The last of Laos and Thailand

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A Letter to the Uninformed

Dear Los Angeles:

You suck.

Love,

Claire

PS Do you know how long it took me to find any kind of work in Los Angeles? Well, okay, weird piecework jobs, I managed to string together, those weren't as hard as -- say -- laying asphalt. But do you know how many resumes I sent out? 10 a day. EVERY. DAY. Do you know how many interviews I went on? NONE. Unless you count the visit to the temp agency that showed me a film about workplace injury designed mostly to test whether or not you knew to put the truss around your waist and not on your head or down your pants, and asked me a questionnaire designed for the monumentally naive.

It was a forty-question jobbie, apparently cleverly designed by the same people who put together the MMPI, with multiple differently-worded questions to catch you out if you happened to be lying. It became quite apparent after the first four questions what kind of applicants usually work at temp agencies though. "True or false -- Sometimes I use violence to solve problems at work." "I use cocaine...Every Day/Once A Week/Every Couple of Weeks/Rarely/Never" "Have you ever falsely claimed a workman's compensation form?" "True or false -- Taking a little nip on the job isn't so bad." "Are you sure you're not a violent, drug-addicted, insurance fraud? Tell the truth!"

In Los Angeles, when Trader Joe's opened a new store, they got 800 applicants. Now given, TJ's offers full health coverage to employees if you work 3 days a week, so they're probably like the Holy Grail of part-time work, but still. That's a lot of applications. I doubt if anyone I gave resumes to even saw them; more likely, they went into some huge slush pile with a sign on it that said either "INCINERATE" or "For Immediate Recycling." Everything advertised as paying the lucrative sum of $8-10 per hour, which in Los Angeles is about enough to keep you from being evicted out of that nice refrigerator box you've managed to set up behind the Ralph's, with the screenwriter from Pacoima and your boss' cleaning lady. All sharing the same box.

Do you know how long it took me to find a job in Perth? I arrived on Wednesday of last week...by Monday, I had a job offer. Today, literally one week after I set foot on this continent, I have a job that is not only interesting and emotionally fulfilling, but literally two blocks from my house, ON MY WAY to the University where I will be studying, and well-paid. The boss and I were both woefully disappointed that I'm not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week: "I'll schedule you for as much as you want," she told me. I go in on Friday for an orientation, and start my first shift on Sunday.

Have I mentioned that it takes an hour to drive ANYWHERE in Los Angeles? Well, it does. Remember how it's supposed to be a seaside town, with waves sloshing over rocks and the gorgeous, omnipresent sun bearing down on the surfers? guess what else they have here in Australia? Sun. Warmth. All the time. It's a desert, but even in the winter, it doesn't go under 10 degrees Celsius. The ocean and white sandy beaches are about half an hour away...BY EASILY ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC TRANSIT. Do you know how hard it was to go to the beach in California? Who wants to drive for an hour and a half through gridlocked traffic on the 405 to join several squalling kids being looked after by a Mexican nanny while their recently Botoxed mother flips through People magazine?

You know what else Perth has? Smiling, happy, friendly people. Everyone chats with you. It's like a small town, where people actually mean it when they ask you out for coffee, instead of Los Angeles, where someone could nick a small cut in each of your thumbs and press them together, swearing Blood Brotherhood Forever, and then the next day, they won't even return your phone calls. People here are nice. They help you. (Well, except in the International Office at Curtin, but that's another story.) They're tolerant of your failings, like not knowing they're called "bathers" instead of "swimsuits." (Silly Americans.)

PPS Oh, and you know what else? People in Australia have got senses of humor. I was always having to explain jokes in California, especially because people take themselves so f-ing seriously. Here, everyone takes the piss ALL THE TIME. It's like the national hobby, after avoiding poisonous creatures.

You know why nobody really needs to provide health insurance with their jobs, either? They have universal health care.

PPPS Also the money is pretty. Colorful, and different sizes, and cool clear plastic windows in it. And they sell cough syrup with codeine in it.

So, Los Angeles? I know we had a bit of an abusive relationship, where neither of us really wanted to be together, but we put up with each other for the sake of the children. I know we had our fights, our massive flaming battles of seething violence, and our cold-shoulder late-night freeze-outs. I know I cried numerous times over your high gas prices and impossibly fake boobs, your long distances and two-hour commutes. So consider this the final notice. We're broken up. I'm returning your stuff. I'll just leave it in a box on your porch. Don't bother coming to the door.

Placeholder

This is a placeholder post, as the post I have been wanting to post for days, which is very funny and erudite, is on my computer...and I have no wireless till I go out and buy a router. I'm on it. But you'll have to wait a short amount of time until I've got one. That's all.

