time for the Laos goodness...

Hello again! So the saga continues but it's much more enjoyable I promise! Here's a map so y'all can situate yourselves...

OK so the next morning we were determined to charter us a boat to make the second leg of the journey more condusive to relaxation. It didn't work cuz the crazy boat lady kept sticking her nose into our bargaining business saying that she makes this much money and that he could also make that much money. We weren't trying to rip him off, offering him a very decent price for the 15 or so people we would have to pitch in... she was basing her amount on the 100 or so people on her boat. But, the dude didn't budge from 10,000 baht (a ridiculous price, 40 baht = 1 USD) and so we were forced to take the terrible slow boat to hell again... or so we thought. Abbey came down to the port and said she was talking to an american family of 4 who had a whole long boat to themselves and that they were willing to bring 5 or 6 of us on with them. So, after she got on the crazy boat, she came righty back off and declared she was taking the family up on their deal. Abbey, Perdy, Jetta, Neils, Elkin, Carly & I all got the wonderfully relaxing journey down the Mekong river we were hoping for! It was awesome! The family was so gracious and nice... We saw working elephants on the way down, gorgeous jungle scenary, stopped in on a village and played hacky sack with the children, I rocked out on the ledge of the boat to some groovin Ani tunes, it was hot and just so nice...

We arrived at Luang Prhabang at around 4pm or so, 10mins before the boatload of people, so we mad dashed it to find a hostel, the Phousie Guesthouse. Carly and I went for some tasty indian food (VERY spicy) then to straight to bed cuz I literally could not move after that meal. haha And so cheap in Laos!! It's great! Yesturday we met up with our boat crew for some delicious omlettes and to say our good-byes to Jetta, Neils, and little Elkin... so sad, always, to say good-bye to great people I meet along the way. I almost cried. :-( Last night we drank a beer, walked around the main hustle and bustle streets of the night market, past some way-too-busy bars and passed out around 12:30 or so. Made it to midnight, dudes! Yes indeedy!

But TODAY was probably the best day of my life for sure... what a way to bring in the new year! We hired a taxi (an old truck with a couple covered benches in the box) for 15USD for the day and he took us to the Kuang Si waterfalls. The amount of money this dude made today is like 5 really nice dinners back home when you convert that into Kip and what 150,000 Kip will get you here is quite a lot. It was early morning on New Year's Day and so not busy at all. They are amazing, by the way! I'll include a picture here when we get them uploaded, but picture: sky blue waters cascading down a jungle mountain and you might get an idea of what it was actually like... Awesome. We went for a swim in one of the pools and it felt like I had been reborn or something cuz I was just so invigurated and rejuvinated... FULL ON!

Something I NEVER thought I'd experience:

I saw a SIBERIAN TIGER today. Her name is Phet and she was rescued from poachers 5 years ago along with 2 brothers who didn't make it. She is the most beautiful creature, ferociously adorable. We were there for her feeding, saw her prowl up to the hording where she was fed buffalo bones. Can you believe it?? I even got to touch her! Her coat is like velvit... Wow. What an experience.

All in all, Laos is great and today was the most unique New Years I've ever had, let alone the most unique DAY period! Hope your's was full of awesomeness as well.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

craziness and scetchiness, but one for the books for sure!

Yay! I'm in Laos finally! After 3 days of voyage, Carly and I arrived yesturday afternoon to the little port city of Luang Prabang where we will be spending new years. But the way here, the voyage, was quite an interesting experience through and through... culture shock? Definitly. Did I learn from it? Of course.

From Chiang Mai, Carly and I decided to do an organized sort of "tour" for our journey to Laos - a country that only just recently opened its borders to the outside. We concluded that since the packeage offered a discount on the Visa - which I would receive directly at the guesthouse before departing on the boat - as well as 1 night's accomodation in Chiang Khong, dinner, breakfast, and a packed lunch PLUS our 5 hour bus ride to Chiang Khong, and a 2 day journey by slow boat down the Mekong River... well, thought we'd go with that so there wouldn't be any worrying envolved as far as how we could get all that otherwise. It was the safest way to pay for a Laos visa and receive it without question. So we took off in a mini bus to Chiang Khong on the 28th with other people from various guesthouses, and little did we know how close we would all become over the course of our journey...

