New Year and you don't need to buy her a drink first

January 2 2023 – Luang Prabang, Laos

If there are no pictures, they will come, just not good internet

Out with the old and in with the new, though it feels like nothing has changed. In reality probably nothing has. I made and Irish Exit around 1030 and was in bed by 1045. I was still feeling tired and beat up and Judi gave me a couple Advil night time tablets and the rest is blank until 5 or 6am. It was the best sleep I had on the trip up to that point. I the movie ‘Airplane’ has a scene where someone is having a panic attack and one of the crew members calls out “Does anyone have a Valium?” and twenty people are offering all sorts of assorted narcotics. It was almost like that when I said to my seatmate at breakfast that I had forgotten my Aleve at home. Tylenol, Advil, Aspirin and some European brands I had never heard of all in different dosages and addition effects. Cold, nighttime, etc. were all offered by the entire table. Judi’s offering worked well.

I did hear some yelling and Happy New Year shouts, but I turned on my other side and was back asleep in a thrice. It was very, very quiet on the boat the next morning.

The reason I left without saying good bye is there seems to be a formal ceremony about leaving. Need to explain and sometimes lie. One male passenger has a medical problem that makes swallowing difficult and uses two walking sticks for balance. If I get up to leave the table, he stands. It is sweet and makes me feel unworthy, and a hint uncomfortable. If I get up for water or something, he’ll stay sitting, but when I leave, it’s – stand, nod and say good night.

The locks begin operation daily at 8am and we were the first in line. At 730 we started moving toward the dam and at exactly 8am our boat’s nose was just entering the first lock. The lock is wide enough for the boat with maybe ½ to ¾ of a meter on each side. The big doors in the back slowly shut. I can watch the daylight go narrower and narrower until the doors are shut. I couldn’t feel the boat rise, but I could watch the walls descend by the inch. When the water reached a certain black line, the doors in front opened and we entered the second lock and repeated the process once again.

When the doors in front opened we floated free into a large lake. No longer the river that we had been on the previous days. Several hours later after sunbathing and lunch off on the next excursion. The butterfly garden, waterfalls, black bear rescue and an added treat of the bison farm. The waterfalls are world famous and on my required list for Laos. The bear, butterfly and bison farm not so much. As matter of fact I would have skipped the butterfly farm. Flying worms are fine and all, but not my first choice for reason to offload and reload a 9 person mini van.

The walking path up to the falls passed by the Black Bear Rescue and we gawked at the area to find a bear, but the keeper told Vieng that the bears probably were just resting. I asked Vieng if he knew what the bears ate. “He said vegetables, but no meat”. “I said would you please make a sound of a vegetable, maybe they will come then” --- he didn’t laugh. My crew mates did though.

The rest of the trek up the stream to the pools and waterfalls was a nice walk. Each pool better than the once before and the same for the falls. At the final falls it all made the butterflies, bad joke and sweaty walk worth it for me, as did it for a million of my closest friends. It is generally busy, but ‘Doh!’ -- it is New Year’s day and everyone has the day off. I jostled and got jostled for prime photo real estate. It used to be that there was that one photographer who would hog that prime spot, changing lenses, F stops, shutter speeds and filters for hours, until I would often just step in front of his camera and get the photos I wanted. Now it is the Instagram people. Generally a female with a boyfriend standing in the same spot for pose after pose after pose. Hair, behind the ear, hair over the ear. Look up, look down, move 1/16th of an inch and do it all again only this time look at the camera over your shoulder. I found that when I got bored watching them, if I didn’t ruin their picture, just invade to camera man’s personal space they got the ideal and relinquished the spot for others. I wasn’t a complete twat about it, I hope. I did offer and had accepted with pantomime that I’d take a picture of both of them together and I promised I wouldn’t run off with their camera, a time or three.

Time ran out and we walked back down to the mini busses and off to the Bison farm. Lao eat meat, but not milk. The bison farm is trying cross breeding and education of the Lao people that with 40% of their children malnourished that maybe a better solution would be give the kids milk and not kill the cow. It was a good presentation. I did find out that you don’t have to buy the cow a glass of wine before you can touch her tits. The most fun was watching our group try and milk a cow. But the biggest thrill for the crowd was feeding thee young’ins from the bottle. The guide said they were too old to be on milk and should be solely on vegetation but one or two of them were addicts and would do anything for their ‘fix’.

Back to the boat and sun-downers and appetizer. Then there was some sort of dancing with weird hand contortions, that looks like they were trying very hard not to smudge their freshly painted nails. Someone should tell them about gel nail color, but it might have an effect on the dance I fear. Then several mature women went and practiced bondage on all of us. There are 32 (?) Chakras (?) and the 16 women each tied two ropes out wrists.

After that we looked like we had tried to cut out wrists and then bandaged them with torn bed sheets.

Dinner and bed followed.

Today we visited the former palace of the King. It was built in the 1930 by the French, so wasn’t very historic. There were 16 panels of a mythical story. One of those, if you complete the task you get wishes granted. So the husband and the wife decided to strive for the wishes. I don’t remember all of the wishes, but shiny black hair, eyes as blue as a butterfly wing, sons, and breasts that always looked up. No saggy boobies.

The whole place as a NO area. No knees, shoulders, hats, shoes and camera. A few temples, but if you want to know more about them I’ll loan you my Lonely Planet book.

Back at the boat for lunch which was the same as before, way too much food. Then I went to the back of the boat and found my local narcotics pusher and begged a nice German Camel filter.

The afternoon was free,, so I did Rest and Relaxation and nixed the bike ride. The traffic is similar to most Asian cities, center lines are not here to prove you are on pavement, not for traffic separation. Stop signs are suggestions. Pedestrians are targets, and an motor scooters are Kamikaze.

I wandered around on foot a bit after 4pm and over the next 3 hours ran into half of my crew mates. One couple left the ship for the night. Their cabin is back by the engine and generator and neither of them could sleep since the start of the tip. There got a hotel off the boat for the night.

I had some round Lao pancakes. That were darned good. Did some shopping, and did some so-so negotiation. One transaction she was very happy with the sale, which means she had just caught a huge Tuna. There was so much goodness in the exchange she ran around her stall slapping the other merchandise with the bills. Sort of telling tem “See?? This is what you are supposed to do !”. The other purchases were more along the give and take where they start high, and I start low and we play numbers.

Walking back to the boat, down a dark, untouristed street I watched the men skin a crocodile and set up a barbie on the sidewalk. Not in a brazier, but in the actual concrete. A few meters on, up the street weaved a local who had had several to many BeerLao’s. Who gave me a friendly hello, he was with two women. One f the woman kept saying “Madame, madame” When I looked at her she was squatting in the bushes of the Royal Palace pee’ing. Yup, ways too many BeerLao.

Back on the boat after supper one of my favorite tribe members and I had a nice long chat about our mutual home towns. The live in a town that is the conclusion point for an aproximate 40km pilgramage. I’ll have to get her to write the name of the town for me, since I have the memory of a Gold Fish.

Then bed with a 5am wake up call to go feed the monks.