Bangkok-Phuket

Arriving in Bangkok again was as pleasent as always. The visa line is my favourite part. At Khao san road I met up with mr sloppyhands, Speedy Gonzales and Rainman once again. It was a special day this day. Mr Sloppyhands turned 30 and we were all going out to celebrate. We started out with a humble meal and a crew of seven, the thre mentioned in addition to the swiss and a new british couple. We enjoyed a couple of buckets of vodka redbull and went to the nightclub. Loads of fun the whole night and Anne die gruppenführerin joined us for a very last time before she hit it back to cold europe. Amir partied like a trooper and we were all happy with the result of the night. The next day we had our little "Hangover 2" with the cameras, cleverly deleting some images before they could be shared.

The second day in Bangkok, Nattinatt, a friend of my thai friend Pan from Hong Kong, took me on a private night tour in Bangkok. The third day in Bangkok, the Twits ( Roald Dahl, Herr og fru Dust) arrived. They saw where I lived with Mr Sloppyhands in Khao san road, and they couldn't leave this Indian guest house soon enough. I had booked two nights at a sweet place in Sukhumvit. This was the first part of my two week Xmas holidays with my parents. Trying to show them how my life has been, we were to only stay at hostels. The first day together we checked out the major sightseeings in Bangkok and went on a boat trip in the evening. The next day would be the best we had. Pan showed up the next morning with his car and took us out the bridge on the river Kwai. We got to Kanchanaburi and took the train on the railway of death. We also got to stop at some national parks, museums and a huge temple. We ate loads of good food and had a very nice time. My parents were thrilled and I jumped up a couple of places on the will ranking.

Off to Phuket we went and settled into a hostel close to the beach. We had nice daytips out to the islands around Phuket. In the afternoon we went to the massage studios actually getting massages and not massaaaaages. In the evenings my parents went to bed and I spent time with some of the guys at the hostel. At Patong beach there is always something going on. There is no lack of connect four competition either. The first night in Phuket I spent with a Swede, a German and a Singaporean we can call Bucket. We had a good time dancing among the hookers in one of Patong's discos. The next day Bucket was leaving so lucky her got to spend the day on the beach with me and my parents, killing time until her flight. She made us laugh couple of times, one of which with the comment: "We love Sumatra! They protect us from all natural disasters".

We spent Christmas eve in a swedish restaurant where they were showing the very same disney cartoons we have at home. Eating a good steak at Christmas wasn't a bad idea at all. Relaxing on the beaches all the day and working as a helper for the elderly was good holidays from my holidays. Holding my parents hands while they were jumping in the strong waves at Kata beach, making sure they found the way back home in the evenings, these were my everyday tasks. They went shopping in the streets and I was listening to my pimsleur "learn thai". We had a nice two weeks together and then they left back for cold Norway. I left for phi phi island on the other side, meating up with the crew once again!

My tracks have now been updated but the file is so big, it needs to be downloaded and opened in google earth.

Luang Prabang - Vientiane

Luang Prabang has truly the strangest night life I've encountered so far. Of course we had to go to a country that was officially communistic to find someone with stranger/stricter alcohol laws than Norway. At eleven o'clock the bars in town close and everybody has to take a tuktuk to a night club ten minutes away. James tried to fake an irish-foot-lock to stay ten minutes longer. The club is cool, but for some reason there are barrel tables everywhere, also on the dance floor. This last another hour and then everybody gets thrown out. Where to go? You guessed right, the bowling alley. This is no night bowling, disco bowling or bowling where you get porn on your screen when you get a strike. It's just a regular bowling alley that sells booze and is full of drunken, white monkeys. We went there three times... We also went to a fare in the middle of nowhere. It was out of a horror movie where we were the only guests. We got to shoot with some soft guns and drie bumper cars.

Our group slowly started to split up. Anne was the first to leave for the south. Then Amir headed off to Hanoi. Chris left two days later for the south of Thailand after having missed his first flight due to sleeping. Darlene takes no responisbility. Marie and Lotte also departed. And then One-arm left us. Left were Darlene, James and I. I went bicycling by myself a couple of days and had a tremendous time going through the villages in the outskirts. The people were cheering me like it was tour de France. At one point I stopped outside a school beause all the kids came running to the fence screaming "Sabadee". I replied and they were ecstatic. Laughing and running around me while I took some photos, the kids seemed to have fun seeing a white guy. I remembered I had some Norwegian stickers in my bag and I started handing them out. The kids stumbled over eachother to get them and used them as tattoos in the face. I took a picture of them after my little embassador job and continued my journey to the waterfalls. On my way back I stopped at a random family that seemed to run some kind of local restaurant. At least I ended up eating noodle soup and sticky rice in the living room with the man of the house while the kids were watching the TV. Best soup I've had and it cost me 10 000 kip, rice included. Darlene, James and I went on a last bike trip together and ended up at family's place, eating their fruits and rice. Such parasites we are.

