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For the last couple of days I’ve been taking small side trips out of Luang Prabang. As much as the city is a major tourist destination, it’s easy to get an idea of what real life is like here by going only a short distance away. I hired a small boat pilot to take me across the Mekong to a small village on the other side. The people there were very welcoming. I also made an instant friend. I took some video of kids in the village racing down the road with some bicycle tires. The video may take a minute or two to load, but it’s pretty funny. Watch the girl at the beginning. She had been doing very well until I started filming.

Later in the afternoon, I ate some traditional Lao cuisine and then took a minibus tour to a nearby waterfall. It’s one of the three or four side trips that most people take from here. Nearly everywhere I go I hear “tuk-tuk, waterfall?” Even better than the waterfall was the trip there and back. I hadn’t traveled by land in Laos before this and didn’t know what it would be like. I convinced the driver to stop for this photo of a farm, but not for this photo of the hardest working women in the thatch business.

The sunset was pretty amazing. I’ll have to put up some better photos, but here are a couple.

Traveling from Chang Khong Thailand to Luang Prabang is a river trip on the Mekong. There are two choices: a leisurely journey of two days spent enjoying the quiet serenity of the Mekong River and wishing there was a bathroom onboard the “slow boat” or six hours spent on a

“fast boat” enjoying the very loud serenity of the Mekong River while crammed into a very small space with seven other cadets going 70 km per hour wishing that the strap on your helmet wasn’t broken so you didn’t have to hold it onto your head the whole time. You can imagine which one I chose.

Take a look at who and what is driving these things. It’s an engine and standard transmission on a mount that allows it to be rotate side to side or tilted up or down. There’s a long drive shaft coming out the back with a propeller on the end, and there’s a long shaft coming out the front which allows the whole setup to be manuevered and has a throttle and shifter linkage on it. It’s brilliant. It’s even almost stable at 70 km per hour.

At some point I gave up on the helmet and put on the hat. Adam, I’m very ashamed of what happened a few hours later, but I can only laugh when I think of some sixty-year-old Lao fisherman working his nets in the hot sun with a bright green John Deere hat on his head. It all happened so fast. I just turned my head the wrong way and…

I arrived in Luang Prabang and immediately got price-gouged by some guys with a truck, but after being crammed into that boat for six hours, I didn’t think my legs were up to the 12 km hike into town. They wanted 100 Baht (US$2.50) each for eight of us for the ride. We got them down to 80 baht, but it was a rip-off because it was the only truck and everybody knew it. I later talked to some other tourists who sure were sore that they paid the whole 100 Baht.

Luang Prabang is fantastic, but don’t tell anybody. It isn’t big enough for the tour buses. At first I thought it was crammed with tourists, but I realized it the same tourists I was seeing over and over. This place is growing on me. There are some wats and a couple of waterfalls to see, but the people here are the best part. There are night markets where you can buy all kinds of crafts and a whole street of food vendors. There’s even a beer delivery service.

With all the pictures I’ve taken there were some great ones that got away. There was the obligatory young monk smoking a cigarrette, but better was the monk standing in the Mekong up to his knees smiling back at me as he brushes his teeth with bright yellow toothbrush. There was the video I should have of the three year old boygrabbing oranges as they fell off the pile and tossing them back on top. I do however have some video of some young kids racing each other as they roll bike tires in front of them by hitting them with sticks. I’ll figure out how to post it somewhere, but maybe not before I’m home.

These are the things that make this sort of trip absolutely worth the (actually very small) risks. If I had been at the beach when that tsunami hit, I would probably still be alive. I would probably also have been able to help other people who were injured or didn’t have a clean water supply. Yesterday I was writing in my notebook and I came across my notes from the day before the earthquake. I was talking with Nuii (a fantastic tour guide from Chang Mai) and asking a bunch of questions as to where I should go. Compare this with the newspaper reports.

In any case, I’m very glad to be here and I’m having a good time. I do wish that one of these days some of you might come with me.

Because of the twelve hour time difference and the fact that I’ve was in the middle of nowhere all of yesterday, I’m just getting info about this now. It looks like a mess down there. It’s noon-thirty Monday here and I guess this hit yesterday morning. I’ll make a few phone calls, but it’s after midnight at home.

Two nights ago I was talking to people asking questions about how I should get to Krabi, Koh Phi Phi, and Phuket. It looks like it might have to wait until a different trip. I might redirect to Vietnam and skip the south of Thailand.

Being at home with the news on everywhere, It’s probably hard to understand how close I have been to not hearing about this Earthquake at all. Other than seeing some footage of messed up beaches on the news last night on a Lao broadcast, and some French travelers mentioning it this morning, I still wouldn’t have heard of it. I’m in an Internet cafe and I’ve just begun to read about it.

Everything is good here. I’m going to be in Laos for a few days, and I’ll figure out where to go from here. Most of Thailand is fine, but I might have to miss out on kayaking.

I’m alright. I’m sorry I didn’t get the word out sooner, but I’m just getting an idea of the scope of this earthquake this morning. I saw something on restaurant TV last night, but it was in Lao. Some French people were telling me about it this morning. It looks like I might not be doing any kayaking on the coast of Thailand this trip.

