Day Two, Houay Xai.

We woke up fairly late. It was, maybe, ten o'clock. We got ready and went back to the restaurant with the ants. The ants were still there. The breakfast wasn't very good. We walked back down the street to see if the Gibbon Experience had opened their office yet. They had not and the note was still there saying that they would return at two. Marcus and I decided to take a walk and see if there was anything more happening during the day than there had been in the evening.
Marcus, having been to Houay Xai earlier in the year, remembered there being a market. We started down the road. We walked past the same ten people on the same ten motorbikes. We stopped at a couple of shops so that Marcus could try to find a long sleeved shirt for the jungle. We also bought a couple of other things out of no real necessity, save conveniences, like shaving cream, toothpaste, some razors, and, later in the day, a flashlight. Marcus didn't have any luck finding a long sleeved shirt.
We walked up to the market. There, we found a store selling mats. Mats are great for keeping your climbing gear clean. We had forgotten to bring a mat, so we bought a new mat from a very nice lady who then was also kind enough to sell us some water. It was hot, close to noon, and there was very little shade. We checked out the market. It was full of all kinds of things.


The thing that I remember being the most plentiful, however, were the flies. They were everywhere and all over everything. They swarmed the meat as young mothers haggled over prices with the vendors who absentmindedly swished the flying pests away with plastic bags. I decided, in that market, that I was no longer eating meat in Houay Xai. This resolution was short-lived, but, at the time, I was convinced.
We quickly lost interest in the market and continued walking up a steep hill. When we got to the top of the hill we turned left. We walked some more and came upon an old concrete machine gun bunker. As we were admiring the craftsmanship of Vietnam era military engineering some young girls sitting on a patio down the hill noticed us. They started shouting all the English words they knew, "Superman", "banana", "stop", "bunny", "monkey-carrot-dollar-same". I laughed and said 'hello' and then we kept walking.
We walked past the Laotian military barracks and down another hill back into the main part of the city. We saw a baby chicken in a ditch who couldn't find its way out. It was chirping wildly trying to get its mother hen to come and save it, but the momma didn't seem too concerned. I still don't like chickens. That is why I eat them. We stopped in at the cafe that I had been to the night before for lunch. This was done mostly because it was right across the street from the 'Gibbon' office, which was just down the road from where we were staying. It was getting on to two in the afternoon and there was still no sign of activity in or around the office.
Marcus started to wonder if maybe they had gone bankrupt and just not bothered to tell anybody. Marcus is a bit paranoid. We ate our food and, as we were finishing, we saw some young men walk up to the 'G' office. We got scared. It was a combination of the way they were dressed, the bad hair, bad sunglasses, bad posturing, and the way that they walked that caused Marcus and me to simultaneously begin to pray that they would not be on the same 'experience' as us. There was no way in hell that we wanted to be stuck in the jungle with these boys for company. I took it as a sign that I am aging (that, and the gray hairs). A few minutes later a land rover and a jeep pulled up in front of the office and people started getting out and going into the office. We payed our bill and wandered over to check in for the trip we would be taking in the morning. We chatted a bit with the people just returning from the trip and the excitement for what we were about to do began to escalate. The people were thrilled with the experience. They told us we would love it but they couldn't explain why, we would just have to do it ourselves. We signed our waivers and release forms and were told to be back at the office at 8:30 in the morning. The boys with the bad hair were no where to be seen. We were, honestly, relieved.
