And to that end I’ve put together a little reel. Check it out:

It has only about a third of the shots I directly worked on at Dreamworks, but I think it’s a fairly representative sample, and nobody really wants to see every disembodied-lemur-eyeball-in-the-bushes shot from Madagascar anyway. At least I don’t.

I was a little unsure about my musical selection. Anthony Rother’s Little Computer People might be a bit grating for those who don’t have a taste for fine electro. But I thought it was totally appropriate and totally hilarious. So I’m going with it. Plus my experience of CG demo reels is that they universally have ridiculously awful music, so everyone turns the sound down anyway.

So. People of the Internet. I am interested in what you think. Let me know! (and BTW, Internet: I’ve missed you. I intend to start posting here again regularly. I promise.)

So anyway, after Laos I headed straight for the South of Thailand (via a bus, a night train, a plane flight and half-days in Vientiane, Nong Khai, Bangkok and Surat Thani), where I intended to spend my last week relaxing on the beautiful and sun-drenched tropical island of Koh Tao:

Blue skies! Barfy burgers! Girls! It was going to be so awesome to sit on a beach in paradise after the chilly Laotian mountains.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm was damped somewhat when I got blatantly ripped off on my way to the island. The mole-bearded dude at my guesthouse in Surat Thani directed me to a travel agent who could sell me a ferry ticket to the islands. There are three major islands off the south-east coast of Thailand: Koh Samui, Koh Phangnon, and Koh Tao, and as far as I could tell there’s only one main ferry that links all of them with Surat Thani on the mainland. But the travel agent told me I could either get a ticket on the slow ferry that goes to all the islands, or on the express ferry direct to Koh Tao which costs twice as much. She even had a little brochure about it. So naturally, being worried about arriving late and not finding a good guesthouse, I bought the “express” ticket. But of course when I got to the ferry I discovered there was only one boat all along—the slow boat—and I’d just been sold a normal ticket for fifteen dollars more than it’s worth. I complained to the ferry people about the travel agent and they just said “oh yes travel agents, they lie”, like that’s just a given.

Eeeerrgg! That motherfucker! I know $15 isn’t that big a deal. But in Thailand it’s a huge deal. And come on! I’m unemployed here! That’ll buy me Macaroni and Cheese for at least a week back home! This is the one thing I have come to hate the most about Southeast Asia: as a visitor you cant trust anyone. Tourists are always fair game, and it’s just expected that locals will try to overcharge or cheat or otherwise rip off tourists in any way they can. It doesn’t even seem to be considered immoral or wrong to cheat farang (tourists). I mean it’s one thing when a seedy tout on the street rips you off, but you have to watch out for everyone: Travel agents in respectable-looking offices. The guy at your hotel reception. The Police. People who you are totally at the mercy of because they are the only ones who can give you the information or sell you the things you need. You just have to always be on guard, and always, always be skeptical of anything anyone tells you. I’ve gotten pretty good about always asking at least two or three people for the same services—it’s amazing how quickly prices drop when you do that—but in this one instance I let my guard down. And it pissed me off. I mean $15 isnt that big a deal really—mostly I just hate feeling stupid.

But anyway it was all okay because I was off to my sun-drenched tropical island paradise!

And the ferry ride to Koh Tao was indeed sun-drenched and beautiful. But see those menacing clouds in that photo? Sure enough, like a joke in a bad cartoon, the second I stepped off the ferry onto the island it started to rain. And rain. and rain. Torrential, intense, furious rain—the kind that only exists in the tropics (and which I seem to have encountered an undue amount of on this trip). Apparently someone had neglected to tell me that November is the end of the monsoon season in Southern Thailand. And it kept raining pretty much the entire week.

So all the roads on the island looked like this:

and to get anywhere you had to wade through flood waters.

So it wasn’t exactly the tropical island paradise I was hoping for, and I didn’t do much sitting on the beach. But I still liked Koh Tao a lot, and ended up having a great time there. It’s a very small island, and you get the sense that everyone knows everyone else. The people are very friendly, and it’s extremely touristy, which meant that it actually had good services and western-style stores (like 7-eleven.. i dont mean cowboy stores). That might sound lame, but it was a refreshing change of pace after Laos. Plus, while it was very touristy, it was also friggin monsoon season, so there wernt many actual tourists there. And we did eventually get a little bit of sun, which hinted at the tropical paradise Koh Tao must be in the high season.

