I was looking forward to helping because it has been forever since I grilled out, but no luck. We went to the market with Pear early in the morning to pick out the meat, and after walking past vendor after vender offering fresh cut meat, Pear stopped at one place, shooed Rob and I on, and proceeded to buy everything.

Her friend Pocky came over with the grill, and they began to get it all set up. Again, I tried to help, and was told to sit down, read a book, or drink a beer. I complied.

When everything was ready, Rob and I were allowed outside to enjoy the food. Owen (an Australian I had met a few nights before) and Cam (another Aussie) showed up a little later, and we grubbed out for a few hours.

Afterwards, Pear and Pocky cleaned up, but I was able to force a little bit of help on them (mostly shuttling dishes from outside to the kitchen…) before we all sat down for drinks and conversation. It was a great Sunday afternoon, and I am lucky to have found this group of people.

Pear and Pocky making the food

Owen and Me – and Rob enjoying the garlic bread (with homemade garlic butter)

We went out the other night with some of her friends to a Lao club, and I have to say – I hate Lao music. It is horribly, miserably annoying. Imagine a love affair between Britney Spears, the soundtrack to the Matrix, and  Nelly.

Today we are doing a barbeque at there place, and they have invited over some other English speakers, and the group that went out to the club with us. Should be fun!

I still have 10 days or so on my visa, and I only need three or four to see everything else I want, so I am planning on leaving here on Tuesday.

to dial it, I think you have to put +865 in front.

The total rent for his house, which has three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a family room, a dining area, a fridge and a laundry machine is $200 USD a month. It is about the size of my house in at Elon. Crazy. 1/10th the cost. Water bill is $1, gas $1, electricity $10, trash $2, yard guy $10. He has offered me the room if I want it… and his roomate, Pear, has some jobs with adversitign and graphic design agencies that she has mentioned to me. Tempting, but I think I will continue to put time into making the NPO work.

I met up with Rob, the German I had met in Bangkok a month ago, and am going to stay with him for tonight and possibly tomorrow. He runs an export business here and knows a lot of really good people that could be helpful in setting up the NPO.

I am meeting him in 40 min, so more later!

It was time to leave Vangvieng , even though it was a fun place, it functions much like a black hole. You get there, and simply don’t leave. I made sure to get up early (7:00) so that I could catch a morning trip to the capital. When Thad and I were leaving last time we made the mistake of waiting until afternoon, which put us in the city after nightfall.

I went to the station, and found a pick-up truck leaving in 15 minutes so I jumped on board. That is to say, I crawled over the Lao people and squeezed in between an old lady and a little kid. I was the only farang (foreigner) on the pick-up. You know when you see a bunch of Mexicans in the back of a truck and chuckle? Multiply it.

We literally had 24 people in this truck at once. I counted. Four hanging off the back, three across the front seat, and the rest jammed in the bed. My knees were less than two feet away from the woman across from me, and I had a guy with a kid in his lap between us. (who had one of my knees lodged quite tightly in his ribcage… He was on the floor and I was on a two-by-four bench, and I literally could not move enough to get my knee out of his ribcage, but he didn’t seem to mind.)

An hour into this trip all I was thinking about was how badly I wanted to move. Just a little – a full extension of the leg would have been bliss, but I would have settled for the ability to even shift my weight. Moving without killing a Lao was all that was going through my head when the child next to me loudly and violently threw up.

His mother looked at him, looked at me, looked at the rest of the people, then handed him a plastic bag and looked back out the side of the truck. He threw up several times afterwards, but always in the bag. I forgot about movement completely and decided my new goal was to avoid whatever 3rd world plague this child had. Whenever I heard a bout of vomit about to come, I would force my head out the side to avoid inhaling any of the spray.

So yeah… That was my ride to the capital city.

One of the things I noticed last time I was here, but don’t think I mentioned, is how proper all of the business names sound. “P.D. Group Construction Design & Surveying Co., LTD.” And they are all like this. Full name, industry, exact services, followed by Company LTD. Don’t know if they are just proud to finally have real companies or what, but they pay to have the full name written out on every sign and place board.

Once I arrived in the city, I was abruptly switched to a tuk-tuk for the rest of the ride in. Having been told by the driver that it cost 10,000 kip ($1) I knew that it was only 5,000 so I offered him that and he took it, but gave me a look that said don’t try to act like you know what you are doing again. I walked the short distance to the area I had stayed in before, but opted to check out some new guesthouses because my previous accommodations here had been shoddy. The first place I tried led me up four flights of stairs that will be quite impossible later on when I have had any more than one Beer Lao due to their steepness and the fact that at least two slats are missing, and into a single room that was devoid of any inspiration at all. That is, unless you call the single fluorescent bulb and hand drawn rules tacked on the half teal /half once white walls artistic. Sick of carrying my bags, and scared to carry them down the stairs I said ok, and forked over my $4.

