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!