Plus Koh Tao is known as the scuba diving capital of Thailand. Pretty much every guesthouse also runs a dive shop and gives lessons. And I figured as long as it was raining it would be probably nicer to be under the water than above it. So I spent a few days getting my PADI Open Water certification, and can now say that I am a certified scuba diver!

That’s me looking all sexy in my gear. It makes my head look really big for some reason. And I think the photo’s blurry because it was raining really hard on the dive boat right then.

But anyway, scuba diving is awesome! I really enjoyed it a lot, and I think my future vacations are all going to have to involve diving in some way. The water wasnt incredibly clear due to the turbulent weather—I think the best visibility we got was about 10 meters—but there were so many fish, and beautiful corals. I can only imagine what Koh Tao’s waters must be like in high season when the viz (thats what us cool scuba divers call visibility) is over 30m. We saw stingrays and angel fish, moray eels and clown fish that everyone called “nemo”. And its just such a great sensation to breathe underwater and swim weightlessly. I can’t wait to do it again.

The instructors took a little video on our last dive, which I’ll try to post if I can figure out how to work youtube.

So despite my issues getting there, and the generally uncooperative weather, my week on Koh Tao was totally enjoyable, and really was a perfect way to unwind after my hectic charge around the rest of southeast asia.

check out my koh tao flickr set below:

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I don’t have a picture to illustrate the phenomenon, cause I dont really like taking pictures of weird-lookin people, and plus it’s just gross. I wouldnt subject you to such unpleasantness, Dear Reader.

But you see it a lot here: men (and women!) with no hair on their face except for three or four long straggly hairs growing out of a mole or birthmark. Like five or six inches long. Ewww! I mean I understand that, stereotypically, asian people tend to not grow that much facial hair, so maybe you go with whatever you’ve got. Or maybe there’s some taboo about shaving it. Or maybe they think its sexy or something. In any case, I dont get it.
Perhaps one of my many intelligent friends with more cultural knowledge and sensitivity can enlighten me about this one, cause I’m at a loss.

I mean, I know a thing or two about birthmarks—I’ve got the facial scar to demonstrate that. And shaving them is difficult. I understand. I sympathize. But come on guys! Take some tweezers to that thing! You’re grossin me out here!

Sure I’ve been on some nice buses… the few times I splurged on a VIP air-con bus in thailand were very pleasant (they have stewardesses who serve snacks and drinks! on a bus!). But on the whole buses in this part of the world are hot, loud, and populated by other people, dammit.

There’s always Smoking Guy who smokes despite the clear no-smoking signs and rudely scowls at and ignores the entreaties of any offended westerners. There’s always Throat-Clearing-and-Spitting-Out-the-Window Guy who does that constantly the entire ride. There’s always a group of Loud-Talking Old Guys who cant seem to stop yelling at each other. And there’s always Sitting-Next-To-Taylor-Despite-All-The-Other-Open-Rows-and-Snoring Guy, who’s obviously my favorite.

Plus buses always load up on passengers and deliveries to a ridiculous extent, trying to squeeze every last kip out of each bus journey. This is what a typical bus aisle looks like in Laos:

…filled with boxes that you have to climb over to get in and out of your seat! And the last two rows and bathroom are totally crammed full of boxes too. Not to mention the baggage area under the bus, which has no space for actual baggage.

Another fun quirk about asian buses is that it acceptable to litter out the window. Done with your bottle of coke? Throw it out the window! Empty bag of chips? Defenestrate! On a boat? Throw it in the water! The same thing actually happens in many of the Eastern European countries I’ve visited. I think it’s a trait of developing nations—in places where there’s no municipal garbage collection, the typical disposal method is to burn garbage in big piles. But with a lack of better options, and no fines for littering, people seem to revert to their default, most self-serving behavior, which is just to throw their crap wherever they want. I actually have wondered about this a lot—is the only reason that I dont litter in the US, and actually find it extremely repulsive, that I’ve been subjected to years of “Dont Be a Litterbug” campaigns as a child? Is it because I subconsciously know that it’s illegal and I’ll be fined? Or do I have some more enlightened moral stance—an ability to think outside myself and see how my actions affect everyone else’s enjoyment of a place? I think probably not, and put in the same position as a typical southeast asian person, I’d probably revert to littering with the best of ‘em.

Anyway, the result of all this is the beautiful Southeast Asian landscape is covered in garbage. Especially the roadsides. So you always have a lovely view of a garbage dump from the bus window.

