrived 30 mins later to what was at that moment in my life, the most beautiful place i've ever been. before the actual falls, we passed a bear sanctuary. the bears were not quite visible then. we carried on and passed about 3 or 4 different sites for swimming but figured we may aswell keep going until we see the end of our options before settling on one. the end was a massive waterall in which you could NOT swim in, or jump off unless you don't value life much. we opted for the one with the higher waterfall halfway back that you COULD jump off. it also had a rope swing from a diagonal tree. i also noticed that some poor ass had jumped face first from this waterfall without any knowledge of what was below and smashed his ugly little face up real good. i first saw him dabbing his face with a rag or towel.. then he removed it and half his face was red with blood and puffed up. who am i to turn down that kind of fun? i did the swing first and everyone in the water below was rating the swing jumps with 'oooohs' 'ahhhhs' and 'woooooooah!'. apparently i did ok. the german girl was all over this shit taking every opportunity to jump off whatever she could. she eventually dragged me along to the waterfall and we went off that too. it was awesome! the water here was a beautiful, unreal turqoise colour. lush emerald green all around us. it was fantasy. i felt bad for the korean girl who could not swim with her bag foot. we scoped out another pool, the bears and then consumed some beerlao. by the way, beerlao just might be my world champion for beer. typically, tiger beer can be found everywhere in the asian countries i have visited. it's brewed in singapore. other than tiger and the odd carlsburg, beerlao is the only beer you can find in laos. it is excellent.

we left the falls and came back into town. they were already setting up the night market and i knew already that i'dbe buying that sweeet ass chess board i saw on my way home. later that night, it was a night at hive, a popular bar. i bumped into a few friends from my slowboat. few drinks and a bunch of people went to the bowling alley. the bowling alley is the only place open after 11. laos has a legal curfew. pretty lame. so upon exiting the hive i saw tons of shitty drunk tourists piling into tuk tuks and howling mad. i thought to pass the bowling tonight and do it the next night.

i honestly don't remember the next day so i'l skip to the evening. it was back to the hive and this time it was all of landon's slowboat friends and all of mine all together in a group party, which i quite enjoyed. this time we did go to the bowling alley and i got quite drunk and really sucked at bowling and tried to convince landon and some guy from iceland that obama is a puppet and his only purpose is to renew american faith enough so that the real powers that be can screw everyone behind the curtain. i was called extremely negative by the guy from iceland. the night was not without drama as one of my friends had a break up with her boyfriend. i think they're still together so i guess that's ok. the next day, amidst a nasty hangover, we met with the icelandic man again for breakfast and then climbed a mountian called pusshi mountain or something. they view was nice, but the climb was damn hot. we then met with my british friends and a dane to see if we could go to the caves. turns out we were too late. so eventually i got to buying that chess board. it was pricey, but worth it. well, only worth it if it actually makes it back home. which, by the way, cost as much as buying it to begin with. our last night was spent at a place called lao lao where the power went out in the entire city. it was kind of cool but we left early because we were really tired and were leaving the next day. the power returned to the city the moment my key touched the door to our guesthouse. fancy that. the next morning we caught a tuk tuk to the bus station but not before we got some tasty sandwiches for the road from joma. we ended up bumping into johan, our dutch friend at the station and sat with him on the beautiful mountain bus ride to vang vieng.

