It’s time to leave for India and say goodbye to SE Asia. This trip seemed very different from our last visit to the region, largely because we knew what to expect and what to do. We were a lot lazier (read: more relaxed) this time, due to the fact that we had already seen most of the big attractions.

Bali seemed more or less the same as the last time we were there, though perhaps a little bit quieter. This was to be expected, since the place was bombed about a week after we left the last time. If anything, though, the sellers seem to be less aggressive than before, and much more willing to barter, which worked for me.

Bangkok was a welcome relief after China, even though I’m not so keen on the city. In our second trip, the shopping was an excellent balm for my exhaustion and anger, and regardless of how many taxi drivers tried to rip us off or how many guesthouses were completely inept, it was still easy to get around.

Laos was almost perfect. For years, people have been telling us about how great Laos is, how  laid-back and easy it is, and they weren’t lying. I left with a deep fondness for the place, and a burning desire to come back and see more (our excuse for being so lazy—leaving us things to see the next time).

Cambodia seemed really different from the last time we were there. I still hate Phnom Penh: all the streets are numbered in a bizarre fashion, so one block will be Street 156 and the next will be Street 187. It’s confusing as hell, especially since everything looks the same. The one thing we found really different from our last visit was the number of people everywhere. On our honeymoon, it was almost creepy in the city at night because it was so quiet. Not so now. There are zillions of people zipping around on motorbikes all the time, and crossing the street is a terrifying experience. Even in Kampot and Battambang, it seemed as if things were improving (or else it’s just my secret hope). And, as always, the Cambodians more than made up for the hellishness of public transport.

Malaysia, again, was a delight. Going to KL is always great, because our friends take such good care of us. It’s almost like being on a free package tour—our accommodation, food and transport was always arranged, and we got entertaining company to boot! Because we have such a good time in KL, we have a lot of the country left to see, which we will hopefully be able to do when our British friends move there. (We are all about visiting our far-flung friends in exotic places. They always know the best food to order.)

I really love SE Asia, but I’m basically crazy for any kind of travel, so I dont know how much my SE Asian adoration really means. I think this area is growing really quickly and I’m so glad we managed to get in before it really explodes (especially in Cambodia, where we seemed to have missed the massive tourist boom in Siem Reap…ha!). I’ll miss it here.

We awoke on our second morning on Don Khone, thinking we were at least mildly prepared to get down to Phnom Penh. We knew it was a long day and weren’t even sure how far we could go. We bought tickets from Mr Pan the night before, but were informed we could only go as far as Kratie, so we bought tickets to Kratie.

At breakfast, we met Roger and Nadine, a Dutch couple who was going with us to Cambodia, but were allowed to go to Phnom Penh, for some reason. At breakfast, we also met a very sassy American woman in her mid 60s who was traveling through Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia ALONE. Her husband doesn’t like to travel, so every couple years she takes a trip by herself; she’s been to SE Asia, India, Egypt, Indonesia, China and Israel all by herself. When I heard that, she became my hero in life (I can overlook the fact that she liked Mike Huckabee. Or can I?).

At 8 am, the five of us got onto a longboat (the American woman was going to a waterfall) and cruised back past all the little islands and the seagrass and the water buffalo, to the jetty. We were directed up the hill from the jetty, where about a million other Westerners were standing in a big clump. Suddenly, I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. What if Cambodian transport hadn’t improved at all in two years?

My fears were soon confirmed when three minivans pulled up and we piled 9 of us into each van (discounting the driver). We all squished in, and we soon became very closely acquainted with Roger and Nadine. They are almost done with uni, but decided to take a year off to travel the world and figure out what to do with their lives. They’ve done China and SE Asia so far, and are considering India and Nepal.

The bus bumped up and down for about a half hour down a dirt road until we reached Lao immigration. Lao immigration at the Cambodian border is a shack that looks a lot like the ones in Maine, for kids to wait for the bus in the winter. We cleared the Lao side, then walked about 500 meters down the dirt road to an identical shack on the other side of the road for Cambodia. T paid extra for us to go to Phnom Penh (we ended up paying an extra $10, just because Mr Pan was too distracted to get us the right tickets, thus, I have put out a hit on him.) And then we sat. And sat. And sat. For about three hours, we sat in an increasingly large group, just waiting around for no apparent reason.

Just when I was about to expire from dehydration, they decided it was time to go, and three minivans appeared from the other side of the border. They tried to fit everyone for Phnom Penh into one van, which clearly wasn’t happening. So then they just started throwing bags on top of buses and putting people in, regardless of where their bags were.

