Closure

Well, now that I am out of Lao, I can say this: we (well actually just the other two guys) took back our gas tanks. The Lao police don't seem to keep much of an eye on confiscated goods, so it was actually fairly easy. We sold them for about $100 and had some good food and drink to celebrate. Over dinner, having finally accepted the loss of our Princess, we debated our next plans.

We all wanted to continue to Cambodia, but decided that hopping on a bus full of tourists would be just too lame after our river travels. So, to ease ourselves back into the backpacker routine, the French guy suggested that we hitchhike race to the southern border of Lao. We agreed.

Swiss Guy is the first one to catch a ride

The rules were simple: spend no money on transportation, first one there wins. We had about 700 km to cover and even though it took us two days to reach our destination, we all arrived within two hours of each other. The rankings, I'm ashamed to say, were as follows:

1. Cyrill (the Swiss guy)
2. Romeo (the French guy)
3. Me

Morning of day 2: I got a lift with this guy on his motorcycle. We passed the Swiss guy trying to find a ride, and I asked the driver to stop so I could take a picture and laugh as we passed. Unfortunately, I still wound up losing.

But it was still a fun way to travel. Not only does it save money, but hitchhiking takes you to all sorts of villages that you would never see otherwise. I think carrying around a paddle gave me some sort of Lao street cred, because instead of shouting "Falang!"(foreigner) as they had in the past, the locals instead made rowing motions while shouting "Mai Pai!" (paddle) when they saw me.

Sharing a lift with a local.

I think that I wound up getting to Pakse (our destination city) with about 8 lifts, though one of them was for 350 km!

After a day in Pakse, we continued to the 4000 Islands region which forms part of the border between Lao and Cambodia. Though it was nearby, it took us almost the entire day to...

• Hitchhike the remaining 100km or so to the border
• Walk to the river
• Find a boat to bring us to the island of Don Khon
• Rent bikes and ride our bags to one of the beaches on Don Khon
• Set up camp

(I think bulleted lists make blogs much more readable, even if they are unnecessary)

But it was worth it. This place is paradise.

Taken from my tent at sunset. Sorry, sunset pictures are lame.

We wound up spending four nights on the beach. After a week of Lao police, this was a perfect retreat and had a nice balance between remoteness and civilization.  On one hand, this was not the "backpacker island" so all the other tourists had to leave before dark in order to get back to their bungalows, on the other, there was a small restaurant on the beach whose staff became very friendly with us. They would appear unexpectedly to give us free barbecued fish. They let us sleep in the restaurant on our last night when, for the first time in the month I had spent in Lao, it rained. The owner of the restaurant even brought us with him to check his fish traps.

He wasn't happy with his son.

 This was fun. We got on his engine-equipped canoe, waited for a few minuted as he yelled at Sonpati, his crying four year old son, to tell him he couldn't come along, then watched as he skillfully navigated some powerful rapids to reach his traps.

These traps are incredible. They are placed where the river becomes very fast, and they are basically just V shaped porous funnels that allow water through, but not fish. Since the water is so fast at this point, once the fish are in, they cannot escape.

One of the traps.

After spending weeks watching the Swiss guy relentlessly attempt (but consistently fail) to catch a fish in the Mekong using a rod and reel, it was impressive to see the haul that the traps brought in.

Impressive...

...and delicious.

We returned with the fish. His wife cleaned and cooked them. We ate.

Don't mess with this woman. She's very good with a cleaver.

One night on the beach we decided to give the Princess as proper of a burial as we could manage. We still had the keys with us, so after a good fire and some Lao whiskey, we said some words and took turns hurling our keys into the Mekong.

This was a nice way to leave Lao, and provided a good sense of closure to the Sinking Princess saga. I would like to come back to this place sometime to check in on my new friends.

Sonpati, myself, and Mr. Bounsom

Now I'm in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. It's amazing how much difference a border and a few hundred kilometers can make. This is a real city! It even has a skyscraperish type building. After the relaxed attitude of Lao, it is a bit overwhelming to be constantly hassled by people looking to sell you drugs or give you a ride in their Tuk-tuk.