Another bizarre (and troubling) bus phenomenon is the guns. This one’s peculiar to Laos I think—on both long-distance buses I took in Laos there were various passengers carrying guns. Not hunting rifles—like serious, Kalashnikov-style assault rifles:

Scary! All carried by young men who strap them to their backs under their “US Army” jean jackets. Especially scary since the highway from Luang Prabang to Vientiane on which I was traveling has had a few robberies in recent years that left tourists dead—the US State Department has a travel advisory for Rte 13 in Laos, which is right where I was! But nobody else seemed to pay any attention to the enormous weapons on the bus. The Smoking Guys and Loud-Talking Guys paid them no mind. So I tried to ignore them too, even when a gun guy was sitting right behind me. I decided maybe they’re for protection. Or maybe they’re a delivery or a gift for mom or something. I dunno. Maybe they just really like guns. Obviously nothing came of it, but it sure made for a nervous couple of all-day bus rides.

But by far the most grating thing about bus travel for me is that on every bus you are forced to listen to whatever the driver wants on the overhead speakers. At high enough volumes that my trusty iPod cant overpower it. And as you may imagine, bus drivers in Laos are not in possession of the most discerning of musical tastes. It’s always, always the most terrible, sappy asian pop music ever created. And usually the driver just has one CD, which he repeats for the entirety of the nine-hour bus ride. I really dont have a very high opinion of southeast asian popular music (i think most of it comes from china, actually), because I’m a snob.

Some buses are a bit better and show movies, if they have a TV. Again, you’re forced to listen to it—buses never have headphone jacks like planes. But at least the movie selection is bewildering enough to be amusing. It’s like they bought some VHS tapes in 1985 and havnt ever bothered to refresh their library. Actually that’s probably exactly what happened. So on this trip so far I’ve seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, Heaven Can Wait, some Steven Segal movie, and The Bad-News Bears. All dubbed into some language (chinese?) with local subtitles. Still annoying, but at least weird.

I think I get annoyed by all this because of a basic cultural difference. Asian and western senses of appropriate public behavior, particularly with regard to personal space and comfort are just extremely different. We are used to a lot of comfort, and expect to maintain a little personal sphere of quietness where you dont have to pay attention to anyone around you (or at least I expect to). So when that’s intruded upon it seems rude and selfish. Like every other person is so inconsiderate for doing whatever they’re doing that imposes their behavior on us. They’re so self-centered for not thinking of how their actions impact my happiness! Of course I think a Southeast Asian person would see it exactly the opposite way—that I’m the self-centered selfish person for wanting to remove myself from my surroundings and not be bothered by anyone. Personal space does not exist here, and people are not used to having it. You are always, constantly interacting with other people and there’s no escaping it.

The buses really arnt that bad here… but they sure are fun to complain about, like a good self-centered comfort-loving American!

Anyway, there’s only two notable things about Phonsavan. First, it’s in the middle of the mysterious Plain of Jars, which is covered with scattered groupings of giant prehistoric stone jars, like this:

(i’ve placed a handy taylor in front of the jar so you can better judge its size)

And second, Phonsavan was one of the most heavily-bombed regions of Laos by the US during the Vietnam War. From 1963 into the early seventies, the US flew five hundred-thousand missions over Laos and dropped two million tons of bombs on the country. I mean we really bombed the shit out of it. It works out to something like an average of one bomb every eight minutes for nine years. And we never even told anybody we were fighting Laos! Go USA! High five!

Plus, due to our awesome military technology, about a third of those bombs never exploded and are still lying around on the ground all over eastern Laos. So you dont ever, ever walk off the road there, and you see tons of people with missing limbs and other disfigurements from fun encounters with UXO (unexploded ordinance). The whole Phonsavan region is a monument to the bombing in the sixties. There are bomb craters everywhere. Like in every little town there’s huge holes in the ground all over the place, and every hillside has visible bomb scars.

That’s a bomb crater at the first Jars site I visited. The sign says something like “American Bomb Crater c1970″. The only places that are safe for tourists to go are the ones that have been meticulously subsurface-cleared. So you see a lot of these sorts of signs listing how much UXO was found and destroyed in a given region:

The Laotians seem to have taken a very dry, ironic view of their bomb-riddled landscape. The most popular articles of clothing are military jackets that say “US ARMY”, and every guesthouse is decorated with weapons scrap. Like here’s the fireplace at my guesthouse:

That kitty thought that warm bomb was… da bomb! badum-bum!

