After coming to terms with the fact that pushing that truck through the floods was the closest we were going to come to tubing, we had some delish Korean style BBQ for dinner and headed to Q Bar which was grotesquely packed with a bunch of 19 year old British kids bemoaning the lack of tubing and making up for it by pounding bottles of what I believe is Lao moonshine and unabashedly hitting on our young English friends. After a particularly grabby clueless aggressor didn't pick up on us boxing him out of our circle, I pulled my usual "get away from Kelly" and started dancing quite unattractively in between him and our friend until he wandered off to latch onto his next victim.
In the very rainy next morning we headed down to the river to see what all the hullabaloo was about and how about that the normally lazy river had turned itself into an absolute beast. The mid-river island that housed bars and hotels was about 5 feet underwater, the river itself was tearing ass at a pace I cannot even describe, and the water was up to the treetops along the flooded banks. The last remaining bamboo bridge to the island looked like it was on it's last legs and wouldn't be there much longer. Yeah, probably a good idea to cancel tubing.
In the very rainy next morning we headed down to the river to see what all the hullabaloo was about and how about that the normally lazy river had turned itself into an absolute beast. The mid-river island that housed bars and hotels was about 5 feet underwater, the river itself was tearing ass at a pace I cannot even describe, and the water was up to the treetops along the flooded banks. The last remaining bamboo bridge to the island looked like it was on it's last legs and wouldn't be there much longer. Yeah, probably a good idea to cancel tubing.
Around noon I came down with ye olde "I was sitting in the back of a flatbed truck in the rain for 3 hours and now have a fever, chills, headache, stomachache, and general malaise." With total disregard for creating an antibiotic resistant super bug I popped a couple azithromycen and 800mg of ibuprofen and settled in for a 4 hour nap while the heavens continued to unload themselves outside.
When I awoke I was feeling quite improved, and went to the front of the hotel to meet up with our new friends, who had met a couple more American new friends spending a year traveling for a year. Sadly they had come bearing so sad news - an 18 year old British kid traveling by himself had jumped into the ridiculously fast moving flooded river off the only bridge still standing while off his head from some combination of mushrooms and pot that had maybe been laced with meth. At the time of our departure the next day he hadn't been seen and was presumed dead by local authorities. No, they don't have the infrastructure to do search and rescue missions in
We then had a lovely group dinner at a falafel joint where I discovered Dark Beerlao, in a circumstance not unlike the one in which I discovered Speight's Old Dark (hi Kelly and Sheila!).
Following dinner the boys and I barhopped, discovering "the original Red Bull" (um, Red Bull isn't actually supposed to be red, Jai Dee) and totally crashed Frank in some sort of backwards pushup, before our friend Paul bested him in legs up pushups. Guess that's where CrossFit gets you...? (sorry, Frank)
The next morning we set off on a beautiful yet harrowing minibus journey to Luang Prabang in spite of Frank's hangover.
The trip proved to be yet another sobering reminder to Frank that he should have sprung for the travel insurance. As one British girl in our minibus put it, "this driver doesn't give a shit." Rain, cows, fog, landslides (I've never seen anything like them), dogs, women and children, other cars, buses coming at us... None of these factors had any impact whatsoever on the speed with which he careened through the treacherous, 1.5 lane, guardrail-less mountain roads. On yeah, and he took a lot of important phone calls throughout our 9.5 hour drive.
Only thing that stopped us was the performance of other vehicles in the mudslides: At one point a large dilapidated coach directly ahead of us lost traction in the mud and began to slide uncontrollably toward the road edge (read: treacherous cliff) whenever the driver accelerated. Naturally, they kept everyone on the coach until it was about 5 feet from falling off the cliff. For the record, it's a really terrible feeling thinking you're going to watch a bus of 50 people die right in front of you.
Thankfully they eventually unloaded the coach and we jumped out of our minibus in case it slid downhill and knocked us off the road with it.
Our driver, totes pissed at us, maneuvered around the stranded coach and took us to some of the most awesome street food at the top of this ridic mountain.
Eventually we made it to Luang Prabang after several more mudslide incidents (these more annoying than harrowing) and sought out a hotel. Emma – on our search I spotted this beauty…note the phrasing:
The next day, Frank and I attempted a walking tour of LP, but were swiftly brought down by the onset of stomach pains, so we retired to our hotel essentially for the rest of the evening. For the most part, Luang Prabang was characterized by Frank and I feeling like hell and torrential downpours, although we managed a tuktuk trip with some folks we met on the street to national park with a bear exhibit and a waterfall which was supposed to have sparkling blue pools great for swimming. Due to the heavy rains, the waterfall had turned into an absolute deluge, and all the paths and pools had become a part of the raging river.
(Which one is best, Kelly?)
After a stop back at LP, our tuktuk driver kindly scammed us out of the second half of our day trip ("no no you just pay waterfall not waterfall and caves") and in spite of a quick group trip to the travel police ("no no you must not have been clear you wanted to go to both, it doesn't matter he started by asking which one you wanted to see first") we resigned to a lovely riverfront expat bar aptly named Utopia. There I met a lovely couple from NYC and got to chill a little more with Dutch Annemarie (Emma she lives in Frisia!) who had shared our minibus with us.
The next day Frank and I headed off to Chiang Mai via plane, running into a very nice older Belgian couple we had bumped into no fewer than 3 times. This trip has been funny like that, with us spotting the same people in the most random places. At the airport we watched the immigration officials hammer out games of spider solitaire while stamping exit visas, although the ones in charge of entrance visas in Pakse didn't even have computers if that gives you a sense of the intensity of Lao border control. Also, Lao Airline's entire fleet is twin props.
Sara!
ReplyDeleteThis blog is pretty much better than sex.. I went to cambodia a couple summers ago and can kinda relate (minus the floods but definitely to the bus driver and tok tok!). Keep it up, and don't get too brave with the street vendors.. I got cocky and ended up having to go home early I lost like 20 pounds in a week!
-Jes Tamminga