Some pictures to fill in the gaps

This tree lit with lanterns is in the main park in Ubon. I love it.

I like entropy, things that are fading or being weathered. This is from Pakse, and I don't know where it was pointing to.

More interesting decay. Also from Pakse; Laos used to be occupied by the French, so you have these odd colonial facades all over the place.

Whew, I was afraid this was the SMOKING Wat Luang.

I love this door/window combo. More entropy. Sorry, I really like it.

It's a good point.

Monks with umbrellas in Pakse. In Buddhism, every man is encouraged to become a monk to bring merit to his family -- he can be a monk for as short a time as a week, even. I think this is why people don't appear as overly solicitous towards their "clergy" here; if that holy guy is your cousin Larry, it's hard to be all, "Your worshipfulness!"

Sunset from the railroad bridge in Don Khon, Si Phan Don. I guess it's kind of okay, if you like things that are GREAT.

View from my hammock on Don Khon. See that black speck mid-photo? The next shot is an enlargement, if you will.

Kids tubing in Don Khon. They floated down the river shrieking and tumbling off and having a great time, just at dusk.

Things that will probably kill you: #436

So, the most intriguingly dangerous part of this whole trip is this: in Thailand, people drive on the left (mostly)...but in Laos, they drive on the right (mostly). Crossing that border every day must lead the airconditioned minibus drivers into more than one traffic accident, although presumably none so impressive as the semi truck we saw overturned and jack-knifed on the side of the road between Si Phan Don and Pake yesterday. Since I was traveling by local bus (which is essentially a Daihatsu pickup truck with benches welded into the bed), everyone made sure everyone else got a good look, even if we didn't speak the same language. "Oh my god, will you look at that," seems to be universal, as does "Holy crap, something to divert me from the jostling and diesel fumes and bumpiness of the past two hours."

The French sisters told me a story back on Don Khon about how they had been walking along and saw a tourist woman come flying by on her bicycle, which then caught on something and tipped up, sending her headfirst into the ground. When she sat up, she was pouring blood down her face, and the sisters said they could see a huge gash on her scalp, with a glimpse of bone (ew). They mopped her up with their little portable medical kit which they brought because they are good European girls who get all their vaccinations and travel with more pills than most Asian pharmacies. She kept protesting that she was fine, and they kept telling her she needed stitches, but finally she got on her bike and rode off. However, when they were done wiping the blood off her, they looked up to find themselves completely surrounded by uniformed Laos schoolchildren, gaping in wonderment. Schadenfreude: better than television.

This morning, my last day in Laos, I woke up later than usual (7:15am, yes i have become an old woman and I go to bed at 10pm and wake up with the roosters and the Laos) and walked out into the cool sunny day. In the market, I bought two baguettes for the bus and train later, and a small bunch of bananas, and three steamed pork buns, and took them down through the wat to the wall by the river. The Laos and Thai have a much more cavalier view of their religious buildings than we do; while we might consider it the height of irreverence to cut through churches or sleep in their backyards, most useful paths in Laos and Thailand cut through the back of a wat and people just ride their motorcycles right on in.

Eating my buns in the shade and watching the local secondary school students poking each other and giggling and stripping leaves off the nearby plants before class started in the building at the base of the wat, it was very peaceful. The Mekong was in front of me and the traffic bridge that connects downtown (such as it is) with where everyone lives to my right. The bridge is pretty funny, actually: it's only wide enough for one lane of traffic, so everyone spurs across it in a flurry of motorbikes and tuktuks and then the stream ebbs and dies and there's utter silence for about a minute. Then it happens again in the other direction. Again and again, all day.

It makes one want a motorbike, that's for sure. Just to blend in with the crowd.

Quickie

I'm back in Pakse, having paid almost twice what I had to (about $17 more) to get from Pakse to Bangkok via Ubon tomorrow. I could have saved all the money and bought the tickets myself, but I don't know what the train availability from Ubon to Bangkok is, and I arrive in Ubon with only an hour between them, so...

I paid for comfort and peace of mind, but then instead I'm beating myself up for not being more thrifty. It's only $17, but I'm castigating myself for having spent it. That's a full freaking day of traveling in Laos, I tell myself.

So much for peace of mind.

Somebody slap me and tell me that $17 isn't that much, and I'm not a bad traveler for paying it.

