50 Shades of Orange -OR- That Time I Fed Bananas to the Monks

January 18th, 2013
Ashley here

One of the coolest things about Luang Prabang, Laos is being able to see all the monks walking around town.  There's actually a sign up in the main market area that I saw that says something like- 'You're probably really curious about our monks!  People are always asking...where are they going and what are they doing all the time when they're walking around?  The answer is- they're doing the same things as you!  They're going to school or going to see their family or getting some exercise.  They're normal people just like you!'  Uhhhh yeah, normal people except for the fact that every morning at 5am they walk through the streets in lines and collect their one and only meal of the day from old ladies and random people on the street who go out and feed them every morning.  Totally normal. 

All pictures courtesy of the internet.  Picture me squatting next to that girl with a few bunches of bananas on my lap.

A tiny bit of background: There are at least 30 Buddhist temples (wats) in Luang Prabang and real-life-shaved-headed orange clad monks live in all of them (I think).  Every time we would hear someone talking about the monks, it seemed like they were trying to one-up the last person we heard talking about them with their description of their orange robes.  From poppy to pumpkin, turmeric to tangerine, marigold to saffron.  It was like everyone was practicing for their next poetry slam.  

More like 50 shades of hungry.   HOW DO THEY SURVIVE ON ONE MEAL A DAY???

Anyways I feel like this is going to get really long so let me at least try to cut to the point.  We heard that you could get up at the crack of dawn and join the buddhists in feeding the monks, and Kim was kind of like ehhhh that sounds really cool and we should definitely do it, but I think I'd rather just watch.  And I was kind of like 5 in the morning?  That sounds horrific but I really want to feed some monks so fine ok let's do it.  The next day at 5 in the pitch black morning we got up and started walking to the main street in town to figure out how I could take part in this cool tradition.  I'd done some research the day before online and read that people usually fed the monks rice (oops left our rice cookers at home) or sometimes bananas, and so we went in search of a good deal on bananas at the local fruit and veggie street market.  I got a few bunches of them and we headed out to the street to get situated and wait for the monks to come.  

Once we saw the old ladies sitting on their stools with their big bowls full of rice, I started getting nervous.  I didn't have a stool, I didn't know what to expect, and it seemed like the internet had lied to me about the bananas, because no one else had any.  I stood around with Kim for a bit trying to figure out where I should squat and what was going to happen, and then we saw the first line of monks start walking down the street and I just plonked myself down next to a row of old ladies, set my bananas on my lap, and tried to copy what the ladies on my left were doing.  It was going fine for the first 9 or so monks, but then I realized I was running out of bananas and there were still about a million more monks coming down the line.  At about monk number 16 I was out.  Then I didn't know what to do.  I just stared down at the ground and waited for this first line of monks to pass, then ran across the street to Kim who was standing watching, taking it all in like a normal person.  

I felt like they were probably going..."rice, rice, rice, rice, rice, banana? rice, rice rice." Luckily they're monks so they didn't make fun of me.

After my few minutes of getting to at least attempt to partake in this awesome tradition, I stood with Kim and we watched row after row of monks get their food for the day.  Everyone involved was completely silent and the sun started to come up and it really was an amazing sight to see. 

Ashley

If Anyone Tells Us This Was a Character Building Experience...

January 17, 2013

Ashley is too angry to write this post but she has plenty to say so I will add her commentary in red, which accurately reflects her mood, as she reads over my shoulder.  Hi guys. Ashley here.

We decided to stay in Luang Prabang an extra 4 days so we could meet up with Hannah and Neil. We figured since we were staying longer we should do a tour before they got here.  My bad habits must be rubbing off on Ashley because we signed up for a day long biking/kayaking tour without really thinking it through first. We woke up early to join the one other participant and our "guide" -in the sense he told us what to do then took off at light speed without ever looking back to see if we were still behind him.   

Mistake #1. We assumed this would be a leisurely bike ride through town and some light kayaking since no one bothered to ask us our skill level. We also believed the agent when she said the roads would be flat.  Mistake #1.  Not asking for our money back the second our guide (who BARELY spoke English)  tried to get us on a bike built for Shaquille O'Neil.  It was literally made for a giant person and he was pointing at it trying to get me to start riding it and I was like ummm sir, this bike is WAY TOO BIG.  I can't even get my leg over the top.  And he was just shaking his head trying to shove me onto the bike and I was like DO YOU MAYBE HAVE ONE FOR NORMAL SIZED HUMANS???  And he ended up having to borrow bikes from the rental place across the street because apparently he usually only gives bike tours to Sasquatch and The Rock.

