Just a Brief Update From Laos

I know I haven't written in a while. The one computer that is free to use at my guest house, has been occupied non-stop. Not that there is a super amount of things to write about.
I stayed in Vang Vieng 3 nights. The scenery there is quite beautiful, but the town is solely designed for young partiers. If you so chose, you could rent a moto and go see some caves or lagoons or just hangout in the beautiful countryside. Then, you have to go back to town and see all the drunk or otherwise kids roaming around being fucking annoying. Why are they so intoxicated? They go tubing. There is a river that goes along the town that is usually calm enough to go tubing down. I've always been a big fan of grabbing some beer and taking a leisurely tubing trip with friends. Vang Vieng takes it up a notch. There are bars along the river, about a dozen in total (though I heard yesterday that most got washed away in the storm that's been hitting SE Asia). These bars not only sell or give away cheap shitty whiskey called Lao Lao, but some bars offer "happy" shakes or food that can have mushrooms, opium, or pot in them. Therefore, you can begin to see why there are so many people wandering town bandaged up or why they have a dozen people drown a year.

Book Review - Into the Wild

I finally read the book Into the Wild, though reluctant because the character in the movie pissed me off.
Well, the character in the movie was slightly mis-portrayed. What appears to be going into the wilds of Alaska with absolutely no experience and blatant disregard is not quite true. I think what pissed most people off was that he mis-identified some plants which ended up stopping his body's ability to absorb nutrients from food. It appears to be that he correctly identified the plant, but there was nothing written about the dangers of eating a part of the plant he had to start consuming. He was eating wild potato, but during the summer they dry up and he started eating another part of the potato, which was impossible to know would be bad for him since it was though edible and there was no record, save one rare account from a couple hundred years back, of it being an inhibitor. While some of my opinion of Chris McCandless has changed, I still don't care for him.

Dylan Is the Most Awesomest Being Evar - Guest Post by Ivy Gahn

OK, the title is my own.
I asked Ivy to write about the experience from her point of view. I wanted to give you guys a view from a different perspective. She remembered a few things that I had forgotten as well. It was nice for me in another way as well. I had never read anything that she wrote. I didn't even know she had written or even enjoyed it, but it turns out she is pretty good. Check it out:

Savannakhet, Loas Update and Book Review

After my last post, which ended with me dropping Ivy off at the airport, a couple of nice things happened to me to help cheer me up a bit. After leaving her at the airport, I took the train to the city. It doesn't stop anywhere near where I was staying, but I figured I'd just take a tuk-tuk the rest of the way. However, when I got to the last stop I was in no mood to do so. I guess I needed a good walk. On the way back a couple temples caught my eye, so I wandered in. I arrived at the second temple just as the monks were wrapping up praying. I was lingering about and one of the monks motioned me in as the last trickled out. He showed me how to pray and while it's pretty simple, involving three head to floor prayers, there is no way I'll remember what the speaking parts were. I talked to him a little bit in broken English and he said his name, but it was impossible for me to even pronounce. He also made me take a picture of their Buddha shrine. It was a really nice moment. Next, I stopped at another temple that was at the top of a "mountain" as the sun was waning. When I got back to my guesthouse, I went to the roof to find rabbits in what used to be a bar and a laundry girl that spoke near perfect English. I talked to her a bit about her life and then got some recommendations from her. The recommendations were spot on. I ate some fantastic baby clams and then had a beer in a tucked away deserted bar (I didn't want to be around anyone).I realized that Bangkok isn't the shit hole I thought it was. It has hidden little gems amidst a see of crap. Although, I'm not sure that I'll ever find a reasonably priced and not a dump, place to stay. So, those two things helped to cheer me up a little. Also, the next day I found a guy who reinforced the stress points on my new backpack (Ivy brought my dad's backpack which was identical to mine and we switched). He didn't do quite the job that the guy in Peru did, but it will definitely help to keep it from breaking.
Still, I needed to get out of Bangkok as quickly as possible. The first thing I did the next day was book a bus to Vientiane Laos. Then, the backpack thing. Then, a couple new books. I've been looking for The Celestine Prophecy based on a recommendation from Golden, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I didn't find either. Not that they aren't out there, just that when you go to a book store or whatnot, the books are stored happenstance. It is quite frustrating trying to find specific books as I'm sure you can imagine. However, there is something to it. In a way, it allows you to find things you weren't sure you were even looking for. I ended up picking out Dan Brown's new one (see book review below) and Into the Wild. I didn't know I was looking for them, but as I was looking for those specific ones above, they were the books that vividly stuck out.

Cambodia, Thailand, Ivy, and Jason/Angie

Sorry folks, but this will probably be a long one. It encompasses a little over two weeks of stuff and Ivy.
Originally, I planned on going through Laos to Thailand and meeting Ivy in mid-June. However, her work and idiotic bosses had other plans. They nearly made it so that she would never be able to visit. Why? Because two weeks off is too much. It is a sad, sad state of affairs in the US. First, we only get about 3 weeks off a year - maybe 4 if you're lucky or upper management or spend 20 years at the same place. Then, most people can't take more than a week off at a time. Most of the time it's just stigma. I mean, if we get our work done, or if it's shared work when we are out (as in Ivy's case - coworkers are required to cover for people on vacation), then shouldn't we be able to do whatever we want with our vacation time. When talking with European or Australian people, or even some of the third world, they are baffled about how we view work. Even British get twice as much time off as us, and they are workaholics too.
Our work paradigm is better spent for another post, so getting back on track, Ivy's work had another person out for a couple days of the original time, so they wouldn't let go on our original plans, then they were reluctant to let her go for two weeks. I'm not sure I would have allowed her to come if she could only get one week, it's simply a waste of money and we'd likely have not been able to Bangkok. We'd have had to take tours out of Bangkok for a couple days, but going to the islands in the South would have been out because we wouldn't be able to afford the time to not fly and we'd not have been able to fly there cause we are on a budget. Thankfully, her bosses came around, though I (and my parents) was about to have words with them had they not.
So, I flew from Hanoi to Bangkok for under $100 and was scheduled to arrive thirty minutes before her. I figured I'd go to her gate and meet her, you know, all romantic like.

Topical Discussions - 060611

I read the news today oh boy...

Today, as I was drinking a coffee, I noticed a Bangkok newspaper in English. Curious, I picked it up to see if there was anything interesting going on or anything about Thailand. Generally, I use a person filter to get my news and it works really well. But, I was curious. Oops. 

3 things caught my attention: The pope sees his shawdow - 6 more weeks of winter, drugs are bad m-kay, and an interesting thing about India.

Book Reviews - The Power of One & Blink

Take a guess at which one is a novel and which is a non-fiction essay type book. Also, take a guess at which one sucked monkey balls and which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Last Part Vietnam

Last you heard, I was in Hanoi eating snake hearts and pooping. I spent a couple more days there, but mostly just walking around the city. Ho Chi Minh has his corpse mummified there, but unlike Stalin, you don't get to look at it and they have a changing of the guards every now and again in front of the mausoleum. Also, there are all the ministries - on that subject, surprise, the biggest ministry was defense. It may have been on more acreage than our Pentagon. If not, it at least looked like a resort. Those defense strategists need their spas, but don't worry it's all inclusive. Moving on, I decided to go to Sa Pa.