the past few days

I was stranded in the middle of nowhere for the past few days. Literally. The. Middle. Of. Nowhere.

For your information, Nowhereville is beautiful, serene, has an overwhelming abundance of livestock (I saw too many "chickens pecking the ground" and had permanent Trisha Yearwood in my head the ENTIRE time), and is also pretty boring. This is going to come across wrong, and those of you working right now will hate me for this, but here goes. I'm tired of sitting on my ass. It was all good in Vang Vieng. I can do my fair share of ass-sitting. Truth be told, I'm fairly good at it. The difference is that Vang Vieng had a fun river and caves and stuff. There were multiple cafes with televisions that only played "Friends" episodes. There were a lot more foreigners. There were fewer pigs, cows and goats. There was, in general, more to do WHILE sitting on your ass.

I had finished all my books by the time we left Vang Vieng and so hit a bookstore to trade stock immediately upon arrival in Vientiane. I found a new one by Ann Rice, "Every Breath You Take." I recommend it, it's awesome. It occupied most of my time while in Laos' capital city. There wasn't much else to occupy my time with...

well no, that's exaggerating. A bit.

I was only in Vientiane for 2 full days. In those 2 days I managed to visit 2 important Wats (temples), see the Presidential Palace, browse the massive Morning Market (Yes, Rachael, we did mistake that smelly, disgusting market on the first day for the actual market. The real Morning Market has a lot more fabric and fun stuff, less smelly fish), and get my butt 25 kms out of town to the "Buddah Park."

Buddah Park was pretty cool. As I remarked to two other Canadians I met there, "this place would be a photographers wet dream." (sorry mom) It was beautiful. Hundreds of stone and concrete scuptures, some centuries old, surrounded by a myriad of beautifully colored flowers. The most dramatic being a massive laying down or "reclining" Buddah. It was well worth the hour-long dusty and bumpy Tuk-tuk ride it took to get there.

So, that sounds like a lot, but it's not. Wats are cool and the first one I went to, "Talat San," was remarkably calming, with hundreds of miniature buddah sculptures set into the walls. But really, once you've seen one Wat, you've gotten the jyst and pretty much seem 'em all. I don't spend much time in them, especially considering most writing describing things is in Lao and/or French.

Anyways, all that stuff I just said took up ohhh, about 6 hours of my first full day in Vientiane. I spent the rest of my time sitting at the Mekong River-side bars reading and people watching, walking around, eating at this fantastic Scandanavian Bakery, and again, doing pretty much nothing.

Vientiane's not exactly the bustling metropolis we'd usually expect from a Capital City. A vast majority of the roads are unpaved or really rough. I only saw a handful of buildings over 3 storeys. I saw more chickens downtown that I'd ever seen in Campbell River. Few stop-lights were 4-way, most were just 2, however that didn't seem to pose much problem since the traffic flow was so light. So, point made, it's small. It's ok though. I was rarely bored. I'm one of those weird people who actually likes to be alone with her thoughts. I wandered all over Vientiane (not hard to do), saw random stores and buldings and found old, forgotten about temples. I passed numerous young Monks. Most said nothing as they passed, some smiled and said hi, and some hit on me. THAT is somethimg I will not get used to.

On my first night in Laos, spent in a random village halfway through my two-day boat journey from Chaing Mai, it was young Monks who first approached us with offers of opium and weed.

Thought that was kinda odd.

Then, in Luang Prabang, a young Monk winked and definetly said hi with a different tone. Strange.

THEN, a girl I met told us how a Monk she had been talking to had grabbed her and kissed her!

Monks in Laos are weird.

Sorry, I digress. Back to topic. I'm ok with being alone. However, sometimes too much of a good thing is not so much a good thing.

I headed to bed early on Tuesday because I had to be at the airport the next morning at 5:30 for my flight to Pakse. Pakse's in Southern Laos. I had absoutely no intentions whatsoever of stopping here, but I had a 1.5 DAY layover before flying onto Siem Reap. Kinda sucked, but I figured hell, happy surprise right? There's this huge waterfall 1.5 hours out of Pakse that I'll go check out. More sitting on my ass can't hurt. Wrong.

I wake-up, get to the airport, fly for a tense hour and a half (Lao Airlines isn't exactly known for its superb no-crash rating), get to Pakse, get on a bus (it's very old and dirty and there's a cow standing in the middle of the dirt bus terminal - bad sign), and drive for 2.5 hours (grrr) to the. middle. of. nowhere. Just so you really get the picture. I was wearing a white top that had just been washed in Vientiane. It was definetly not white after the ride - ew.

The bus randomly stopped on it's dirt path beside a bridge and kicked me and a few other travellers off. Luckily, there were Tuk-tuk drivers ready and waiting to drive us to Tadlo Falls. I was excited, what a FUN ADVENTURE...(note: sarcasim. At this point I was starting to have major doubts)

We drove further up a different dirt road before stopping at a row of guest houses. The first one we stopped at, "Tim's" was listed in Lonely Planet. It only had one room left, with two beds. I shared it with an American girl, Amber, who was on the bus with me. $1.50 for the night, not too shabby. I dumped my stuff and headed for the falls. I was sweaty and dirty. I needed a swim. Despite all of my travelling that day (I had covered about 600 kms) it was still only noon.

