why doesn't this taste better?

DRAGON FRUIT
It looks like it should be in a video game. Like Yoshi would pop it out or eat it or something.

And it comes in two colors, too! White and pink. When you make a fruit shake with the deep pink/purple ones, it looks really lovely.


HOWEVER. They don't taste like much. They are like a weaksauce kiwi with crunches. Kinda like eating solid water. It makes me sad every time, because they look so cool. Sigh.

Imogen's going away party was on Monday night. She left Chiang Mai for good on Wednesday. So sad! She'd been here since January though, so she was ready to go back home.

We started at Small House (my new fav place) where there were a few games of jenga. I lost one game =(.

Then we moved to Monkey Club. Thais don't really dance - they have dance floors with all these tall tables, and you kinda stand around your table and bob up and down. Not farangs, though. We draw attention by dancing however we like. Don't ask me what I'm doing in the picture below, though. This is probably why I shouldn't dance.


My hair looks crazy but I can't help it. I wear it up all day because it's too humid and then at night I look like a mess. So it goes.

So now Jessica is gone (a friend I had back in June) and Imogen is gone and the number of people here that I know well is dwindling! Of course, I'm leaving in 8 days so I'll soon be among those leaving Chiang Mai behind. I can't wait for Mexican food, my pool, family, friends, big BBQ/crawfish boil, giving everyone their gifts, Voxtrot, an astros game, maybe getting up to Austin, etc.

And then it will be back to the grind. We got an email yesterday from our classmates about the exam schedule for next year. Ugh. Who's thinking about that right now? Disgusting.

Laos entries w/photos!

I'm backdating the Laos entries to the days they actually occurred, so if you want to see my pictures, look at the entries on July 23-36. The pictures came out really well!

PS - all the Laos entries are finally up! Hooray! Also, if you click on the pictures, it lets you see a bigger version, which is nice.

two loves

1) I got a new phone. It cost about 21 dollars US and I couldn't be happier. It's an old nokia - I think it's the exact model I had in early high school - and it's amazing! Easy to text on, tons of free ringtones and games, some sort of strange GPS system that knows where I am in Thailand (right now it's saying I'm at the Fine Arts Center at Chiang Mai University, which is true)...I've always preferred stick phones anyway. Flip phones are just too fancy. I really want to take this phone home with me and go retro.

2) We went to a bar last night called Small House for Imogen's going away party. It's just two streets away from where I live, which is always nice because I can walk instead of drive, and it has board games and movie nights and plays American & British indie music! I'm in love. This is the place I would become a regular at if I were staying here. Too bad I'm leaving in just two weeks. Sigh.

back from Laos!

This trip was all traveling. We spent three days to get to Luang Prabang...spent one night there...and took an hour long flight back to Chiang Mai. An hour by air, compared to three days by land and river. Surreal.

It was like a mini-backpacking experience.

Did we meet many Lao people? No.
Did we eat any Lao food? We tried, but not really...no.
(We did have delicious Indian food twice, though. This is really weird, because I haven't had Indian food once in Chiang Mai, though I'm sure it's available somewhere.)
Did we stay in one place for more than 12 hours? No.

Basically, we were following the route that most backpackers take to get from Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos, so we were with tons of foreigners (farang, in Thailand, falang, in Laos) and we really only had the opportunity to hang out with foreigners. The few Lao that the slow boat picked up along our route were from tiny villages and spoke no English.

Interestingly, I may have been one of the only Americans on the slow boat. Imogen and I spent a lot of time talking about why Americans don't seem to do the classic backpacking experience as much. There are a lot of young Americans working in Chiang Mai, but there were few, if any, with us on this journey. I think it's a combination of things: the "gap year" between high school/college or college/working still isn't standard in the US, and few kids would be able to come up with the money for a long trip, even if it was backpacker-cheap. I've certainly never had the time or the money to spend 3 months or more traveling - last year Tami and I were here for two and a half short weeks.

Anyhow, we met tons of people and had loads of fun. And the slow boat itself? It was insane. I can't wait until I have the pictures so I can do a day-by-day update. Imogen lent me her smaller digital camera (she has one of those huge fancy ones as well) so I was able to take my own pictures!

Tonight I'm going to do some shopping at the Sunday night market (and get a massage, and eat delicious street food). It's time to get serious about gifts for people back home!

last half day in Laos

In the morning Imogen and I woke up around 8 and went to find breakfast. We found some lovely raisin toast and fruit salad. The toast came with mixed tropical fruit jam and Lao honey. The honey was sooooo good.

Then we decided to go find Phu Si, a temple on the top of a hill in the center of town. Somehow, we had missed it the day before. It was quite a hike up! After about 100 stairs we saw a sign saying that there were more than a hundred more stairs to the top. Whew! But we made it, and I'm glad, because the views of the city were spectacular!