For example, after leaving one of the killing fields, where 35 years ago the Khmer Rouge executed about 20,000 people by kneeling them blindfolded next to a pit and clubbing their heads with hammers, my Tuk-tuk driver asked me if I'd be interested in going to the "shooting range" where for $400 I could shoot a rocket launcher at a live cow. Normally, this would be something I would decline. Having just seen the killing fields, I wanted to vomit.

It is now December 20th. I have 5 days to get to Bangkok, where my mom will be meeting me to spend a couple weeks exploring Thailand. If I am bored I may make a post on a quantitative method for hitchhiker road selection optimization (riding in the back of a truck for hours gives you plenty of time to think about useless things. Plus I like math), but besides that it may be a while before this blog sees an update.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

"Yes, we can"

This post's title is not an Obama campaign slogan. It is the response I received from the Laotian official when I said "But we spent $850 dollars on that boat! It's our boat! You can't just take it from us!"

So, after another hour of waiting, thus ends the Sinking Princess.

They took everything. The $850 boat. The 4 gas tanks, worth $60 each. Our food, our flag, our tools, and yes, they even took the Wok.

"But can't you just give us back the paddles? We carved them and they are worth almost nothing."

"No, they are Lao's paddles"

Depressed Swiss guy

Depressed French guy

Well, we wanted those paddles back, so the French guy and I walked back to the riverside storehouse where our stuff was kept and poked around a bit, trying not to seem to conspicuous.

The door was locked, but one of the windows could be slid open a bit. We strolled over to this window, slid it a few inches, leaned in, and grabbed our paddles. Ha!

A small success

I should have my Cambodian Visa tomorrow afternoon. I am ready to leave Lao.

Whenever I leave a country, I like to look back on what words I have picked up while I was there. In every country you learn the basics: thank you, hello, how much, and some numbers. It is the not-so-basic words that really remind you of how your experience was somehow unique.

In India, I learned the proper response to people who won't leave you alone. It's "mahder chod" and means something like mother fucker.

In Japan, I learned "Kamajii," the word for a particularly long-legged spider that happened to crawl across our camp as we sat in front of a fire by Mt. Takao.

In Lao, I learned "piston," "river," "firewood," and "paddle." That's cool.

Lao has been great. The river was an expensive, but incredible experience. But I cannot say that I am a fan of the Lao government.

It's a strange feeling to not have a goal anymore. Up until today, we had always been working towards taking the Sinking Princess to the 4000 Islands region that makes up the Lao/Cambodian border. This is where the river becomes impassible, and it's only due to the presence of the waterfalls in this region that Lao (mostly) avoided European colonialism in the 19th century.

Even if I have to get there over roads (I know, lame right?), I'm still interested in seeing this region. The fact that one geographical idiosyncracy could dictate the entire development of a country is pretty wild to me, and I'd like to see how things change on either side of these falls.
 
Next stop, Cambodia! 

Esperando

In Spanish, the words "hoping" and "waiting" are the same. Since we have spent the last week doing a significant amount of both, this is a fitting title for this post.

The waiting began as soon as we entered Vientiane's waters and a speedboat pulled up next to the Sinking Princess with two men dressed in tee shirts and jeans who seemed to want us to follow them. They brought us to a Lao immigration office, where the first man in uniform that we had ever seen in Lao demanded our passports.

Now that I realize how much of our time would be spent with men in this exact uniform, the situation doesn't seem quite as funny as it did at the time, but when it was happening we were certain that this man only wanted to make sure these three "phalangs" (foreigners) weren't wanted fugitives.

He kept our passports for two hours while we sat and tried to mime to him our intentions. This proved difficult due to the lack of an internationally accepted gesture for "we bought a boat and just want to keep going, please let us have our passports and boat back."

This actually isn't a photograph, it's a two hour long movie. Stay tuned to see something happen!

