Hello everyone!
We're back in Thailand right now and I'd forgotten how great this country is...easy travel, great food, beautiful people...
When last I left you, we were in Luang Prabang, Laos. Truly one of the most laid back cities in the world, there's only 16,000 people in Laos' second largest city! Not a lot of people, but tons of temples, history and more atmosphere than you can shake a stick at. I highly recommend people visit Luang Prabang before it gets "ruined".
Among the highlights of Luang Prabang was a street market that goes on for 10 blocks...tons of every possible local craft you could want but for me what was special was the street of prepared foods (of course). You walk past and there's grills set up with chicken, fish, barbequed pork...there's stalls for soup, spicy papaya salad, and even a vegetarian buffet where you fill up a bowl and they stir fry it in front of you...for 5000 kip (50 cents)! Want some other stuff? Not an issue...buy a grilled fish and bring it with you...or some stewed pork and they'll just stir-fry it with everything else. I was in HEAVEN...I think I actually shed tears I was so happy.
The other highlight was meeting some great people at Nao's Sports Bar...the proprietor, Gary, who quit his job as a criminal/court interviewer from San Francisco and we think got married to a Laos woman and now runs the pub and a bakery. Gary's favorite line: "it's ALWAYS happy hour"...my head still hurts. The other was a British gentlemen named Dave who over the course of several days became my idol. Dave spends 6 months a year in England and 6 months in another exotic locale each year. Dave's great quote: "I don't do winter". He's visited 108 countries (so far) and was just a fount of knowledge on India, Nepal, and Myanmar...and I'm sure many other places we just didn't have enough time to ask about. We're hoping to catch up to Dave in ChiangMai...truly a great guy and so, so helpful.
One thing which was strange was missing the SuperBowl...for the first time since 1983 when I was "grounded" from watching TV. (You're right dad...it didn't kill me but I DO still remember) While we did have plans to wake up at 6 in the morning to watch, we had taken a slow (2 day) boat trip from Luang Prabang to the Thai border. Unfortunately, the town we stayed in between the 2 boat days happened to not have anyplace to watch the game (or electricity during the day for that matter). From what I hear it was a boring game anyway...that's what I keep telling myself. We were the lucky ones though...we heard from others the next day that they could hear rats running in the attic in their Guesthouse and one person even had a rat drop onto the top of his mosquito net. I don't think Deanna or I could have handled that.
Once we crossed the border, we made our way north to Chiang Saen and Sop Rauk...the heart of the Golden Triangle, made famous as one of the highest producers of Opium in the world. There's an Opium Museum there where you can learn all the in's, out's, and history of smoking Opium. I took notes... You can also climb a hill and see the meeting point of Burma, Laos, and Thailand...in true tourist fashion there's even a boat which will zip you between the three to say you've been to Burma and Laos as well. We declined since we're going there anyway.
From Chiang Saen, we took a bus to Chiang Rai and have really done nothing of note just yet. There's (another) great market here and yesterday we just sampled food and watched a bizarre stage act - alternating acoustic guitar with dancing girls dressed in 18th centuryFrench courtesan outfits. What was really strange is from being in Bangkok and Phuket, I really, really, really have to look to be able to tell if they are girls or guys dressed as girls. I'm still undecided about the people in this show.
From here we're onto Chiang Mai where we'll try to sort out some plane tickets to Burma/Myanmar where I expect we'll be for about 3 weeks. During that time, there's NO access to web-based email (the government supresses it along with their people) so although I expect to send one more update before we go, it will be awhile afterwards until you hear from me (I can sense you're thinking "thank god...less spam").
Anyway...happy Chinese New Year and I hope everyone is well.
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