You can see the airport runway in this one!


They had a buddha for every day of the week. I forget which day this one was for!

We had to rush down the hill to get back to our guesthouse to meet the tuk tuk driver at 11:30 and pay for our room. The tuk tuk driver was actually early (!) but we first ran upstairs to get Trish and Dana's contact info. Then we hopped on the tuk tuk and went to the airport! It was probably the smallest airport I've ever been to. Still, they had some food - smile burger!


You just walk out to your plane and climb the steps to get on! (I'm over there on the right.)


Even though the flight was only an hour long, they served us lunch. It was good, too - hand-made and -wrapped. Little ham sandwiches, pieces of white dragonfruit, and a small cake. By 2:30pm, we were back in Chiang Mai. Craziness!

arrival in Luang Prabang

The next day was another long day of boating, though it passed much more quickly than the first day. We woke up at 8am to grab breakfast before getting back on the boat at 9:30, but Dayna and Trish came knocking on our door to tell us they'd seen all the other backpackers already heading down to the boat! Sneaky people trying to get better seats! So we had our guesthouse lady pack up our breakfasts and carried those along with our lunches to the boat so that we wouldn't get stuck in the worst seats.

When we got to the boat, we were worried - it looked like all the good seats on the boat had been taken. I ran to the back and found two benches - enough space, anyway, even if it was cramped - but then I looked behind me and didn't see my friends. They had seen that another boat was letting people on. Apparently this time they were going to split us into two groups and take us on two smaller boats! So we were among the first to get on the second boat. We were about to take the benches in the front when I scanned the back of the boat and saw four cushy car seats! They had taken old car seats and bolted them into the boat. We ran to the back and secured them. It was soooo much nicer to sit in these than on the benches! We didn't even really need our cushions. The only downside was that it's louder at the back of the boat because of the engine, but the comfort was worth the noise.

Dayna's on the floor, but you can see our sweet seats at the bottom of the picture.


The boat actually left on time - at 9:30 - and I think I slept until noon. Haha! At some point Imogen and I went to the front of the boat and took some pictures.

Another boat we saw making the journey. It had an entire house in the back!

Imogen sitting on the deck in the front of the boat.

Imogen took this picture of me.


How people made themselves comfortable no matter where they were sitting:

Happily, we arrived at Luang Prabang around 4:30pm! We thought we wouldn't get there until much later. We found a guesthouse, ate crepes with chocolate and fruit (mmmm) and drank mango shakes, and then set off on foot to explore some of the temples of the city.






Luang Prabang is very beautiful. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site and it's clear that UNESCO pays for some of the upkeep of the town. Laos is a very poor country, so Imogen was surprised that there weren't as many street stalls and beggars as one might expect. She did get hounded by little kids trying to sell her trinkets, though.

That little boy there in the foreground got VERY angry with her when she did not buy from him and bought from his friends (who were there first!) instead. GO AWAY! he said. "Go back to England! You are not pretty!" So bitter for such a youngun!

After seeing the temples we headed for the night market and the food market. The food market was a huge disappointment. I was hoping to get some real Lao food at last, but it seemed like this food street was set up solely to cater to tourists. Imogen did get a barbequed bird, though. We tried, but we couldn't eat it.

The night market was a huge success, though. They had things I hadn't seen in Thailand, so I ended up buying more than I had planned! (I had planned to buy...nothing?)



We were exhausted after our long day, but then we met an American guy from Los Angeles, Eddie, who found out that it was our last night in Laos so he said he'd buy us our drinks if we went out. Who can say no to that? We went to this extremely trendy bar called Hive. Not a Lao in sight, but it was a cool place. There were tables on fire and everything. I tried Lao rice whisky, which is really gross. It actually leaves a rice taste in your mouth.

Flaming table!


The bar still closed pretty early, though - I think it was midnight. Imogen and I went back to the guesthouse to sleep, while everyone else went to some bar/bowling alley?? Apparently this bowling alley is the only place open past 12 in Luang Prabang. I didn't really want to pay for a tuk tuk all the way there and back, though. At 3:15 in the morning Imogen and I woke up to the sounds of our friends yelling and having a grand time at the tables on the porch of our guesthouse. We were highly annoyed and going to go out there and say something, but eventually everyone dispersed and the night was peaceful again.

We had a flight to catch at noon the next day and wanted to wake up early to see a little more of the town before we left!

slow boating

What our slow boat looked like:


The lady that runs our guesthouse insisted that we be ready to go to the boat at 9:30am...even though we'd heard several rumors that the boat would not actually leave until 11:30. We didn't have much choice but to follow her directions, so we showed up at 9:30 and were on the boat by 9:45. We had seen pictures of the boat and were not impressed - let's just say we weren't expecting much in the way of comfort - so we had bought cushions and hats the day before. We even had lunches packed because there was supposedly no food on the boat.