And so there we were again, T and I crammed into the back seat of a slightly larger minivan with an Englishman and an Aussie who kept falling asleep on T’s shoulder. We drove for an hour to Stung Treng, when we abruptly stopped and were ushered into some cafe and told to eat. Only our bus had arrived, and we were a little concerned about our bags, which were on a different van, but suddenly a Cambodian man came staggering over, carrying them and calling, “WHOSE BAGS IS THIS?” About 10 minutes later, the other two busloads of people crawled up, sweating and looking miserable. It turns out our bus just drove across the bridge, but they were all put onto a boat to cross the river, and then told to walk for about a kilometer with their bags in the blistering sun. For once, we chose right.

After an hour at the cafe, we were put onto two new, bigger buses and told we would go to Phnom Penh. There were some single seats by the window, so I claimed one for me, and the one in front for T. Unfortunately, there was an extra Cambodian driver who spent the entire ride sitting in the aisle between T and Roger and Nadine, so my planning didn’t work so well.

The exciting news was that there was a TV on this bus, so we started watching that movie with Jet Li and Aaliyah until we hit the dirt road at Kratie, when it was abruptly turned off. after the dirt road, the driver put on a whole new movie, and funnily enough, it was a Chinese one T and I saw on our flight to Beijing, about Vietnamese gangs and Hong Kong cops. We stopped for a quick break about an hour into the movie and when we got back into the van, the driver put a whole other movie on—another movie with Jet Li and Jason Statham, which we got to watch all the way through.

Apart from the movies, the most entertaining part of the whole trip was the Aussie from our first bus, who is a world champion sleeper. He somehow managed to fall asleep on the dirt road, which is a feat in and of itself, but he then managed to sleep as his head clunked against the window repeatedly. We would be watching the movie, and then CLUNK, and he would sleep right through. I think he should enter a competition or something, because I was getting a concussion just listening to him.

The least entertaining part of the ride was when we were careening down the road at about 70mph and CLUNK. No, not the Aussie’s head…a dog. T says the driver looked upset (I couldn’t see him), and I certainly was, but we kept on trucking down the road at a rapid pace and didn’t even slow down. I’m hoping the dog was completely fine (unlikely), or that he died on the spot. Poor pup.

Finally, 12 hours after we left Don Khone and 6 after leaving Kratie, we arrived in Phnom Penh. I am sorry to report that transport in Cambodia is not even remotely improved from 2005, and if you don’t believe me, just ask my crippled body.

So, after 12 hours on the bus to Pakse and an hour waiting around, we finally hit the road to Si Phan Don. It turned out that the kind-faced man was right about one thing: we arrived at Si Phan Don before noon, meaning that the entire journey from Pakse took 17 hours. I love me some public transport.

We were on the bus with three French couples and an English couple. We knew we were ultimately going to Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands), but we weren’t sure which one, because our ticket kept changing. Our original ticket said Don Khong, which was a large one in the north. We did not want Don Khong, so we were pleased when they changed it in Pakse to Don Det, without us even asking. They just collected our original tickets and handed us a new one with a new destination.

It turned out that it didn’t really matter which island we wanted to go to, because no one else had any idea where we were going either. There was one French couple in the bus who was insistent that we go to Don Khone. We passed the turnoff to Don Khong and the bus driver asked if anyone wanted to go there. Yes! Yes! The French couple wanted to go, so down the bumpy road we went, to the river. When we got to the river, they realized they wanted Don Khone (it was all a little confusing and more than a little annoying, after 12+ hours of transport). So back down the bumpy road we went, to the jetty to Don Det and Don Khone.

At the jetty, they directed a bunch of us to a wooden longboat, and we filed in. We floated slowly down the river, past small islands and large rocks, by half-submerged water buffalo and seagrass. We floated between two islands, and the boat docked at the one on the left. We all got off the boat, and the Frenchman was practically apoplectic about being at the wrong island. He was swearing and calling the driver nasty names (behind his back) until T pointed out that we were actually on the island he wanted. Dumbass.

A woman greeted us almost immediately and asked if we needed accommodation and when we said we did, she took us to a guesthouse, which was one of a series of basic cabins along the riverside. Our room was clean and simple, but just across the yard was a kicking Lao wedding going on, with some more crazy Asian pop blasting from the speakers. The lady informed us the wedding would be over at 6, and apologized profusely.

We walked down the road toward the bridge to Don Det and stopped at a toll booth that was charging $1 for foreigners who wanted to cross the bridge or walk under it. Pissed off, we decided to have lunch at the restaurant just before the toll booth, where we watched the river drift lazily past. To T’s horror, there was no Dark Beer Lao in Si Phan Don. When he recovered from the trauma, we made our way back to the room, where we both passed right out from exhaustion, even sleeping through the Lao rap next door. We woke up later, covered in sweat but just in time for the sunset. I’m not sure why, but sunsets in southern Laos and Cambodia are the most amazing I have ever seen. It looks as though the entire sky is on fire.