Slow Boat to Luang Prabang

david_s — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:17:00 GMT

i had all my nothing time in chiang mai and now i was ready to take the slow boat to laos. well, actually it was more like HAD to. my visa was up and i had to leave the country. as soon as i got on the minibus heading towards the border i starting hitting it off quite well with and brit, irish, scottish and american. blah blah blah where you from, blah blah blah where you been, blah blah blah insert funny story here, you know... the usual travelling banter. this minibus departed chiang mai at 9pm so we had to stop for the night at a sub par gust house and wait until the morning to do the border crossing. i was lucky enough to get my own room out of all the other people on the bus who shared. the next morning, we all packed up and jumped in the back of a pick up and drove a quick way to the water for a real crappy complimentary breakfast where i met my better friends for the rest of this journey, a pair of girls from australia. we crossed the water to the other side where all the visa bulllshit goes down. it was here where my group of travelling buddies grew from 2 aussies and me, to 2 aussies, 1 english, 1 dane and me. the whole process was harrowing to say the least, bottle neck structure with nasty french men with oversized bags spinning and turning and bumping you around when you just want to move on. of course canadians get the short end of the stick in that our lao visa cost the most out of any country listed.... a whopping $42. i saw as low as $25 for other countries. we all finally made it across and were asked to sit at some shitty restaurant while they verified our passports. erm, didn't they just do that at the border? FINALLY we boarded the slow boat which was actually much more luxerious that i had originally imagined. this is also to say that it was by no means fancy. my group and i got on later than most so alot of single traveller assholes took benches instead of sharing while groups had to be all divided. we opted for the engine room. it was super spatious and we reckoned it couldn't be that loud.... but, well... it was. so we searched the main seating area and found enough single bench ends to satisfy our group. it was like, 6-7 hours to pak beng, our night stopever. this was probably one of my favourite experiences travelling. just being crammed on this boat with excellent scenery, drinking beer lao with new friends and having excellent conversation every where i turned. i didn't even pull my book, ipod or DS out once. pak beng was a strange place. it seemed like a town that was built specifically for this drop off. we met a pair of british girls here who we added to our posse and we went for dinner at an indian restaurant. it was ok. they had catfish in the bathroom. the electricity dies everynight at 10pm, so that made for an interesting evening. candle lit card games with our german guitar player. the guesthouse was interesting.... this was my first time sharing a room with anyone other than landon. it was with the one brit guy and he opted for the "my head by your feet" sleep formation. the next morning, another sub par breakfast and off we are to the slowboat again. this time we were prepared and were among the first on the boat and comandeered the best section. this ride wasn't quite the same as the day before. i'm grumpy in the morning so i just sat there for the first bit doing nothing. eventually the fun picked up again, still having fun drinking and playing cards with an excellent view the whole way. new friends including an american and a scottish guy. anyways, words can only go so far describing the good times, so i'll just suggest that if you go to laos, go from the north of thailand and take the slow boat. that's good for now... i'll let you wait for luang prabang....

Do You Read This?

david_s — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:12:00 GMT

i'm often curious who actually reads my blog? i know for sure my mom and landon's mom do..... is that it?!

leave a comment if you read this because it's a hassle to keep up to date with it and i'll continue if there is positive feedback....

Lights out in Pai

david_s — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:16:00 GMT

return to Pai. seems like such a long time ago now.....

i don't even fully remember the events. i remember going back to the pool the 1st day and relxing and reading. later that night landon and i had a bit of a problem and decided to part ways for a while. luckily we made friends with a nice couple renting a house in town so they took her in. i spent the next few days in pai exploring the countryside on my motorbike in the day and drinking at the bars at night. i ventured 9 km south on the highway towards Chinag Mai and found pai canyon and it was, up until 2 days ago, one of the coolest places i've seen on the planet. i have pictures and videos so i'm sure whoever is reading this will see it one day. but to sum it up briefly (i need to update more frequently, i really am not looking forward to the next 20 minutes of this) you climb up this hillside off the side of a highway. it's not even much of a climb. but what i see at the top is the last thing i expected. it's just nature as far as the eye can see, with differently purple-shaded mountains along the horizon. right before me was the real treat. multiple thin 2-3 foot wide ridges that snake out into the jungle bellow. i don't know, google it if that doesn't explain it well enough. i was alone and in awe. i braved many of the pathways and was alone there for actually quite a while until a swiss dude and french couple showed up. they were pretty nice and are responsible for any photos of me there.