The guesthouse was quite nice, right on the river, decent food, nice people. The next morning I received my visa as planned and Carly & I were of the first 8 to head down to the pier, ferried to the other side of the river, stamped our visas, payed for that night's accomodation in Pak Beng, and trucked off to another pier where we would board the slow boat. The slow boat can comfortably hold about 40 people and so when we noticed that there were much more than 40 people boarding the boat, we just assumed there would be another boat since so many were trying to get to Laos for New Years. Do you think this happened? HECK NO! If you can imagine, there was 110 people - mostly white tourists - packed like sardines onto a boat that was far from comfortable to begin with. This perhaps is usual for locals to be packed together so tightly, but for all the grumpy and complaining tourists, it was almost like a hell for them. I'm not saying I was happy-go-lucky for the journey, but it was really neat to have experienced that - on the bright side. We saved a couple seats for the 2 aussies travelling with their 1 year old baby boy since we knew it would have been quite difficult for them otherwise. Jetta, Neils, and little Elkin. Carly and I and a few others were babysitters for the ride! It was so cute! They appreciated it totally and in that journey we became quite close, as far as travellor's can achieve closeness to others. Between constantly standing up and sitting back down on the cooler so the crazy boat lady could serve beer to the drunken tourists - and one local who picked a fight with Jetta because he just wouldn't shut-up while Elkin was sleeping, was beligerant and puking over the side and then going back for more beer which the crazy boat lady cheerfully served him - and moving over every 5 mins for the idiots who didn't think to go to the washroom beforehand, and not to mention the jerks who were hanging their legs off the edge and leaning their chairs back who wouldn't budge to allow for more room to get to the toilet, oh ya and there was the heat and crampedness and constant loud droan of the motor situated in the back of the boat where we were also situated... it was a very unique and interesting journey! heehee Baby sitting Elkin definitly passed the time cuz playing with babies is always fun, especially smiley happy ones with really cool parents.

The arrival was a gong show, in its truest sense. It was dusk, there was hardly any light, everyone piled off the boat and waited on the steep sandy banks for someone to unlaod their packs so they could mad dash it to find a place to sleep for the night if they hadn't arranged for one already. But the bags never came. I grabbed mine before deboating, but still had to get Carly's and so while she waited with our stuff, I went back on the boat to see what was going on.
The dudes were moving them from to the middle, but not OFF the boat. I started an assembly line to get the packs off before it got too dark, and as they were coming off Neils was calling out their descriptions and trying to fend off the little local boys who would come and try to steal them (or bring them up the bank)! I got off, Carly went on the search for her's and some older local had it and another's and tried to get her to pay to get it back! Of course she didn't, but because this town was PURELY built for tourism - ie. dodgy guesthouses and restaurants are it's only industry - the locals don't really understand what that means... it's hard to explain. I saw a dude shove a poor boy face first into the sand because he was so fed up with them crowding around him. It was terrible. The tourists don't really understand either, apparently. So after all that crazy day, exausted and sweaty and sore, we found our dodgy guesthouse and went for some delicious thai food with Jetta, Neils, Elkin, Perdy and Abbey (the 2 british birds who were also on the mini bus ride as well as our boat).

Elkin was across the street being watched so Jetta could have some peace time. So cool. The other kids being watched were of the young girl who was cooking everyone's meal BY HERSELF as well as the girl's brothers and sisters. The babysitter? the girl's mother. But that's what it's like there... she is only 15 years old and just had her second child only months before. She is working from dawn til 10pm when the entire village's power is shut off for the evening because of the curfew. A very different way to live. It's incredible.

Day 3 will be written another time...

bangKOK it's good to be here!