As we were in the process of filling out the forms we met an American woman named Constance. Constance was, by all definitions, a soccer mom. She was traveling through Laos with her son for his 21st birthday. I am not entirely sure, but I believe she said that his name was Q. I also can not quite recall the exact line of questioning that she engaged in with us but it was strange enough that both Marcus and I almost instantaneously started coming up with reasons that we needed to leave. Since we were in Houay Xai, this was not exactly an easy thing to do. We settled on the idea that we needed to go for a run and that is exactly what we did.
We went back to the guesthouse, paid for the room for another night and made a reservation for a room for the night we returned from the jungle, and then went for a run. Our run covered almost exactly the same course that we had walked earlier in the day. I am pretty sure that the Laotians are not big on running. I am also sure that they don't see many people, especially foreigners, who go for runs while staying in Houay Xai. As the two of us passed by there was lots of pointing, confusion, and laughter as the by-standers saw us, proceeded to look for what we were running from, and, then, realized that we were not running from anything. During the run it again became apparent that Laos was trying to asphyxiate itself. The air, while not filled with same kind of pollution that we had been acclimating to in Bangkok, burned in your lungs. And it was really hot.
After the run, we took turns getting cleaned up and washing our clothes in a bucket in the shower and hanging them out to dry. While Marcus was getting ready, I went to the roof to try and catch a bit of sun and get some color in to my pasty white skin. The boys that had previously been no where to be seen came up to the roof as well. Fantastic!, they were staying in our guesthouse. I said hello to them and got absolutely no response. I felt justified in my early stereo-typed condemnation. They proceeded to roll up joints, open beers, get fucked-up, and hold conversations consisting mostly of monosyllabic insults. Based on the difficulty that I had understanding there monosyllables, I decided that they were most likely young South Africans (nothing against South Africans, I wouldn't have liked these kids no matter where they were from). Marcus came and got me after he was finished and I took my turn washing the filth off. When he came back down from the roof I got the impression that he was, yet again, praying that we would not be spending the next few days in the company of those gentlemen.
We went back to the same restaurant by the river for dinner. The ants were still there. Marcus continued to terrorize them. At one point he had one of the vicious little bastards hanging by its mandibles from the tip of a pen. He then dipped the monster in the cherry dipping sauce for the spring rolls and then returned him to his compatriots. The ant's buddies started alternating between tearing the poor guy limb from limb and realizing that he was one of their own. It is definitely interesting to watch ant behavior when they are forced into an ethical dilemma. Constance was also at the restaurant. She introduced us to her son, again I am pretty sure his name was Q, and, to our relief, informed us that she was not on the same trek that we were. She spent the rest of her meal with her son glancing at Marcus with a very strange expression. We ignored it the best we could and pretended to have interesting conversations about things that we had already talked about and, eventually, she and her son left.
After we finished dinner we went back to the little cafe we had lunch at, ordered a few beers and had a very interesting conversation with an older Irish lady named Mary. She had been traveling for most of her life and entertained us with her stories of those travels. After a couple beers and a couple hours of chatting, we headed off to sleep.