I walked the 5 minutes to the waterfall and yes, it was beautiful. And, I was lucky. Another traevller told me that just the day before the waterfall had been a trickle due to a dam upstream, but that today they had opened the dam. My informer also told me that the swimming had been great yesterday, but the pictures lack-luster. However, today the pictures would be way better. We couldn't, however, swim. We COULD get in the water and try to stand still, bracing ourselves against the many rocks under the water. I tried that, I almost got swept downstream. So, still dirty and sweaty, great pictures though. There were some places that you could sit down, where the water was extremely shallow (1 inch) and cool off. I settled on having a semi-bath and some tanning. It seemed like a long time had passed, I was bored and hungry. I didn't have my watch so I headed back to the guest house for what I figured would be a mid-afternoon lunch.

It was 1:30. dammit.

It's ok, I figured. I had finished my book on the plane, so I'd just exchange it for another at the guest house book exchange. It was a fabulous plan, except that for some reaosn the guesthouse had an impressive selection of German and Dutch books and a sprinkling of English titles that interested me. And those I had already read.

dammit.

Alright, I'll just go take a walk through the village - take in some true Lao living. I saw a lot of dirty babies - all smiling and waving - dirty, but cute. I saw baby goats playing with a puppy, then chasing piglets, also cute. I walked for awhile. It was interesting. While Hill-trekking I'd been through villages and stayed there, but it felt almost like a show was being put on. This was real. I walked around for what felt like quite awhile. I got back, and it was 2:30.

DAMMIT

Okay, back to the waterfall I go. While sitting on my butt there, being sufficiently bored, I met an Aussie girl, Nicki. She'd been here for a few days and was loving it. We got to talking and she brought me upstream to an even bigger waterfall (definetly no swimming here). We met up a bit later for some dinner. She was also exchanging books. I discovered a Patricia Cornwell title I hadn't read yet. Sweet, got myself a book. After dinner we separated for a few hours and I wondered what the heck I was gonna do now. It had been an early dinner, eaten mainly cuz there was nothing better to do. It was then that I decided to update my blog - sans PC. That's right everyone, this update was hand-written first and then copied onto the net. That's just how bored I was.

I sometimes forget how much I love to write. I blame it on Univeristy working the love out of it for me. It relaxes me, I've always done it. I recall writng "novels' (in felt pen!) when I was in Elementary School. Even then they were suspensful, investigative stories. Funny. This entry took up the rest of my evening until I met up with Nicki and Amber for some good Lao Beer drinking (love the stuff) and an early night.

I woke up early the next morning (roosters'll get ya every time) and read a bit of my book. The plan was breakfast with Nicki, a quick semi-swim in the river, and get my ass on the bus back to Pakse. Nicki was still sleeping so I headed to the falls first for a cool down. Southern Laos is a LOT hotter than Northern. It's humid here and nasty. I'm not really used to it yet, I'll adjust. I was pleased to see that the dam had been re-instated (i don't think that's the right word...) and the river was swimable. I was almost ready to strip down to my suit when I heard cat calls. In Vang Vieng, a major tourist hub, we swam in our bathing suits and tanned no problem. In Tadlo Falls, however, the tourist boom was slow to develop and relatively new. The locals didn't really know how to behave around us and our versions of bathing suits and clothing are definetly different from theirs. Apparently they take this to mean that they can stare, touch (a group of kids had grabbed Nicki's chest as we were walking), and yell as much they want. We should blame it on our movies and MTV I think, portraying us as far too easy. So, needless to say, no swimming (AGAIN) for me. By this time Nicki had woken up and we had breakfast. I packed my bags and headed for the bus.

Long story with a short ending...the bus came, it was full of ducks and chickens (Bianca - you would've FREAKED). I tried not to think about bird flu. It wasn't nearly as full as it had been going to Tadlo Falls and I had my own seat. The previous bus trip had left me sitting beside a Lao man who kept falling asleep on my shoulder. I kept pinching him to wake him up, much to the humour of the British guys sitting behind me. I met a French Canadian woman and her son who currently live in Bangkok. We spent the whole ride comparing living-in-Asia stories. They were remarkably similar.

I'm now in Pakse. It's a small town, WAY bigger than Tadlo Falls mind you, so it's good. I have an actual hotel room (no mosquito net!!) and an ACTUAL shower, which I made use of exactly 1 minute after shutting my hotel room door. I fly out to Siem Reap tomorrow and hopefully will make it to Angkor Wat tomorrow as well. My flight's in the early morning so I should be all settled into a hotel by noon. That's plenty of temple time.

That's all for now! Take care everyone!