Laos Laos

No pictures with this post yet, as I'm sitting in a very tiny internet "cafe" in "downtown" Don Khon, in the Si Phan Don, the part of Laos closest to Cambodia. In fact, I saw Cambodia this morning, biking around the island; there was a dirt road that dead ended in some beautiful blue water and a cluster of tiny islands in the distance that was a whole different country. How did I know that? Because the sign in English right before I got there said "Hello you can go no further there is the end of the island so walk to the beautiful sandy beach and look at Cambodia and sit down relax have a beer thank you."

See?

Moving from Thailand to Laos was relatively uneventful, except for being relieved of $35 US at the Laos border for a "visa", which you don't actually get one of, just a stamp with an end date. The border crossing is dusty and hot and the windows are completely tinted black ecept for one small semi-circle at the very bottom, so we all spent a lot of time shouting "Forms? Passport? No picture!" with our heads tilted sideways and resting on the Formica countertop. The shouting was happening in lots of different languages, since the bus from Ubon to Pakse was crammed full of, not just tourists, but Laos returning home and Thais on vacation. And bicycles.

Although Pakse itself is a pretty touristy town, the Laos are probably the friendliest people I've encountered so far. They're always smiling, even if you're not buying something off them, and everywhere you go, people are shouting "Sabaidee!" In Pakse, I found the street market and amused myself playing with a tiny puppy and gnawing on an ear of corn while watching the smiling faces come and go, eating soup from a bag and noodles from...still a bag. They like plastic bags.

(When I told the French girls I've been hanging out with about the puppy, one said, "Oh my God, what do you think they were keeping it there for?" Note: it was purebred and had a collar. Not food.)

The Sabaidy 2 Guesthouse had one dorm bed left; tidy and spotless, the dorms had four actual beds, not bunkbeds, although when I returned from breaking into a deserted mansion later in the day, another mattress had been added to the floor, along with a backpacker on it. I wandered and wandered, Pakse being pretty freaking tiny, and crossed the Mekong as the sun was setting, wandering through the dusk and jogging Laos and motorcycles and shouts of "Sabaidee!" and construction workers yelling "I love you!" onto the Laos side of the river. From there I could look through the pink air across the Mekong back at the tourist fiesta, see the bright lights and signs proclaiming "Pizza!" and I smiled.

I'd spent the whole day looking for a riverboat down the Mekong to Si Phan Don, which is the ONE thing I really wanted to do while I was in SE Asia. There aren't any. Well, there might be some, but you can't find them without speaking Laos, and I think my limited vocabulary would not extend to such endeavors, unless all they required of me was to say "Please," "Thank you," and "Hello." So I got a ticket from Sabaidy 2 on a tiny Mitsubishi minivan that brought back memories of Guatemala, and dumped me at a rural boat launch known as Ben Nakasang.

The small canoe with outboard motor crammed as many tourists as possible into it and rocked out into the Mekong, depositing its first and largest load at Don Det, the backpacker paradise. As the rest of us continued onwards to Don Khon, I laughed out loud to see several water buffalo swimming, their noses barely held out of the water; for some reason, I turned my head to look at the boat driver, directly behind me, presumably inviting him to be delighted at them right along with me, like he doesn't see the eact same thing every day. A few minutes later, he touched my arm and pointed at some more swimming by, with a big Laos grin.

Arriving in Don Khon, it's pretty easy to find accommodations: there's only one big town and one road. So The two French sisters and I walked to the first guesthouse we found that had riverfront rooms with hammocks (I NEED hammocks...the same way some people need cocaine) and took it. My room is 25,000 kip, or approximately $3US, for a large bed with mosquito net, outdoor toilet, view of the Mekong, hammock, and, presumably, mites, ticks, bedbugs, and other infectious stuff.

Yesterday night, watching the sun set over the Mekong from the gentle sway of my hammock...well...it probably couldn't have been better. This morning, however, I made the mistake of believing the guidebooks and bicycle merchants and rented a bicycle. Why doesn't anyone talk about how intensely unpleasant riding a bike around this island is? The roads are scattered with rocks the size of fists; no wonder every Laos rides a motorcycle, because everybody but dumb tourists knows that biking around is a sure way to either fatal head injury or potential shaken-baby syndrome. I did find some isolated sand beaches, and enjoyed a breakfast/lunch of chicken and vegetable curry while staring out over the river. A Buddhist nun joined me and we sat in companionable silence, while she surrounded herself with animals and I slurped my curry, which had probably been made of river water. Yay, Parasitology Museum!

I can't stress enough how terrible bicyclcing is here -- I'd really almost rather walk, assuming you get up early enough to avoid midday heat. So now I'm heading back to the hammock to nap till it cools down a bit...then probably walking across the railroad bridge to Don Det. I'll probably be staying in the Si Phan Dno for at least another day and then...I don't know. Maybe north to Vientiane via sleeper bus and work my way south through Thailand back to Bangkok...or maybe back the way I came, spending another night each in Pakse and Ubon. Either way, I'm on a tropical island.