Darlene and I left James in LP and headed for Vang Vieng. The toyota hiace that picked us up was already full, so we sat on the floor and sides inside. It was tight. Luckily it only lasted to the bus station. There we got into another slightly less crowded bus and headed down the curvy roads to VV. It felt like eternity, but we finally got there and checked in at an ok guest house. I liked the owner, Darlene didnt. He was sexist hehe... Vang Vieng is probably the strangest place we've seen. A mixture of nice limestone hills, much like Yangshuo in China, mekong river, shady bars and cafes playing reruns of Friends the entire day. In the river you can go tubing, that is sitting in a tube from the wheel of a tractor, and follow the current of the river. There are multiple bars down the river and they fish you out of the water and give you shots. It was all fun, but too much of Sisqo's shakedown for me. Felt kind of out of place. Lotte was with us again with a young Aussie. We had a nice day together.

Darlene and I went bicycling and hiking around the town. We checked out some interesting caves. Outside one of them we found a cool jew that went in with us. We walked around inside and it was really cool but slightly claustrofobic. Safely outside we went all three on Nir's scooter. It was fun and painful on the dirt roads back to town. The suspension on the bike got some exercise that day. He dropped us off just out of town and we walked the last part. My stomach has been fighting me the last day and during this little walk I had an emergency. Luckily there was a kind of beer garden/guest house there and I ran into it. Turned out it was a maze, but right before touching cloth turned into filling up cloth, I found a toilet and punished it. Meanwhile the owner of the place sent Darlene a small comment, question her IQ since she didn't walk on the boards into the guest house. The sement under it was "wet", but I didn't see anything either since it was quite dark. Darlene, having been fed nice truths about men from me and sexist approaches from our own guest house owner, got the little extra she needed from this guy and she exploded! Full of wrath and fury she ran in wanted to put him in his place! Telling people passing by that his place was shitty and they shouldn't eat there! Leaving the place with an insult that would make a pirate shiver: "I hope your food is bad and you get diarrhea!". While waiting for me outside, still steaming, she admitted to me she wished she'd done a better job insulting him. Leaving the whole place while screaming "An apology would be in order!", I felt more like running than walking. But it made the evening complete and I was laughing and Darlene was not :D

After alot of fun in VV it was time to leave. We went down to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Darlene left immideately with the train and I spent my last kip in the capital on food and spent the evening online fixing a place to stay in Bangkok. When I got back to my guest house I was pleased to see that I still got connection to the cafe's internet. Lying down on my bed, I had a hunch something was wrong and checked under the pillow. My bed was full of ants. I went down and the guy seemed pissed off and bothered and was complaining to himself all the time while changing sheets, like that would solve the problem. The ants were still there and I slept with the lights on and stayed in the other side of the bed. In the morning I tried to get a refund and the guy went mental. Standing there with this crazy guy, acting like a monkey with rabies, I got slightly scared in the end and gave him the key and left. A bad case of ADHD there. Since I left the place 7 in the morning I had alot of time and walked to the airport. Next up: Bangkok again.

Photos:

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111130ChiangMaiLastPhotos?authkey=Gv1sRgCPvhnJfSvJHcsAE

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111204ChiangKongLuangPrabangBirthdayAndParty?authkey=Gv1sRgCMmOy7PjyezQxAE

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111205SlowboatAndLuangPrabang?authkey=Gv1sRgCPjdpt2jmvDzSQ

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111212LuangPrabangPartyKamera?authkey=Gv1sRgCKe6wf_FlYK85gE

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111209LuangPrabang?authkey=Gv1sRgCN-snOWYiO7cew

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111214LuangPrabangVientiane?authkey=Gv1sRgCPfns-XWz5PuSQ

