With rising death tolls and growing concern, i think its time I write the next section of my story. I missed the earthquake and tsunami, and although I have always been fascinated by natures fury, I think its for the better I missed this one. I was sitting on an island in the mekong river in Laos called Don Det. No internet or phones, most of the time not working as communication here with the outside world is relatively unimportant. I didn't find out till I got to Pakse, but first, where I left off before...in Phnom Penh

If you ever get on a bus leaving Phnom Penh and half the seats are empty, I can tell you why. When I bought my bus ticket to leave, I had been waiting for a friend I met in bangkok to show up, and decided I didn't want to wait any longer having no word from him. Of course 2 hours after I bought the bus ticket I get an email saying he'll be there tomorrow. as usual I stay up all night playing pool and hanging out at the magic sponge, a little english bar on the lake side. The sun comes up, I walk outside, 2 doors down where I bought my bus ticket and move my departure back one day. I'm lucky she hasn't officially booked the ticket cause I bought it after the bus company was closed. No problems here. I hook up with my friend the next day, and get another email from a guy I met in Phnom Penh saying that tomorrow he wants to hook up on some music and maybe go check out this recording studio that he had heard about. Great. Another trip to the travel agent, a little wait while she hassles with the bus company on the phone, and I have 3 more days in Phnom Penh. Of course that night, for the first time on my trip I get sick and am puking all night till early in the morning before I fall asleep. My friend never shows up. turns out he was sick to. I decide since my visas starting to run out, I can't wait around and head up to Kratie.

1 day, 2 nights and Im done. I saw the iriquay dolphins, an endangered breed of fresh water dolphins living in the mekong, and walked around a lot. There's an air of paranoia I felt in Kratie. For example, they lock you into the guest house at night. A little disconcerting, but I take it all in stride. I book my boat ticket to Laos, and am on my way. We catch a speed boat from Kratie to Stung Treng. The boat is about 150 ft long and maybe 12 ft wide. rather than sitting in the dingy inside on the tiny Khmer sized seats, I climb onto the roof and sit in the sun. all the westerners are up on top, and all the locals are staying out of the sun. It's an interesting dynamic you can notice almost everywhere. The locals will be bundled up in coats and hats in the middle of the mid day heat, trying to keep there skin light, and the farangs are stripping naked trying to get a tan. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. The boat takes off and instantly starts taking this convoluted route twisting and turning between big concrete pillars in the river, turning around then back again. It's the dry season, and the water level is pretty low i guess. There is a very specific route the boat must take in order to get where we are going other wise it's so shallow the boat would surface. You can tell from the vegetation growing in the middle of the river, but its so massive and wide, you would never really know. A few stops on dirt embankments, or next to passing boats to pick people up or drop them off and we arrive in Stung Treng. I hop off and directly onto the speed boat to Laos. The speed boat is now a small wooden boat about 25 ft long and 5 ft wide with a massive engine sitting on the back.

Me and a girl from vancouver are the only passengers besides the driver right behind us and the guide up front. I wish I had construction ear plugs, cause the motor is louder than shit. The jungle at this point in the mekong is absolutely amazing, plush and full of life, and the river has all kinds of currents and whirlpools in it. I've never seen a real whirlpool in a body of water, and I don't ever want to be in one. The driver of this boat is trying to make the best time he can, and really pushing the wire a little bit. The river isn't any deeper here, but this driver doesn't care. I've heard stories about these boats hitting rocks or hitting each other around bends, but now I really understand how easily it could happen. Soon after the sun goes down, we pull up to a mud bank with a wood shack on top and are told we need to get a Cambodian exit stamp. If it wasn't for the driver I would of never known we were crossing the border. After arguing with the customs official for fifteen minutes, we get out of there for $1USD a piece(its supposed to be free) and we leave. We land in Laos on a beach full of little kids running around and adults washing up in the river. Our boat trip is over.

I couldn't find any exchange place in Kratie that had kip, the local Laos currency, and opt not to take the boat driver up on his terrible exchange rate. 7000 kip to one dollar. I climb the steps to the customs office, aka the front porch of someone's house, and get the normal rate of 10,000 kip to one dollar. Customs is straight forward and they only charge us the $2 fee that there supposed to. This is my first taste of the laid back-ness of Laos, where I haven't been bothered, and stopped bargaining cause people are just being honest. A big contrast to Cambodia where everyone is trying to rip you off and you are always hassled for everything.

A short expensive taxi ride, and we catch a boat to Don Det. The long boats feel like there always going to tip over, and we weren't sure if we'd make it with no lights, but the moon was bright and it wasn't far.

