Such a Wondrous Place, Let's Get Pissed Here

As we walked down the stairs of the guesthouse after our first night on the bed we'd named 'Steven Seagal' - it looked nice, soft and squidgy but in fact was a horrible, hard bastard - we collided into Edward and Nicola, fresh from two days elephanteering.

After a quick catch up we went into a whirlwind of activity, including visiting some super-wicked Wats and going to a big waterfall which we jumped off. It was here that our batteries ran out on our camera, but luckily a strange German lady was taking photos of Ed and I, so hopefully I can put up some good action shots from that particular day out. 

The only problem is I have to open correspondence with her, and I think she may be slightly odd. In a brain-mental way.

We also went to the night market and ate some of the greatest fish and meats ever in the world, or at least it seemed that way as Helen and I hadn't eaten for a good few days.

It was here that we witnessed what was in fact our second experience of dogs having sex, twisting around so they are literally facing the opposite way from each other and getting stuck. Amusing at first, then off-putting and finally downright distressing. Hopefully they've untangled by now though.

Ed and I bought a ball for about a pound, it had all of the roundness and slightly less of the kickablilty of an egg but it kept us happy for a good while.

We made plans to move on from Luang Prabang and head to Vang Vieng, home of some stunning scenery, vast green plateaus and hundreds of tourists getting drunk on the inner tubes of tractor tyres.

Our trip there was relatively straightforward, compared at least to our last bus journey. The only difficulty was that the minibus driver refused to turn on the Air Conditioning in a vehicle that was acting like a convection oven. 

Nicky put on her reasonably threatening tenor voice though, and for about ten minutes every half hour we had a bit of freshish air.

Other than the heat, the journey was really good. Scenic, a bit rough and therefore exciting and I had my first experience of the Adam and Joe podcasts, which I have since been quoting ad nauseum, much to Helen's, and eventually even Nicky and Ed's, disdain.

Inevitably, on reaching Vang Vieng, we slowly slipped into a bit of a beer mentality.

We soon shrugged off the 'Are we doing the ethical thing?' bit and slipped more into the 18-30's mindset of places such as 'Bucket Bar' (where Helen found another kitten to rescue and nurse back to health over the four days we were there) and a Swiss bakery.

We took on these luxuries with aplomb, and soon found ourselves floating down the astoundingly beautiful Mekong River, pissed and stoned listening to shit early nineties dance music being blasted out of the makeshift bars that the enterprising Laos people had set up for stupid ignorant people like ourselves.

But it was fun, so I don't care what you think. I don't owe you anything. In fact, Jon, you owe me thirty quid.

That day was full of small stories, none of which matter.

A few to note where that we made friends with countless small children, a fat man called Mr Lao Lao (or Mr Rice Whiskey) who was a bar owner, drug dealer - although all the drugs were free - and budding DJ and singer-songwriter. He insisted we take his CD, and by that stage we happily obliged.

Ed also swapped his obscure South American football team T-shirt with him for a random T-shirt, just because he thought it would be funny for a man in Laos to have it. To be fair, it was really funny. But by that stage...

If you can't make out the writing on our backs, Helen's says FREE PALESTINE and mine says I WENT TRAVELLING TO FIND MYSELF - TURNS OUT I'M A CUNT

The next day, feeling strangely chirpy, we had a good walk round and found a great organic restaurant where we gorged ourselves. The rest of the time was spent mostly avoiding people that resembled what we had probably looked like the day before, and wondering how the staff of the restaurants that showed Friends continuously, for 20 hours a day, hadn't gone quite insane.

Maybe they had, who knows.

The following evening we indulged in a pizza that was less than normal, and we felt less than normal for the next 36 hours. 

This place was run, bizarrely, by some bloke from Northern Ireland. I asked him how many pizzas we should get to 'feel their effect' and he said that 'four will do you.' I asked what they put on the pizzas and he said that it was weed. They used to do mushrooms but stopped doing it because, and I quote, 'People said they were shite.'
I asked what time the place shut and he said 'Whenever the police come and turf you out.' There's a curfew in the town - rather than a daily bust by the PoPo.

We decided to get two and see if we were still hungry - and happy - and then get two more if so. Thank fuck. 

We're still not entirely sure what the 'happy' ingredient was, but the cycle of 'happy' crashed pretty quickly into 'reasonably paranoid' followed by overt panic from Helen. I thought it was great though.