Just after sunset, the guesthouse turned the generator on, so we finally had electricity. We only had power from about 6 to 10 pm, and it came on and off without warning. We also had no hot water, which was kind of a shock to the system, but very useful in the heat. Because there is no universal power on the island, the restaurants are pretty basic and simple, and all offer almost identical menus. The food was okay, but nothing particularly spectacular, though it must be said that T had some lovely fried noodles on our first night, when we waited until dark and then sneaked past the toll booth, like the criminals we are.

The next day we were feeling highly ambitious, so we decided to rent bikes. I’m not sure what’s wrong with us, if were both missing chips in the brain or something, but we will never learn that it’s always a terrible idea to rent bikes. It’s almost as if we are abused spouses or something. No matter how badly the bikes beat us, we keep running back. Perhaps we should seek psychological help.

We decided to bike to the waterfall, and then bike along some of the paths on Don Khone, and maybe across the bridge to Don Det. We paid the toll at the bridge and went on our merry way. It was really hot, with a blistering sun, but we decided to go anyway, because WE LOVE BIKES! The waterfall is the biggest in the region, with various tributaries all feeding together into giant gushing falls.

Of course, it was not enough that we just look at the main waterfall…we decided to go to the beach for more adventure. We couldn’t find the beach, so we ended up climbing down over all kinds of burning hot rocks in our decrepit flipflops until we finally found it. The beach was a large stretch of sand leading down to the river, which was far too turbulent to swim in. Walking back to the main path, T directed me to the woods, where he told me we should go, based on some footprints and bike tracks. I suggested we go to the obvious path with two bikes already sitting next to it, and he said condescendingly, You have to follow the signs. Guess where the signs led us? Into the middle of the friggin’ forest where no one had ever set foot before. We tramped through the woods and the dried grasses and sticks and leaves for about 20 minutes before we found our way back to the main path. Signs, please. Thats the last time I let boy scout testosterone dissuade me from COMMON SENSE.

If only that were the end of our troubles. We stopped for some drinks to rehydrate ourselves after our rock climbing/extreme hiking experience, and on the way back to the bikes, my sandal fell apart. Still motivated to be ACTIVE!, we hopped on our bikes and took a right, down to the beach. The freshwater dolphin tours leave from the beach, but we decided to wait until late afternoon to try those, because the dolphins are around more in the morning or late afternoon.

And then we made our fatal mistake. On the way out from the beach is a sign that has the name of a village, 4km away. 4km is NOTHING! WE HAVE BIKES! WE ARE YOUNG AND STRONG! Off we went. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The road was narrow and full of rocks. It eventually led to a village, but not ours. We ended up biking through the village until we came to a point of land full of Japanese tourists on bikes, who shook their heads at us and said, No go. Back we went, taking a different road this time after the village (mostly because I couldn’t stomach the bumpy rock road). We biked through some woods, and some children ran up to us and asked for money, which was weird, because we haven’t seen much begging. We rode past them, and then we discovered why they were asking.

We were stuck. The road led to a metal bridge that had collapsed onto itself. I almost cried. So we walked our bikes down a hill, through a beach, and back up a hill. We kept riding, past two more bridges. On one, T took each bike and carefully walked across the fragile bridge, with me following (but not at the same time, lest the fragile bridge collapse under the weight of T and the thighs). At the third bridge, we walked around and were trying to lug the bikes back up a dirt hill when an angel appeared. A Dutch or Scandinavian girl, all alone, popped her face over the top of the hill, laughing and asking “Maybe not such a good idea with bikes?” She helped us get the bikes up the hill and told us it wasn’t so far to go back to town. We are both pretty sure she had a halo.

And so on we went, sweaty and dehydrated and hungry. We got to a T-junction and almost had simultaneous strokes from the stress of not knowing where to go. We kept going straight and almost cried when we reached our first village in ages. I’m pretty sure we terrified the woman in the town who owned the restaurant where we stopped. We pulled in, with matted hair and dirty faces, and choked out water. The poor woman handed us some and stepped way, way back. Rejuvenated by the water, we kept going. When we finally reached the village, I would have cried, were I not so exhausted and dehydrated. It was 4pm and we left for the waterfall before 11. Never in my life have I been so happy for a cold water shower.

I mean it this time: I am never, NEVER, renting a godforsaken bike again. Please, don’t let me do it. Punch me in the face instead–it would be less painful.

As I mentioned earlier, T and I decided to buy our bus tickets to Si Phan Don from the sweet-faced man at the travel agency next to the internet cafe, mostly because he had such a nice face, but also because he was $5 cheaper than his competitors. The kind-faced man promised us beds next to each other on the sleeper bus, a good dinner on the bus, and pickup and coffee in Pakse before the trip to Si Phan Don. It all sounded good to us.