Don Det is a peaceful little island with a bunch of local villagers, and a lot of guest houses that are exactly the same as where the locals live. It's the closest I've felt to living like a local yet. Except of course during the day, instead of fishing and farming, I'm renting bikes, seeing huge waterfalls(the largest in SE Asia by volume)floating in the river in inter-tubes and fighting the mighty mekong currents in a canoe. One night I was playing soccer on the beach, and at the end of the soccer game, we noticed a water snake swimming in the river. One of the locals grabbed a bamboo pole and flung the thing at his friend and right onto the beach. He then traps it with a stick and picks it up, waving it at everybody for fun. He lets it go in the side of the beach, and once we see it swim away, all of us full of sand, jumped into the mekong to wash off. Then I took a shower and realized I'm showering in the mekong to rinse off from swimming in the mekong. I stopped showering and just went swimming. For christmas dinner, I met up with about 6 cats from england and we ordered a roast duck and a roast chicken. They went and caught the animals and carried them still alive by bike into the restaurant as we all watched. We sat around the fire drinking Lao whiskey while they cooked. 3 bottles of whisky, and more food than we can eat and the whole thing maybe cost us $5. We hear about a party on Don Kong, the next island over and the owner of the restaurant offers to take us there buy boat for some ridiculously cheap price. We take it and he says we can't fit all 11 in the boat, so he will take us half and half. He takes the first half over, and we sit around drinking some more till he comes back, and we hop in his little lawnmower engine powered hand made canoe. We get to the party, and all the locals are there drinking Lao Laos. There are booths set up selling stuff, booths set up with make shift carnival games like darts and balloons with drinks for prizes, food vendors, and traditional music. We hang out for a while, and I decide to try and find a bathroom. All I could find was a line of guys pissing on a fence, so I joined them. Not quite sure where all the girls had to go. We get tired and find our boat driver sitting by the boat drinking Lao laos, and quite drunk. He agrees to take us back so half of us get in the boat with him and wait for him to take off. He's not moving. This guy speaks almost zero english, but is waving at the rest of us to get in the boat. We start piling into the boat, me and my friend end up sitting between the last seat and the driver, on the gunnels of the boat, hoping we don't fall out. By the time we get everyone into the boat and on our way, there is about 4 inches between the gunnel and the water. It's a big moon, but we are heading up river, and it's quite dark, we have 12 drunk people in a wooden boat made for 6 and our driver is at least as drunk as we are. About 1/2 the way back home, the driver starts to bail water out of the boat, and by about 2/3 of the way home, I'm really not sure if we are gonna make it cause there is so much water in the boat the gunnel is now less than 2 inches out of the water. Somehow we made it, climbed ashore and back up to our guest houses for the night. Staying in the bungalow next to mine is a guy from seattle. We have a lot of mutual friends and decided to travel in Laos together. We head to Pakse.

I'm sure all of you remember those tiny little plastic chairs they have in kindergarden? That was my bus seat. I was crammed in the isle with 20 some other people, in, on or around bags of rice and everything else. It looked like rush hour in a new york subway. Intermittently a man kept climbing in and out of the window and up on top of the bus with the luggage. We stay one night in a crap guest house in pakse till moving into the nice guest house we wanted. We rented motor bikes and headed to the Boulavan Plateau. Some of the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen are out there and we're in search of them all. The first one we come across is several hundred feet tall and were seeing it from atop the cliff on the other side of the canyon. We try to hike down. Half way down the path we find ourselves climbing down the hill holding onto bamboo so we don't fall and don't turn around until we realize that the actual cliff face is probably 30 ft below us, and impossible to make it down. An interesting climb back up and we move on. about half way through the trip, my friend sees a sign to a waterfall and basically stops in the middle of the road. Im not paying enough attention, and hit the side of the back of his bike. we don't fall off, but my front brake no longer works(not that it worked great in the first place). We drive down the road a ways in search of the waterfall, the sun is going down, we feel like we've been heading down this road forever without finding anything, and we finally turn around when we come to the top of a hill where, I think I won't be able to slow down or stop going down with one brake, and my friend doesn't think we will make it back up. We head back to Pakse. Another day of doing, well absolutely nothing, and we decide to move to Vientiane. The next morning we hire a tuk tuk to the bus station and were off.

Thankfully this bus is mostly empty cause its a 15 hour trip. One of the best bus trips I've had. Nothing happened, a little conversation, and a lot of sitting, but it was nice. We get to Vientiane at about 2 in the morning and nothings open. We decide to wander around the city till the sun comes up and we can find a guest house. We settle down in a park to hang out and wait till the morning to find a guest house. We start playing around, and a security guard starts walking our way. We're sitting there thinking we are about to get kicked out of the park, but this guy just comes over and starts talking to us. I pull out the phrase book I have and start learning key phrases like:
"Where's the opera?"
"There are four seasons in a year, Laos has two."
and
"How many days are in a week?"
What a wonderful phrase book I bought huh?

At about 6:00 we start walking around again in hopes a guest house is open. Around 6:30, the australian guy that was with us cracks and hires a tuk tuk to take him somewhere, and guns off. The guest houses open at 7, at 7:30 we're in our room and falling asleep.

Until next time...

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