When we went to leave the bar I realised we hadn't paid, so Ed and I stared at the meaningless coins and notes in our hands trying to work out what this monopoly money meant.

By the time we got out, Helen was standing with her face right up against the wall of the bar. When I asked if she was OK, she replied: 'It's the only way I can feel normal.'

When we got back to our abode, the cats that Helen had rescued from the bar the night before had 'turned into gremlins', and we had to put them outside.

I think we'd eaten quite a lot of opium.

The other thing that happened of note was Helen left a wet towel on the bed and thereby can never ever moan about me doing it again.

Thereby, Vang Vieng passed us by in a puff of smoke and a splash of Lao Lao - which I'm sure would be an effective windscreen washer fluid - and we made our way to Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

After a disastrous start, getting quite confused and lost trying to find the hostel we planned to stay in, we eventually settled in a decent hostel. The next few days were spent exploring the city and eating A LOT of fresh bread and 'Happy Cow' cheese.

One fantastic thing we witnessed was a tuk tuk driver that drove us about for a while was constantly shaving his face, using the sweat that was dribbling down it - just like Mac out of Predator! Put simply - I could come home now and be happy.

'Here we are again bro... Just you and me. Same kind of moon same kind of jungle. Real number 10 remember... Whole platoon, 32 men chopped into meat... We walk out just you and me, nobody else. Right on top huh? Not a scratch... Not a fuckin' scratch. You know who ever got you. They'll come back again. And when he does I'm gonna cut your name right into him... I'M GONNA CUT YOUR NAME RIGHT INTO HIM!' Said the tuk tuk driver, before dropping us off at the mini-mart.

Looking back on this entire episode leaves me feeling reasonably hollow inside. Yes, it was great fun, at the time. But I feel an awkward guilt about what's going on in Laos. I hope it doesn't become a wretched hive of scum and villainy like Thailand. Or Mos Eisley Cantina.

Plus this entire post is wrong - we went to the pizza place two days before the tubing, we planned on going tubing the day after the pizza but everyone was still sketching out. And Han shot first.

Opium's a hell of a drug.

I'm in a world of shit... yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid.

Helen eventually woke me up at about seven and we grabbed all of our stuff and crashed next door into a room that had a toilet. 

I went and told the manager what we had done and he actually seemed truly concerned about her, even offering to drive us to the hospital about half an hour away. I said that she should be fine, and we tried to get a little more sleep.

After half an hour it was obvious this wasn't going to happen and I went out on the search for some rehydration tablets or powder, which I got from a pharmacist not too far away.

As it turned out, the next three days were to be the biggest festival of the year in Luang Prabang, and throughout the day people were setting up stalls for food, drink, games and toys for children, preliminary long-tail races were crashing through the river that we were right on top of and there was a general feeling of excitement and fun from everyone in the town. Helen, however, was just feeling like shit.

I tried to be the best nurse I could, and by the late afternoon the worst of it had passed. The posse that had been on the bus with us were meeting up at six for a meal, and I told them that we may be able to make it if Hel felt any better.

During the day I went in search of the hostel that we had originally planned to stay in, Ed and Nicky had planned to be there and we had also told Helen's mate Tori from the University hockey team that's where we would be. After a few hours of searching, my incredible sense of direction failing me at every turn, I had walked about four miles, got nicely burned, but had found it.

I asked the lady if we could have a room for the following day, and she replied that we could, all was well. When I rounded the corner on the way back to my own hostel I even bumped into Ed and Nicky. I told them about Helen but said she was on the mend and that we would probably see them tomorrow afternoon.

My walk home was slightly more successful, but was soured by the fact that I bumped into a lad that had shunned the bus and taken the boat. 'It was a great laugh, yeah! It was a bit crowded but the food on the boat was great, we stayed in a wicked little hostel and all had a party, and then we got here about three hours early. How was your bus journey?'

I made his death as painless as I possibly could.

Arriving back at the hostel I found Hel getting dressed, she was obviously feeling a lot better and had had a chat with some of the girls that we were meant to meet for dinner. Right before we went out to meet them though, she took a turn for the worse. 

I actually went out anyway, leaving my poor girlfriend to wallow in a state of emptiness inside and out in the room and went up to meet the guys for a bite. I felt like a bit of a bastard, but as I found out later that night, fate was to have its revenge.