On the agenda tomorrow: Mail a lot of stuff to several different people. Get my Cambodia visa. Trade in the stack of books I have been carrying around since Chiang Mai. Visit the US Embassy because I have never been to one in another country before. Book my ticket south.

Rice Patties

Clouds on the way (below us)

So far I have lost: 1 pair of cotton boxers, my travel pillow, my quick dry towel. Not so bad.

What has worn out: My pair of REI quick dry pants are a disappointment. I have had to cut the zipper off of the cargo pocket in order to use it, because it locked shut. Also, the inner lining of my bag has started to come apart, but I found a place here that will fix bags, and I am going to try to get them to sew it back together.

Every thing else is holding up pretty well, my shoes were so dirty that I washed them yesterday and they turned all the water brown but they look like new now.

This is a really random entry, and not planned because I am just killing time. I am pretty done with everything this town has to offer, and am just waiting on an email from a guy in Vientiane to see if he is in town and I can crash at his place there.

Side Note: Just ran into a couple who run the Leconte Lodge in the Smoky Mountains. Pretty random coincidence, but if I get lost on the AT I have a place to crash.

Also, I have been in contact with Casey, my old suite mate from freshman year, and he is planning to through hike the AT, something I am very interested in doing… So more about that in the near future.

I have been trying to put some pictures up, but the Internet here is giving me no end of problems. I will post some when I am able.

-Ben

I will probably stay here for several days, to spend some time on the Internet doing some work, and to try to set up the non-profit I am working on some more. It is only $3 a night to stay here, so I can remain for quite some time.

Plus, there is a river, mountains, caves, rock climbing, motorcycles, music and a lot of really fun people.

More updates on the projects I am working on in good time…

1. I have really started to like Laung Prabang.
2. I have met some amazing people.
3. I am ready to leave Laung Prabang.

First day I spend being lazy (what is new, right?) and I justified it by saying I had just come from a long three days of traveling. Valid point. Today I woke up early and went for breakfast and some Internet at a place I found that has free Wi-Fi, where I promptly forgot about updating my blog and focused in on some good facebook stalking, coupled with a feeble attempt to download the last episode of Heroes. I failed at the download due to the excruciatingly slow internet they have here in 3rd world asia. Seriously, when are they going to get with the times and get high speed cable internet to these beautiful bamboo shacks? In facebook stalking I was much more successful, so I am caught up on all the gossip going on at home, without even needing to talk to anyone.

(disclaimer / spoiler) I found heroes at the Pirated DVD store that every street in South East Asia has, and am pissed that once again, nothing is explained, and we still don’t have a clue as to what is going on. Now Peter can do everything and is good again, and Silar is back? Come on and finish already. Just kidding, please don’t go on strike, finish the series.

After I wasted a good hour on the internet accomplishing nothing, I walked around most of the temples and gardens in this city. Laung Prabang was originally a French Colony, as was most of Laos, so it has a lot of old french architecture, and most of the buildings are still built in the old French style. The whole town is very small, and this took me about 3 hours. So I had an early lunch, followed by a nap.

I made it up to the temple that is on top of a little mountain overlooking the town for sunset, and was rewarded for my 400 steps up a hillside covered in tiny, 13-year-old, “help me sir, for I am starving and need money for my school, so please buy a little bracelet that I hand made to pay for my school… Yes they are different from that girl over there’s bracelets, because she copied me,” sales people by a stunning view, which I have kindly shared with you below.

You have to realize that these children selling goods are everywhere in Southeast Asia, and they rarely get to keep any money they get. After a while, you just get callused to them, and shrug it off. If I were to giver to everyone, I would go broke in a day, and nothing would get done about the situation. Seeing the vast amount of poverty, coupled with a desire to do something effective about it, has let me to start a new project where I will be investing money directly into a community with the goal of long term benefits. Yes, I have already set up a site to work on this, and am just starting to look into what it would take to get it set up as a legal NPO in the USA. More about that later, because it isn’t ready yet.

Whew… Too long…

The people I met: Some Kiwis who I am going to teach how to climb in Vaing Veing.

Why I am ready to leave: Vaing Veing

Sunset at the top of Phu Si

Flower reflection (there is a different shot of this on the photos page)