later on i went out to ting tong and had some drinks with some americans. always nice, however most americans i meet are still cocky bastards. i generally prefer europeans of any sort. the next day was st. patty's day i think.... landon wanted to meet up so we could send some things to canada that we bought together. if mrs. spenrath is reading this (do you prefer karen?) you will probably die of laughter at how we packed this up. you'll see...
we followed this by a movie because we then encountered our first real rain in asia. it was pouring so we went to see a movie. we decided on 'the kite runner' since we both read the book recently. alas! the rain cut the power out in the entire town! i drove landon home and then retired to my own until the power returned. i then ventured out to a nearby bar that i knew had the cheapest beer in town. i sat alone and was about to pull my book out when a plastic california girl with fake boobs called me over to drink with her and 2 guys from israel, 4 more americans and an english guy. we all sat there for a few hours and drank whiskey and beer until the sun went down. this experience, fun as it was, still did not help my opinion on american travellers. still cocky, still braggart know-it-alls. smile and nod. smile and nod. we all agreed to meet at ting tong later for drinks because it was real fun to drink with them... and what else did i have to do? so we parted ways and i went to pai country house (decent tofu burger) for dinner. as soon as i got there there was no power again. i ate my dinner and after that the chef came out and talked to me and this israel girl sitting next to us. this went on and on until and austrian joined us and it was a really cool experience. the restaurant was closing down and here were 4 of us, an austrian, canadian, thai and israeli drinking and chatting in a candle lit room. we were finally asked to leave. the austrian disappeared along with the thai and it was just me and HAGAR. yes. her name was hagar. ting tong was definitely closed. it's an out door bar and it was still pissing rain. i asked hagar if she wanted to join me at bebop. indoors and probably has a band playing if the power comes back. she agreed and off we went. i thought it would be jammed packed with people. as it's one of the few indoor late bars. it was DEAD. we drank anyways, candle lit once again trading stories from canada and israel. she doesn't understand north america and made it sound pretty stupid alot of the time. i can't say i don't agree. eventually the lights came back on and people started coming in and the band arrived. i watched a fat irish man sing his irish songs. st. patricks in thailand... what an interesting night.

i think the next day was my last day. i jumped on a bus to chiang mai while landon was on a trip to luang prabang in laos. i needed to do some last minute stuff. i had 3 or 4 books to trade, i had to pick up a dry bag for when i go tubing down the mekong in vang vieng and wel, i just like chinag mai. oh, and i wanted to space out my travels. so 1 day and a half in chinag mai, mostly reading, book shopping and resting. doing nothing. i booked an expensive slow boat tour from chiang mai to luang prabang which ended up being one of the coolest parts of my entire trip!

Mae Hong Son

david_s — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:16:00 GMT

My motto throughout mae hong son was "i feel bad for..."

we had high expectations for this place and during our 3 hour bus ride there from pai (even though we didn't communicate it at that time) neither of us really wanted to leave pai.

it was a combination of these things that made mae hong son seem like a bit of a bust. landon was extremely unhappy with our guesthouse. turns out my sister laura stayed at the exact same guest house a few years ago and told me it was cockroachy. this prompted us to sleep that evening with the lights on. anyways, our first day we both sort of set out and did our own thing. i went and got some pasta and bummed around on the internet, read a little and then met up with landon later on to go to the sunflower cafe for veggie burgers. the next day landon went and found a guesthouse more to her liking. we rented a bike and the guy who ran our guesthouse told us to go swim in the river so we turned back around and got our bathing suits and followed a map to the river. i don't know what it is about maps made by travel guides or bike shops or guesthouses but they are always more confusing than they ought to be. or, landon and i are just retarded because we drove right onto the bridge above the river we were supposed to be swimming in and wondered..... "DUR WHERE IS IT?!"