After a nice meal, the name of which I cannot remember but translated as 'The Drunken Mess', essentially a bit of everything thrown together, I went back and tended the best I could to Helen. She'd made a decent recovery, and could take on a bit of liquid now.

We watched a Family Guy that we had downloaded onto Hel's iPod and she drifted off. I, however, did not. I felt slightly queasy to say the least. Within three minutes I had devolved into a baby; pissing, shitting and puking simultaneously, all of which in the quietest possible way as to not wake my sleeping shitstress.

Touché Cosmot.

All night I was in a right two an' eight. This was followed by all day the next day, meaning that I, and again, bless her, Helen, missed out on the absolutely huge celebrations that were going on outside. We could watch about 80 metres of the boat races but that was about all.

We also noticed that Laos children were obsessed by toy guns, and the standard of toy guns was incredible. It looked like there was a child army outside, armed with everything from little pellet-shooting pistols to full on semi-automatic plastic rifles. It was a stark reminder that not so long ago this Communist State had been in a steady flux of war that children of their age would have been fully involved in.

Toy guns are strange.

We also missed the Monks collecting alms (not 'arms' as I first thought someone said, this country's gun-mad, I thought) in the morning, but I was almost glad as the stories we later heard of wanker tourists like ourselves shoving huge cameras in the monks' faces and touching their robes made me glad that I wasn't there to get vicariously embarrassed.

So, the day after the celebrations, we moved on to the other guesthouse, knowing that Ed and Nicky would be back from an elephant Mahout trip the following day, and Helen's mate Tori would be along soon.

There was a veritable heap of things to do in Luang Prabang, bum problems over, we were determined to crack on with them.

When the Boat Comes In (My Advice For You Is To Take It)

So. We'd crossed the river and were officially into Laos.

After a quick panic and a rummage around I found our newly-posed-for passport photos (that look like the kind of smiley geeky photos that appear of now-famous people on 'When they wasn't as famous as what they is now' programmes) and got stamped.

We were now officially, officially in Laos.

It was from here, however, that things started to go ever so slightly wrong.

The plan had been, indeed we had even purchased the tickets, to get a slow boat up the Mekong River to reach Luang Prabang. However, the man who escorted our quite large group of pink tourists to the port told us that we could get a bus, at no extra cost, which would see us in Luang Prabang at eight o'clock that evening.

Sold.

As much as we thought it would be fun to go on a river for two days, we also thought that we would only be spending a fortnight in Laos and that a seventh of the time we were here to be spent getting to the first town would be a bit silly.

(I should also mention that the man selling us the tickets was the Laos version of Joe Lyons, one-time Southampton University Men's Football Club Captain and accomplished Lothario, so I immediately trusted the man. Strange, as I never trusted Joe...)

Besides this, most of the group also said that the bus would be the best option. How fantastically wrong we were.

The dodginess began when Joe, as we'll call him from now on, took our passports from us and gave them to a random man. At this point my voice suddenly changed into that of a Guy Ritchie character, 'Wot you fink you doing with them then, eh?' etc.

Our fellow travellers all started taking pictures of the man with our passports, as if that would then hold up in some kangaroo court when we were all left stranded on the Laos-Thailand border with little more than some Doublemint to our names.

Mounting the songtow to the bus station, only 'five minutes down the road', we thought we had had a touch.

Forty-five minutes later we arrived at the local bus station. Our driver got out, handed our passports to a man that had a face like a bulldog chewing a bee, and disappeared in a cloud of green smoke. Or something to that effect.

We now had no way of getting back to the port, no passports, and seemingly no transport to Luang Prabang. Well, they weren't going to put us on the local bus that was already there, surely? It was pre-war (Crimean), and something fleshy and dead was stuck to the side of it.

The grumpiest-looking man on the planet walked over and gave us back our passports, and we asked in our now perfected broken English of the backtwatter which bus was ours. Winston Churchill pointed to The Munster's wagon. Fuck.

Oh well, we'd been set up, but at least we weren't going to be on an equally clapped out slow boat and we'd be there this evening, supping an ice cold Beer Laos and chomping down on some Lapp chicken.

Only we weren't. 

