"Sabai dee"

"Hello" in Lao. I'm writing now from Savannakhet, Laos. There is much to catch up on. But I'll live it backwards: ooooh, crazy, huh? It's now Monday early afternoon in this here part of the world. What time is it in your neck of the woods? [I just made you look at the clock in the lower-right of your computer screen and answer that question with that little voice -- that sounds a lot like you! -- inside your head].

Right before coming to this internet place, Paul and I went into St. Teresia's Catholic Church, purportedly the only Catholic church in Laos, built in 1930. It's located right in the middle of town. We went in and took a few minutes to say our respective prayers. I thanked God for, among other things, allowing me the freedom and ability to make a trip like this. As much as I'm missing home right now, I'm still quite aware of the fact that I'm living a life experience, and that so many people throughout the world never see much beyond their immediate surroundings. I'm tremendously grateful to be here, and to share the sights, sounds, and smells with one of my very good friends is a very fortunate thing too.

Yesterday was a major travel day; hence the fact that I've appeared -- to you, at least -- to have been absent for a little while. We left Vang Vieng on a 10am VIP bus for Vientiane, the capital city to the south. Despite the fact that the bus was labeled as VIP, and we thought the ride would be quick, the bus moved at a snail's pace. The main redeeming aspect of the trip was that I sat next to a French girl, with whom I spoke for most of the five-hour bus ride. I was interested to find out that she's a law student back in her hometown of Paris, studying abroad in Vietnam, and -- get this -- that one of her favorite groups is The Roots (Philly's premier hip-hop band, and yes they're most certainly a band). I'll take the liberty, and risk, in admitting right here that talking with her really made me miss the companionship of a girl. To save my ass from certain retribution back home, though, I'll immediately follow-up and say that the Parisian girl and I parted ways as soon as the bus arrived in Vientiane. But the residual of that conversation got me thinking about Philly for the rest of the day and night:

"All this roamin's got me missin' home 'n' all this globe-travelin's got me unravelin'" - me

We took a very long and quite excruciating bus ride from Vientiane to Savannakhet last night; we departed at 6pm and didn't get into Savannakhet until after 2 in the morning. There were long stretches of that ride that I was staring out the window, looking out at the outstretched moonlit fields, convincing myself foolishly that I was on Route 70 back near Medford, New Jersey. And for the first couple hours of that ride, I listened to The Roots' albums "Things Fall Apart" and "The Tipping Point" back-to-back. About two hours or more into the busride, the bus driver pulled over to let everyone go take a piss in the high grass alongside the road (even an old woman went into the grass to squat down and do her thang); after relieving myself under a midnight blue canopy pierced with thousands and thousands of stars, I talked with Paul for a few minutes. I told him that I felt so homesick that it felt like my heart hurt; it felt to me that my heart was just gonna jump out of my chest and run to the airport for the next flight back to the Two-One-Five. Oh well. I understand that a trip like this comes with the full gamut of emotions.

The bus ride was rough, but I was so serene in my own dreamy thoughts that I guess it could've been worse. I sat in the second to last row at the back of the bus, so I didn't want to recline my seat, knowing that the last row couldn't recline theirs. And Paul was sitting in the seat directly in front of me, reclined as far back as possible, so my room to manuever was quite minimal. And the guy (French I think) sitting next to me didn't afford me any room to move my upper leg past the dividing line between my seat and his. I was packed in like a sardine.

When we arrived in Savannakhet, the bus literally dropped us off on the side of the road. We had no clear idea what direction to walk, as everything was closed and pretty dark. We decided to walk in the direction that we'd seen a couple Laotians walking, but we were really clueless. The first two guesthouses that we saw were locked up and inaccessible. So we just kept on walking. A security guard pointed us in the right direction, but as we found out later, we were still pretty far from the center of town. We were certainly blessed when a guy drove up and offered us a ride into town and directly to the Savanbaohao guesthouse, which happened to be one in our guidebook. The main gate was padlocked, so I hopped the fence while Paul waited outside with the bags. I walked around the entire premises, but "not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." Finally, I saw the reception area, behind the desk there were two tents, so I did my best not to startle their inhabitants; I noticed a clock that said just a few minutes to 3am. Fortunately one of the guys woke up and let us have two rooms, we didn't really care what the price was, we just wanted to lay down our hats and get some shut-eye, which we definitely did.