A quick update

I went for a walk earlier, through the park near my hotel, at dusk. And came across this.

Apparently this is quite common in Thailand, but it just made me smile all over. You can also hear the deathly chirping of the numerous birds, which sound like a Hitchcock movie.

Thai one on

Yes, I'm continuing a tradition of cheesy pun-related post titles.

I'm writing now from Ubon Ratchathani, a lovely, gentle Thai town to the east, about 12 hours by slow-moving, multiple-stopping train from Bangkok. It's only 45 minutes from the Laotian border, and that's where I'm planning to go tomorrow, Laos and points south. Which actually would technically still be in Laos. Just the south of Laos.

So, let me explain. No, there is too much; let me sum up.

I landed in Bangkok at night, and without a window seat there's no way to even tell how close you are till the wheels touch the ground. I slept the sleep of the terminally exhausted on the Seoul to Bangkok leg of the trip; my head tipped back whether I willed it to or no, and I was irrationally infuriated with the nice ladies offering me first scented towels then a drink then some food and JUST GO AWAY AND LET ME SLEEP ALREADY! And can't you turn out the cabin lights, for the love of god???? I don't want your headphones! In other circumstances, I would have been delighted with the in-flight services; this time I mostly just wanted to be horizontal.

Bill Bryson pointed out how odd it is to cross the international date line, because you suddenly and without your consent, cease to exist for one whole day. My cessation mostly left me feeling compacted, like I had lost about a foot of height, which was odd since I'm finally in a country where everyone is not only my height, but my size. I'm tired of people telling me how tiny I am, so from now on, I'll just translate it in my head as them telling me how Thai I am. "You're really going to eat all those French fries? But you're so Thai!"

I skipped the backpacker paradise of Kaosan Rd, mostly because I have a deep-rooted aversion to people who wear a lot of hemp and worry about ecotourism. i can't help it. I didn't like them that much even when I was 18, and now that I'm almost 30, hanging out with a bunch of hard-drinking idiots wearing tank tops and flip-flopping around filthy Thai streets looking for the best bargain has gotten old. I did fall asleep in my quiet, clean room listening to someone croon Neil Young's Harvest Moon into a portable karaoke machine. It was a Thai person, I'd evidence, based on the mispronunciations.

This is Sukhumvit at night, the busy urban sprawl of Bangkok. there are 7.7 million people there...in Bangkok, not on Sukhumvit. I may have seen all of them at Siam Paragon mall on Saturday though.

So I didn't have any plan for what I was going to do when I got here -- here Thailand, as well as here-Bangkok -- so I basically did what seemed like the best thing: obeyed Reed's suggestion. reed has been to Thailand several times and he said, "Go stay in Banglamphu one night just so you can wake up there and say you did it." So when I woke up the next morning, I waded my way past the numerous 7-11s ("I'm feeling thirsty...I wonder how many seconds it will be after I turn down this side street before- oh, there one is!") and hopped on the Chao Phraya river taxi to the Siriraj Hospital and the parasitology, Forensics, and AWESOME Museums.

Okay, there wasn't a museum of awesome, mostly because that's what the whole thing was made of. Has anyone seen the Mutter Museum? Now picture the Mutter Museum as existing in a country where things actually go wrong with people; the Mutter was all about syphilis. The Siriraj Museum had mummified rapists, graphic photos of prolapsed rectums and young boys with thousands of roundworms spilling from their guts, and poorly preserved organs with stab wounds. As well as deformed fetuses. Did I mention the round worms? I can't wait to not eat anything or touch anything ever again, and I'm fairly sure these red bites on my legs are from me GETTING A HORRIBLE PARASITE. Maybe I should have saved the Parasitology Museum for AFTER traveling in rural Thailand instead of before. Oops.

Then I went to the Buathip School for a Thai massage.

Unlike every other "massage" "parlor" in Bangkok, Buathip makes it pretty clear what to expect: in English AND Arabic.

If you've never experienced one before, Thai massage is halfway between your little brother poking you for more attention and a violent altercation with the Cirque du Soleil. Mine was conducted by a tiny lady who gently pounded me, smacked me on the head, and finished by sliding her finger into one of my ears and wiggling it around. Definitely no sex, although the ear thing was kind of nice.