we didn't really inspect it much. we saw huts lined all along the river below but thought they were ghetto homes. we turned around and went a different way. we did that for a while until we gave up on trying to find a path down to the river. turning around, we went back to that bridge once more and saw 2 thai girls ahead of us bike down a hidden path to the riverside just to the left right before the bridge. wow, was thaT ever a poorly constructed sentence?!!? anyways, we slappped ourselves for being stupid after realizing that those huts we saw earlier were not ghetto homes but little huts you could rent out. you could order beers and everything. beside our hut was a group of like, 10 young thaI kids who couldn't keep their eyes off landon. we were, afterall the only white people there. (mae hong son was tourist defficient, i got alot of looks like, 'what? white people? what are they doing here? not that i mind but what the hell is there to do up here?') after a while we went in the water and almost immediately the 10 kids started bombarding me with sea weed they balled up. at first i was like.... what the fuck! but then i found out it was all good fun and joined the war, which was unfortunately, all against me. like i said, they were kids and i'm bigger, taller, faster. i caught almost everything they threw at me. i had submerged kids trying to pop up behind me for sneak attacks. i had kids up on the divider under the bridge showering projectiles from above. they eventually warded me out into open water which they didn't dare tread. i found out why when the current started to carry me away. i struggled to get a good foothold on the river flooor and suceeded for a moment before i saw more sea weed coming my way. after i time i mastered the current and staged my best attacks from the open water. landon came out to join me and i was so immersed in the battle that i forgot that she would be washed away. sure enough i see landon just kind of whip by me and after warning her, hear her calling for help. i went back and realized that i couldn't help her by grabbing her hand. she was complaining that her shorts were falling off so i told her 'it's you or the shorts' or 'swim like you mean it'. i then realized that where it mattered not to me, as i was still at war, landon could just swim to the side of the river for a good hold on something solid that she could shimmy along back to the hut. we got tired and went back into town to try and book a trek but the guy we were referred to was still not in. we were terribly bored with mae hong son and only had a week left on our visa before laos. we were still pai homesick and i guess that's when we decided to go back the next day. we finished the day off drinking sangria, which we've had no luck finding anywhere else in thailand, and playing jenga at a bar (i won). when we got back to our guesthouse there was this rambling old european man who locked himself out his room who talked our ear off for what seemed like forever until the owner came back and opened his door with a spare key. anyways, i was saying my motto was "i feel bad for..." because i felt bad for mae hong son, felt bad for the guitar player at sunflower cafe when we left because we were the only people there, felt bad for the 1st guest house we were at because we left for a better one and felt bad mostly because we didn't do a trek.

....my foot has suffered some nasty cuts and everything and the shoes i have aren't the greatest for hikes so i've unforunately been avoiding treks. =(

oh well... back to pai

Pai

david_s — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:59:00 GMT

Pai is probably the coolest place i've been to so far.

i actually was really disappointed when we first arrived. it looked boring and shitty. that and i felt terrible because i saw some guy drinking a coke on the ride from chiang mai and thought it might be a good idea to have one too, you know... a picker-upper. it made me feel like donkey feces. that's what i get for drinking coke after not touching the stuff for a few months. doesn't that shit polish copper? it certainly destroys enamel. enough of the teeth lecture....

we looked at a couple places listed in the lonely planet guide and they were playing second fiddle to this other place we found called "breeze of pai". the first place we ate was at mama falafel's. this is amazing because you don't see falafels or hummus in thailand, it's mega rare. i loved it, and the menu had mama falafels face on it. kind of like aunt jemima. later that night we went out to this bar called ting tong. they have mirrors all over town that say "are you ting tong?" so you can look yourself in the eye and ask yourself the question. when we got there all the thai guys who worked there had shirts that said '100% ting tong' and i felt left out. they played match-maker and grouped us with other canadians. we met this timid girl from guelph, ontario who seemed nice. then one of the ting tong dudes ushered another canadian to our table who ended up being one of our better friends on this trip. we bar hopped a little and then went home.

the next few days saw us checkin' out waterfalls in the country side, (after renting a motorbike) doing an elephant trek, celebrating a strangers birthday and going to an awesome secluded hotsprings.

the waterfall we chose(3 to choose from) turned out to be a bit of a bust. it was a slope more than a total drop-off. there were a shitload of thai kids, unattended by adults just sliding down the rockface into the pool below. the half assed waterfall made the rock face slippery enough for this to be. i was chickening out on entering the water initially... it was really frickin' cold. landon went in waist deep but got out when she saw a wad of phlem floating about. we just chilled and watched the kids slip'n'slide until i built up the courage to try it myself. it was fun! if not a little dangerous... but if these kids could, i could dammit! after the first slide in i climbed out and went higher up the slope for a longewr slide. i was dry almost immediately... then i slid in again and that was enough for me. we biked back and watched some awesome country side while we were at it.

