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After a humiliating first round defeat 3 weeks ago (has it really been that long?) I had another bout with this dirty, stinky, busy city and it turned out… much, much better.  Among other things, importantly I know how to talk to the relentless tuk-tuk drivers, I know how to work the skyline/subway system, and I know to drink lots and lots and lots of water. 

I got my camera fixed today.  Bought a new lens cap (oh yeah, lost that about a week ago) and that annoying spot that shows itself in every… single… one… of my pictures has been destroyed.  Thanks Canon people!

Other than that, what did I do today that made Bangkok so much more successful this time?  It’s hard to say, because it’s not anything huge and tangible like the Gibbon Experience.  It was the little things, like bargaining prices of tuk tuk rides and food, eating the best waffle-orange juice combination I’ve ever had (in Asia?  what’s going on?), riding the canal boats while listening to music on my iPod, marvelling at all the Japanese tour buses outside the “must see” temples or the “must shop” shopping center, having a nice talk with one of the guys who was trying to sell me a painting after I made it real clear I wasn’t going to buy anything, and other little small things.

Tomorrow I’m on a man on a mission though: operation rescue Moe.  Ok, it’s not a particularly difficult mission, and really the only thing that’s going to happen is I’m going to show up at the airport before her flight arrives and we’ll take a taxi together to the guesthouse we’re staying at… but still!  It’ll be epic.

As for the last, oh, week or so…  let’s see.  I didn’t mention going to the waterfalls in Luang Prabang although I did put some pictures up of them on Flickr. 

I didn’t mention the other busrides I took, which had decent road conditions but something just as bad: Laos music.  If I were in the same room as you right now I’d be happy to do a little impression of the monstrosity that is Laos music but just know that it’s cheesy, slow, unpleasant, and it all sounds the same.  They play it constantly, and at a nearly ear peircing volume.  It’s loud, and it hurts, but it doesn’t strike you until maybe 11 pm at night just how absurdly loud it is for the time of night.

Vang Vieng was a great time, but rough as well.  Allan, Nick, and I had high hopes of enjoying this city as much as we could together before we all went our separate ways but the 2 of them ended up being pretty ill for the first couple days and me getting sick on the second to last night. 

Regardless, we did manage to do a few things.  The first day we made the mistake of walking (it’s too hot to walk in the open sunlight too far) to a cave.  Nick wasn’t too interested, and Allan and I were skeptical as we thought we were all caved-out from the last one we went to in Thailand, but we went in anyways.  This one wasn’t guided, and it was really quite boring for the first part.  And then you get to a part where there aren’t any lights set up, you’re allowed to bring a flashlight and just go in on your own.  Awesome.  Neither of us had any lights on us.  Not awesome.  Turns out my camera is good for more than one thing though.  My camera has a prepicture stobe light flash it shoots out for a fraction of a second when it’s trying to focus that turns out to be quite powerful.  With my camera we could strobe flash (”chk chk chk”), walk a couple steps, stobe flash (”chk chk chk”), walk a couple steps, and so forth until we are so deep into the cave that when I’m not flashing it’s so dark it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether your eyes are open or not.  The only sound you could hear were the water drops all around you falling and hitting the ground.It was spooky.  It was zen.  It was fantastic. 

Cave 3.  This cave was filled with water and it probably had roughly the same perimeter as a 2 car garage but it went back far further than we actually made it.  They give you tubes to float in and a headlamp for this cave.  At times your head comes close to hitting the ceiling, but most of the time it’s ok.  At times you have to get out and walk on the rocks, but most of the time you’re floating.  It’s so cold we didn’t care to go swimming much and I would scream like a girl anytime water was splashed on me.  We did the whole turn the lights out and be as quiet as possible in this cave as well.  Loved this cave too.

Oh yeah, we learned our lesson for this cave and rented motorbikes to ride to them.  At 4 dollars a day, motorbikes are an amazingly fun way to get around.  Definitely will be doing it again on this trip.

Tubing.  Tubing is funnn.  Tubing is the reason many, many people come to Vang Vieng.  “Have you been tubing yet?” is a common question amongst people here and “This is my 3rd day… in a row” is not an uncommon response.  It’s a slow river, there aren’t any rapids, and the tubing is nice but it’s only secondary to the bars and rope swings set up along the side of the river.  These are serious rope swings, too.  When I heard “rope swings” I expected to see some rope swings that were attached to trees along the river.  Well, Laos people understand the rope swing creating limitations of nature and have managed to far surpass it by sticking hugeee posts into the ground right by the river and using cables to let them hang ever so perfectly over the water.  Another one of those things pictures/video can do far more justice than description.  The bars they have set up along the river have lots of seating right on the river that makes the rope swinging into a spectator sport.  It’s kind of like NASCAR in that everybody’s just waiting for a crash.  2 people will go normally and everything is ok.  Every 3rd person will go (don’t quote these numbers) and do a backflip or hang by their knees like a trapeze artist and ”ooo and aaa” the audience.  Every 4th person attempts to do a backflip or something similar and hits the water in a painful position, resulting in immediate embarrassment and red burn marks that look like sunburn.

My last day I spent recovering from sickness which the tubing day’s drinking probably helped fuel.  Alas, my recovery was swift and I had a not overly pleasant busride to the Thailand border, much confusion at the border, then another not overly pleasant overnight train ride that got into Bangkok this morning.

As I leave Laos I wonder if I’ll ever go back.  I don’t want to return in 10 years to see it exploded in Thailand-esque tourism where everybody is swarming you for your money.  Laos is way more laid back about everything and I hope it manages to stay that way while lifting its way out of poverty and providing better living conditions for its people.