Hello to all my fans and adorerers... heehee I hope everyone's Christmas was a wonderful one, filled with good food, good gifts, but most of all good times. Mine sure was! THE MOST relaxing Christmas I have ever had in the boonies of Northern Thailand, about 17kms outside the city of Chiang Mai. We (Carly & I) stayed a beautiful resort where the spicy thai food was just that: spicy, and the scenary of course was fantastic. I have never seen such beauty before... I've been to many countries these past few months and the landscapes have all been respectively unique - even within a single country the landscapes shift, but nothing can compare to the mountains of Thailand. And though Thailand and the whole of S.E. Asia has been having quite a "cold" spell, the weather has still been substancially warmer than Spain and I've been in flipflops the whole time. TODAY though is absolutely gorgeous, the sun is back! It's been so long since I've felt it's luxurious rays on my skin... YES! heehee And here I am in an internet caf‚e writing an entry for this blog instead of outside basking in the sun! Now THAT's love!

*muah* a kiss for all of you cuz you are surely missed.

So ya. Bangkok was cool. The plane ride over was decent too; with nice reclinging chairs, a tv on every seat, good meals served, me and this dude who looked like Vin Diesel had a whole centre row to ourselves so we took advantage and sprawled out... the flight was 11 hours so why not? haha But arriving into Bangkok was pretty easy, no problems at the border, no real hold-ups either. Carly got pretty sick in Phnom Penh (stomach virus and head cold) and I got some sort of a cold while in Spain so we were pretty dosconnected for our 1.5 days in Bangkok. Went to Kaoh San Road (THE street to go to the city for cheap whatever and accommodation and pretty much everything a tourist might want/need) nonetheless, I met Carly's friend Sue who owns a shop there - very cool lady, single, no kids, travels and her shop is awesome - and hungout til we cought our train for our overnight ride to Chiang Mai.

Our resort was called Banana Bon Bon and it was paradise. Truly. The food was friggen AWESOME! We were right in the mountains, the boonies, no international telephones, no internet. As a gift, Carly and I went on an ELEPHANT RIDE!! WOW!! That was just about the most incredible feeling ever to see the animal I have for so long adored and felt a connection to... touch her, feel her leathery skin, look into her wise and caring eyes... so beautiful, I can hardly describe how I felt. It was a short visit, but it will forever be engraved in my memory as one the happiest moments of my life. Christmas was peaceful, as I've already said, and quite the refreshment from the craziness that is what I'm accustomed to . I might even consider doing something like that every year... truly. And now we are back in the city of Chiang Mai for the day and the night.

We leave tomorrow morning for Chang Khong where we'll be fed dinner, lodged over night, and fed breakies. We will leave Thursday morning on the "slow boat" which takes 2 days to reach the Laos border. In Laos I will write again cuz it likely won't be until then that I'll be near a computer, let alone any sort of advanced technology. I'll be in Luang Prabang for New Years and we'll be touring around Laos until January 9th at which time we'll be heading into Cambodia for the rest of January. I think the plan so far is that we'll be staying at an eco house in Ban Lung, living in a hut amongst the local tribes there, learning how they live, their history. I look forward to that for sure. Also, I have been invited to come along with Rain Water Cambodia and see/learn what it is they do as far cleaning the water and what not. I am honored for this oppertunity. We will be staying with the good people with whom Carly stayed and I am very excited to meet them. I will include a map of Laos in my next entry which won't be until the beginning of January.

Until then, know that I will be playing it safe and taking good care of myself. Carly and I are both healthy and ready to go and adventure! Yay! I hope you are all well... Keep posting comments (S&D) and at least START commenting you guys!!! Come on! I wanna know how you are! I love you!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

leavin on a jet plane...

So, my euro tour is over and I'm off to London and then Bangkok. Crazy. In case I don't write again for a while, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and all the best in the new year... know that while most of you are enjoying a delicious turkey dinner, I' ll be chowing down on a bowl full of rice. heehee
Take care everyone. I'm pretty excited about going... but I still miss you all lots.

I love you.

xoxoxox