The kind-faced man LIED. Yes, we were in beds next to each other, but the beds were actually a single bed, on the top bunk. Never in my life have I been so grateful to be married to a man as wide as a bean sprout. I thank God (and the other passengers should too) that I was traveling alone, or else I would have been crammed into a bed with some tiny unspecting Lao person, who would have been CRUSHED when we turned our first corner. The “good dinner” was another of the Lao twinkies you get on buses, and a juicebox of soy milk. Mmm, delish.

I had thought this experience would be fun….I had never been on a sleeper bus like this before, and since I can usually sleep anywhere, I figured it would be okay. HA. Hahahahaha. I was sleeping next to the window, where I nearly died of frostbite, and I spent much of the night with the bean sprout’s bony knee in my back. Every time I was about to fall asleep, the lights would come on and we would pull into a new bus station. I finally fell asleep just as we arrived in Pakse at 6am.

When we arrived in Pakse, we looked around for the minibus that was supposed to be meeting us. No minibus. T eventually called the number on the ticket, and was told we would be picked up shortly. After an hour, the bus finally arrived, just before I exploded in a fiery rage. Then, our bags were thrown atop the bus and we were carted off into town, where we sat INSIDE THE BUS, outside the office for about half an hour, roasting in the sun, as we waited for the drivers to sort ourselves out. There was no coffee. There was not even water. The only thing the kind-faced man was got right was his tutuk driver being on time, and even that was wrong–he was early!

That’s the last time I buy tickets from someone based on them looking nice. Next time I’m going to buy from the meanest-looking SOB I can find.

The first thing that happened when we returned to Vientiane was that we were stopped at a light in the back of our tuktuk and a motorbike with a tiny girl pulled up next to us. The tiny girl looked at us and shouted, “Hello sabaidee how you are? When we all smiled back at her and said hello, she frowned and yelled again, “”Hello sabaidee HOW YOU ARE?” She seemed happier with our second response, in which we said exactly the same thing as the first time. It was good to be back in Vientiane.

We stayed at the same guest house, more out of habit than anything else. As T said, better the devil you know…but this time, we got a fancy A/C room, which was much nicer than the fan room (which obviously makes sense). Given that we were used to Vientiane already, we were quite happy to settle into a little routine, which was Lotus Restaurant for sticky rice breakfast, JoMa for bagel lunch, and Khao Nieo for baguette dinner. We started right with Khao Nieo, where I had another ham and cheese baguette that was so good, it almost made me cry.

The next morning, we went to Lotus for breakfast. It should be said that Lotus has the friendliest waiters in the world, who want nothing more than to speak English with their customers. We had a different waiter than the last time, a man named Bee, whose uncle lives in San Diego (the first waiter’s sister lived there). Bee chatted away with us for ages about America and basketball and how most of the tourists are Aussie and how he can speak English and French and Italian and Japanese and Danish well, and about five more languages not very well. He was lovely and charming and I wanted him to be my best friend. Unfortunately, this time the sticky rice got the best of me and I could not finish! Tragedy!

The main reason we had come back to Vientiane was to pick up the godforsaken Indian visas, which we had been told took “Five days, or a week.” We had been gone for a week when T decided to call the number to see if they were ready. He was transferred to an Indian man who told him “No. Visas tomorrow.” When my head almost flew off at the prospect of waiting another day for visas that take five days everywhere else in the world, we decided to call back. I called and got a Lao woman who assured me that they were both ready. At this point, T’s head almost flew off because this was the second time an Indian man at the embassy had given him misinformation, and this time it could have cost us a day instead of $15. Ah, India. I am so excited to meet you.

With visas in hand, we were visibly relieved and decided to celebrate. We went to dinner at Sticky Fingers, which is an Aussie-owned restaurant full of glamorous expats. We went there for dinner our first trip to Vientiane, and I spent the entire meal whining to T, “IIIIIIII want to be a glamorous expat!” There even appears to be a glamorous expat door, accessible only if you are employed by an NGO or speak 14 languages (or more likely, just know your way around). This restaurant is good for more than just expat watching, though. They have good western food, with things like blue cheese! and cocktails! This time, we split some nachos and I ordered a Bloody Mary and T had another dark Beer Lao. It was happy hour, so of course we each had to have two, and then share a cheeseburger that might have been the best I ever had. Laos, you continue to amaze me with your Western food. On a sad note, T had his last dark Beer Lao at Sticky Fingers (though he did not know it at the time) and he is now in a corner, trembling and shaking and calling its name.