We get there and we're like, hey, not so bad. We're early, and everyone seems to have their own little bench. Nice!

Before:




But people kept appearing. And appearing and appearing and appearing. Imogen and I were now sharing a seat. Everyone was now sharing the benches. People started to sit on the floor - in the front of the boat, in the back, and in the aisles. There were no less than 120 people on this boat. It was craziness. Somebody we met later in Laos said it was like a "refugee boat of foreigners." Haha.

After:

The boat actually did not leave until 1pm - we sat on it for 3+ hours just waiting to leave and THEN it was a 6 hour journey.So, as you might imagine, you quickly make friends with your neighbors. To pass the time, people played cards, chatted, read, slept in pretty hilarious positions, and stared out at the beautiful scenery slowly floating by. Drinks were available, including beer, but luckily nobody got rowdy on the boat.





The last picture was taken with Imogen's super nice camera. Lovely, hm?

We finally pulled into Pak Beng around 7pm. There was a mad dash for guesthouses, as you might imagine, with 120 people just suddenly arriving out of nowhere. Pak Beng is the standard stop on this boating trip, though, so they have enough accomodation. We found a nice, clean room with hot water for 6$ each and threw our stuff down so that we could go find a nice dinner. Guess what we ate this time? ...Indian food! So strange. But still good.

It was the slowest restaurant in the history of restaurants, though, so we didn't finish until 9:50pm and had to make a mad dash back to our guesthouse because the electricity was shut off throughout the town at 10pm. I had just enough time to take out my contacts before the lights went out. It was pretty early to sleep, so we visited for a bit by the light of a flashlight (or torch, as Imogen would say) before hitting the sack.

first day of Lao trip - Huay Xui

On Thursday morning Imogen and I caught the 6:30am bus to Chong Khong, a border city in Thailand. The bus took 7 hours and arrived around 1pm. There's no reason it should have taken 7 hours - Chiang Mai isn't that far away from the border - but it's a hilly drive and the old buses usually have to struggle up the steep grades very, very slowly. Sometimes it's an adventure to see if you'll make it up the hill. I felt like we were on the little bus that almost-could-not.

After we got to Chong Khong, we took a ferry across the Mekong River to Huay Xui, the border town in Laos.


We had to get little passport photos taken so that we could get a Lao visa.


The visa was US 35$ - expensive! Oh well. Then we decided to find lunch because we were starving. The green bus did not feed us cookies all day the way the bus to Mae Sai had two weeks earlier. So, lunch!



Both Chong Khong and Huay Xui are little border towns that wouldn't really exist if not as entry/exit points out of the country, so they are small and tend to cater to tourists. For example: I had a ham/cheese/garlic/tomato baguette for lunch. Not typical Lao cuisine by any stretch of the imagination.

After lunch we decided to explore what little city there was...

A view of Huay Xui from the river


The all-important gaming center in town


Jungle meets city


This ice cream flavor was called "happy summer." It tasted like....cotton candy, or banana taffy. I didn't really like it but I ate it anyway.

Finally we decided to go visit the temple. It was beautiful, as most temples in southeast Asia are. When we got to the top, we were surrounded by a bunch of Lao boys. At first I was anticipating that they were going to try to sell us something, but it turned out that they just wanted to practice speaking English! It was pretty cute. You can tell they learn very formulaic-ly, though, from books, because they can ask many questions, and understand your answers, but when you ask a question they don't know it throws them for a loop. Just for me to ask "What city are you from?" was really difficult. Miming may have been involved.

The view from below...so many temples are built on top of hills. Always takes some effort to get up!
I thought this was funny.


So pretty!




After our explorations, we returned to our cute little guesthouse, booked our tickets for the slow boat for the next day, and took a short nap. Well, I napped, anyway. When I woke up it was time for dinner, so we decided to go to a little Indian food place our guidebook recommended. It was so good! I hadn't yet had Indian food over here, but it became a theme of my Laos trip, as you'll see later.

Dinner was great, and we were tired, so we decided to forgo drinking and just have a coffee. We walked into town to try to find some people and lo and behold, we found people.

As you can probably tell, we ended up having a beer and then some. The Dutch guys were celebrating "surviving" their 3-day Gibbon experience, a trekking/ziplining/gibbon watching adventure where you sleep in treehouses 40m up from the ground, so they were getting a bit happy. Dayna and Trish, on the left, ended up becoming our traveling buddies for the next few days after our bonding experience on this night.

Everything closes really early in Laos, so this is all happening around 10pm. The little restaurant cleared the tables to the side so that we could dance. So we tried to dance to music that's just not meant for dancing (the Cranberries??) and generally had a great time.





By 11:30 they clearly wanted us out, so we left to go get some sleep before our slow boating adventure began on Friday!