I’m in Luang Prabang, Laos right now. I was on a speedboat all day yesterday coming down from Chang Khong. Other than the news and rumor, I would not have known about the earthquake at all. There is no impact on this area. I’ll be here and around here for at least a couple of days.

I have to run, but I’ll post more later. Thanks for your concern, and thanks Jim for the resources you posted. I’ll check it out.

This is just a very brief update. I’ll expand it later. I’m in Chang Mai in the north of Thailand. It’s the second largest city in the country. I got here at 6 am yesterday on an overnight bus. The trains were full. It is more relaxed than Bangkok and small enough to walk around, but the pollution is getting to me.

I saw a couple of unusual Wats yesterday–Wat Umong and Wat Chet Yot. Last night I went to a Thai Kickboxing event. It was clearly a tourist affair, but interesting nonetheless. As usual the small guys kick the heck out of each other for 5 rounds and it is decided by points. The big guys hurt each other and it’s over quickly. The last fight was between a Canadian and an Englishman. They were the only two foreigners and they were the biggest. One of them kicked the other in the left thigh hard about 20 times the first round and that was it. He was a hurting unit. For both of them it was their first fight in Thailand. I’m sure they thought it would be more dramatic. The fight before one of the Thais got kicked hard in the elbow. It happened so fast I thought he got kicked in the head and went down. There was a “doctor” there who took care of him. If you’re going to be a kick-boxer it pays to be small.

Today, I’ve hooked up with a tour group who are headed to Laos. We are traveling overland to the border where we’ll cross in to Laos at Ban Huay Sai. I don’t remember the name of the town on the Thai side. I’ll then take a boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. I don’t imagine that I’ll have Internet or phone access for the next few days, so I wanted to get an update out there.

Right now it’s Christmas here and Christmas Eve at home. I hope everyone is having a merry Christmas. I’ve got more to write about the last few days, but I need to catch the van. The next update should be entertaining.

I’m leaving Bangkok tonight. The second class train tickets were sold out so I’m taking a VIP bus. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep. I think I’m on Thailand time now even though last night I fell asleep at 8pm and woke up at 1 am.

Today I went to the National Museum. An Englishwoman gave a three-hour tour. She was very knowledgeable about the various poses and periods of the Buddha. I didn’t realize before how heavily influenced Thailand is by Hinduism. It precedes Buddhism here and they kept a lot of the stories and symbolism.

Toward the end of the tour the guide started sweating heavily and felt light-headed. She laid down on the floor of the museum and drank some water. I think she was very dehydrated. She seemed to recover alright, but I encouraged her to drink much more water (remember “clear and copious”).

Later in the day I went to Wat Sudhat. I think it had the greatest effect on me of anything so far. The complex is amazing. The main temple is overwhelming and the various sculptures in the courtyard were very different than anything I’ve seen so far. The horse sculptures are considered masterpieces in bronze. I can’t put the place into words. I was able to enter the temple and listen to monks chanting. The sound was amazing and I’ll try to post an mp3.

Well I made it. That was a long series of flights. The flight from Atlanta to Tokyo was not so much a journey as a temporary lifestyle. I watched four complete movies and some TV, ate three and a half meals, read and slept.

I’m staying at a place called the Sawasdee Bangkok Inn. It’s alright. Sawasdee means hello, so when you say “Sawasdee” to a taxi driver he says, “Sawasdee” and you look at each other until he realizes your an idiot. There are at least half a million Sawasdee guest houses around Khao San Road, which is where the backpackers congregate. The taxi driver from the airport new all of them except the Bangkok Inn.

It has been exceedingly easy to get around in Bangkok. Most of the taxi drivers and Tuk-Tuk pilots speak enough English, and there are helpful people seemingly everywhere. Yesterday, I toured my legs off seeing some of the major sights in Bangkok, including Wat Po and the Grand Palace, and took a boat trip around the canals. On the canal we were served a tasty beverage by a woman who paddled up in a small boat.

Today I got up at 11 and finally felt rested up. I’ve applied for a visa to Laos, and purchased a bus ticket to Chang Mai in Northern Thailand. I’ll head up there tomorrow night. The train was booked up except first class.

I took the subway out to an area of Bangkok that has a lot of western stores. There’s an Office Depot and a Tops supermarket and two KFCs within a block of each other. There were also a lot of American clothing stores. It amazes me that people here will pay 25 dollars for a shirt at an American mall store when they can have shirts custom made for a fraction of that, or buy them from a street vendor for a dollar. Logos are everywhere, most of them are unlicensed.

The traffic is not as bad as I expected. The motorcycle drivers are crazy, and you see some weird loads. A Tuk-Tuk is like the front end of a motorcycle with two rear wheels. They don’t seem to be much cheaper than taxis, but they’re more fun. There are also some vehicles with two wheels in the front and one in the back. Sometimes they are peddle-powered and sometimes motor powered. They’re used for hauling things that can’t somehow be tied to the back of a moped. Today, I saw one with three large (five foot long, maybe 80 pound) propane tanks. I couldn’t quite get a picture of it.

So far, so good. I am, as usual, more excited about the trip now that I’m here.