Chiang Mai - Luang Prabang

Chiang Mai is by far one of the best place I've been to. Time just seems to disappear in this place. Eating, drinking, massages, going to the night bazaar, spicy night club, boxing matches, there are endless things to do and the weather is great every day. I got some of my christmas presents together and went to a store and asked if they could wrap it for me. After 15 minutes of gesticulating, we finally understood eachother and the old woman started wrapping every pile of presents I had. Of course she did this after a young guy had found precisely the right boxes to put my stuff in so the gifts would be nice and prism shaped. After keeping these two people busy for an hour or more, they charged me 210 baht, roughly 5 euros, paper and ribbons included. Happy as fat guy at McDonald's, with free bigmac coupons, I left the store and thought I had at least gotten 50% of my gifts taken care of. The next evening, our last in Chiang Mai, I took my nice pink bike to the night bazaar to get the last stuff for my family. Close to closing time I had gotten all the last gifts I needed and tried my luck again by asking a woman at the last stand if she knew where I could get it wrapped. Expecting laughter, I wasn't high with hopes, but she brought me to a small post office at the corner. I tried to explain that paper wasn't enough, I would like to have help wrapping the gifts. The woman wistled two girls over from the pizza place across the street and they were up for the job. I was sitting there chatting while these cute girls were wrapping presents, with millimeter precision. Everything was closing around us, it was 12 o' clock, and they were still smiling and were even the first to congratulate me with my 27th birthday. I kept these girls busy an hour or so as well, but in the end I had a full set of perfectly wrapped presents and two new friends in Chiang Mai. What a wicked place! :)

November the 30th I went to the post office early in the morning. I shipped the Xmas presents to Norway and then headed back to the hostel. The team slowly gathered together. Mr Sloppyhands (Amir, the notorious loser of Jenga), Rainman (James, No explanation needed), Christopher Alexander and alwaysOnTimeDarlene. A minivan picked us up and we headed up to Chiang Khong, a border town to Laos. On the way I beat Chris countless times in chess, no wait, I counted, 5-0 was the score. In Chiang Kong we checked into a very basic, but nice and clean guesthouse. We had dinner included in the reservation and then we went out to take a beer. After all, I was 3^3 years old. We found this brilliant pub that was run by an old Belgian bloke. He was so nice and made sure that we had all that we needed. On the bus ride up and in the guest house we had already made some new excellent friends. One-armed Reg, alien-infested Marie, the Argentinians led by Juan, blonde swiss Michele, bday beer Carleigh, Hawaiian, but not so native Bryson and many more. In the bar we had loads of fun, but we lost Amir. He was gone for a good hour or so and we couldn't find him. Luckily he showed up again. Soon after the power went out, or so I thought. Out comes a woman with a birthday cake with loads of sparkling candles and everybody is singing happy birthday. I got a bottle of something which I haven't tried yet. It was a great day.

Getting to Laos by a slow boat, we first had to get some visas in order and then we headed down to the mekong river. Seeing that the slowboat was half full, alot of us thought it would never have enough space for us all. An aussie and a couple of others tried to start a mass demonstration to get an extra boat, but somehow the captain managed to set up more seats all the time. Half way in this funny battle, where people were screaming at eachother, my group entered the boat to make sure at least we had good enough seats. In the end the most stubborn were the last to enter and had to stand haha. The scenery down the river was amazing and we spent the time playing chess and connect four. After a good six hours ride or so we ended up in Pakbeng. A dirty little stopover town, which is basically one road full of guest houses, one bar and loads of husstlers and thieves. Felt like a wild west place, but we had a good time there and nobody I knew lost anything. At the bar we met the swiss and the Argentinian army and had some beers with them. The next day another eight hours were spent on the boat. I crushed most opposition in connect four, although some stabbed back a little. Sloppyhands, facehugger-victim, blondie, speedy-gonzales and chris were some of the ones feeling my cff ( connect four fury).

In Luang Prabang Anne die Gruppenführerin waited for us at the pier and we went to find ourselves a guest house. For breakfast I had some entertainment I've never had before. Two dogs were stuck ass to ass. Somehow they'd managed to end up in this position during intercourse and they walked around like this for fifteen minutes or so before they separeted. It was quite funny to watch. Luang Prabang is a much like Chiang Mai in the sense of being an easy place to relax and let time pass. We were lucky and arrived the week a film festival was held. We watched a documentary about a football team from Laos going to the gothic cup. The film had some stings towards the states for spicying up the country with cluster mines, and at the end of the film, the football team entered the stage and got an applause. Then they invited the American ambassador up to the stage and James got his wide angle lense ready. She was so fat she stood next to the whole team when she was up there. The day after our group went on a kajak and biking trip with a stop at a beautiful waterfall. We had a good time and the new members of the group made it all the more fun. The kajaking part was easy and everybody managed, even the french girls. Did I say everybody? Of course Rainman James managed to capsize.

More to come from Laos later! I got shitty connection so pictures will be added later.