As I said, we had a little routine down in Vientiane, and one of the things we found was a cheap and fast Internet cafe, in which we could use our computer. So we went back (sometimes twice a day) to use their computers for pennies an hour. Next to the internet cafe was a hair salon, and on the other side was a travel agency. Because our laziness knows no bounds, we booked our tickets to Si Phan Don from the kind-faced man at the travel agency and I got my hair cut at the hair salon. This is how it went:

I walked in and asked if they could cut it. About ten women were in there, all staring at the TV, which was playing some kind of soap opera. Finally, one said she would do it, and she proceeded to wash my hair. For 20 minutes. Now, I don’t know if a Lao hairwash is typically 20 minutes or if she was waiting out the end of the soap opera, but it was good. She washed and washed and massaged my head and even though there was no hot water, I didn’t mind. Then, I was moved to the chair, where I received a 5-minute back massage. At this point, I am thinking this is the best haircut ever, and she hasn’t even touched my hair yet. Finally, it’s time for the haircut. Now, let me explain. First of all, my hair never recovered from China, where it either got tangled up from the pollution or from my new fleece, but either way turned into the biggest rats nest ever. It was coming out in chunks in my hands weeks later. Even so, I was still traumatized from my honeymoon haircut in KL, the mullet of doom, which took years to grow out. So I was watching her every move when I noticed they had a giant mirror in the back of the room which reflected everything she was doing. And she was not cutting a mullet–she was giving me a real haircut! After she cut away all the dead, angry Chinese hairs, it was time for the blowdry. TWO WOMEN blowdried my hair at the same time. Thats what I call service. I wanted to make out with her when she was done, but instead I tipped her $1. It was the best $4 haircut ever.

On our last day in Vientiane, we were sitting in JoMa eating bagels when I noticed a little face at the window. It was a man with Down Syndrome, and when I smiled at him, he gave me a huge smile and started waving as if we were old friends. Then, he pointed to his wrist, pointed to the left and ran away. I didn’t know what that meant, but I was happy to have seen him. When we went outside to go to the fancy supermarket next door, he was there, selling braided bracelets. In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I volunteered in junior high school and in college with people with Down Syndrome and there are few people in life I enjoy being with more. So, there was no way I was not going to buy from this man. I was not disappointed. When we approached him, he greeted me like an old friend, crying out HELLO! and grasping my hand in both of his. I don’t even think he wanted to sell me anything, but when I pointed to the bracelets, he took one and carefully tied it around my wrist, smiling at me the whole time. T was unsure about how much they cost (he had a sign that said 2000 kip, but then he had pricetags in various amounts stuck to his little stand), but when the man held out another one for T, he let him tie it on as well. We gave him 5000 kip (60 cents), which was what we were planning on giving him anyway, and he was most appreciative, telling us thank you, thank you. He was the happiest, most beautiful person I have seen in a long time and it made me happy just to be near him and sad to be leaving town.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I love Vientiane.

On the map of Laos, Vientiane and Luang Prabang don’t look that far from each other–about 300km. Wrong. They are only 300 km from each other, but the bus ride takes 9 hours. Why, you ask? Well, mostly because the road is a NZ-style curler that winds around hill after hill, meaning that the speed limit is 30 km/h. Yes, you heard me right. 20mph.

You would also assume that a Lao bus would probably be bare bones, with no exciting amenities. Wrong. Lao buses are equipped with TVs that play Thai and Lao karaoke songs for nine hours, which means that if you have no iPod, you are quite likely to go insane.

You would think that spending 9 hours on a bus going 20mph along a curly road listening to Thai karaoke would be tedious. Wrong. It was fantastic. First of all, you get a free lunch at a local restaurant (which isn’t all that delicious, but is free) and they give you a snack and some water, like on the Thai VIP buses. Second, the Lao bus drivers are not demented maniacs, a la China or Cambodia, drivers with a death wish who want to meet their maker traveling at speeds that make your blood stop. They actually go the speed limit, which in turn gives you the chance to look out the window and see the life outside.

I saw bare bottomed babies and girls riding upright on bikes and boys walking down the street with their arms around each other and old women drying palm leaves on the streets and entire families bathing in outdoor showers next to the road and lazy dogs lying in the dirt and bands of kids walking to/from school and people sitting inside darkened houses looking out and magnificent limestone cliffs and smoky valleys and curvy roads and families with four to a motorbike and school yards full of laughing children and women gossiping inside shopfronts and a handful of white tourists walking around and one overturned oil truck and one beautiful little boy with a baby strapped to his back, all alone, waving to the bus from the side of the road.

Our bus from Vientiane took about 9 hours, so we arrived in town in the late afternoon. We walked to our guesthouse with two lovely couples: Mick and Sarah, a British couple, and Mike and Sarah, an Americanadian couple. We all ended up in rooms next to each other, but after that, we didn’t see each other for ages. T and I settled in our room and went out to dinner, where we met a hilarious Kiwi couple who had arrived in Luang Prabang in the afternoon and had been drinking ever since, to recover from their trip up the river from Chiang Mai, which took three days on a boat meant for 70 Asians but held 140 Westerners, during which a dead body floated past. I would have wanted a drink too, after that.

