wow i haven’t done an entry for a long time… i don’t know how many people check this site regularly but if you want to be updated when i write on it just register for the site and i’ll send an email to you. there is so much i could write about but there’s just no time to say it all. so i have to let my experience settle for a while then more or less summarize it, or select a story or two to tell.
I’m in China now. Prior to this, in Laos, I’d spent the last two weeks happily stuck in Luang Prabang, chilling out and living the local lifestyle. at first the place reminded me of Kyoto, because it is a lovely town/city with many temples, beautiful and tranquil surroundings, and is overrun with tourists. However it being low tourist season, things were quiet key and the place became very difficult to leave. That was fine with me because i had to network a bit to find a buyer for my motorbike (or scooter depending who you are). here I had a nice place to stay, with many good cafes and restaurants, and my own transportation. so let’s just say i was not exactly going door to door in a hurry to sell the bike. after a week or so of chilling i met a local girl, chit, who took me around the town and to a waterfall. my dumb ass managed to slip down this path and bang my legs and knee on rocks, dumping me into a shallow pool. i could tell chit was really impressed. that night i also decided to play badminton at the local hall. by the time i got home i felt like a wreck. so of course i decided to go to the disco, to drink some beers and numb the pain. i made some friends at the badminton hall too, some local expats and a lao fellow as well. we al decided to go around 10. it was a saturday night and the place was pretty jammin’. lao discos are really unique. they close around 12 midnight consistently, which means it never gets too crazy, but they compensate for being busy just about every night! the music alternates between a dj and a live band. the dj plays a mix of hip hop, disco, and lao techno, as well as some cheesy lao line-dancing songs. My theory is that Laos is the Alberta of Asia. more on that later. getting back to the disco, tonight was saturday night and the DJ was on a roll with the hip hop. At some point there was an Eminem track mixed in flawlessly and the place just went nuts, well as nuts as Lao can get anyway. There were about 10-15 farang (whites) in the place, some of whom started to climb up on stage. Some chick who looked like she walked off pacific beach started grinding some lao dude up there. As for myself i was feeling no pain and began to work it as best as i could. Its fun to bounce when you are a foot taller than everyone else on the dance floor. Well things were so crazy the club stayed open super late, 12:30! I had been hanging out with the farang group, and in a display of serendipity, one of them was interested in buying my bike! cool. they were in the mood for an after-party, so we all headed over to a house to chill and talk. it was more of a chat than a party but i was happy to speak some english using long lost articles such as “the”. I hung out for a while and when home to my nice comfortable guest house. it had been a rough day.
I had to take it easy after that since my legs were super sore, I bought a CD player and listened to it down by the river, got some massages, went to cafe, etc. This chinese made CD player is quite something, it cost about 30 bucks, can play VCDs and MP3s, has a DSP and even a remote control! well it is my new little precious yes… it took another few days to finalize the bike deal, in typical slacker fashion. I took more of an interest in Chit, and we hung out every other day or so, going for fruit shakes, and hanging out. She said she wanted to marry me, but she wouldn’t let me touch her which drove me crazy, and at this point i think i bought some blues CD to listen to 
. anyway she was fun to hang with. The last day at my guesthouse, I bought food from the market and I wanted to cook for everybody. Earlier I had taken a cooking class and learned to make vegetable curry; I wanted to try cooking it. We had 2 dishes, the curry and some tomato/bean concoction that i fried up. Chit brought over some mushroom soup with rice noodles. With all that, and the rice, it was quite a feast; we managed to feed about 8 people. I had help cooking the curry, and i must say that everything turned out quite delicious (aroy in Lao). Later that night a group of us went to a more low key disco, and we had a good time. On the motorbike cruise home I sang “you’ve lost that lovin feeling” in the feeling of Top Gun. I stayed up listening to music and overslept, packed my things in a hurry, said goodbye to guesthouse staff, and took off to the bus station. Goodbye Luang Prabang!