the elephant trek was a bit of a bust too. i've been on elephants before but the other times they had seats strapped to them. this time was bare back. i thought it would be the most amazing thing but it actually was just like torture. i was counting my blessings i didn't arrange the 3 hour trek like i wanted to. our elephants' spine protruded significantly and made for some seriously sore asses. it was almost like being violated... and i was surprised at how coarse the elephant hair is, like a rough scrub brush steadily going back and forth on your legs. i feel bad because despite all this it is amazing and elephants are so powerful yet so gentle. eventually the tour had us going through the river where the elephant rocked us off her body and into the water. what a wake up call... it was really fun. the elephants bathed themselves, spraying water from their trunk onto their back with us there. we got on and were thrown off a few times. the last time i was thrown off, however, the elephant went down and on it's way back up to it's feet it lumbered towards me and unintentionally stepped on my foot. lucky for me my foot was in the river and the muddy river bottom cushioned the impact and all i got was the elephants toenail scraping down my foot. it hurt like it was stepped on all the same for a few hours after and bled too.
that marked the end of the elephants and we then got to relax in some hot tubs where the water was derived straight from some hot springs. i guess the minerals would do my wound some good.

later that night landon was sleepy so i went out with our friend we made the other night to celebrate some girls birthday and i ate cake. it was terribly random.

we also visited a neat little place called fluid where you pay 60 baht entry fee and get the whole day to use their massive swimming pool and utilize their excercise machines and lift weights etc. the poool was fun but swimming with my fresh wound was a pain, literally. and flies were drawn to my exposed flesh... it was nasty. later on we went to the hotsprings close to the elelphant camps outside of town with birthday girl and her irish boyfriend and our friend from ting tong with his girlfriend. it was nice and secluded which was a relief. it's always nice to have things like that to yourselves. the night ended drunkenly, i went out solo to ting tong and ran into a toronto couple i met earlier and we had some great conversation before i stumbled home and went to bed knowing the next day would be the day we ride to Mae Hong Son...

Chiang Mai II

david_s — Mon, 9 Mar 2009 22:57:00 GMT

We woke up the next morning to plates of toast and eggs. landon and i both avoided the eggs like the plague because really, who the hell likes eggs? but really, it was more like: we were both getting over food poisoning and eggs seem to be a contributor to food poisoning. that and i hate eggs.

we watched the village people wash the elephants in the river as we ate our toast. after eating, of course we were bombarded with cheap souvenirs in which i think i only bought a elephant statue. on to the elephants. this elephant ride was way better than the ko lanta elelphant ride, mostly because we got to walk in and out of a river. unfortunately the elephant handler on our elephant spent the first chunk of the trek on his goddamn cell phone. not even safe from the blasted things on a nature hike! it was really annoying, and he was exceptionally cruel to our elephant. i know i'm no expert on riding and steering elephants but what he was doing was unnecessary, to be sure.

after that was all done it was time to board the bamboo rafts! this ended up being my favorite part of the trek i think. long and narrow with a teepee formation in the middle of the raft to have our bags hang off of. 2 in total. 2 guides, each at the front of each raft, with landon, the german couple and i on one and the finns and the dutch girls on the other. guys at the back to help steer with girls in the middle to.... uhm.... relax. the bamboo sticks we used to jab into the river to help push us along or veer us from rocks ended up being really rough on the hands, but what's a nature trek without a few bruises etc? there would be longer periods of calm waters and short bursts of rapids which were obviously more exciting. there would usually be rocks jutting out everywhere in the rapids so the guide would have to be particularly quick in succesfully navigating. one burst of rapids was so intense, we crashed into a rock and i flew forward and nailed the poor german girl on the head with my bamboo stick. we were to raft for 2+ hours. about half way through our guide wanted a break so he let me and the german guy alternate as the leader. i ended up leading most of the way til the end... it was really fun! i had us stuck on rocks a few times and crashed once or twice and it made me respect the guides much more for it looks easier than it is. by the end i was much better and it was really fun to worm through rock mazes in rapids. at times, people would jump off and go for a swim but the dutch girls got leeches....