Luang Prabang is a quiet little place that also happens to be a UNESCO Heritage Site. Apparently, this combination is quite enticing for tourists, because the place was packed with them. And not just white tourists–a fair number of Chinese and Japanese, as well. LP is full of lovely French architecture, with dozens of restaurants and bars and internet cafes meant to cater to the flocks of tourists everywhere, which made it extraordinarily easy to get around, if a little disconcerting. Even the stray dogs are well-groomed, including the golden retriever we saw who looked just like my parents’ dog Finn, who spent all day cruising around town eating scraps. As T said, that dog was living the dream!

The best news about LP was that there was a HMONG MARKET at night, which took up streets and streets. And these Hmongs sold more that just jewelry and blankets–they sold baby clothes, and duvet covers and Beer Lao t-shirts and all kinds of other potentially useful stuff. The good news is that I cemented my bargaining skills at this market when I bought a Beer Lao t-shirt. The man selling it told me its price, and instead of begging for less, I handed it back to him and walked away. As I was walking away, he offered me less, and I countered with an even lesser price, and he accepted! Take that, Grow! The bad news is that these Hmongs don’t seem to be anywhere near as sassy and hilarious as our girls in Sa Pa, which just made me sad that we didnt go there in the end, because I miss those kids, and our Facebook friendship just doesn’t cut it.

In addition to the hundreds of tourists and Hmongs, there were also a fair few monks wandering the streets. There were quite a few in the internet cafes at any give time, and at one point, I was standing in the street waiting for T, and a little one walked by and sneezed, so I blessed him. Thats right, I BLESSED A MONK. I think that makes me pretty holy. I’m going to heaven for SURE!

T and I managed to come up with a pretty great routine while we were in LP: sleep until about 10-11, then bathe and stretch (my yoga mat finally came out of the backpack), and go for breakfast. Then, wander around and check our email for a few hours, then come back to the room and watch TV for a little while, then go back out for dinner. Then come back to the room, watch some more TV, and then go to sleep. It worked like a charm.

The best thing, hands down, about LP was the bagels. Yes, you heard me right. There is bakery chain in Laos that is clearly Western-owned, called JoMa Bakery. Theres one in LP, where our tuktuk driver dropped us, and we decided to go there on our first day for breakfast. I was waffling about what to get for breakfast when T told me he was getting a bagel. I thought he was deranged–not only getting a bagel outside of NYC, but getting one in LAOS???!! At best, it would taste like concrete! Not wanting to miss out on the small chance it was good, I got one too. OH MAMA. It was so good. It was the best bagel Ive had outside of New York, and now I am totally pissed because we will have to go back to Laos to get them (bad news: Laos is far away; good news: we get to go back to Laos). And so, every morning left in LP and Vientiane, we ate bagels for breakfast. And we liked it.

On our penultimate day in LP, we decided we should stop slacking and actually see something, so we did a directed walk around town. We walked down the banks of the river and sat for ages watching the kids playing: little boys shrieking and being swept by the current, before grabbing a rock and jumping off, shrieking some more; little girls in the river carefully washing their hair, yelling at the little shrieking boys who come by, splashing the newly washed hair. It was great. Then we walked down to the tip of the city, to look at our guidebook. At this point, we were greeted by an old man with a bicycle, who told us he was poor and selling ice cream. Did we want some ice cream? When we said no, he nodded and said, “Good luck and prosperity to you in life!” Eh? We just said no and you’re wishing us good luck? Have I mentioned I LOVE LAOS?! After the ice cream man, we walked to LP’s most famous wat, which was lovely and also quite deserted, which worked for me. Unfortunately, the desertion didn’t last long, because we decided to go to Phu Si Hill.

There is a wat perched on the top of Phu Si Hill, in the middle of town. At night, it’s all lit up and is quite beautiful. Our book said the best time to hike up there was sunset, and we stupidly listened to the book. Damn you, Lonely Planet!! We forgot that other people have the Lonely Planet guide as well, and Others were everywhere, crawling all over the wat like ants, many of them elbowing people out of the way so they could get the best photo position at the front of the wat. I don’t understand what’s wrong with people like this. First of all, its a friggin’ holy site! Get a grip on yourself and have some respect! Second, why should you get the rights to the best pictures just because you are a pushy little bastard? Take your pictures and cycle through like a decent human being! At one point, there were about ten people all perched on the tip of a rock, clicking away with their cameras while about 50 other people, INCLUDING MONKS, craned to get even a view. It was at this point that I imagined a swift gust of wind coming along, making them plummet to their deaths. It was a good vision. Then I remembered that I was at a Buddhist holy site, and I should rein it in.