My second night in town, I spent on Soi 4 off Th Sukhumvit; Kaosan is where the backpackers in fisherman pants go to trade copies of Kerouac and smoke a bowl. Sukhumvit is where sex tourists go. It's urban, dirty, and lined with a "street market" that sells porn, knockoff wallets, and, essentially, anything you want.

Offshoot road Soi Cowboy is a neon-painted spectacular, with every bar featuring pairs like this, except when the Thai person was obviously a boy.

Bangkok is famous for being a sex paradise, with ping pong shows and child rape abounding. I didn't see either of these, but I did see evidence that sexpatriotism is alive and well in Sukhumvit.

It's strangely innocent evidence, after all: every white man older, chubbier, and walking proudly hand in hand with a young Thai woman in a tight dress...or the tables at every bar with a giggling Thai girl crossing her legs and flirting with the bedazzled German in a sweaty Lacoste. no outright sex, or even kissing; just the pristine hand-holding and half-stunted conversations, again and again, and the sweaty smiles. The thing that struck me about these couples is how BORING it must be to be one of these girls; to have to spend your whole day struggling with a language you don't know, pretending to be fascinated by someone's business ventures or family woes, hoping you can get to the grunting part so then he'll feel obligated to buy you a handbag.

I saw a lot of these couples where the smiling woman carried several bags of shopping; stopping in the post office, I saw one older man bending over a money wire form as his young Thai lady leaned over his shoulder. It's a living, if you can make it; as I rumbled on the train out of town, I ruminated that the amount of money I cavalierly took out of the ATM to "do me" for my time in Thailand (20,000 baht, figuring it's better to go high than risk running out) is more than the average monthly salary for a well-paid business professional.

Leaving Bangkok was great. I bought an overnight 2nd class sleeper ticket to Ubon and had my tiny swaying bunk made up for me by the steward as I made faces and clapped hands at the grinning baby with her hair in a sprightly topknot, directly across the aisle. I had a top bunk: less light and air, more coolness factor, and we chugged into Ubon around 6:30am and I took advantage of the early morning and rode around on a songthaew for about an hour.

A random temple of some kind in the park in downtown Ubon, directly across from the swingsets.

The pace is slower and gentler out here away from the city; I can finally see why people say Thais are the friendliest, most polite of people. Here they smile, and move slowly through the streets, grinning and laughing. I've waved at more children, and had old ladies grin at me more today in a few hours than I did in all of my time in Bangkok. Also the city is rife with wats, meaning there's gorgeous gilding and sloping roofs and bells and marigolds, everywhere.

I don't know what this charred paper is, but it was tucked into this gorgeous stone flower side wall.

I love the country. I'm not a city girl. And the Thais seem to love it too, given their cheerfulness and open arms and camaraderie. or that has something to do with me finally figuring out how to say "Thank you" in Thai. It was killing me not being able to say anything, but Thai is purely tonal, so you can't read it in a guidebook and pronounce it anything like accurately. I'm completely afraid of sounding like an idiot and stumbling around with my Lonely Planet held open to the "Language" section, so instead I remain mostly mute. But now I've learned thank you...hello can't be too far behind.

I've got Seoul...

So, I'm in Seoul. I ended up in Seoul for 11 hours because that is the layover I got when I bought my ticket from LAX to Bangkok lo these many months ago. You'd think with the amount of pre-planning and researching I do, actually for a job as well as just for myself, I might have noticed that Seoul gets winter. Like, actual winter. With cold. A 63 year old museum docent pointed out that it was minus ten Celsius today. I don't have any cold weather gear. It's freaking summer where I'm going! Oops.

These are emergency gas masks behind glass in the subway station.

I wandered around Seoul for a few hours, trying desperately to find things to do that were inside and heated. I went to the Korean War Museum, which was impressive, particularly when the above docent told me about his life, which was amazing. I went to the Korean National Museum, which was mostly boring paintings and Stone Age artifacts, which are very interesting to archaeologists and basically nobody else. And I spent a lot of time on the subway. It started out pretty enjoyable, but I've gotten more and more tired as the cold seeped into my bones, so now I'm content to sit here on the comfortable reclining rest chair in Incheon, waiting for my flight.

I'm going to go get some hot water in a minute, and make some pre-packaged udon soup that I brought all the way from Trader Joe's. Other than that, how do I feel about embarking on the biggest gosh darn trip I've embarked on so far? Do I miss my friends? Do I miss Justin? What are my plans? It's all murkily obscured behind COLD and SLEEP and COLD and HUNGRY and COLD. There's apprehension and so forth, but mostly I'm just reduced to grunting and pointing.

Jet lag, thy name is rapid time zone shift.

Stylish bathroom stalls in Seoul Incheon Airport