Laos

Today has been one of the greatest days I've had in recent memory.

 

First, a recap of the time between my last email and right now.

 

I went from chaotic, lawless (but awesome) Phenom Penh, Cambodia to a town up north called Siem Reap. What an amazing little place -- food and service so good it's like a punch in the face, glorious people, and so many cool bars that defy description. 50 cent draft beers. Little alleyways with overgrown plants. Hot weather. Millions of geckos. A bar where you can feed their pet crocodile for the price of a draft beer. Oh, and down the road, this little collection of buildings called Angkor.

 

Ankor is an area of dense trees dotted with massive stone temples built around 1,000 years ago. The largest is Ankor Wat, the world's largest religious monument. The walls, floors, everything made of these massive slabs of stone that were carried here by elephants. Stray dogs walk around, little kids try to sell you t-shirts and little trinkets they made, and thousands of insects make that buzzing sound you hear in some places. Snakes slither around, and water buffalo graze. It may as well be the year 1,120. Incredible.

 

It was sad to leave, but I intend to go back. I left Siem Reap and flew a couple days ago to Luang Prabang in Laos. Teamed up with 3 other solo travellers -- from Ireland, Sweden, and the SF Bay -- and we got a couple rooms in a guesthouse and have been living it up, eating 5 times a day and enjoying this marvellous, tiny town.

 

So, back to my original thought -- Today. Got up, ate some amazing breakfast, then got on a boat and headed down the river to some local waterfalls. Trekked through dense tropical forests teeming with animals and insects we never knew existed. Came to the waterfalls, which cascaded down several tiers into azure-colored pools. A-w-e-s-o-m-e.

 

We followed that with some criminally good soup at a local hut. I drank coconut juice out of a whole coconut. It was really heavy. In the back, we heard some violent squeals from a pig, followed by some dramatic sound, followed then by silence. I got sad for a couple minutes but then got over it.

 

On the boat ride back into town, I put on my headphones and played Echoes by Pink Floyed, and I directed a music video for it with my eyes, controlling where I looked and when. During the loud slide-guitar parts, I looked out at all the amazingly peaceful Lao families bathing in the river and waving to us. During that weird part in the middle of the song, the part with the noises that sound like whales fucking, I looked out to the water to my left where billions of butterfly-looking insects were flying upriver while skimming the water, always within 1 millimeter of it but never getting wet -- sonar or something, I guess. The tree-covered mountains around us were incredicle, and the sky was a gorgeous palette of sun-setting colors.

 

Back in town, I got the best massage of all time from a young Lao woman under 5 feet tall but with vice-grips for hands, for exactly the same price as an hour in San Francisco -- that is, an hour in San Francisco at a parking meter, not a spa. And now, I'm here typing.

 

Parting story -- when we got into town yesterday, we were surrounded by street stalls and grills and fruit stands. At one of the grills we saw some skewers of interesting meat. We asked, Is that chicken? The Lao woman didn't understand English, but an American passerby who'd overheard us answered with a smile -- "the chicken that goes Meow!"