Hiding in Napho

We are currently laying low in a small village called Napho where my Grandma lives. It's a little village 1.5 hours north of Vientiane and has about 2000 people. I took the liberty of kicking my cousin out of his bungalow in the middle of the rice field so we can "camp". Since we are "falang" I am having a toilet installed so we dont have to do any digging ourselves. It'll be nice to be out in the middle of nowhere to enjoy the peace and quiet. It is a little cold and very hard to find scotch so I'll just have to get more blankets.

The maids are extremely cheap here, we have one for each duty such as a cook, laundry person, Beer Lao runner, etc. We only pay them about $1US combined for all their hard work each day. I'm working on importing them to the US for sale so let us know if you want any. I think I could fit about 5 in each suitcase.

Pretty much just hanging out and waiting for my mom and uncle to get here one way or another since the airport in Thailand is still closed. As soon as we find out whats going on with that, we'll head up to Bokeo and hang out in the trees with the Gibbons monkeys. Now Amy is going to rant about the roosters that crows at 11PM.

Yeah the roosters are American or something because they like to crow at night especially after 3 in the morning. Everyone is friendly at Grandma's house and I'm starting to catch a few phrases but mostly I just smile and nod and say Co-op Chai, which is Thank You, or Sabai Dee, which is Hi how are you/Bye/Fine, thank you, all in one.

We went into Vientiane (mainly for hot showers) and it has changed a lot. The village looks the same except everyone who used to ride a bike now owns a scooter that goes just as fast as a bike and spews black smoke as a bonus. But in Vientiane there are a lot more Western goods and stores available (for Western or at least Thai prices.) The morning market, which used to be pretty shanty (where we bought the couches if you saw the photos from the last trip) has changed a lot. It now bosts a 4 story concrete parking garage and the indoor mall part is fancier and bigger. Out by the Mekhong, the open strip with a few chairs and cafes is now covered by restaurants built on stilts. There are a lot of Euro tourists too, all looking as pale and sickly as I was - the food is still a bit of a shock to the system here. I'm feeling better though as of today.

The weather is much cooler than Thailand, cold at night actually but warm, dry, and sunny during the day. Definitely this is the best time of year to visit. For Colin Cotterill fans, we've seen almost everything in the books, including the Lao Women's Union, the black stupa, the Ministry of Education, and Mr. Geung (with Down's syndrome) who went on a bender last night and came by all the houses in the village causing an uproar. But apparently he is normally a hard worker on the farm and very popular. There is also an Auntie Dtui. And of course the bicycles with no brakes are a must! We'll try to avoid those.

We also did a nice walk around Sam's cousin farm which looks just like the shire, if hobbits grew rice. It had a cool footbridge made out of bamboo which surprisingly did not collapse when Sam crossed it. It probably waited to collapse for the next poor person to come along!



Well we are heading back for some R&R and then some camping at Grandma's house now. We'll post again when we head north.

Surviving Bangkok

Just a quick post to let you all know we made it safely out of Bangkok. We took the bus back from Koh Sahmet and decided to catch the train to Vientiane the same night, in case Bangkok hotels were busy with tourists waiting for the airport to open. The train station was not too crazy but it did have quite a few tourists there - Sam says normally there are almost none. The sleeper car train was full so we took the second class "soft seat" train. It was better than flying, I guess, given that flying would have been impossible. Anyway after 2 taxi rides, 2 bus rides, 2 immigration lines, and various chaos we got across the border and are at Grandma's house in Laos now. Mmmmmmmmmm green mangos and fresh fruits. We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow at lunch while you guys are eating dinner since we don't have time to find and kill a turkey today. Happy Thanksgiving!

Koh Samed and the Say Anything Announcer

We got to Koh Samed without too much trouble, well at least I did. Sam had 60 kilo of baggage on his lap in the minibus. The ferry was oddly crowded but we survived by hiding in back with the pilot. The tourists up front got soaked. When we arrived we found the prices a little higher - about $40 US for a room with air conditioning, however the AC was worth it as it was very hot and humid.

We headed straight for the beach in front of our hotel and basically stayed there in one spot for 36 hours - at night they just change the beach chairs for tables. We only left to eat the cheaper local fare outside the resort, which was tastier. Sam's brother would have loved the insanely spicy larb salad. The swimming was great with the water pleasantly cool but not at all cold. Now I'll tell you about the "toy boy fie-mun."