To go anywhere in the area you need to go on a tour with a guide who has been given a permit by the laotian government, and who (presumably) knows where not to step. So that’s how I visited the Plain of Jars, on a tour with a group of Italian people. The jars themselves were pretty cool I suppose:

They’re a big puzzle to the archaeologists apparently—nobody’s really sure what purpose the jars served, or how they got there. We know they’re over 2500 years old and the stone was quarried locally. The primary jar theory is that they were used as sarcophagi for burials. But they also might have been used to make old-timey whisky, or to store food or water. Some of them have faint carvings of people on them, which seems to support the burial hypothesis:

Unfortunately it’s difficult to study them decently because of all that darn unexploded ordinance those rascally americans dropped all over the place. We visited the only three jars sites that have been cleared, but there’s still a lot that has gone un-researched.

The jars are neat and all, but at the end of the day, they’re sorta just a bunch of dumb jars. I mean, they dont really do much. I mostly enjoyed my tour because of the pleasant landscape the jars are scattered in. It’s all rolling grassy hills and small bushes—much less dramatic than the rest of Laos. Actually, weirdly, it reminded me a lot of parts of California.

So I had my jar fun, and then we moved on to the second half of the tour. We had been told that in the afternoon we would “go see a waterfall,” which sounded pretty nice I spose… I mostly just wanted to see the Jars, but there’s nothing wrong with a little waterfall-viewing now and then.

But the thing with Southeast Asian tours is they never really specify exactly what you’re signing up for. I dont know if it’s a cultural difference, or just a lack of English ability, but I find that tour guides always seem to leave out really obviously important pieces of information. Like that the waterfall was an hour-long hike down into a really deep river valley which we’d then need to climb out of by walking through the river.

The hike featured lots of very grumbly Italians. But fortunately the waterfall was pretty:

And the hillsides were covered in sunflowers:

and the tour guide took us to his house afterwards (which was right next to a bomb crater):

and we got to meet his water buffalo:

so, you know, the whole waterfall endeavor wasn’t entirely fruitless. One might even say it was da bomb! … I mean, I wouldnt say that. But someone might.

see my phonsavan flickr set below:

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Turns out, Luang Prabang is a beautiful, laid-back and very welcoming city. Nestled between mountains at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, it’s a picturesque and all-around pleasant place. All palm trees, lazy river boats and old wats.

(The Mekong is the muddy river in the back).

The entire old town is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so it’s well-maintained, and has not been subjected to the rampant modernization and uglifying that has overcome almost every other city I’ve visited in Southeast Asia. It beats out Hoi An in Vietnam for my prestigious Prettiest City in Southeast Asia award. There’s not that many activities in Luang Prabang to speak of… there are a million old wats, and the royal palace museum, and some caves and waterfalls outside of town that are kinda nice. And there’s a great night market perfect for all your tourist souvenir-shopping needs. But mostly I just enjoyed hanging out in Luang Prabang doing nothing, eating spring rolls overlooking the Mekong and making friends with stray cats:

She was very interested in those spring rolls.

I think also a lot of the city’s charm comes from the fact that the Laotian people are generally really friendly. In every other country in Southeast Asia tourists get hassled constantly to have a tuk-tuk ride, or buy some piece of crap, or get a massage, or take a city tour to my brother’s suit shop. It’s unceasing, and often very sneaky. In Thailand, Chiang Mai in particular, stores send people out to befriend tourists, and pretend like they’re being helpful, but are really just surreptitiously guiding the unsuspecting tourists towards the stores for a commission. It’s one of the things I like least about this part of the world—that you can’t trust anyone, and have to constantly be defensive. So I’ve built up a good instinctive, dismissive reaction to anyone who speaks to me on the street—shaking my head, not looking at them and clearly saying “no”. If you just ignore people they assume you didnt hear and get louder and keep repeating themselves, following you, and often grabbing your arm or shoulder to get your attention. And you definitely cant say something indecisive or sarcastic like “maybe later” or “ill think about it” because that’s interpreted as “definitely later” and “im interested in purchasing your crap”. So a clear “no” is my default expression.

