Laos

We never take off our helmets. You can never be too safe when writing a blog entry!

Greetings all! Another update from our great adventure around the world with a little joke about New Mexico carefully placed in the middle for everyone to enjoy. This time we are coming from Vientiane, Laos, and not Thailand surprisingly.

Wat Phra Kaew, Chiang Mai

Finishing up our time in Chiang Mai and strolling around at night, we crossed a stall selling baby clothes. "Who would need baby clothes? Oh wait, we would now." So just like that, we bought the first set of clothes for the new baby. A yellow shirt and shorts with the words Thailand and a picture of a tuk-tuk. The baby won't fit in the outfit until Cletus or Dolly is at least a year old. Maybe I could let my small New Mexican friends wear them for a year, and enjoy some clothes that will fit them well.

Floral art by a Belgium dude, but can you imagine cutting the grass inside the cone?

We also went to the Royal Flora Expo in Chiang Mai. This was an expo celebrating different types of flora and other green things that grow out of the ground in addition to different technologies used to help use less natural resources in Thailand. This all originated from the King's initiative to reduce reliance on foreign countries for energy and have a healthy environment. Progressive King that man.

Nadine smelling the roses, while . . .

I emit toxic gases next to Toyota's Eco-Man

We both looked at each other in astonishment with the fact that we were actually going to leave Thailand for more than a couple of hours on a visa run. But in order to do that, we had to jump on an overnight bus to the city of Udon Thani, where we would pick up another local bus to the border, where we would jump on another bus, and travel to the capital of Vientiane.

Our overnight bus to Udon Thani proved to be the most eventful. After a compulsory Jackie Chan movie, the lights went out, but the moon continued shining brightly outside. In our best attempt to sleep, we got in the fetal position on our seats. It wasn't long until at 1 in the morning, we pulled up to a gas station with adjoined restaurant. This was the V.I.P. meal included with the bus ticket and the meal was atrocious. We spent more time guessing what we were eating rather than eating it.

To conclude our overnight ride and middle of the night meal, we were serenaded by a farang and a Thai guy. The farang was practicing his Thai with the Thai guy and he was happy to conversate. I'm all for learning, practicing, and sharing with local people in your travels, BUT NOT at 2 in the morning while the rest of the bus is trying to sleep, especially the two people directly in front of them being Nadine and myself. We eventually arrived to Udon Thani sleepy and dragging swollen feet. My legs are too long for the seats, thus they hang over the edge, and swelling ensues. Result, large feet.

Our plans had previously included entering northern Laos and tracking our way down south to the border of Cambodia, but that all changed with a little peanut baby deciding to join us on the trip. Since we already possessed two expensive Laos visas, we were going to use them and visit the only place that was malaria free, the Lao capital.

After a team of buses from Udon Thani, we had crossed the border and were in downtown Vientiane, the unassuming capital of Laos. Automatically you think of a capital of any country, U.S., Peru, Texas, or even Morocco, they are going to be large. That is and is not the case for Vientiane. It is one of the top 3 largest cities of Laos, a country of only 6 million inhabitants, but the capital only has 200,000 laid back folks. Driving from our hostel to the Vietnam consulate to apply for another visa, you feel like you have been placed in the middle of a large farming village trying to avoid hitting a grazing dog along the way.

Laos is a communist country but the winds of change are on the horizon. You notice that there are not any Western fast food restaurants dotting streets, just local vendors, but that may not last long. Laos is slowly making its way on the backpackers radar. Even then, the number of tourists are few.

With only 5 days to explore this "captial," we rented bikes and made our way around the city. You can't visit and not see That Dam Stupa. Not quite sure why we needed to see that stupa other than it has a cool name and it was one of very few places to actually visit.

Nadine is standing under That Dam Stupa again with a smirk on her face

Situated directly downtown, and similar to Paris, Vientiane has their own version of the Arc de Triomphe, Patuxai. It is impressive in a city that doesn't have much to impress, but comically, it was built with the donations from an American cement company to help build an airport. Instead of using it for the airport, they used it for some downtown grandeur. It is referred to as the "vertical runway."