And up next is "Buk hum lai" who is only 12 and def 100 percent virgin. If you want to take him for toy boy you can but watch out for dem thai police. And be careful because he too young to know yet if he ladyboy or not yet. Sometime you see on the street you don't know if they boy, girl, ladyboy, transhec, homoshec, or what. Scary. Anyway "Buk hum lai" good kid take year off to pay for school. Not like dem kids take money from parents for school and spend getting piss drunk and mushroom...."

That's basically the announcer for the firedancers who sounded exactly like the race car dude in Say Anything. The firedancers were 6 guys (one had the night off) who juggle torches and do all kinds of crazy acrobatics, even juggling actual fireworks at the end. It would be super illegal in the US especially as the ones at the top of the human pyramid were only between 12 and 15 years old. They were very impressive though the announcer was definitely the highlight.

Finally today we decided to head back to Bangkok to catch the train for Laos, after one final swim in which the mosquitos and jellyfish all came out to bid me a fond farewell. Between that and the sunburn I look like a proper Americal tourist now (i.e. lobster red.) We are hoping the train station isn't too crazy because the airport is completely shut down by protesters. If we can't get a train we'll stay at the Happy House again, don't worry it is far from the airport.

Sam's thoughts on Koh Samed:

The highlight was definitely the annoucer for the fire show. There was a lot of beautiful fat euros wearing speedoos and damn g-strings all over. The guys were wearing g-strings! Other than that, Amy pretty much covered it all minus the parts about only eating $2 US per meal for the both of us and only 2 meals a day.

Thailand: Kao San Road

Well, Thailand at last. We made it here safely and got a nice room near Kao San Road. There's more dirty hippies per capita than Humboldt county except the ones here are travelers like us. Amy says this is her one chance to let out her "inner hippy" but I think with time on the road and less showers and body maintenance, we'll get there soon without effort. We walked around Kao San and got cheap pad thai from the street vendor for $1US. Mmmmmmmm. When it got dark, we treated ourselves to some ice cold "Chang" beer at a beer garden and treated some local mosquitos to some good "Farlang" blood (Amy's). Woke up early and like a bat out of hell, we headed by bus to Koh Samed.

Now for Amy's thoughts on Kao San:

I don't have too much to add, it was quite nice there and also a relief to fit in for a bit with all the other tourists. We stayed at the Happy House which is more or less what you expect from the name: staffed by "ladyboys." The room was cheap and had a balcony so we were able to do our laundry, thanks to Forrest's handy clothesline. We also got in some shopping - skirts and mens' tee shirts are about $6 US and girls' tees only $3 - finally fair prices! I definitely liked it there apart from having a hard time telling the mosquitoes apart from the bats.

Kung Fu Fighting in Hong Kong

We made it to Hong Kong and wanted to leave as soon as we landed. That was the craziest city with more inhabitants than an insane asylum on crack. Millions of drones working and living in "skyscraper caverns" that decends on the streets after 5 PM. The scariest thing I have ever experienced in my life. Amy will now tell you about the fun stuff.

Ok so the trains were definitely impressive. I think the longest we waited at any hour was 4 minutes. Our first day we made the rookie mistake of taking the hotel shuttle so we did avoid the chaos of commute hours on the train. We then wandered around trying to locate our guest house which turned out to be somebody's apartment on the 5th floor of one of a zillion identical 40 story buildings in Causeway Bay which is like the HK mission district or something. We thought the room was quite awful until the hotel workers showed our room to some interested tourists who commented on how wonderful it was compared to "the other place." Oh well I guess it was clean and had free internet. The only problem was finding food, the lines were so long it wasn't worth most people's time to deal with "Englibabas"!

On our first full day in HK we decided to see the city, for about 30 seconds, then we hopped on the nearest ferry out of there. It turned out to go to Lantau island which was awesome. We waited the usual 60 seconds for a bus up to the Giant Buddha and Tourist Trap which was fun; we also took a short hike to admire the views. There was also a pretty cool "Wisdom Path" with 30 huge pillars with some kind of Buddhist prayer written on them in beautiful calligraphy which if we'd been able to read Chinese we would now be enlightened! But sorry, no enlightenment for us. Yet.