Eventually the English speaking reinforcements arrived and it quickly became clear that our waiting had just begun.  "Phalang no can buy boat in Lao," he repeatedly informed us. When he took us into his private office we were hopeful that a few hundred thousand kip may grease the rusty wheels of bureaucracy, but to the credit of this officer, he was actually offended at our offer. Instead of our money, he just wanted our stories: why are we in Lao? Why couldn't we take buses like all the other tourists?

After hours of this, we heard what would be the first of many references to the enigmatic "Big Boss," who, as of this writing, none of us have met.  It seemed that even though our journey wasn't technically legal, it may be possible for the Big Boss to grant an exception and let us pass down the rest of the river.

A walk to the police station.

After five hours at the office, the police put us in the back of their truck and took us to a guesthouse with instructions to be waiting for them at 9:00 the next morning to sort this all out.

The first journey in a Lao police truck (sorry I can't take pictures)

They arrived 6 hours late.

Since then, we have spent the days transporting ourselves back and forth between different guesthouses and police stations, slowly climbing the hierarchy of the Lao immigration office.  Needless to say, patience has been waning and tensions waxing amongst the crew of the Sinking Princess. 

One night, after spending yet another day dealing with this nonsense and feeling a real need to forget about Lao police for a few hours, we decided to unwind by buying beers and drinking them by the river which had, up til now, been our highway, shower, sink, and--of course--toilet.

We had just popped the caps when four young police officers with AK-47s proudly strapped to their shoulders marched over and squatted beside us. Without a word, one of them began to search my bag. Another searched the French guy. We were frustrated, but since we were doing nothing illegal, we let them search in the hopes that they would then leave us alone.

Then they took our passports. They gave our documents cursory glances, mumbled to themselves, seemingly disappointed that everything checked out, and then handed my passport back. Then the Swiss guy got his. But they kept the French passport. Now we were really starting to get angry. As the other two played tug-of-war with the remaining passport, one of the officers took me to the side and said "you give me 200,000 Kip."

Normally I may have just paid the fine (it's about $25), if only for the sake of ending the hassle, but after days of dealing with Lao police I am proud to say that I didn't acquiesce. Instead I told the man to go fuck himself. Despite his limited English, he seemed to understand.

They knew we were in the right, and after we offered them cigarettes (even if you don't smoke, you should never travel without cigarettes, they are the cheapest situation-smoother you can buy) their mood quickly changed and they let us go.

As far as the boat goes, right now we are cleared with immigration, but our boat is still seized. Tomorrow we go to the harbor office to see if we can somehow get it back. I'm hopeful, but not optimistic.

If this gray cloud of Communist bureaucracy has any silver lining, it lies in the fact that while our journey may not have charted any new geographic waters, we can at least say we've mapped some new political/legal ones. Certainly others have traveled down the Mekong, but I can confidently say that we are the only foreigners in recent history to do so in our own boat, and though we haven't covered as much ground as we would have liked, it has at least been a novel travel experience and the days on the river have been amazing. And who knows, maybe tomorrow will bring good news?

I enjoy spending the days here...

...and nights here.

Now that you are up to date on the sinking princess saga, some unrelated pictures!

Obviously we all know that French guys are legally required to begin smoking at age 12, but I would think it was forbidden for monks.

At least this city sells coffee, in US or French versions.

This 72 year old Laotian lawyer is a real man of claims. He is the Lao 5000m record holder, with a time of 18 mins. He coached a teenage John McEnroe. He played and lost a game of ping-pong with Pele (the soccer star), but then beat him in tennis 6-0, 6-0. He knows, but dislikes, George Steinbrenner, but is buddies with Hank Greenberg, the former CEO of AIG. The diversity and ridiculousness of all these claims almost makes me believe him.

River Writing

It must have been about 4:00 when the roosters started. By 5:00I had given them names. There was Elvis, whose "doo" was always flat; Johnny, who didn't even "doodle," he just "cock-a-dooed;" and Sid, who sounded like an old man clearing his throat.