Views from the top and at the base of Patuxai. No airplanes landing or taking off

After seeing a few sites, we began our way towards towards the golden Pha That Luang, a national symbol of Laos. But before we had the opportunity to run around the site, we had to get there on our bikes. Along the way, we had come to a traffic stop with a couple of cars and scooters manuveuring for position and to turn. In the process, and very slowly, Nadine peeked her head out from behind a car just at the time that a scooter was turning. Nadine and the scooter collided. I turned around to see it happen in slow motion. I ran over immediately to check on Nadine and her belly. Fortunately, both were moving at the speed of grandmothers in a wheelchair race. Neither Nadine, nor the other guy were injured, but Nadine's bike was hurting. Fearful of having to buy a new bike, we presented the bike to the hotel, rode in a tuk-tuk with the injured bike to a bike shop, and had it repaired for $10.

For the first time on our trip, I was approached by tuk-tuk drivers for rides around the city. That is not what is unusual. As always, I didn't accept, but as soon as I said no, they countered with "you smoke? Weed, marijuana, opium?" I responded with a firm "winners don't use drugs, and I am a winner. So no!"

Honestly in all of my travels around the world, it's not uncommon to be walking and have someone ask you if you want some weed, but to be propositioned for opium, that's a first. We are in the heart of the former opium trade.

It reached the point where the tuk-tuk drivers would look at me, raise their eyebrows several times at me as if saying, "you want some? I got some 'you know what' to smoke." I guess since the distaces in Vientiane aren't that large and you can really walk anywhere, tuk-tuk drivers have to find a way to diversify their income with tourists.

Pha That Luang smiling for the camera

With the little accident with Nadine's front tire and a scooter, we never made it to Pha That Luang that second day. The following day, we did make it without any traffic accidents, but to throw a kink into our running around, we arrived at lunch hour when it was closed, so we had to wait. Nothing wrong with this, it left ample time to take some silly pictures outside That Luang and play with some local kids.

How many differences can you see in these two photos?

As a rule, we never give money to kids in that, in our opinion, it promotes parents to push their kids to ask for and earn money when they should be in school. But we do play with kids. So Bun, Lou, and I played our own rendition of shoe badminton. One shoe or sandal off as a racquet, and just knock the birdie as hard as possible. We all had a good time and proudly, one Texan beat two Lao girls in a tough match of shoe badminton. When they began protesting my scoring system, I looked away, quickly yelled "I have to go visit Pha That Luang. Bye!", and ran away.

Winning shot

As a result of Nadine being pregnant, her body is going through changes we like to call the "Thai winter of change." She has been feeling nauseous every other morning and needing a little more rest than usual. Good thing we aren't back at school working and we have the freedom to sleep in a little. We've changed the way we travel a bit. We are taking things slower and act according to how Nadine feels that morning. Every time I tell her to just suck it up, she just punches me. That works well. We did find one thing to help alleviate what ails her. We took her to get a massage. That morning having felt pretty miserable from morning sickness, that afternoon after the massage, miracously, she felt like a new woman. A new woman with a little baby growing inside of her.

To end on that point, life is good for both of us. We are super excited about being pregnant, but it has changed our focus and ferociousness that we travel with. We are heading back to Bangkok for a doctor's visit in a couple of days. From there, I will travel to Cambodia for 5 days in a whirlwind tour to see Ankor Wat and anything else I can catch in that time, while Nadine rests. We will then meet up in Ho Chi Mihn City, Vietnam where we will spend, my mom's birthday, Christmas, and probably New Years over a one month period. We may look for a job for a month and take a break from our constant moving. That is the freedom that long term travel has allowed us to make easy changes as needed.

This weeks question: Insert your own quote for this picture.

We hope all is well and enjoying the Christmas season. Don't hold your breath waiting for Christmas presents from us.

Peace and love

JW