hello china… i couldn’t have asked for a more novel way to enter china. north of Luang Prabang had a really frontier feel. there was a 5 hour bus ride north, to oudomxai. there were about 7 of us on the bus, and 4 of us were travellers heading to china. One was a monk from france, two Japanese, and myself. we formed an unoficcial and unlikely team. oudomxai was no place we wanted to be. we stayed overnight and took the next bus to china. we were joined by Erik, an American defector to China. he had not been home in 9 years. The contents of the bus to china were thus:
1 French monk
2 Japanese guys
another Japanese guy (not sure where he came from)
1 white Chinese guy from Minnesota
1 Canadian/Indonesian guy trying to find a place to surf
2 Lao bus drivers
We didn’t talk a lot together but I had a chance to talk about buddhism a bit with Felix, the french buddhist. He was from the Bugu/Dzogchen sect, which I believe is similar to the one of Khempo rimpoche who I’d met in LA before I left. I asked him about differences between Tao and his practice and could not find a lot to tell them apart. but I digress.
see photos here
The Lao china border is awesome, there is nothing there except a shitty road and a few border officials. Our bizzare team crossed without much incident, but our Monk mistakenly overstayed and had to pay a fine. China quickly became another world, the border town had decorated storefronts, and landscaping with flowers. what was quite tacky seemed beautiful. our Chinese guide from Minnesota negotiated bus fare for all of us, and we proceeded on to the closest urban center. The bus ride was a short distance, but the road was windy and mountanous, very similar to Lao, and it was slow going. We arrived around 4pm. I’d about had it for buses that day. The france/japan team wanted to travel on, but Erik and I were through with buses. That was fortuitous because Erik could show me around the town.
I crashed out for a couple of hours in my dumpy hotel room, then we hooked up again for dinner. we walked into a nearby restaurant, and instead of looking at a menu, Erik just walked into the kitchen and told the cook what to make! “China is really casual” he says while we sip tea. We order a beer (the first of many) and soon after the food comes out. We have 4 dishes (more food than we can eat) and about 5 large beers, all for about 7 dollars. unfortunately, i decide to sample the local whiskey. it was poured out of a large glass bottle which contained all manner of roots, herbs, and twigs. it tastes like cheap tequila. I had to go pee from drinking all that beer. bad thing to do in China after dinner. in China the public toilets are disgusting. they have to be seen to be believed. the reek of them is fantastic. what a horrible smell. the toilets are just concrete troughs that lead down into some nameless filth. i hope no one has to clean them.
Well after that we headed down to walk around the town. we came across a disco (i guess this post is about discos) It was saturday night, and people were gearing up to party. the music wasn’t too bad, but it was a bit harsh–the kind of blaring, pounding tecno remixes that asians seem to like. a lot of tables had ordered the platter, basically a mountain of beer set upon your table, with a plate of fruit on top. i’m not sure how much it costs. we had already had plenty of beer so we skipped the platter. In China cigarretes are an icebreaker; people often offer them to be fiendly. the people in the disco were especially friendly, and soon enough we were being offered cigarretes and beer. i was feeling a little queezy from that awful tequila-like concoction, but it wasn’t so bad so i kept on going and dancing. it was a really fun time, especially since it was my first night in china. the next day i felt really bad though, and i could smell that whiskey coming out of my pores. i dragged myself to the bus station around 11am and got on to the next town. it was good to be on the bus as I had assimilated a lot of info about china and had to sort through some of it.
i made it in by 4 and one of the touts at the bus station led me to another dingy hotel. i was alone, and began wandering around the town. at this point i realized that i was completely unaware of where i was or where i was going, and i could not find anyone that could speak english, or even an english map. i looked at the signs on the bus station for kunming, the capital of this province (yunnan), and there were none. that’s where i wanted to go eventually, but had no idea how to get there. i also had no more money left and it being sunday, could not get any at the bank. i decided it would be a fasting day and i’d only drink water. well i just wandered around aimlessly and went into a lot of shops and had a look around at everything. the next day i’d figure something out.
It sure is cool to be in China, i think i’ll end up liking it a lot but for now i’m taking a wait and see approach. I really want to gain an appreciation of the language, to figure out how a system of writing and communication could in part produce such a diverse and unique place. I will try to learn some of the language, I would really like to be able to make some sort of meaning out of all these seemingly indecipherable symbols, to see what mysteries they may contain.