Post the Third

We settled in to our seats on the bus and started to take in the scenery between Chiang Rai and the Laos border. Lush green rice fields, amazing karsts, wooden huts, and an ever present acrid smoke that seemed to choke the horizon. It seems that, in preparation for the rainy season, most of Northern Thailand and Laos light everything on fire right around the beginning of March. I have never spent a lot of time studying agriculture but I seem to remember that field burning was one of the less desirable ways to prepare land for the next seasons crops. They don't seem to have gotten the memo in this part of the world. As the bus traveled on, we not only saw the acrid smoke on the horizon but also the remnants of the recently charred fields and then, as we got closer and closer to the Laos border, we were actually driving past hillsides and fields that were in the process of being burned. I imagine that a controlled burn is a lot less labor intensive than some of the other ways you could clear land for cultivation but, I must say, it does kind of rob ones appreciation of the natural beauty of a place when it hurts to breathe.

For about the first thirty minutes of the ride, Marcus and I had a great time. We were on the road and heading to Laos for a fifteen day adventure that promised to be a great time. We took in the sites of the country, so refreshing after several months of the pollution, concrete, and craziness of the city, chatted about the plans that we had and how we were going to implement them, and laughed about the situations we had already found ourselves in within the first six hours of the trip. The windows on the bus were down, the air was thick with the smells of the countryside (we hadn't been overwhelmed by the smoke yet), the scenery was beautiful, and, by god, we were going somewhere.
That somewhere, according to the English signage on the bus, was Chiang Khong. As we got further and further away from Chiang Rai, a subtle shift in Marcus' demeanor started to become apparent. "Hey, Brett" he eventually said to me, "what if we got on the wrong bus?" The bus slowed down, some people got off. Marcus, newly worried with the seeds of doubt, changed seats. I went to sleep. I woke up a little while later to see Marcus on his cell phone trying to get a hold of someone in Bangkok to confirm that we were, indeed, supposed to be going to Chiang Khong. He was unsuccessful. I could read the stress on his face. I went back to sleep and had a lovely dream about unicorns. The dream caused me a bit of an epiphany when I realized that we never stop fantasizing. As adults, we just limit our fantasies to the world of the possible and then pin all of our hopes and dreams on things that are just as imaginary as unicorns, but they are things we can justify as being 'possibilities' and we are just as upset when these fantasies fail us as we were when we found out there were no unicorns.
We finally arrived in Chiang Khong and were immediately relieved to find a host of tuk-tuk's waiting to take people to the border crossing. It was about 5pm and we were not sure how much longer the border would be open. We threw our bags into the back of the tuk-tuk and energetically encouraged the driver to get us there quickly. Unfortunately, there was nothing quick about the tuk-tuk we chose. I am not sure if it was the weight of our bags or the 1% grade of the hill we were driving up, but the man's motorbike definitely struggled. I started debating whether or not we should have walked. Eventually, we got to the top of the road leading to immigration and that is as far as our driver was willing to take us. We paid the man, grabbed our bags and walked down to the little office on the banks of the Mekong River. We were still not sure if immigration on the Laos side would be open and we still had not acquired our visas for Laos but the man at Thai immigration happily stamped us out of Thailand. We walked down to the bank of the river and hired a boat to take us across to Laos.




The boat ride took all of five minutes and then, after collecting our bags, we walked up the boat ramp to find the Laos immigration and visa services office....open!
We handed over our passports and filled out our applications. We changed money. I, for the first time in my life, had over two million units of a currency on my person. We got our passports back with the Laos visas, paid our fees (it's cheaper if you are an American than it is if you are a Canadian, go figure). We then gave our passports to the immigration officer and we were officially in Laos. This really consisted of, yet again, grabbing our packs, and then walking up the road in to the little town of Huay Xai (Hoo-ay-sigh).
As I said before, there was nothing happening. Marcus and I checked into the Friendship Guest House, dropped off our bags and then went to find the Gibbon Experience office.



The office was just down the street from our guest house, as it would turn out that everything else was as well, and there was a note on the door that said 'will be back at 2pm'. It was already six in the evening so we assumed they meant 'the next day'.
We ate at a pretty nice restaurant just down the street from our guest-house (ha!)which had the added benefit of having these huge red attack ants all over the riverside railing. These ants were HUGE! They were so huge that when they snapped their mandibles shut...YOU COULD HEAR IT! The ants also had these crazy black eyes and you could tell that they could actually see because they would stop and look at things (like you, or your finger, or the tip of a chopstick, or each other) While we were waiting for our dinner to arrive we observed these creatures capturing all sorts of bugs and we also observed that the gecko's, which were easily ten times bigger than the ants, were terrified of them. Marcus started alternating between catching bugs to feed the ants and then flicking the ants off of the railing into the dark oblivion of the riverside grasses.

Our food arrived. Marcus ordered sticky rice and spring rolls. I had a very nice fried rice with chicken that, while delicious, really hurt to eat because of the burn in my mouth from the pizza earlier in the day.
After dinner, Marcus decided he still wasn't feeling too great from the previous nights escapades and that he was going to go to bed. It was 8:30 at this point. I decided to stay up and check out Houay Xai. I wandered down the main street and saw the same ten people on the same ten motorbikes driving back and forth down the road. I saw people eating dinner at little impromptu cafes and food stands. I heard a lot of Thai pop music blasting at speaker-blowing levels out of tiny little radios. I found a little cafe that was playing Jack Johnson (at least is wasn't the Eagles), ordered a beer, and began writing in my journal. And that was about it. Thus ended the first day of our trip to Laos. I was in bed by 11:30 in order to prepare myself for the day ahead, little did I know that Houay Xai was so sleepy that I wouldn't have needed to sleep at all and would have still had plenty of resources to deal with what there was on offer.

