China on Skates/SHANGHAI

China was next on the itinerary, where we would meet with some friends of ours in Shanghai.  After checking out of the hotel, we wait at a nearby restaurant for our ride, while I breakfast on yogurt and muesli.

Without a hangover to provide the proper self-punishment, I compensated with a bowl of flavorless uncooked oats.

Our van back to Vientiane is late to pick us up, and the drive is exactly as pleasant as you might imagine a budget ride across Laos might be.  What should have taken 3 hours instead takes almost 6, as the van stops about every half hour to grab more passengers, with new seats folding out of hidden compartments from seemingly every surface.  Soon the eight passenger vehicle is carrying a great deal more, and there's no room to do anything but sit as straight as possible with your baggage clutched close to you.  Sleep is impossible, of course, and fresh air becomes a cruel exercise in aversion therapy, as every stop we make to stretch our legs means picking up another human-sized body heat generator.  It got so hot and sticky in the van, and we were packed in so tight, from the outside it must have looked like the world's most polite and dead-faced orgy.

We emerge from the ultra-compressed interior of the van into the almost-completely empty Wattay airport in Vientiane.

There is a cat though, in the airport.  Some things really make you think, about terrorism and all.

Also, Ms KEK.  She makes me think about other things.  More confused, erotic things.

From Laos we fly to Shanghai (the one in China), but first a layover in Bangkok.  The layover is supposed to take 7 hours, but I'd been to Suvarnabhumi Airport before and remembered it be quite comfortable, so I wasn't too bummed out.  After all, I'm a classy traveler who knows the names of airports.

'Cause I'm smart.

It's an overnight flight, which means a great deal more sitting around and letting my greasy pores slowly cover my body in a warm filmy membrane.  By the time we land, my hands are so oily that when I clench my fists it sounds and feels like a wet swamp fart in my palm.

When we touch down, the first thing I do (after a quick hobo shower in the restroom) is test out an ATM, and find that my debit card is still not working.  I'm getting pretty worried at this point, and to that end I send off an email to my credit union, in the hopes that I might have access to money at some point in the near future.  For the time being, Sarah is gracious enough to cover our expenses and loan me some spare cash.

Airport Customs goes by surprisingly quickly, but we do find ourselves stopped by a broken subway ticketing machine, which takes an exceedingly long time and several ranks of bureaucracy to fix.  It's been almost 24 hours without sleep, and we still have 20 subway stops to go until we reach our digs in Shanghai.  But these were no ordinary stops.  For some reason, the train conductor could not start or stop the train smoothly a single time, and rarely could they stop the train in the right location.  This meant stopping, inching forwards or backwards slowly, stopping again, then inching a little more for good measure.  At one point the train doors opened and closed three times at a single stop, and these doors were not quick to do either.  I will say this for the subway, though, it taught me that old Chinese men love to sing to themselves.  Now you have that information, and can hopefully do more with it than I.

At least the train has a great view of the smog.

For our stay in Shanghai, Sarah had arranged for us to crash at her friend Mitchell's apartment.  Mitchell had previously worked at the same English academy in Korea as us, but broke his contract to move to China.  He's won't be back from Taipei until tomorrow, but we manage to sneak into the building as some other residents are leaving.

This fence(?) was standing in the lobby, presumably being all politically biased.

After a shower and a nap that wished it were so much more, we head back out to get dinner.  Even though Shanghai is a huge, ultra-modern metropolis, Sarah and I are still very much stared-at as we walk towards downtown.  The city itself seems perpetually downcast as a result of all the pollution created by rapid development and urban sprawl.

Pictured: That perfect moment when you realize the fog isn't dissipating, and also it isn't fog.

Street vendors harass constantly, trying to sell (counterfeit) designer bag, clothes, and iPhones.  Most of them have laminated cards they can shove in your face with pictures of all the Prada and Gucci and Louis Vuitton that can be had at "good pri' for you."  What was unnerving about a lot of the vendors I encountered were the light-up plastic wheels they were selling that strap onto your shoes.  I've got quite a bit of experience dealing with street sellers, but never ones on roller skates.  To turn away a haggler only for him to keep up with you without having to walk, red lights flashing under his feet, felt dreamlike, and not un-demonic.

Between the two of us Sarah and I probably knew negative Chinese, but we didn't let that influence our choice of restaurants.  We found a tiny hole-in-the-wall, pointed at a couple pictures of dumplings, grabbed some seats by the window, and hoped for the best.  Luckily, they understand "beer", and we're able to get a great big bottle for less than a dollar.

In fact, this entire spread cost less than 5 dollars.  Commies, you're alright.

While we were eating, we kept hearing this loud screeching coming from behind us, in the kitchen.  For a while I figured it was a broken appliance, or some sort of exotic and annoying cooking method I didn't know about.  That's what I figured until the screeching came our way, and my eyes traced the source to a giant rat above us, scurrying along the pipes hanging from the ceiling.

Remy's come a long way.

We're asked if we want any more beer.  I have to give them credit, the place did have great hole-in-the-wall service, in addition to the very real holes in the wall, one of which the rat was currently escaping into.  We finish the dumplings, leaving our bowel health for fate to decide.

On the way back to the apartment we stop in a convenience store, to stock up on beer and any random Chinese liquors that caught my eye.  There's a policeman by the counter, who thinks it is just funny as all get-out when I say "xie xie" to the clerk.  The cop offers me a cigarette and grins, revealing a mouth where teeth had long ago lost a terrible civil war.  I don't smoke, but I also learned I don't turn down toothless Chinese police officers.  For five minutes we smoked in the store, and he kept urging me over and over to repeat the only Chinese words I knew, which were "ni hao" and "xie xie".  He would say one of the words, I would repeat it, and he would burst out in a gum-filled giggling fit.  Over and over.  Finally I gave my best "well I'd love to keep doing this forever and ever until I die but you know" expression, and quickly backed out of the store, his laughter following us as we made our exit.