On our final day in town, we happened to run into Mick and Sarah at JoMa Bakery (I told you it was good–everyone goes there!). They told us they were going to the waterfall; we told them we were too, and did they want to share a tuktuk? They did! FRIENDS!! Hurrah! Mick and Sarah are a lovely couple who live in Leeds, but are planning to move to France! How glamorous! They had also just come from India and were full of useful information. They were also very charming and interesting and not 12 years old like so many of the people we meet. I loved them.

The waterfall turned out not to be a waterfall in the woods as we all imagined; it was a waterfall in the woods surrounded by shopping stalls and restaurants, with tourists everywhere. Nonetheless, it was quite an impressive spectacle. We had heard you could swim at the top, and Mick and Sarah brought their swimsuits, so we started the trek up. It was quite a scramble, but we made it, only to find no swimming pools. So we carefully stepped across the shallow pool at the top of the waterfall, trying not to fly over the edge and face certain death, and we went down the other side, where we (or the boys) could see a girl in a pink bikini swimming further down. About halfway down the hill, there was a way to climb out to the pool, and T and Mick, overcome by testosterone, quickly vanished. Sarah and I were left squinting to see them in the distance, but instead seeing the silhouettes of people who appeared to be hurling themselves off the side of the waterfall to land in a bloody heap (they weren’t). Eventually, the boys came back down and we carefully stepped our way back down the hill, only to find that at the very bottom of the waterfall, on the path we didnt take on the way in, were a number of beautiful pools that did not involve risking one’s neck to reach.

Also at the waterfall were a number of bears who had been rescued from the jungle and were lazily hanging around, and a beautiful Asian tiger named Phet, who was meandering around when we arrived, but pacing like my father by the time we left. She was really beautiful and had also been rescued as a baby. It pained me to hear one of the tourists comment that she was the same kind of tiger they just shot at the San Francisco Zoo (she wasn’t) because she was truly, truly glorious to see. And so that I don’t start crying all over our new computer about how people are stupid to kill such beautiful animals so that the remainder have to live in cages and it makes me really angry, I will stop talking about this now.

We spent our last night in town having dinner with Mick and Sarah at a pizza place we discovered few nights earlier. I can’t say enough how nice it is to meet people you like when you travel–even though it’s lovely to travel with T, it’s always exciting to have some new blood and discuss things you don’t normally discuss or discuss to death with your partner. Mick and Sarah were really interesting and smart and funny, and to prove it, I have attached their blog at right. They are traveling for a year, because they are much cooler than we are. We’re not jealous, really. (Do you believe me?)

From Nong Khai, we went to Vientiane in a minivan with a German couple. We were dropped off in the middle of town, and we walked from there to our guesthouse. The guesthouse had told us they had no fan rooms (”No. We no have.” is a response we got very used to), but sooprise! When we arrived, they had one for us. With a Western toilet. And a sink. And satellite TV. Were it not so disturbingly unsanitary, I might have hugged the toilet.

The first day, we just walked around town and went down by the river. Vientiane is possibly the sleepiest capital city I have ever seen, with only 200,000 people. It feels more like 200, which was perfect for me. Practically the first thing that happened (and we later discovered that this was a highly rare occurrence) was that a woman with a tiny little girl came over to us, begging. I DID NOT EVEN LOOK AT THEM. And they walked away! Imagine! No pulling on my clothes, calling, “madame, madame!” No jumping right in front of me, so I can’t get past! No following me down the road, making me look like a mean old bitch! They just walked away.

And then a little bit of my soul died.

After I completed my first heartless act, we decided to reward ourselves with lunch. After all, what better way to celebrate your immense wealth and prosperity by denying it to the poor and spending it on yourself? We went to a restaurant called BanLao Beer Garden, where T tried his first Beer Lao and I tried my first Lao banana shake. It was, hands down, the best banana shake I have ever had. I’m not sure what was in it, but I suspect there was just the tiniest bit of crack. And man, was it good. I also tried laap, one of Laos’ signature foods. The laap was also good, but it was overshadowed by the shake of love.

After a few hours of vaguely wandering around town, I got a pain in my back. Hooray! Time for my first massage of the trip! We went to a place called Mixay massage, where I got an hour-long oil massage for $4. It was quite possibly the best $4 I have ever spent, and when it was over, I tipped her $1. Look, I was still rich from ignoring the beggars, so I had to spend it somewhere.