Mistake #2. I am probably the only woman dumb enough to show up for a bike excursion without a sports bra. The fact that our bike had shock absorbers should have sent me running back to the hotel room to get one.  This wasn't a problem for me a) because I was wearing one and b) because I don't really need one.   

The first 30 minutes were a pretty scary ride through town, dodging motorbikes and tuk tuks, up into the quiet suburbs with locals and dogs meandering the streets. Then the flat, paved road ended and turned into hills covered in big gravel that sounded like popcorn popping and slowed us down to about 1 MPH because we thought for sure our front wheels were going to go spinning out of control at any second. Our guide and Clive, the other extremely annoying and awkward gentleman on the tour, would bike ahead, stop and wait for us, then take off as soon as they saw us, repeating this the whole way. The only time they waited was when my chain came off and it was Clive, not our guide, who assisted.

The flattest, most scenic part of the journey.

We managed to survive the Gravel Hill Of Death and turned onto a dirt road which we soon learned was under construction as huge bulldozers and tractors went speeding past us. This part of the journey would have been a lot more enjoyable if it was a true country road, quiet and surrounded by trees and hills. Instead we were surrounded by the jarring sound of jack hammers, the beeping of forklifts backing up and potentially pretty views that were clouded over with a dusty haze.  GUYS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.  It was like trying to go for a leisurely bike ride through a monster truck race track while all the trucks on there were trying to run you over and you barely had enough energy to keep pedaling up and down the rocky gravely hills, let alone to dodge tractors and semi trucks filled with rocks and dirt that blew in your eyes.    

We kept going and going and going and going until we reached the turn off to meet up with the main road again. Sometime between the last tour and our tour, the construction team had dug a deep ravine separating our path from where we needed to go.  So through the ravine it was.  Here's where I 100% almost lost it.  Are you picturing this yet?  After hours of riding up and down an awful dirt and gravel road dodging construction vehicles, thinking we must ALMOST be at this river ready to get in the kayaks, the road ends.  And we're looking at a giant ravine filled with quicksand and nasty water.  And our guide can't find a way around it so he decides we have to go through it.  THIS WASN'T IN THE BROCHURE.  

The guide and Clive made it through without many mishaps and then it was my turn. I slowly walked my bike down the steep hill to the muddy, cloudy, nasty looking river that had been created. I pushed my bike over to the other side and then hopped across the river only to sink mid-shin deep in mud. I quickly started to climb out but the mud was pulling me down like quicksand. With a loud slurp I managed to pull my foot out while my flip flop (Mistake #3) was sucked down into the muddy abyss. Determined not to lose a second pair of flip flops only 6 weeks into the trip I grabbed a rock and started digging.  And I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures since I was still on the other side of the ravine holding my bike trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get across without dying.  This I have to admit was simultaneously the most insane part of the trip and the most hilarious for me because the three of them were over there sinking in quicksand, digging around trying to find Kim's other Croc (yes Laura, Croc!) and I was high and dry on the other side trying to capture the moment on my iPhone.  RIP iPhone. :(

Meanwhile Ashley was still on the other side of the river in a state of shock. Our guide decided to be helpful for the first time and picked up the biggest rock his small frame could support and threw it in the river trying to make a path for Ashley to cross, which resulted in him splashing her with a ton of disgusting water. (Here's where it immediately stopped being hilarious for me.)  Before she had time to react, he threw a second rock sending a second wave of nasty water all over her.  I almost threw the bike down and tackled him into the ravine because I was so furious but then I realized I would be even dirtier and oh god it was just so terrible, I'm angry thinking about it again.

By the time Ashley made it across I had given up on finding my shoe. The guide gave a half-hearted effort at digging and then he also gave up. Our situation had gone from bad to worse as I wasn't sure how I was going to continue with only 1 shoe.  And then the nearby backhoe started speeding down the hill, apparently tired of waiting for us. As we scrambled out of his way he dug up a huge pile of mud, threw it against the hill and there was my flip flop, tumbling out of the mess.   Ok wait, again, is everyone picturing this accurately?  We're all standing around in the mud trying to find the shoe and trying not to sink into the quicksand, and out of nowhere the giant bulldozer thing with the scooper thing at the front starts coming at us and we start scrambling out of the way trying not to get run over, getting muddier and muddier with each step, and then it turns out he's actually trying to help.  THE BULLDOZER SAVED THE DAY.  And I had pictures of it!  But now I don't.  

