A New Era Continued (featuring bears)

So, I'm going for a different feel for a bit.

I've still got some long form stories within me to tell, but those are on hold. In fact, I'm working on writing them also, but I'm writing various things.

For the time being, I'm going to start doing roughly a post every day about some smaller topics, usually involving one picture and a small story. I know this is actually pretty typical of blogging for most people, but it runs against mostly what I've done so far, so to me this is micro-posting.

The End of This Road

To be honest, my next couple of days in Vang Vieng were mostly repeats of the same, but with the British kids instead. We played around in the water a lot more; I hardly drank at all, except for taking some of the radioactive snake whiskey shots just for kicks. Instead I just subjected myself to the cruelest of water punishments my body’s ever handled, and pushed myself more and more; I think, ultimately, the biggest drop I took was about 20 feet or so into the water, which was pretty wild. I would love to go back and push myself some more; who knows when Laos will call me back.

Vang Vieng Some More: The Day Out

So, the day everyone was leaving, I went and rented a bike, and was deadset on just riding and seeing whatever was see-able. I hopped on and gave it a trial run, and rode around the small town a bit, seeing Evan before he left, and hung out with him for a little until his van showed up. I also did a bit of translation for the “front desk”, such as it was, at his guesthouse, between them and a prospective Chinese client. The Chinese person didn’t speak English, let alone Lao, and the Lao employee didn’t speak Chinese, so I moderated between them and got the guesthouse a client, in the end. I should have gotten a commission!

Vang Vieng Rock City 2: Rock Harder

Currently I write this while cruising in a taxi, with the glare of the sun upon me I might make a few extra typos in the first portion of this, so please give me your leniency!

So, the morning after my caving and kayaking trek, I met up with Evan to get breakfast. Another well-documented phenomenon about Vang Vieng is its ample restaurants aimed entirely at Westerners that have tons of televisions set up, upon which they show endless reruns of Friends. There’s a couple of restaurants that decide to mix it up with some Simpsons, and I saw one showing Family Guy.

Vang Vieng Rock City

So, Vang Vieng. This place needs a bit of an introduction. Ten years ago, it was on no one’s radar. Something changed. It got listed in Lonely Planet, for one reason and one reason only: tubing.

Fleeting Moments in Vientiane

So, first things first on this morning, I visited JoMo Cafe for some more bread eggs and bacon, and coffee, then I hopped straight onto a bus to go to Vientiane. It was a pretty good sized bus, and truth be told, the ride was super uneventful. In fact, my entire entry about Vientiane is going to be pretty short, as I didn’t do very much at all.

Tour de Luang Prabang

Picking up right where we left, off, a boatload of people and I had just landed at the river docks of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the town Luang Prabang, which is a sleepy town lying at the confluence of two rivers, one being the Mekong River, and has a ton of old school French colonial style architecture, particularly in the area designated as that heritage site. We weren’t there for more than thirty seconds before touts started trying to grab us to take back to whatever guesthouse they worked for.