I can rant about this forever. But anyway, imagine my confusion when I get to Laos and everyone I pass on the street just smiles and says “sabaidee“. At first I didn’t know what that meant and assumed they were trying to sell me some sabaidee, whatever that might be. But I soon learned it means “hello” and they’re all just being genuinely friendly. Like friendly without a catch, or any expectation of getting money later. So refreshing! I had heard that Laos is the most pleasant country to visit in southeast asia, but it’s really true. Sure there are still aggressive tuk-tuk drivers and you get hassled in places like markets, but in general it’s much more relaxed than anywhere else I’ve visited. You can actually let your guard down there and enjoy the culture a bit.

Awk Phansaa

As it turned out, it was a good thing that I got sick in Luang Prabang, because I extended my stay there by a few days. And just by chance, the last night I was there coincided with a huge festival called Ban Awk Phansaa (i think), which happens once a year on the full moon in late October or early November. From what I gathered, it celebrates the end of the rainy season, along with the end of three months of fasting. And the Laotians go nuts for it! It was like New Years combined with the Fourth of July—huge crowds and drinking and dancing, and everyone had fireworks:

I mean everyone did. The city felt like a war zone at times..

it was difficult to take one picture the sheer number of explosions going off everywhere, so just take my word for it. It was pretty awesome. The centerpiece of the festival was a parade, with all sorts of different groups all carrying paper and bamboo boats to the riverside:

all of which were covered in candles, and then sent sailing down the Mekong into the darkness. Individual people also launched little floating wreaths with candles as well, so the Mekong was covered with lines of floating candles.

it was difficult to capture with my crappy free HP camera, but you get the idea maybe. The overall effect was very peaceful and beautiful and festive.

I love stumbling across random local festivals when I am traveling. It really lets you see a side of a culture that you dont normally get to experience, and makes a place all the more memorable. Ill always remember the celtic midsummer festival in Asturias, for example, or happening across the dalai lama’s birthday party in Ljubljana. And I think I’ll always remember Luang Prabang. It’s a very singular place.

See all my luang prabang photos below:

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but its time had come.

It just became very annoying to have such a fantastic beard

while I simultaneously had a fantastically runny nose.

I’m sure you can imagine the problems such a situation might cause.

So the one thing I accomplished during my convalescence in Luang Prabang was its complete removal:

But don’t despair! My face is currently busily working on a replacement beard which I’m sure will be its equal in every way. The beard will return someday. But for now it will live on in our memories, and our hearts. And these cuts on my neck.

And normally I’d just sleep that off for a day, drinking lots of orange juice and watching soap operas, maybe asking my mommy to make me some chicken noodle soup. But I was in Laos, land of scary diseases like Malaria, Dengue Fever and Japanese Encephalitis, all of whose symptoms my guidebook lists as “high fever, nausea and headache”, with the added warning that any sign of fever should be treated immediately because malaria needs to be caught in the first 24 hours.
And to make things worse, there are no reputable hospitals in Laos—any major emergency medical cases need to be flown to Bangkok for treatment.

Plus they dont have Orange Juice in Southeast Asia!! Seriously, everything is this “25% Orange Concentrate” crap that tastes like Hi-C. I think the thing I’m most looking forward to when I get back to the US is having a nice big glass of orange juice. And maybe a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. And maybe a burrito. But I suppose that’s what I’m typically looking forward to when I’m in the US as well…

Anyway, I’m not normally prone to hypochondria, but I got myself worried. So I dragged myself out of my guesthouse that afternoon and wandered the streets slowly and stumblingly, sweating profusely, trying to find someone who could tell me where to find an English-speaking doctor. This took a few hours… when you don’t need any help you’re constantly being badgered by people wanting to sell you things, or give you massages, or rides on their motorbikes, but when you actually need something (and look a little diseased) nobody approaches you. Plus every tuk-tuk driver in the world knows the english words for the main tourist attractions, and for denominations of money, but if you say “take me to a doctor” they just stare back blankly. I found a place listed in the Lonely Planet as an “international clinic” but nobody there could understand anything I said. They just laughed at the amusingly-bearded American (i realized later I had stumbled in to the cardiology department by mistake).

I finally learned the laotian word for hospital—something like huang maw—and found a tuk-tuk guy who understood me and took me here:

The China-Laos Friendship Hospital. If there are three words you shouldn’t trust when found in a sentence together, they are China, Laos, and Hospital. And if it looks like it’s in the middle of a big muddy field, that’s because it is.

