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!