This Guy. Post the Second.

We walked into the pizza shop, took off our huge backpacks, and managed to get ourselves seated at a table. We went over the menu, decided on what we were having, placed our orders and, then, I started scanning the dining room to see what the people of Chiang Rai that ate pizza were like. As I was looking around, I noticed the man pictured to the left. Well, not actually that man. I stole the photo of the interwebs and then doctored it a bit in paint to make it slightly resemble the man that I saw, but I think it is close enough to accurate to paint the correct picture.
He was sitting at a table behind Marcus. He had a copy of the Lonely Planet 'India' guidebook unopened on the table in front of him, underneath a plate of half-eaten onion rings. When I say half-eaten what I mean is that each of the individul onion rings was only half-eaten. In other words, he had eaten half of each onion ring on the plate. It gets even odder. Oh, and there were three cups of coffee, not that that is odder but they were also on the table. The man himself was wearing a baseball cap and very, very dark sunglasses. I am not sure if I need to, but I will remind you that we are sitting in a fairly dimly lit pizzeria. I begin to look away and look at some of the less strange clients in the restaurant as he starts tearing the warning label off of a pack of cigarettes. By the time I had scanned the rest of the dining room and got back to looking at the man in the hat and glasses, he had removed the warning label from the cigarette pack and was holding it in between his lips so that the picture of rotted teeth and a cancer-eaten lip was covering his own mouth. While he was doing this he was also scanning the dining room and locking eyes over the top of his glasses with anybody he caught looking at him.
I quickly looked away, but at this point thought it would be a good time to involve Marcus in the freak show that was occurring just a few meters away. "Don't look now", I said to Marcus, "but in a bit look over your left shoulder at your six o'clock." Marcus eventually glanced over and then almost choked on his own laughter. The man continued to sit there in this fashion for about the next 10 minutes. Marcus and I, all the while, quietly discussing the ins and outs about why westerners get such bad raps in foreign countries. Suddenly, the man stood up and, without collecting any of his possessions or asking for his check, walked out the door. Watching from my seat, I saw him stand outside the front window, pull out a cigarette, light it up, and then walk across the street to a temporary traffic police shelter and sit down. At about that time our pizza arrived. We ate, I burned the roof of my mouth severely, we payed our bill and, by the time we left, the man still hadn't come back. Everything he left was still on the table but he was no where to be seen. Perhaps the mother-ship called at an inopportune time.
After we left the pizzeria, Marcus realized that he had forgotten to pack a towel. This was very bad. According to one of my favorite authors in the world:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Chapter 3 of Douglas Adams work,
'The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

Not that Marcus or I are interstellar hitch-hikers but the same, in a much tamer way, can be said about the uses of a towel even if it is toned down the things that one may come across backpacking through SE Asia. Marcus decided that procuring a towel was the single most important thing that he needed to do. I waited outside of a shop he went in to search for the towel. I smoked a cigarette in clear view of the bus that we were supposed to be taking to the border. I glanced at my watch, it was 2:30pm. I looked up just as the bus started backing out of the bus station. Marcus still hadn't returned. I quietly chuckled to myself. The bus pulled out and slowly headed down the street, turned the corner, and disappeared. Marcus returned about two minutes later carrying a towel. I smiled as he walked up and told him that our bus had just left. He asked me what time it was. I told him it was 2:33. He waved his towel furiously, "This is Thailand," he yells, "NOTHING EVER LEAVES ON TIME, LET ALONE FUCKING EARLY!"
It turns out that a towel is also useful for flagging down buses in Thailand. I know this because, at that very moment a bus pulled up beside us and, although it didn't actually stop, a woman on the bus started signaling for us to get on. Marcus said, "Laos?". The woman continued signaling for us to get on. The bus still hadn't stopped moving. It was a split second decision. We jumped on. I, confused by how quickly everything was happening, tried to sit down on one of the open bench seats without removing my pack. In my haste I completely mis-judged how much space the seat had to offer and the combined size of me and my backpack. I found myself mercilessly wedged between the back of the seat and the seat in front of me, the weight of the pack having pulled me into the compromising position before I could re-shift my weight to get out of it. I squirmed, and squirmed, and squirmed and, eventually, managed to get the backpack off and into the back of the bus where Marcus was standing and laughing at me. Not only was Marcus laughing at me but so was every other person on the small bus. Every person, that is, except the young Thai monk sitting directly behind me. He was definitively unamused.

