slow boats and millionaires

I am officially a millionaire. Laos style. which means im quite poor but my wallet is literally bursting with money i can barely close it. I changed US$400 yesterday and in return got 3,433,000 kip. and as their biggest note is a 50,000 and they dont have coins so it makes for one very big wad of money.

I left Chaing mai early saturday morning after very minimal sleep as i was literally carried to one of the local clubs by our trusty tour guide, James Bond after a very fun night of cards and 'circle of death' for all you kiwis who know that game. was also introduced to a new rule called 'shag that sheep', am definately bringing that one back home. Got to see lots of old western men and young thai girls in the club too.. always fun..

Anyway I am currently travelling with a guy from Taiwan whose english name is Fabio. And before the rumours start he has a gf! He's quite fun and speaks pretty good english, though i am making it my mission to have him speaking like a kiwi in no time. We got to spend a lot of time talking on our 5 hour bus ride, then 3 hour bus ride, then 20 minute boat ride on saturday getting into Laos. We travelled local style which was a lot of fun, way better than this tourist air-conditioned stuff which is always turned on way too cold, seriously about 10 degrees colder than outside,sometimes more. you feel like a real dick walking out of the bus wearing a jersy in 30 degree heat! We stayed one night in Huay Xai in Laos then headed the next day to the slow boat on our trip to Luang Prabang. the boat was really small with about 100 people on board, small wooden benches with barely enough room for your legs, and one toilet.. Was definately interesting. We sat right by a canadian couple Kasia and Matt who were really cool to hang out with so we played cards and chatted, read books.. and 6 hours later arrived in Pak Beng for the night. the next day we hopped into a much smaller boat with the same amount of people and had a 7.5 hour day.. we were pretty glad to arrive in Luang Prabong! Was a fun trip but i think its enough for one life time..

In Luang Prabong the next day we all hired bikes and biked around the city, going through some of the local village which was cool to see. also biked along the Mekong River and then discovered there was a night market... It was reasonably big but after about 20 metres you realised most venders sold EXACTLY the same thing. not even similar, just the same thing... so we headed off to the food part of the market. I have become vegetarian here which is proving interesting as the Loas people LOVE their meat, you can buy whole fish on a stick, whole flattened miniature birds on a stick, chicken on a stick, pork on a stick... its actually hard to find food wihtout meat because its so common they often dont tell you it is in the food, you order 'noodles with chinese brocolli' and it comes with pork! ah well good times though. Fabio my travel buddy loves meat so he was in Fabio-heaven with his meat on a stick...

Today we left the Canadian couple and headed off on a boat back up the mekong river (this time much smaller but with much more room) to the Pak Ou caves, of course with the mandatory Loas stop at a village to try to convince you to buy more gorgeous things that you saw at the market. they have really beautiful scarves but i dont want to be carrying them round for the next few months so n oshopping for me! There were two caves pretty much filled to the brim with buddah statues.. some old, some new. was quite interesting.. there are a lot of buddah statues everywhere around here as there are temples on every second street corner!

Anyway must get going as i have been on the internet for a long time.. If you wanna check out my photos i have uploaded more to www.bebo.com/ingridjones

much love,
Ingrid