We sat playing shithead for four hours. We then eventually got on the bus with sixty locals that didn't want us on it, and sat for a further hour before the bus took off - a hundred yards down the road to the petrol station where we waited another half an hour.

I have failed to mention that Helen and I were sat on top of the wheel arch, meaning that I had my knees around my ears and an arse so uncomfortable I felt like I was in some sort of twisted Jennings novel.

Along with every seat being designated, there were plastic stools running down the length of the bus where people were sat in the aisle. 

Our two neighbours were a couple of teenagers who had just finished Thai boxing practice. By the smell of them they had been practicing very hard and very long. And in manure.

It's okay though. We'd be there by eight. Oh, no, wait. We're running about four hours late. So we'll be there about eleven or midnight. That's not too bad. It's not what we'd signed up for, but it's better than the District Line. (Who actually fucking goes to Olympia?)

We were traversing the worst roads that any of us had ever been on. This included, surprisingly, the locals as they too were looking and pointing in astonishment at the landslides, holes and cracks in the road that made what Reeves had to deal with in Superman II look like a tarmac paper cut.


Our driver, who looked just like Party Boy from Jackass, was laughing like a maniac for the entire journey. Well, almost. 

At first it worried us that we had a driver that guffawed harder than Akabusi at seemingly anything, but after a few hours we realised we should be more concerned when he stopped laughing, as this meant he was probably trying to navigate a precipice the size of a small country.


Hours passed, and soon day turned to night. Pitch-black night. In the jungle. With a huge fucking thunderstorm cracking on. Normally, I would have enjoyed such an occurrence like some kind of simple child, but I was so uncomfortable that all pleasure was being converted straight into pain, and with a great rate of interest.

Helen, bless her, accommodated me lying in her lap for a good while, but then, unbelievably, the bus picked up about another ten or so passengers. There were now people standing all the way down the bus, falling all over the place and spitting without aim.

It was midnight and we were still a good hundred miles away from Luang Prabang. 

The German lads we were with were fine, they had been drinking and 'using marijuana' since ten that morning and didn't really have a clue what was going on. The rest of us were agitated but also so tired that perversely we weren't even really looking forward to getting off the bus, as it meant that we'd be in a new town in the middle of the night with nowhere to sleep.

We stopped off at about one in the morning and I had some sticky rice and Hel had some noodle soup. She was made slightly more upbeat by this influx of energy that the grub had given her, I was made a thousand times worse as my metabolism kicked in pretty much as soon as we hit the road again.

Eventually, at half-four - eight and a bit hours after we were meant to have reached our little bastion of rest - we arrived at a random bus lot in the middle of nowhere. Everyone got off and we piled into a tuktuk that took us to a hostel. After a bit of half-hearted bartering we bedded down and as soon as our heads hit the pillow we were out.

Well, I was out. 

Hel had about an hour’s sleep, and then spent the next three hours riving in pain on the toilet. The noodle soup that she had been singing the praises of had obviously not enjoyed its time in her intestines. And this was just the start of another chronological path constructed mainly of shit.

Wats That, What...?

The last few weeks have flown by faster than Concord on cheap speed and, without knowing it, I must have had a bloggage blockage. 

We've been to six different destinations and done so on and in various different modes of transportation, none of which were safe, comfortable or fun.

To start off, we got the bus up to Bangkok. This trip was meant to take a little over eight hours. It took about 17 and the entire trip was spent sat in front of four pissed-up English lads shouting about just how pissed-up they were. Oh, and Bad Boys II was on. Super.

After getting dropped off on the middle of the Kao San Road at five in the morning, we bit the bullet and bundled into a private taxi in search of our refuge, a hostel called Suk 11. After lots of driving round and not very much getting there, we bundled out again and started trudging around with all our gear.

Eventually we found the hostel, but couldn't check-in for another three hours. 

We had a bit of a kip on the floor and got absolutely savaged by mosquitoes. But eventually we were allowed up into one of the nicest rooms we've stayed in over the last three months - and slept. For a very long time.

The next three days were much of a nothingness. 

We had a decent mooch about over Bangkok and conquered the easily conquerable Sky train. Other than that we didn't do a lot, apart from seeing The Dark Knight - again - but this time on the biggest screen in South East Asia, apparently. ('Twas pretty darn big.)

After a couple of stress-free days, apart from when we got in an argument with some Thai men of Indian descent about Indian economics.

