Week Three: Lau Lau!

So our time in Lau is almost up and one thing's for sure: in Lau, time does not equal money. In Lau, time slips by undetected and dissolves as though it never was. If there is a clock somewhere, it definitely doesn't tick. Buses leave an hour later than scheduled, and the ride is two hours longer than they told you it would be. We have fought hard to make it out of here, as one day easily becomes three.

I left off at our 11 hour bus ride to Luang Prabang. Did I say 11 hours? Try 14. Yes 14 hours on a bus. The first five hours, the bus shook to the beats of Lau music, hands down the worst music on the planet (according to our Lonely Planet, the classical Lau music has fallen victim to the "vapid tentacles of Thai pop"). My stomach did somersaults. Thankfully, I had earplugs and two seats to myself. I curled up into a ball and closed my eyes. After our dinner stop, the bus shot through the jungle darkness like a spaceship on the verge of breaking down, narrowly avoiding horrific collisions with asteroids, barely able to handle the demands of its fearless captain. The only way to describe the violence with which the bus frantically bounced, shook, and swayed is that it did so with cartoon-like exaggeration. Laying your jostled head against anything for comfort was futile, as a mild concussion was a probable outcome. I guess you can say that we slept, but I wouldn't be able to say that without mentioning that most of the sleep was more like hallucination. In that place between awake and asleep, I imagined the bus falling on its side or toppling off the side of the mountain. But somehow, we survived and arrived in Luang Prabang. All we could manage to utter was, "That was horrible."

On that fantastic voyage, we met two nice Moroccan Israeli guys, Idan and Eyal, and a sweet American girl from California named Sarah (not Jewish). We played some fun games on the bus to kill time (one person thinks about something, anything in the universe, and everyone asks questions to try to figure out what it is...lots of laughs) and ended up hanging out quite a bit until yesterday, when we finally had to say our goodbyes.

We were pretty out of it the first couple days in Luang Prabang, but we managed to enjoy eating the food and walking around the exceptionally charming city. The French influence is everywhere. The walkways are brick lined, the courtyards are terracotta tiled, and the windows are quaintly shuttered. Many rooms have hard wood floors and ceilings. The result is a visually pleasing and photo-friendly town. Of course, tourists are everywhere, and one quickly gets the sense that the place survives solely on tourism and the excessive popularity of Beer Lau, but it is a nice plays to vegetate for a few days. The coffee alone is reason enough to stay. Lao coffee is a thick, silky brew of rich black liquid. When it hits your tongue, it doesn't taste or feel watery. It is like a velvety blanket saturated with the essence of coffee. It is normally mixed with a bit of sweetened condensed milk, which lightens it ever so slightly. I would like to take a bushel home with me.

On Friday night, the five of us got together and did a little Shabbat dinner at the restaurant across from our room that overlooks the Mei Kong and the mountains beyond. It is really beautiful. Sarah was a little surprised by our rituals, but we had a great time chatting and eating. It started to rain (it rains every day) and we made it an early night. The next day we got together after the morning rain and took a Tuk Tuk ride over to the unbelievably amazing waterfalls. We hiked a bit, swam, and swung into the freezing water by rope along with dozens of other travelers and locals. I can't stress how special the Kuang Si water falls are. It is an idyllic, fairy tale setting. We spent about three hours enjoying ourselves before we rode back to town, hanging of the back of the tuk tuk, soaking in the scenery, singing songs, and greeting the people and children by the road with a loud "Sabaideeee!" It was a special day.

The next day, Leeor and I fell ridiculously ill with food poisoning. We stayed in bed the whole day doing what peeple with food poisoning do. We had fevers and body aches. We also had HBO, which we could not have done without. Movie after movie took our minds off of the complete awfulness of the day. Somehow we survived and left the next day for Vang Vieng, or what I like to call the SE Asian mouth of hell.

Vang Vieng. It's the type of place where a horror movie should be filmed. It is a Mexico-like drinking town full of Wester travelers looking to get a cheap buzz (fall on the floor drunk) off of the buckets of alcohol (literally small plastic buckets) they give away for free. There is an area of the river where you can tube from bar to bar. That's what people go there for. However, as a shirtless and tatooed European traveler put it, you don't have to drink all the time, you can also smoke weed and watch movies (?!?!?!). I wasn't really into it, so we went out one night dancing with our new friends (very fun, no buckets I promise!) and then spent a day still recovering from our previous sickness. I have to admit that despite the bizzareness of the town, the scenery is magnificent. So we enjoyed it. We came to Vientiane yesterday and today we are going to Vietnam (yay!). Thank god, after a few days of eating almost nothing and having the most boring cravings in the world, we have our appetites back. We can't wait to get out of Lau, but we are happy about our stay. You have to come here with the notion that it's ok to spend some time soing absolutely nothing. If you enjoy the coffee, which you must, and find sticky rice to be a revalation, which it certainly is, you should be fine. But stay away from Lau Lau, the locally made rice whiskey. It's vile. So I will end with a warm Kop Jai Lai Lai!