wow! laos... and other things.

so it has been quite a while since we last spoke. seems a whole hell of a lot has managed to happen since then.

last i left you i was trekking through the rainforest in chiang mai and riding on an elephant that kept sneezing boat loads of elephant snot all over me. fun.. absolutely not.

so the plan from chiang mai was quite simple: cross the border in to laos (it is supposed to be pronounced so that is ryhmes with the english word "cow." the "s" at the end of laos is silent. when the french named the area it was a mistake to have the "s" at the end in the spelling) start our second leg of the southeast-asia journey. ahhh, it couldnt have possibly been that easy.

see, when you cross the border from thailand in to laos at chang khong, you either take a speed boat (duration 6 hours) or a slow boat (duration 2 days) along the mekhong river (10th longest river in the world, mind you) in to laos. now, everyone told us that the choice between the two methods of border crossing was an interesting decision. according to one fellow traveller, "it was 2 days of suffering on the slow boat or 6 hours of hell on the speed boat."

welp.. we opted for a quick and painful experience on the speed boat. and painful really isnt the best word to describe the whole thing. see, i say speed boat and you think of water skiing sunday afternoons on the lake. well, our little boat couldnt have been any further from that rosy image. there were 6 of us, alogn with all of our luggage crammed in to this "speed boat" that was smaller than an american canoe. we each had about a 1.5 foot by 1.5 foot square to sit in. it was pretty well understood at that point that it was proper to sit on your butt with your knees folded upwards so that your arms and chin could rest on them. dear god, my ass was asleep and my entire lower body was cramped up after 21.5 minutes on the damn thing. 6 hours was looking like.. well.... hell. funny how that works. as we "sped" along, you couldnt even hear yourself speak becasue the engine was so incredibly loud.. haha ear plugs were necessary.

one of the older guys in the boat with us from korea was taking pictures and video while we were cruising along. i honestly wanted to rip his camera out of his hands and toss it in the river as he tried to get some sort of reaction out of me when he put the camera in my face. i jut sat there and shook my head. i am reasonably sure i didnt smile.

we did in fact make it though.. i unfolded my body out of that little "speed boat." i couldnt hear a thing when i took my ear plugs out. there was a nice ringing sound in my ear though. i looked out at what was laos. it wasnt very pretty at that moment given my bit of frustration, but i was sound as a pound knowing that i could get out of the water.

we grabbed a guesthouse in luang prebang which was the city in laos that we were now in and had crossed the border to get to. at first glance, the people looked similar. no real distinctive features that made those from laos look different from thai people. the layout of the city was similar to smaller thai cities like chiang mai: you had convenience stores all around, occasional tourist agencies looking to book you on a jungle adventure, stretches of endless markets that had everything and anything you could imagine.

the culture seemed even more laid back than thailand-- you no longer experienced a lot of the haggling (for example, people trying to get you to come in to their store in thailand) or begging. the overall aura was just very mellow. restaurants would have areas to lay down and eat your meal on cushions as opposed to chairs. TV's were always playing movies to enjoy while you ate. it was kind of funny really. i even managed to fall asleep one night in a restaurant. when we would order a meal in laos, you honeslty could have just walked out after you were done and not paid. it was just that chilled. we obviously did not, but i am trying to illustrate the scene here.

see now, laos was colonized by the french and so you see a lot of that french influence in the food and such. the best influence was the abundance of baguettes and sandwiches that were quite common cuisine among both locals and tourists. taking a bite of that first giant baguette with cheese on it was a pretty awesome feeling. you really never saw ANYTHING like that in thailand. so that was different and very nice.

60% of laos prior to being settled was natural hilly forest and jungle. so naturally as you traverse the landscape you really see a lot of cool foothills, mountain'esque areas and just miles and miles of green lush landscape. this was really cool to see and was experienced at its best on the bus ride from luang prebang to vangving. that little journey of about 6 hours had bryan and i looking out the window at some pretty stunning sights. at some points though, i really wondered if the bus we were in was going to make it up the mountainous terrain.

ok-- so i had been in laos for a few days and all of the sudden gail (my girlfriend at home) emails me mentioning the possibility of coming out to visit in bangkok. holy crap! if she were to come, she would arrive in about 4 days time... hows that for some change of pace!?

so meet gail: she's a cool girl. shes real cool in fact. its kind of funny how the whole thing has evolved between the two of us. we have known each other at MSU through mutual friends for a few years now but kind of started dating just a little bit before i left for the trip. funny how that works isnt it? its like some of the best things happen to you when you are absolutely least expecting them. while most students are buttoning up their college careers and looking at moving to the next step, i JUST begin to start things with gail. but i wouldnt change a thing.


so, naturally.. the thought of her coming is firing me up. and in true "gail fashion" she ends up purchasing the flight to bangkok 3 days before her departure date. haha it still makes me laugh.

i was like speedy gonzales at that point to get back to bangkok in time for her arrival on 28 february. i hopped on a bus from vangving, laos to ventiane, laos (4 hours) and then a bus from ventiane to bangkok (15 hours). the transport was much smoother than i had expected due to the aid of a sleeping pill (from my mother, thank you. no pills from strangers mrs. sack). at about 5 am on 28 february i arrived in bangkok and i was excited as can be (and still adjusting to) knowing i was seeing gail later.