Onward we went to the river. Our guide asked if we wanted helmets FOR KAYAKING NOT FOR BIKE RIDING, thanks guy, and the following conversation occurred.

Me: "Do we need helmets?"
Guide: "Only if you capsize."
Me: "Do you think we'll capsize?"
Guide: "Only if there are rapids."
Me: "Are there rapids?"
Guide: "No." (handing me a broken helmet)
Me: "Are you sure??"
Guide: "Yes."
Me: "There are no rapids at all?"
Guide: "No. Only at the end."

We got in and practiced a little since this was my first time kayaking. The guide told me I should be good enough by the end that I'd survive the rapids.  He then paddled past Ash, splashed her with water, (that's when I screamed he should go eff himself) then took off down the river. I slowly fishtailed my way after everyone, trying to rationalize how my crooked steering could somehow work to my benefit when I reached the rapids that may or may not exist.

We stopped for lunch and had a heart to heart where Ashley and I admitted to each other there was no way either of us wanted to hop back into a kayak for 3 hours and brave the potential rapids. And so we happily thanked our guide, wished him and Clive good luck and took a long boat back to town where we finally got to enjoy some peace and quiet and beautiful countryside.  But not before Kim cheerfully had lunch with Annoying Clive and Terrible Guide laughing and joking and making the best of things because like a married couple- when one of us is upset the other one ends up overcompensating in the other direction so we don't have a collective meltdown.  Don't we make a great team? :)

Love,
Kim and Angry Ashley

How To: The Journey from Thailand to Laos

January 11-13, 2013

You have three options when traveling from Thailand to Laos.

1. You can fly. If you wait until the last second to try to buy tickets like us then you'll be forking out $400+ to fly from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang. When trying to travel on $30 a day, this isn't really your best option.

2. You can take a 24 hour minivan ride to Vang Vieng. Despite the crazy minivan ride we took to Pai we almost chose this option. We had actually purchased tickets for this but our new friends convinced us to change and take option #3.

3. The slow boat option. To begin this journey you hop on a jam packed minivan and spend the next 7 hours on the windiest, craziest ride of your life. Your driver will be borderline mentally crazy and will speed up on the turns instead of slowing down. The first 3 hours will be a repeat of your drive to Pai, containing 762 consecutive curves. The second half of the journey probably doubles this figure.

At the halfway point, you will pull up to a remote 7-11 where a second van full of Korean tourists will disembark their van and try to steal your seats while you're inside buying Ovaltine cookies and cheetos for dinner. After a lot of head shaking, frowning and shuffling people around you will get back on the minivan and continue your journey. The best way to survive without having a panic attack is to pop some Dramamine, anti-anxiety pills, close your eyes and hope that the back and forth motion of swaying into your neighbor, then crashing into the window will put you in a semi coma.

At 3am you will arrive in a small border town where they have prearranged sleeping accommodations for you. Your bathroom will probably smell a little funky which you will gladly take in exchange for the hot water coming out of the shower. You will fall asleep to the sounds of the local pteredactoyl squawking, wondering why there is a pteredactoyl living at the border. Tomorrow you will find out it was a rat.

Four hours later you will be woken up and enjoy a free breakfast overlooking the Mekong, your road for the next two days. You'll smile in anticipation of cruising down the river past local villages and bonding with your fellow passengers.

The beautiful Mekong River.

Getting on the slow boat will be a 3 hour process. First there is the ubiquitous ride in the back of a pick up truck where you hold hands with the person sitting on the ledge across from you so you don't fall out. Then you will pass through Thai immigrations, take a boat across the river, go through Laos immigration, then you sit around for 2 hours.

Just riding in the back of a truck again.

And then you will finally get to board your vessel; a beautiful, distressed long boat with huge open windows. You keep walking allllll the way to the back of the boat to the engine room, to your makeshift we-will-fit-as-many-people-on-this-boat-as-possible seat. Any hope of relaxation and talking to your neighbors will quickly fade as the engine roars to life. You might try to dance to the beat of the sputtering engine to keep yourself entertained but that's only fun for a few minutes. Your iPod full max will not be able to compete with the noise and the only way to communicate with your neighbors is with sign language.