that was pretty much it for the trek, we shored up at another village where a truck was waiting for us and we were all really tired on the way back into town.

the last few days we spent in chaing mai were rocky and landon got her own room at one point to give ourselves some space. when we were together though, we rented bicycles one day and explored the city a little, ventured to the chaing mai zoo another day and saw tons of monkeys, a couple emus, white tigers, giraffes, elephants, lions, peacocks, hippos, rhinos and koalas(not to be confused, those koalas and rhinos ;p)
i got to feed the giraffes and a jaguar. that was pretty cool.

the zoo was decent but the map they give out was terrible and navigating was a bitch. we got really tired by the end of the day and went home.

that night we decided to go to our first theatre in asia. we saw "the curious case of benjamin button" one night and "watchmen" another night. our time in chiang mai kind of tapered off into laziness, really. we never ended up doing cooking classes and i never got a massage. i keep telling myself i'll get one after my treks in pai and mae hong son.

our bus to pai was 200 baht. i can't wait...

Chiang Mai

david_s — Sun, 8 Mar 2009 22:10:00 GMT

we rode a ghetto bus up to chiang mai i can't quite recall how long it was, maybe 12 hours?

we arrived and there were pick up trucks waiting for us like vultures, wanting to take us to their guesthouses. of course we read our lonely planet guide and usually stick to the place listed in there that appeals to us the most. that said, we weren't really interested in the guest house we were brought to, imaginatively dubbed "nice place". the guy was nice enough, he had us all sit down and women brought us tea and whatnot. it's like, 6 or 7 am and i don't think anyone had a great sleep on the bus.the guy goes on a rant about thailand being a country of smiles and how he doesn't appreciate rude people who just shrug him off when they're brought to his guesthouse in this way. he also boastfully claimed his trek tours were the toast of the town and we won't find treks like this anywhere else and nowhere else offers treks t pai like he does... (later we found out most places do) truthfully, his guesthouse wasn't all that bad and he had a book full of travellers praise to back up his boasts. all the same, so did other guesthouses. we opted to catch a 20 baht tuk tuk cride to bow guesthouse and it was worth it, the rooms were nice and reasonably priced, and bow herself was a cute and sweet thai girl with an excellent standard of cleanliness etc etc. the room had a TV but chiang mai channels really suck and i was lucky to catch obama giving a speech or the movie 'hook' in thai with no english subtitles. it's actually pretty entertaining to watch a movie from when you were a kid in a different language because you know what they're saying at every point in the movie anyways.

we ventured out to the night market and it was insane how it just went on and on... i purchased an interesting incense holder and refrained from spending any more money on things like boba fett made out of nuts and bolts, ninja swords, massive novelty zippo's, a bouquet of fowers that light up and so on and so forth. the next day we booked a 2 day, one night trek into a jungle and through some hill tribe villages. it sounded well enough. after booking we decided to go to this mexican place that caught landon's eye the night before. we both got vegetarian burritos and then later that night, it was all over for landon. she spent the entire night puking... repeated trips to the bathroom. in the morning i had to go downstairs and tell the guide that we needed to postpone our trek by 2 days maybe while landon recovered. we didn't really do a whole lot in between, mostly sit indoors and read while landon recovered. i ventured out and discovered a street with 3 massive book stores and bought a couple of books. when the evening before our trek came again, landon was feeling peachy and it was i who was now puking and feeling the sick. and may i also note that indian food tastes way better going in than coming out. we couldn't get another extention the next morning and would not get our money back (1800 baht each) so we were left with no choice but to do this blasted trek with me having the sick anyways.