After the massage, we decided to look for a place to have dinner. We cruised around town for ages, looking for a place, and then, down the street from our guesthouse, we found it: Khao Nieo. Khao Nieo is a small little restaurant across from a fancy French patisserie called Le Banneton. It had a garden outside, so we thought we’d give it a try. It was the best decision of the day, massage excluded. We made two important discoveries that night: I discovered that the baguettes in Laos are %%##*( great, and T discovered his one true love—dark Beer Lao.

Between Sydney and Vientiane, I had been so good at eating local food. With the few McDonalds excursions in China excluded, I ate local food at every meal, and I liked it. I had no desire to eat anything Western. That all changed when I tried the beautific baguettes at Khao Nieo, which were the best we tried in all of Laos. As for T, he was doing pretty well with his beer consumption. He had maybe one a day, but he wasn’t all beered up. Again, dark Beer Lao changed all that. He got completely cracked out on it, and started refusing to eat at restaurants that didn’t serve it. When dark Beer Lao was mentioned, he got a soft look in his eyes, as if he was remembering a particularly hot girlfriend, or a really big soccer match.

Unfortunately, there were some mosquitoes at Khao Nieo that night, and mossies like nothing more than feasting on my ankles, so on the way home, we decided to buy some Tiger Balm. We were most surprised when, instead of the jar of Tiger Balm, the woman gave us a tiny tin about as big as my thumbnail. When we got it home, we found that it was White Monkey Holding Peach balm, which is just about the greatest name for a mosquito bite remedy ever. It also works very well, and I ended up buying another tiny tin and a larger one, just in case. Who knew monkeys holding peaches made such a fantastic cure? I plan to make my millions by importing it into America, where it will clearly become much more popular than stinky old bag balm.

The next great discovery we made in Vientiane was at Lotus Restaurant (and yes, pretty much all we did in Vientiane was walk around and eat, so get over it). Lotus Restaurant was about 150 paces from our guesthouse, and when we first passed it, T noticed they served sticky rice with mango for breakfast. SOLD. I had sticky rice with mango for the first time on our honeymoon, at the end of our time in Thailand (in a post that I never got around to writing, but maybe one day, I will). I was like T with the dark Beer Lao. I wanted to get me some more sticky rice with mango, and I NEVER DID. It was a TRAGEDY. And so, when I saw it in Vientiane, I had to have it. And I did. And it was sweeter than a hundred golden retriever puppies, but I ate every last bit. And I loved it.

One of our goals in Vientiane was to get our Indian visas, which had eluded us in Australia, New Zealand, Bali and China. We didn’t want to have to wait for five days in Bangkok, so we planned to get them either in Laos or Cambodia, where we could take off while they were being completed, and then pick them up after a trip somewhere else. So we got a tuk tuk to the Indian embassy, for $8 return, which seemed a little spendy, but T didn’t want to haggle so early in the morning (it was 8.30am). We got to the embassy and went to apply for the visas. They take five days. Fine. You need two photos. Fine. You have to pay in USD. Not fine. T had called the day before and spoken to an Indian fellow who told him they take baht. I imagine that man got off the phone and rolled around on the floor, laughing his ass off at the funny trick he played on us. So, we ended up having to go back into town to change some dollars, so we could go back to the embassy so we could get the godforsaken visas. In the end, the tuk tuk cost $15, which is approximately the same amount as a bus to Luang Prabang.

Our final goal in Vientiane was to send some stuff home to America, so T had some more room in his bag and could stop his incessant moaning about how full it was, so we could avoid divorce. Here’s how the post office works in a communist country:

1. Bring your package to a table where a woman weighs it.
2. Move it along the table so a woman can fashion a box and have you fill out a customs form.
3. Pay the woman for the box.
4. Take the box to the man at customs, who makes a check mark on it, takes your customs form and asks you for some more money, for an undisclosed reason.
5. Take the box to window number 5, so the woman can send it for you. Take your little parcels to window number 7, because the woman at window number 5 doesnt do small packages.
6. Marvel at the fact that five people are employed to do the work of one person, yet thank God that its not Vietnam, where they just take your stuff and wrap it in paper and it arrives (barely), all torn to shreds.

From Nong Khai, it’s across the river to Laos. We’ll be in Laos for about 10 days, I guess. We decided to go because we missed it last time and everyone we met who had been there loved it. Said it was the greatest place ever. Never wanted to leave. And so on and so forth.

I don’t know a whole lot about Laos, but I’m told it’s much more relaxed than Vietnam. I found northern Vietnam pretty relaxed and was crazy about it, so Laos sounds good to me.

I think we’ll go to Vientiane, then Luang Prabang, then maybe up to the mountains if we have time, then back to Vientiane, down to Pakse, to the Four Thousand Islands, and then into Cambodia.

It’s a highly ambitious itinerary. By the time we leave, I think I will never want to see another bus again. With any luck, they will be slightly larger than the local Thai buses, and I can fit both thighs on a seat.