These are the first class seats.  Pictures of our steerage seats are at the bottom of the ocean.

So what is a girl to do? Fortunately safety standards are non-existent in Laos so the retired bus seats that you are sitting on aren't actually attached to the ground. Simply pick them up, turn them around so they're facing the window, and ride with your legs dangling outside the boat. This will help keep you cooler because the engine makes the back room quite toasty. It is also acceptable to start drinking Beer Lao at 10am so be sure to do that.

When you get tired of dangling your feet out the window and yelling at the person sitting 2 inches from you, make your way to the front and ask every person next to an empty seat if it's taken. Eventually you will find an empty one and you can spend the rest of the trip in cool peace and quiet. The next day, make sure to get to the boat 1 hour before it departs as there is no assigned seating on the second day.

Once you manage to get a decent seat on the boat, the 2 days pass much quicker than anticipated. The entire ride is extremely beautiful as you are surrounded by beachy shores and mountains on both sides of the river. The boat stops at small villages to pick up large bags of rice and other goods and all the local children come running out to wave at you. There are tons of cows grazing along the way, and actually, after dinner last night, I think they might have been water buffalo. And you get to drink lots of beer and eat lots of chips, the only food they sell on board. If you are lucky, there will be fun backpackers sitting next to you to play DIY boggle with. In all honesty, I think I would rather spend two days on a slow boat again then 24 hours on an airplane. Option #3 is definitely the way to go.

-Kim

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Pai-Scream

January 8, 2013

Our friend E-Moe works for this awesome company called Light My Fire. A few days before Ashley left he asked us if we wanted to take a few items with us, maybe some sporks that we could give to strangers in exchange for other goods. If you know us at all then you know we jumped at the chance to have a silly reason to approach strangers. And so Eric showed up at the airport 1 minute before Ashley went through security and bestowed upon us 100 sporks, 1 lantern and....1 ice cream maker.

If you've ever backpacked then you know lugging around an ice cream maker the size of a soccer ball may not be one of the most practical things you could be doing. But Kyle, our photographer/sherpa was with us and did all the schlepping of our treasures. Then he left. And while we had taken full advantage of our lantern due to little/no electricity in our bungalows and given away several sporks, we'd yet to make ice cream and wondered why we were still carrying this contraption around.

When we got to Pai and met our three new besites, we knew it was time to shake it till you make it. Armed with no recipe and no understanding of the Thai written language, we headed to the 7-11 in search of what we assumed would be the ingredients for ice cream.

We spent 5 minutes deciding which carton of milk, if even milk, might have the highest cream content. We picked up some salt to keep the ice cool, some coconut milk for flavor and since we couldn't find sugar, we decided to try sweetened condensed milk. All for only $2.50. We headed to our usual starting point, High 5, where the bartender gladly provided us with ice.

Our original recipe for coconut ice cream:

1 kiddy sized milk w/straw
1 small can sweetened condensed milk
1 small carton coconut milk
1 giant bag of salt (give the leftovers to your bartender)
Lots of ice
1 Light My Fire ice cream maker
1 spork

Pour all the milk into the inner canister. Add some coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk. Taste. Keep adding coco milk and sweetened condensed milk until everyone is happy with the flavor. Seal it up. Put ice in the outer compartment. Add some salt, seal it up, and start shaking.

You can play catch with it, dance with it, make a drinking game out if it, just keep it moving for 20 minutes. Strangers will approach you and offer to shake it in exchange for a bite later.

We were all unsure if our experiment was actually going to work but 20 minutes later when we opened the ball we had the most delicious coconut ice cream we've ever tasted. Something about our unique mix of ingredients caused the outer layer to freeze pretty hard but we had our sporks and were able to scoop it all out after a few minutes of thawing.

We are reusing this picture because all the other ice cream pictures are at the bottom of the ocean. The red ball is the ice cream maker.

Our first ice cream attempt was a huge success and we managed to make some new friends out of it. We are now on the look out for chocolate chips for our next batch.

Thanks for the presents, Eric!

