Its one am in the morning and the dark sky is littered with twinkling bright lights. Thousands of bright balls of burning gas flood the night sky. Dozens of pairs of indigenous eyes stare out at us from the doorways of their huts with extreme curiosity; we must be the talk of the town tonight. The 5 of us are in rural Laos, and our bus is broken down.
Rewind. ChiangMai is definitely one of our favorite cities so far. The morning after arriving, we've run into a friend from the States who directs us to the motorbike and motorscooter rental place. After seeing the plethora of head, leg and arm injuries in Koh Phangan, combined with the organized chaos that is Thai traffic, we were undoubtedly hesitant about hopping into the fray, however, when in Thailand... We set off, weaving through the lawless traffic that is downtown: around and in between hundreds of cars, tuk tuks, scooters, bikes, rickshaws and things that would hardly pass for vehicles in the States. Once out of the city, we were able to visit a couple waterfalls, and the giant Pagoda perched atop the mountain. While this afternoon was an amazing experience, the best part was definitely returning the bikes with them and more importantly ourselves in our original conditions.
That evening, we took a Thai cooking class with our culinary sherpa, Pot. Pot is a former undefeated muay thai fighter who gave up his career after suffering a series of injuries in a motorbike accident to teach the falang (foreigners) the ways of thai cusine. We made an assortment of noodles, soups, and curries from scratch. We were able to put a little hair on our chests after making jungle curry paste which is made from 40, that's right 40 thai chilies.
The following day, our group split with Bryce and Shannon going on a hike and bike, and Charlie, Alba and myself set off on a 2 day trek through the rainforest that we would never forget. I personally wasn't planning on doing any treking, so armed with nothing but a pair of loafers, blublocker sunglasses and an unnecessarily heavy backpackers backpack, we set off. We started by buying supplies at the local market and arrived at the elephant camp to do some riding. Alba and I were sitting comfortably above these beautiful and powerfully majestic animals enjoying a peaceful ride near the river. All was perfect in paradise. Then it happened. The sky opened up, and Jove let loose a storm that would rock our World. No longer, were our friends beautiful, powerful nor majestic. These slow, lumbering creatures crept along the path as we struggled to keep our cameras, phones and other possessions dry. This was no aguas de marco, or afternoon shower, this was a full on monsoon. As Alba and I seriously debated the idea of returning back to the city, our guides who spoke no more the couple words of English prepared us to begin the trek. For the next three and a half hours, we traversed uphill through 6 km of mud, trees, sticks and rocks. We could barely see more than a foot in front of us and our legs were on fire from the slow climb. The two ponchos each Charlie and I were under kept the rain out, while simultaneousnessly trapping us in our own sweat, body heat and filth. At around 5pm, we finally reached the top of the mountain where we would spend the night in a local village.
The village was a very small place with less than 150 inhabitants, who went about their regular business while we freshened up with buckets of water and ate a dinner prepared by our tour guides. That night we played games with the other travelers and listened to our tour guides sing the classics such as "I shot the tourist." Our trip down that morning included much falling on my part due to the extreme practicality of my loafers, whitewater rafting and a sigh of relief that those two days were finally over.
The next day we spent relaxing and recovering before hopping on on a 18, I mean 26 hour bus to Luang Prabang, Laos. The bus spent the night traveling at no more than 25 miles per hour before breaking down somewhere in the Laos countryside. The most frustrarting part about being stuck somewhere in Laos, is that not only do you not know where you are, no one speaks English, nor cares to communicate what's going on. Not to mention the fact that watching several Laos men throw water on the engine, bang on pieces of the engine, scrounge for extra parts, all with no rhyme or reason was frustrating to watch. 8 hours delayed, we finally arrive at our destination and I promptly decided to buy my next flight to Hanoi instead of busing it.
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