The First Post

Houay Xai, March 2nd 2009
An incredibly sleepy town. I was born in an incredibly sleepy town and grew up in some even sleepier towns (anyone ever heard of Bridge, OR) but this town puts them all to shame in the category of sleepiness. I have been here for a little less than a day at this point and some of the really noticeable things I have noticed are that anything that happens here happens in exactly the same way on any other day (I am convinced of this even though I have been here less than a day), and I am pretty sure the town has hired about 10 young couples to drive up and down the main street to give the illusion that there is something going on somewhere; and that people are trying to get there. After very close inspection, however, you realize that the people on the motorbikes must be driving the same 5km stretch over and over again, all day long. What I have just said is not actually true, but it feels that way.
The trip actually began yesterday in Bangkok. Marcus and I made our way to the airport at 7 in the morning. Marcus, in a far worse state than me, wasn't sure he was going to be able make it and was dreading the flight up north to Chiang Rai. The reason why Marcus was in a far worse state than me? The night before we had gone out for some end of term drinks with our co-workers and Marcus, in his infinite wisdom, decided to get on the whiskey. Not such a bad decision, some of you might think, but what you don't know is that Marcus hasn't really had anything to drink in about two full months (according to my calculations, anyway). We all had a good evening, but the drink hit Marcus a little harder than he was expecting.
We got to the airport, checked in to our flights and then proceeded to kill the next three hours. We wandered around. Marcus, starting to enter the stage of his hangover where everything was becoming funny because nothing made any sense, picked out a strange little cafe for us to have a breakfast sandwich and for me to get my coffee. It may sound like I am berating Marcus for drinking but, I assure you, I am not. I am merely berating him for drinking whiskey all night when he hasn't drank in two months.
We went through the security check (I think they are making the machines more sensitive because my piercings keep setting the damn detectors off), immigration, and then made it to the departure gate. Marcus immediately laid down on an empty row of benches and went to sleep. I found a place to buy some water and snacks and then proceeded to watch the Discovery Channel in Thai. It is very strange to see a bunch of American inmates speaking in Thai. I have always wondered what people do in prison and now I know--they learn strange languages so that they can be on TV shows in foreign countries.
Eventually we boarded the plane. The flight to Chiang Rai took just about an hour and we were in a taxi and on our way to the Chiang Rai bus station before noon. We got to the bus station and asked when the bus for the Laos border was leaving. We were shown to the bus we needed to take. I asked, in Thai, when the bus left. We were told that the departure time was 2:45. I checked my watch. We had an hour and fifteen minutes. Somewhere in this process I realized that I had forgotten to pack any socks. Marcus laughed at me for being an idiot, still blurry eyed, but obviously in better spirits. I looked up and down the street and saw, to my luck, an Addidas shop. Now, I have never been a big fan of Addidas but I was pretty sure they could fulfill my need for a couple pairs of socks. I wasn't wrong.
That wasted about ten full minutes. With an hour and five minutes left, we decided to get some lunch. We opted for pizza and thank god for that because if we hadn't, we wouldn't have met this guy:

This will take a little bit of explanation, I am sure.
And it will come in the next installment. I promise.

Same Same, but different!

And now it's time for the update from Brett.

I have succesfully survived my 14 day trip to Laos. The tale of the trip will be coming soon. Probably in several installments, so please be patient. There is a lot to tell.