-Kim

Tragedy In Paradise

January 28th, 2013

**This post is out of order**

A few days ago we met up with our friend, Kim #2, to spend time on some Thai beaches. One of our stops was Ko Tao, a beautiful diving island on the east coast of Thailand. Since Ash and I can't dive we decided to go fishing instead. We were determined to catch, at the very least, a 4 ft barracuda so after 2 hours and only 1 of us catching a tiny fish, we jokingly asked our Thai captain (Kim #2 would like us to note he looked like an oompa loompa) if we could go to another fishing spot where the barracudas were. We are pretty sure he told us to go f*ck ourselves in Thai, told us in English he wasn't a magician and that we could find barracudas in an aquarium, then took us to the roughest part of the sea where they filmed the movie the Perfect Storm.

And then.....Ashley dropped her phone (our main camera) into the ocean. You are probably as surprised as I am that she didn't throw herself overboard as well. In lieu of flowers please send donations to www.whitepeopleproblems.com. We thank you for your kind thoughts during this dark period.

Kim and Ashley

P.S. Posts will be light on pics for awhile.

On A Steel Horse I Ride

Ashley and I have been toying with the idea of renting motorbikes for 8 years. When we were in Greece we went into 10 different shops and tried to rent one. They either said no as soon as they noticed we were girls or said no as soon as they found out we were American. We ended up crawling along the roads on a 4 wheeler instead. In retrospect this was probably a good thing.

Despite the You Tube videos we've seen of the traffic in SE Asia, particularily Vietnam, and the many backpackers covered in bandages from accidents, we still really wanted to try riding motorbikes. So when we got to Pai and saw how little traffic there was, we decided to give it a try. Our hotel owner suggested we take classes first and since we figured our lives were worth the $3, we marched down the hill into town to sign up.

Our driving instructor, Alan, was awesome. He drove us to a back road and taught us how to stop, go, turn and start from a complete stop on a hill. After an hour he deemed us good drivers and sent us off to explore Pai.

Smartest $3 we ever spent.

Passing the turn signal test.

There is nothing as wonderful as being on a motorbike with the wind in your face. The closest thing I can think of is being on a jet ski. Getting motorbikes opened up a whole new world of exploration as we could drive out into the mountainside without relying on a tour or tuk tuk.

These helmets kept making me think of Strongbad and Trogdor.

We drove to a waterfall, through hilly resorts, past fields of cows, to some hot springs, the Pai Canyon, a Chinese village and allllll over town. We even drove if we only had to go one block because we loved it so much. The only thing we didn't like was riding at night. We tried to take a night trip to the hot springs but after 10 minutes of swallowing bugs we decided to wait until the next day.

Just trying not to die tonight.

After several days of riding we had become really comfortable on our bikes. We were at dinner with Neil, Hannah and William when we heard a loud crash and we all went running outside to see what had happened. Two Thai men had had a head on collision in the middle of an intersection because one of the men had been texting while driving. This is when Neil gave us the best advice we'd received yet. Do not get too comfortable on a motorbike. You may feel like a good driver but you always, always have to watch out for other people. So we spent the next few days riding around always on full alert but still having the times of our lives.

Steering three people on a motorbike is easy once you master it on an elephant.

Kim

We may have picked up an accent

Jan 9th-ish 2013
Ashley here

Who do you hate more than those people who walk around talking with weird accents, and you're like oh where are you from?  And they're like who me?  Oh I'm from Cincinnati, love.  And you're like....???

That's us now.  I mean if not us it's definitely me-  I won't speak for Kim, but I will say that I've heard her mention how excited she is to go to Oz in a few months and that she'd fancy another beer a time or two.

What happened was...we met these 3 awesome new British friends here in Pai on our second night, and have pretty much not left their sides for 5 days straight.  It's a couple from England, Hannah and Neil, and a Scottish dude named William who I can understand most of the time, except for when he's talking to another Scottish person and then there's no way.  He insists they're speaking english but I don't think so.

After the first day we spent with them I was like oh how novel!  They call a jacket a jumper!  And a truck a lorry!  Isn't that nice.  And now while I'm riding down the road on my motorbike I catch myself literally thinking with an accent.  I'm like maybe we should have a cheeky little snack at that restaurant before we head back.  Or oh no! Mind that dog in the road! Etc etc etc.  It's embarrassing even when I'm the only one hearing myself think.
 
Anyways, just felt the need to confess.  Thanks for listening :)  Cheerio mates! -Ash

Kim and me with our 3 new besties having a barry night out!  (Barry = awesome in Scottish)