turns out i was okay for it, we drive a bit of a way to a waterfall. it wasn't until we got there until i noticed who we were actually trekking with... (i rode in the front of the pick up wit the guides). landon made a comment that the 2 finnish guys were drinking beers the whole way in the back of the pick up (10am approx.) and that never changed the rest of the trip. aswell, we had a very quiet german couple and a loud and talkative group of dutch girls, 3 in total. the waterfall was cold! but maybe that's what woke me out of feeling like shit. i was the first, aside from our guide to actually go underneathe the waterfall and it felt like getting repeatedly slapped on the back a milllion times. i think i have some good pictures out of that,., next we went to a hot springs that was much too hot to actually get into. none of us fully submerged but the finnish guys and me waded around in it a bit. from there there was no more truck and a 4-5 hour trek was before us. uuuuup the hill, doooown the hill. or was that mountain? the 4-5 hour hike consisted of what seemed like up a mountain and down a mountain 3 times with two villages in between for relaxing and water refills and one village at the end, our days destination.i recall at one point leading the group up a mountain and looking back to see i was way ahead of everyone, so i stopped and one of the dutch girls came eventually, calling "hey you're supposed to be the sick guy, how're you so fast?".

english was the common language between us all, and the only language me and landon know. however, the other groups of people tended to go off int conversing in their own tongue so at times everyone was pretty segregated. i really didn't mind because when we did talk with the other people they were all really nice anyways and i knew no one was trying to exclude anyone on purpose. the views from the tops of the mountains were spectacular! it was also a treat because the climbing was over and we knew it was down and easy from here..... but that was not so. going dow almost sucked more. it's like walking down hills and straining against gravity as to not end up uncontrollably running and dodging, in motion, jutting rocks, hanging branches and trees and cliffs in general. all in all it was an excellent workout and probably a good thing to keep my body from knowing it was sick.

we arrived at the destination eventually and i took a nap in our hut while everyone else went to the "showers" which they found out, upon arrival, was a river. ha! after my nap we had dinner, and we were spoiled with plates and heaps of extra food to refill. i felt bad because didn't really have an appetite due to recovering sick feelings. i hope the extra food went somewhere useful. from there it was beer and campfire and 'get-to-know-your-trek-buddies' time. most people were exhausted and cheered at the news that there was no more walking the next day. the next day? elephant riding and bamboo rafting......

that will be covered next entry....

Returning to Thailand

david_s — Wed, 4 Mar 2009 20:07:00 GMT

Returning to Thailand from Cambodia was felt like leaving a compost heap and entering a pretty park with birds singing.

haha... ok, what a gross exageration.... but if you were to call them both 3rd world countries i'd be forced to tell you that you are WRONG. more appropriately, entering thailand after cambodia felt like leaving a 3rd world country and entering a 1st world country. the contrast did seem that stark indeed. buildings were neat and tidy, intact, less garbage blanketing the sides of roads and oh, the poverty! where has it gone? i had a child approach me asking me to buy something. i politely declined as i usually do, polite man that i am, and i was bracing myself for a steady decline of politeness in repeating 'no. no. no. no. NO NO NO NO!' as they pestered me. (i may be polite, but i'm certainly impatient at times.) behold! the child heard me! the child is moving on after one NO! i felt like kissing the soil.

another advantage of returning was my new take on the thai baht. where i once foolishly rounded the canadian dollar as 1/3 of 100 baht i have now taken a more realistic look at it as 1/4. 300 baht is NOT $10, either. i think i used to be more enthralled by the idea that everything was cheaper and i was ideally rounding it to more so i could gloat about how cheap it all is. the more i'm here, the more i realise that things aren't cheap and i think that's just me becoming accustomed to a way of life here.
if that makes sense...

maybe it's guilt? i went to a movie last night at the theatre... the cost of my ticket, popcorn, candy, drink AND tuk tuk ride to the theatre cost less than half of what the ticket alone would have cost in canada. but i still feel guilty spending all the money.

oh well.

returning to bangkok was something else. i knew exactly where we were by about half way through our taxi bus ride into the city, much to my amazement. we arrived on a saturday night and i don't recall ever being in bangkok on a weekend before... we walked through khaosan road to find a guest house to stay at because we just spent the day on a bunch of busses. it was neat seeing how unfazed we were by the insanity of it now after our first 2 visits to bangkok. turns out a friend we made in phnom penh was in bangkok the exact same days as we were too, en route to russia. nothing else really happened this time around, just a bit of reading and relaxing.