But rewinding back to the beginning of the bus ride, something very interesting happened. Our bus was scheduled to depart at 6pm from Vientiane, which it did. But as soon as it pulled out of the station, not even one minute later, it pulled over to the side of the road. A horde of vendors came onto the bus and began hawking their candies and drinks to all the passengers. They were literally elbowing each other to be the first one down the aisle. I thought that was pretty funny, but pretty normal. Eventually they all got off the bus, but for some unknown reason we continued to sit there. After several minutes, I noticed the bus driver squating down next to the sidewalk and smoking a cigarette; by this time it was almost 6:30 and I thought to myself, what the hell is going on? Then the driver started messing around with this motorcycle; this made no sense at all. Until a couple minutes later, when I realized that two guys were bringing the motorcycle on to the bus! Let me repeat that: they brought a fucking motorcycle on to the bus and parked it in the narrow aisle between passengers. And it was not only one motorcycle, but two! Absolutely amazing. I was just laughing incredulously, especially when I realized that the Laotians were looking back to see our (the falangs': the foreigners') reaction. Later, as I said, we got out of the bus for piss breaks, those of us toward the back of the bus had to step on and climb over the motorcycles in order to get out. And that's when I also realized that they squeezed in even more passengers by making several people sit on plastic stools in the remaining section of the aisle that wasn't already used as a parking space for motorcycles. Only in the Third World, I tell ya, only in the Third World.

So let's continue on our odyssey in time from the present back to the not-so-distant past. I told you how we left Vang Vieng on that bus ride to Vientiane. Well, the day before was our big day in Vang Vieng. I mentioned in an earlier post that the main attraction in the double V is floating down the Nam Xong River on huge tractor inner tubes. What I did not mention, though, is that there are several bars located right along the river, that patrons stop at to drink Beer Lao, Tiger beer, and Mekong whiskey. Each bar is also equipped with enormous speakers, blasting out electronic music (e.g., Kernkraft 400), alternative rock (e.g., Sublime, Green Day, The Killers), and classic shit (e.g., AC/DC, Bon Jovi). These bars are filled with mostly early 20-something backpackers, wearing bikinis and bathing suits, everyone just getting fucked up from all the alcohol under a hot Lao sun. The scene can best be described as Spring Break / MTV Beachhouse, Laos style. Besides the tubing, each bar has ziplines and high platforms that revellers can ride or jump from into the river. Because I had heard that a guy had literally cracked his head open the day before (and our Rough Guide book says that people have died), I decided to be a little more cautious, and only rode one of the tamer ziplines out into the water. But other spring breakers were doing flips and all sorts of stupid tricks. An older Canadian guy who we had met on our bus ride from Luang Prabang the day before actually dislocated his shoulder on the zipline at the second bar; they had to boat him over to the other side of the river and take him back into town for medical attention. We had a lot of fun, although it was certainly tantalizing to see all those girls in bikinis; fuck I wanna go home! [straightening my tie and regaining my composure]. Umm, so anyway, another highlight was playing volleyball in a large puddle of mud (no intentional reference to the rock band) at the third bar; I would serve the ball and fall face-first so that I could splash all the other players, especially the girls [stay focused], with mud. At the last bar that we stopped off at, there was a very real feeling that we were at spring break. The Laotians had built a huge slide that shot you out into the middle of the river; the interior was lined with bathroom tiles. Paul gave it a try, while I took a photo of him, his body spit out like a rag doll into the river. There was a rosy-faced white guy manning the dj booth at that bar, and people were dancing as drunk people do. A large circle formed, so Paul and I realized that our skills were being called forth. Paul entered the circle, kneeled down in the middle, and held a bottle of Tiger beer up in the air, but not too high off the ground; everyone held their breath, wondering what I would possibly do; so I dramatically stretched and showboated for a minute before approaching the bottle, bending over, putting my mouth on the bottle and then did a flip over Paul and the bottle to land like a jackass in the dirt on the other side. I think I kinda messed up my right wrist, which still feels a little weird, but it was all for a good cause. The final stretch from the last bar to our point of disembarkation was really, really long; for at least 20 minutes we were just gently floating down the river, as the sun set behind the limestone mountains that rose imposingly not far from the riverside. It was really quite beautiful.

Well, this has become an incredibly long post. So I think I'll stop it here. What's that? You want more? Well, we'll see what we can do to deliver so more tomfoolery and shenanigans your way; our skylarking and horseplay will surely continue.