After waiting 2 more seconds for the next bus we headed out to Tai O, which was a nifty little fishing village with stainless steel shacks on stilts in the mud flats. Clearly the US dollar is worthless because the locals were way more interested in fishing and totally ignored all the tourists wandering around. Last we went over and found the one big town on the island (40 fifty story skyscrapers surrounded by 99% nature preserve with no people around anywhere due to it being work hours.) However in the dark shadows under the buildings we found the fanciest Pizza Hut ever, white cloth and silver and everything. Unfortunately we were too poor to eat there because we are too lazy to have jobs like proper HK residents. We discovered that we could also take the train back from this island due to the fact that the train goes absolutely everywhere, so we returned to the chaos (during commute hours, yeah) and crashed after a meal of pork buns. Mmm, pork buns. OK over to Sam for the next day on HK island.

We woke up at the usual 4AM HK time and wondered the streets when it was fairly empty. Only about 1M persons per square mile. I was able to find a small cafe in an alley that had "Americanaaa" menu. You could choose from 3 set items (egg sandwich, saimin, toast, coffee). The price for a meal was about $3.50 US but it was enough to feed a squirrel (We eat like them now since we are poor and dont want to go broke). Amy says that she doesnt care for any more food on HK island except for one pork bun a day. We then headed to South Island to a town called Shek O. This town has a vendetta against Lee, we found a sigh for his market called "Fuck Lee Market". This was one of the highlights of the trip. We also indulged on our first real meal at a "Thai Restaurant" in that town. $30US later and full tummies, we walked up to the cliff on the side of the beach and sat in the sun for a while. After Amy got her 8 minute of tanning, we headed back to downtown HK. We were both exhausted but decided that it was a great time to go and see "The Peak" which is the highest hill in HK. This is the "Beverly Hills" area of HK where only the extremely dirty and wealthy can live. To get to the top, you can walk your fat american ass or take a trolley that costs $10US to take you to the top. We felt lazy for once in our lives and paid to get sardined in a little trolley with about a thousand other angry tourists. Once we were up top, the view was magnificent! You get the best 360 views of the city from your seat inside Burger King. This definitely tops the Taco Bell in Pacifica for prime real estate owned by a shit hole eatery. We hiked down through some trails/roads and saw lamborghini's, Austin Healeys, and the likes in driveways of homes with "fish tanks" for outer walls. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta!

Once we made halfway down the hill, we finally found the infamous "Mid Levels Escalators" which is a series of escalators that runs from downtown. These escalators sucks according to Amy but my fat ass sure appreciated them. Except, we were on our way down and not up. They only run upwards in the PM and we think they run downwards in the AM for those damn rich lazy Hongkongneese. We got tired, grumpy, and headed home to our cell block to bed but not after another $1US pork bun each for dinner. Mmmmmm pork buns.

On the last day we decided to really get out of town and took about a zillion trains and one bus out to Tai Po Kau nature preserve. The 2 hour hike was tough but enjoyable (except for the large crowds hiking at 1/2km per hour which we finally pushed down the cliff in order to get around them. Sorry people whoever you were.) The Bridal Pool at the end was distinctly lacking in any of the qualities of its name (most important being water and brides) but the hike was worth it just for the exercise. Still we decided to walk back on the road. We took the train back and thought we were beating the commute but it seems the HK workers get off early on Saturday and the crowds were much thicker than usual, read, mobs that trample you until you are dead if you try to go against them. Sam and I got separated (his fault) and it was a miracle we found each other only 10 minutes later.

The best part of the day came when the crowds died down in the evening and we finally braved the food on a stick. We got yellow fish gummy, mystery meat, and tentacle all dipped in the spiciest most delicious satay. Crying tears of joy and spiciness we turned in early so we could get up today and catch our flight to Bangkok.

Final thoughts on Hong Kong
- trains and roads are excellent despite the steepness of the island (the roads put Devil's Slide in Pacifica to shame both in steepness and in constant maintenance)
- the food is not so good when you are poor and don't speak Cantonese, but it is possible to survive on pork buns and bananas
- people don't form lines for food (biggest hungriest person wins) but do for line up neatly for buses and trains
- kung fu does not exist but there's lots of Tai Chi
- stay in your hotel between 5pm and 5am weekdays, all day weekends to avoid being smushed by the local pedestrian crowds
- don't stay downtown if you go there. In fact don't go there again ever!