At 5:30 the chanting monks marched through town followed by a menagerie of squealing pigs, clucking hens, and barking dogs. This, of course, upset the roosters, who were forced to increase their volume to compete. Then came the Lao synth-pop. And to keep time for this symphony? The slooow LOUD clang of a gong.

We got on the river quite early today.

But the story of how we wound up in Pak Lay is interesting. First off, that strange noise I mentioned in the previous post was actually a major mechanical problem that required us to take the engine out and bring it to a mechanic who completely disassembled, fixed, and reassembled the motor.


The engine is REALLY heavy.



Between the engine fixing and our time on the banks making new floorboards and doing some minor hull repairs, we had become pretty popular with the locals. We had even become friends with a Lao man named Vong who thought that our little adventure was pretty cool (I think, he didn't speak English). After a day of driving around in Vong's Tuktuk to get wood, nails, etc... we decided to take him out to dinner.

You have to understand, Vong is a bit of a playa.

At dinner, it became clear that Vong was having a bit of a midlife crisis. He is 44, has two kids and a pregnant wife, and I think that he was really feeling antsy to get out of Luang Prabang because he asked if he could join us to Vientiane. After making it clear that he was our friend and not our hired guide, we enthusiastically welcomed our fourth captain.

The next night, before we left, Vong came to our guesthouse at about 8 frantically gesturing for us to get in his Tuktuk.

We got in his Tuktuk.

We drove for 5 minutes and suddenly stopped. Vong frantically gestured for us to buy a chicken.

We bought a chicken.

We drove for 5 minutes and suddenly stopped. Now we should buy a flower. Fine.

Then we drove into the middle of nowhere, which is apparently where Vong lives, because he directed us into his house where his entire family was waiting to perform a Basi Ceremony.

From what I could gather, a Basi ceremony is some sort of good luck/safe travels ritual where a bunch of Lao people make you eat the chicken you just bought and then tie ropes around your wrists while chanting at you in Lao. Whatever it was, it felt like a very proper sendoff, and the next morning we were ready to get back on the river.



My nose is the same color as his shirt!



We waved goodbye to our fanclub and were back on the river the next morning. We spent the first night on the beach by a small village, where the villagers gathered in a circle around our campfire to silently stare as we cooked and ate. After about an hour of this, one of the villagers looked at us and said what I'm sure were his only English words: "byebye," at which point they all turned around and went back to their huts on the hill.

There were 35 people watching us when I counted

That is, until about 9 pm, when an old woman came down with two teenage girls, both of whom had clearly gotten dressed up for the occasion. I don't know what they wanted, possibly husbands, but after half an hour of staring, gestured conversation, and giggling, they left.

The next morning, as the four of us (don't forget that Vong is still with us!) were packing to leave, one of the men from the village came to ask if HE could join us as far as his home down town the river, though his already-packed suitcase gave us a hint about what he thought our answer would be. Of course, we said yes. After all, it's not every day you get to start the Mekong's only free taxi service.

We spent 8 hours on the river that day, and we came up with some interesting ways to pass the time. I took up woodcarving. 

The flag of the sinking princess etched into a paddle. I want this for a tatoo.

We tried to go tubing behind the boat with our giant pan, but Woksurfing didn't work as we had envisioned.

Woksurfing!

Meanwhile Vong chainsmoked cheap Lao cigarettes like a madman.

Let me explain: I was getting a really bad sunburn on my nose and this was the only hat that fit my stupidly big head. We had to drive really fast though because the guy from the Village People wanted it back.

When we made it to Paklay, the town where this story began, we were warmly greeted by our fare's family and friends, who were all very appreciative of our taxi service. We had 4 or 5 people offer to host us for the night, and gave us food and beer. It is amazing that even though the average Lao person only knows about 5 words of English, the ALL know how to shout "FINISH!" if you take more than 30 seconds drinking your beer.

The rest of today will be spent on the river with Lao on our left and Thailand to the right. We will find a place to camp and should make it to Vientiane tomorrow.

(This post was written in my journal and transcribed, btw)