We had a beer

We had a barny

Very strange indeed considering we'd started the conversation with 'Who's better: Bale or Keaton?'.

Anyway, where were we? Literally...

We got the train from the murkiest station in the world to Chiang Mai. This was reasonably pleasant and there weren't any armed guards or prisoners sat next to us, a la India, so we got to Chiang Mai without too much hassle at all.

Once there we had a good explore of the area, met a crazy Spurs fan who thought that a random woman on a motorbike was 'the weirdest thing' he'd 'ever seen', watched Arsenal lose to fucking Fulham again (I swear Helen's cursed) and I had a steak with ginger rice and an Oreo milkshake. Recommended.

One story of note is that we got kidnapped. Sort of. (Yes, again.)

We were having a quiet day going around looking at the different Wats ('slike temples, innit) and some of the Stupas or Thats inside the Wats.

A Wat?

After having a good look round and a good laugh at the fact a 'That' could be in a 'Wat', we trundled past the first tuk-tuk driver that had even batted an eyelid at us in Chiang Mai. He offered, for the skinny sum of 20 baht, to take us around for an hour to the all of the different wondrous Wats.

Well, he didn't. He took us to one that was, no exaggeration, fifteen feet down the road and then drove us halfway across the city to a random textiles shop, which we had already said we didn't want to go to. After we refused to get out of the tuk-tuk he shouted at us, 'Why did you not tell me before I drive here?!' to which we replied in unison: 'We fucking did.'

So, having driven us back to the main part of the town, he pulled up and announced that this was where the market was. 'So?' We wanted to go to Wats, not the market.

He then screamed at Helen and I pretty much woosed out and sat there looking like Boris Johnson at the Olympic closing ceremony (did you fucking see that? The man can't wave a flag, how in blue blazer and tie is he going to organise the Olympics?) and we both got out, and he sped off into the mid afternoon night, leaving us to work out where we were.

As I hadn't done a very good job at standing up for Helen, we then had a barny. Altogether this had not been a successful day. What lacked was the Wat.

But we soon made friends and lived happily ever after.

The next day we got a minivan to Pai, which is a funny little town inhabited by chilled out Thai people and even more chilled out old hippies from all over the shop. We rented out a moped (Mother, read 'push bike') and booted around on that for a while, getting some great pictures of the area and got up to a waterfall which we nearly slid down but didn't.

When Postman Pat lost his van he had no choice but to rent a Moped

Not me

This was the same day that my Cornetto addiction really started to kick in.

Here we met a cool French guy with an unpronounceable name that we spent the evening with, and bumped into Ed 'Bonfire Head' Wellard and Nicky from our first week in Thailand.

After a few beers I shared my (slightly ill thought out and reasonably fascist) idea that people should have to get a licence to have children. Despite making it quite clear that there were 'some minor holes' in my plan, and that I was in no way affiliated with a right wing party, Monsieur Socialisme didn't really like this idea, and later that evening when I asked if we could have his email address he gave me the classic, 'I'll call you' line. Superb.

After being promised in Chiang Mai that we would be able to go straight from Pai up to Huay Xai where we could cross into Laos rather than having to go back to Chiang Mai and up again, we boarded a minibus. 

After about four hours we got to a police checkpoint and the driver was asked where he was going to. 'Chiang Mai' he said. A chorus of 'What the fuck did he just say?'s rang throughout the bus and it turned out that we were in fact going half way back to Chiang Mai to pick up more passengers. It was already one in the morning and we were what could be labelled as 'Really rather ticked off'.

As it turns out, we were picking up quite a few more passengers. In fact, we were picking up exactly one more passenger than we had seats for in the bus. This meant that the driver who had taken us all the way there was chucked out at a 7Eleven in the middle of goodness knows where and replaced by a new driver and an irritating fat girl.

After this commotion we set back on the road and eventually reached our destination. Sort of.

We reached a guest house that we would bed down in for two and three quarter hours before getting up and getting the 'boat' over the Mekong River into Laos. We'd already been ripped off by the ferryman saying that we had to pay in US dollars at the border. We were 90 percent certain this wasn't the case, but changed some up with him at a horrific rate. Fucker.

However, like a poisoned tipped umbrella entering the thigh of an ex-spy, it was only once we'd penetrated the membrane of Laos that the real lies started...