WOW! i tried to throw together some arrangements for gail and i that day and managed to get some transport for us to koh chang which is an island in thailand near the border of cambodia.

i waited at the airport for gail. i was pretty excited, but still almost in disbelief that she was actually going to pop through that arrivals gate at any moment. she came through and the first words out of her mouth werent "so nice to see you" or other pleasant varieties but rather "get me some orange juice, i feel like im gonna pass out." haha welcome to thailand G! just kidding though, she has been having some boughts with vertigo so the dizziness had kind of taken a hold of her and so she needed a little sugar. so we managed to take care of that.

approximately 16 hours later we had managed to hop on another plane and make it to koh chang. haha there would be no messing around with slow paced travelling while she was here. i really wanted to try and get as much time on the island while she was here for 8 days. we checked in to (gasp) the treehouse lodge at the reccomendation of a dutch girl that i had met in my travels.

given my indiana jones adventurous side we got settled in this little bungalow (i would much rather have called it a hut.. a stupid straw hut for that matter) and given the fact that we were just happy to be hanging out together-- gail and i were happy at the moment with things. its funny how i very frequently tend to get a little too adventurous at times and find myself in quite a compromising situation. for some reason though i always have rosy images of extreme rustic living that just never manages to work out.. ohh i laugh about it now.

so the heat was really hard to bear in the damn hut. it was 100 frickin' degrees outside and there was no fan in the hut so i was just baking in the thing. there were bugs crawling all over, it was muggy. i thought it was disastrous. maybe i was over reacting? haha there was no way i was going to be able to sleep in this thing so i opted for the hammock outside. that was somewhat bearable, but as i laid there i made a decision in my head that there would be no more treehouse lodging in my future.

one air-conditioned room later, we had a new place that was much cooler (in every sense of the word). now i think we were both in good spirits to do some exploring of the island.

now, the cool part of koh chang was that it used to be one giant national park with very little people inhabiting its territory. there were occasional divers that explored the areas surrounding it, but tourism was non-existent. given the location of the island and its attractive scenes, the government in thailand decided to begin funding development of the place to encourage tourism. so naturally, it has very few tourists, no crowds, no lady boys or hookers trying to solicit you and most of all some very very beautiful beaches and scenery. excellent.

we rented a motorbike for the week and very frequently found ourselves putsing around on that thing looking around the whole island. we in fact did make it around the entire thing which was pretty cool. some cool finds: a mexican restaurant that made fantastic burritos, a sweet view of white sands beach from on top of a giant mountain/hill, some pretty unique sunsets, a neat pier that stretched quite far in to the gulf of thailand, some elephants that would eat all the food you gave them and then say thank you by screaching with their snout (very funny) and a really cool little restaurant with this little 12 year old kid that helped out in the kitchen (in the picture with gail and i) that was perhaps the happiest little dude i have met in a while.

gail made an excellent point early on in the trip that it felt like we were experiencing the island before all the resorts and tourism grabbed a hold of it. so that was really great and proved to make koh chang my favorite place in thailand.

we managed to rack in some solid beach time, and did a lot of time at a local cafe where i am reasonably sure i drank more coffee in 1 week than i believe i ever have. what can i say, the conversation was good!

ok, i was real happy to have gail around.

i am back in bangkok now, gail is on her way home to the USA, and bryan and i meet up again later today after he was in vietnam and cambodia. i feel like the time away from bryan was not so bad after all. both of us are real fired up to get in to it again so that is a great thing. no doubt about it, i sure will miss my new travelling buddy in gail, but more adventure awaits i suppose.

bryan and i leave southeast asia for hong kong and china on friday 10 march. from there we will be meeting a good friend of mine named omri. he is from manhattan, and i know him from the time we spent living together in australia. the fresh new perspectives and adventure he will bring certaily will create some more variety and thoughts that i look forward to.

this has just been a monster of an update, but i think we are all caught up now. i will try and be more timely with my updates in the future.