I went in and the giggling nurses (who all wore oldschool Florence Nightengale-style nurses outfits) found me a Chinese doctor who understood some English. Thankfully. He was the one doctor on duty, I think. They showed me to an examination room, which I swear to god looked like this:

That’s actually a picture of a prison cell at the Phnom Penh Genocide Museum—I didn’t take any pictures inside the hospital. And I’m exaggerating a bit with that picture, but the hospital bed was about the same… small and uncomfortable with a thin mattress stained with countless laotian bodily fluids. Seriously it looked like the sheets had never been washed. The whole room was dirty and full of medieval torture device-style instruments. None of your typical western white-washed antiseptic hospital rooms to be found here.

So the doctor laid me down, and the nurses took my temperature (101!), and my blood pressure, and listened to my chest and all that. And then they all went away and left me for a while wondering what was going to happen to me. Did I have malaria? Were they going to come back with foreceps and leaches? Would I have to evacuate myself to Bangkok?

But the doctor came back and announced I just had a common cold. And I should sleep, and drink fluids (though presumably not orange juice). He gave me some decongestant and cough drops and sent me on my way.

So I was relieved, but still spent the next couple days lying around in my guesthouse room feeling sorry for myself. And eventually I felt well enough to go out and enjoy Luang Prabang. But more on that in subsequent posts.

Lesson Summary: It’s no fun to be sick when traveling alone. And dont ever get seriously sick in Laos. And I miss orange juice a lot.

Note the man in the background who is apparently importing a refrigerator into Laos.

Entering Laos on a little rickety boat sounds pretty clandestine and dangerous, I know, but the whole immigration procedure was smooth and easy. A big group of German old people did it right before me. One side of the river seemed much the same as the other side, really. The only “wow im in freaking laos” moment I had was when I changed some US dollars into an enormous stack of Laotian kip. The exchange rate is something like $1 = 9500 kip, and the biggest bill they have is for 20,000.

Despite being a major border crossing, Huay Xai really felt like the middle of nowhere. From there it’s many many hours by any form of transportation to get to any other destination of consequence in Laos. Remote and isolated. To get to Luang Prabang (my next destination) from Huay Xai there are two options: take a slow boat or a fast boat. The slow boats take two days and stop at every conceivable opportunity. The fast boats take just six hours but are these little flimsy shallow wooden deals with an enormous engine on the back:

when you ride in one you wear a crash helmet and a life preserver. I guess they kill a few people each year when they hit floating debris and disintegrate on impact.

So naturally, being a total wuss, I took the slow boat.

And as it turned out, I was glad I did because the Mekong is not a calm river. Even now in the wet season there are tons of rapids and swirlypools and eddies and all kindsa obstacles that would have freaked me out had I been barreling along in one of those fast boats. Plus the scenery was beautiful. All incredibly dramatic lushly forested hills dropping straight into the muddy brown Mekong.

And all along there are little shacks and houses in the most inaccessible locations imaginable. It was a bit weird to think about how the people who live there and work in those hillside fields probably spend their whole lives right there in that very spot, and here’s me chugging through in five minutes on my slow boat, taking pictures to remember the place I’ll never see again.

And it was a very slow boat. It stopped at all the little villages along the way to pick people up or make deliveries or whatever. You really got an idea of what commerce on the Mekong is like. There were fruits and bundles of wood, and even livestock delivered to many of the little hamlets. On one occasion a man threw a bag off the boat and it started screaming like crazy, which got everyone’s attention. He opened the bag and revealed a live pig with its legs bound together. Imagine a boatload of Western tourists looking on as a pig is dragged by its bound legs across rocks and up the rough hillside to whatever its fate might have been. I swear that pig screamed just like a little child.

The boat even broke down once and had to be fixed (an operation that involved pulling up the floorboards and doing something with a long bamboo pole):

We stopped for the night in tiny, tiny Pak Beng, whose sole business seemed to be providing guesthouses for the dozens of slow-boaters stranded there for the night.

There wasnt much to it, and the electricity shut off at 10pm. But my accomodation for the night was not quite $3, and you cant really beat that.

8 hours a day for two straight days might sound like a really uncomfortable, annoying ordeal, and it partially was. But I made friends with the people sitting around me, who I then later hung out with in Luang Prabang. I read an entire novel. And if there’s any one thing I’m really good at, it’s sitting in one place for long periods of time, thinking about nothing. So that’s what I mostly did. So it was a great way to journey from tiny, backwater Huay Xai to bustling, cosmopolitan Luang Prabang. Like my own little personal Heart of Darkness, but in reverse.

see my boat journey flickr set below:

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