Maya succesfully survived 14 days without me. She will probably kill me for writing that with the slingshot that I bought her in Laos. Not exactly the wisest gift for me to give a woman with her tendancies towards violence.

The other important things that I feel that are neccesary to mention are that

a: we started planning the wedding early with the full expectation that things were going to change.

b: there has already been a very drastic change.

c: that change is the date of the wedding which is now MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND, SATURDAY MAY 29TH, 2010.

d: we have also decided on the location, which is going to be in ZION NATIONAL PARK, SPRINGDALE, UTAH USA. the exact location of the ceremony and party will be decided soon but that should give you a good idea of how far you need to plan on traveling. I know it is a long way for everybody but that is the only way we thought we could make it fair and it is as close to an equal trip as we could find from both Texas and Oregon and it is a very beautiful place. (Thanks to my mom for agreeing to handle all of the really difficult parts of planning a wedding. All we have to do is come up with the ideas.... see (e). We are both very appreciative.)

e: when we are closer than more than a year away, we will create a website listing the possible options of activities (there is a golf course, Stan), places to stay, options for camping, and a better idea of the kind of wedding we are going to have. Just so you know, it is in the desert, it will be very non-traditional, and the groomsmen may not be wearing pants. We are planning on having a good old fashioned bbq for the reception and possibly renting a mechanical bull (that is the only thing I can think of when trying to decide how to entertain Texans, Oregonians have a good enough time just doing keg-stands).

f: Maya wants me to mention how much I love her, so, I love Maya very much.



Now its time for the update from Maya:


So while Brett's been galavanting around Laos, I've been busy working, doing yoga, not cleaning the house and changing up all the plans we made prior to Brett leaving for Laos. It's been a grueling process but luckily Brett takes to change like a champ. The change revolves around our post wedding/honeymoon roadtrip plans. We had initially decided to move back to Austin so that Brett could get his teaching certification in order to get gainful employment at well-paying international schools wherever we happen to head to next. But then, I got inpsired. What inspired me? Two things really: 1. I met a woman with my dream job. She's the SGBV (Sexual Gender Based Violence) coordinator for the project in a refugee camp where I work. I love what she does. I want to do it, or something like it. I need a Master's. 2. Kit and Michelle. Michelle is going back to grad school and Kit is finishing grad school. They somehow managed to write that daunting essay and get their recommendations and get into school. So I've decided that I just might be able to pull off the application process as well. I absolutely hate the application process because of one thing: The essay. And while I'm comfortable writing silly stories about riding motorcycles up mountains and putting them on the web, that 500 word essay is, to say the least, intimidating and procrastination-inspiring. I've sang this tune of grad school before. I even had my recommendations and GRE all ready. It was the essay that stopped me in my tracks. This time, hopefully, I will persevere.

In looking for programs in what I want, 4 programs really stand out: 2 in Massachusettes, and 2 in the UK, and then there's UT. The programs in Massachusettes is double the time and because of that almost quadruple the cost of the UK programs. And because of the shorter period of the UK programs, they even beat UT in costs. I'll be applying for scholarships and aid but we'll see what happens. I'm only looking at schools where Brett would be able to get his teaching certificate at the same time and he's being more than accomodating about locations. He's awesome that way. So we'll have to see if, 1st of all, I get in to any of these school, and 2nd of all, which won't knock us back into decades of debt. Bottomline: Our intended move back to Austin might be shortened to a few months up...depending on if I get into a school. A lengthy visit to Oregon is also planned so I can finally see what all that hype is about ;). High on the agenda of next year for both of us is catching up with family and friends before we take off again.

That's about it. Brett will be writing lots of long, detailed and funny accounts of the past 2 weeks. Mine went something like this : Wake up, Work, Yoga, Sleep, Wake up, Work, Run, sleep, .... you get the idea. I've been trying to take advantage of my time in BKK to work out as much as I say I want to work out when I'm not in BKK. With no one to come home to, that makes it much easier. Riveting, isn't it. Yeah....I'll leave Brett to it.