Marmalade Daydreams

Yes, poor worried readers, fret not. When a few days elapse between blog postings, it means not that I am in grave danger, waylaid by the perils that can beset solo travellers in this distant land. It usually means that, despite my love of long-winded posts and sharing my pictures, I'm simply having too much of a good time to justify sitting in an Internet cafe when I'm in such an amazing place, meeting wonderful people.

Currently back in Vientienne to retrieve my forgotten hiking shoes, without which my feet have suffered greatly this week, and I shudder to think of approaching the 26,000 feet of Gonga Shan in flipflops, and about to hop on a local bus back to Vang Vien to retrieve my forgotten iPod charger (I'm doing well), and praying that I'm going to sit next to a woman with a garbage bag full of coriander again (oh, that glorious scent), but that this time the lady with a bucket full of clams doesn't get on at the next stop, but I just wanted to express how the last few hours combined everything I love about Laos.

Wonderful kayaking trip today: I capsized the boat in the very first rapid, despite sharing the craft with our guide -- he suggested that I take it easy on the oars in the whitewater and pay more attention to leaning into the waves -- but that notwithstanding, a greatly enjoyable afternoon paddling through tropical forest. Our guide was Pan, very sweet, very professional (he had been trained extensively for river rescues) but also very playful (he began the vicious splashing wars that characterized a good part of the trip, threw me out of the boat when we got to some flatwater, and followed me by doing a backflip), and we enjoyed an excellent barbeque lunch over a makeshift charcoal grill on the riverside (pictures to come).

After we pulled out of the river, the farang from our trip piled into the back of a songthaew (pickup truck with benches in the bed) with farang from another trip for a classic Lao transportation experience: twenty people in a standard-sized pickup truck, two of whom were hanging onto the rear of the vehicle for the two-hour journey, the driver continually pulling over to sell these tiny trussed up bats (in another example of the famously catholic Laotian diet, tiny bats are eaten whole, wings and all) to people on the roadside; as we approached the city limits, he stashed a sign under our bench in the back (possibly revealing the illicity of his bat sales?), made the hangers-on squeeze inside with everybody else, and pulled curtains, ostensibly to conceal the number of people pressed inside the vehicle.

Two minutes later I had liberated my poor shoes from their dusty rack; as the R.D. Guesthouse is a very laid-back place even for this exceeding laid-back country (once, I was returning from the shower to realize I locked myself out of my room -- I had to stand for nearly twenty minutes in the lobby, dripping wet in only a towel, to wait for the clerk to return from wherever he'd gone), I wasn't too concerned for their well-being: I knew they were being properly neglected. Two minutes after that, I was sitting in my favorite patissiere, enjoying a little tarte in celebration of my reunion with the blessed Merrills (happy feet are swinging back and forth as I type, like a dog's wagging tail), and now I conclude this post to run over to the bus station, and head back up north. Probably, I am bound for Luang Prabang tomorrow morning and, once there, I will tell some more stories and update my photo page. Next week, the Himalaya. Until then, I'm looking forward to eating my banana leaf full of fried rice on the bus.