And for all I know, he's still laughing.

The next day we meet up with some other friends of ours from Korea, David and Amy (this is at nighttime, because apparently what I do during the day in a new country is eat KFC and watch bootleg DVDs, but in a cultural way).  Both were fellow English teachers, albeit for other academies, and now they worked at a Chinese university in Hefei.  Mitchell, back now, takes everyone to dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant.  He orders food for the table, which is all delicious, but I admit my memory is dominated entirely by the dessert of flan on a bed of shaved ice.

Like ambrosia having sex with your mouth.

Our group is led to a popular expat bar in the area called Windows Too, which follows the Asian tradition of sticking "Too" onto the end of a bar expansion's name.  Long Islands are five bucks here, which made me feel good about being thrifty while spending someone else's money, and made my liver sigh, lie back, and think of England.

Each of the tables had a set of dice for some sort of betting game that was a big deal with both the locals and the expats.  One of Mitchell's friends tried explaining the rules to me, but somehow despite four concentration-sharpening Long Islands I still kept losing.  With no other explanations before me, my only conclusion is dark, Eastern magic.

Put plainly, every Chinese person is clearly a powerful sorceror.

I don't want to say this statue of a nearby armored rhino is proof, but I also don't want to say it won't come alive in the light of the full moon and hunt down a magician's enemies.

We left Windows Too at around 1 a.m.  We could have gone home, but as I understand it, Chinese national law dictated that we had to first go to a karaoke joint and continue drinking and singing for at least another two hours.  Every song I sang was beautiful and perfectly in-tune.  There was a lot of canceling of my songs by the others, but that's just, you know, jealousy, and just sad for them.

I should probably be a professional, but music is so political, you know?

To everyone's total shock and surprise, we wake up with raging hangovers (honestly, I was actually a bit surprised, after Southeast Asia's mystical hangover prevention).  Sarah and I meet David and Amy for lunch, and set off to find the perfect morning-after meal.  And wouldn't you know it, we run across a Pizza Hut.  Having lived in Korea, I knew to expect some differences, but pizza's pizza, even if this dining room did seem a lot fancier than it needed to be.  Maybe they'll do something wacky like put corn on it.  Or...they'll hand you a goddamn steak menu:

And a freaking wine selection:

After flipping through the book back and forth a couple times, I was able to conclusively say that yes, they did actually serve pizza in this Pizza Hut.

Still not entirely sure if it wasn't all a waking dream, though.

In addition to my pizza, I ordered an appetizer of escargots, followed by bread pudding for dessert.  That was what I ate at Pizza Hut.

Did I mention the escargots?  The Pizza Hut escargots?  Oh goddammit, there's something I have to fix in this timeline, isn't there.

After eating the most confused meal that Werner Herzog never made a movie about, we headed downtown for some shopping.  Finally, I would have shorts.  The street dealers were out in full force on their colorful roller skates, but this time we had a secret weapon.  David had taught us to say "bu yao", which means in Chinese "I don't want".  However, instead of ruing the day and so forth, these people actually seemed to gain power from our attempts to tell them off in their own language, and they laughed and laughed.  Sarah, not one to be beaten so easily, started to combine a shouted "Bu Yao!" with the "suck-it" crotch chop, which seemed to have the desired effect.  There wasn't much a dealer could do to retaliate, after that.

That sound you hear is the sad rumble of roller skates rolling away in defeat.   It's...not a common sound.

We end up on Nanjing Road, one of the world's busiest shopping streets, and a place where a guy is almost certain to find at least one pair of short pants for sale if he looks hard enough.  Despite being the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, the street was as crowded as its reputation suggested.  I don't know if it was a regular fixture, but there was a saxophonist playing from a golden veranda above the street, where old couples had gathered to dance.

And the Chinese Billy Idol.

One of the biggest tourist destinations in Shanghai is easily the the Bund river and the view it provides of the neighboring skyline:

A bunch of space penises ruled over by a spiked uber-dick and its robo-balls.  If you squint a bit.

While we all took pictures of ourselves standing in front of One-Nasty-Riot-Away-From-Cyberpunk City, a queue actually started to form of Chinese people who wanted to take pictures with Sarah.  Once enough tourists had gotten a photo with a real live blonde white girl, we adjourned to the Bund Brewery, where a glass of beer costs about 10 dollars, and tastes like a world where McCarthyism was right about everything, especially dodgy microbrews.  I tried a lager that was cloudy and foul, and a dark beer that might actually have been Bund water in a glass.

The beer was bad and tasted of Communism.  That's the joke.

A rooftop hookah bar later in the evening offered similarly disappointing and expensive drinks, but had a really spectacular view.  Which is good, because also our hookah didn't work.  We end up back at Windows Too, where I find the dice game just as impenetrable, but notice a number of interesting and helpful posters:

Homer nooo

noooooo

 For our last day together before David and Amy went back to Hefei and Sarah returned to Korea, we explored the Old City of Shanghai.

Everywhere, everywhere, are people trying to sell Mao merchandise.  For stuff dedicated to the founder of Chinese communism, it was one of the most flagrant displays of capitalism I've ever seen.  Shops line every street offering the best deals on shirts with Obama's face done up in Communist garb, or Little Red Book lighters for souvenirs.

Also, a lot of Chinese erotic vampire fiction fans.  Just like Mao wanted.

We eat lunch at a cozy little halal place that is bare empty when we arrive, and fills to capacity promptly at 12 p.m. when every Chinese person in the city takes lunch all at the same time.  Moving on, we pass alleys where locals sit around bags of leather and metal buckles and put together the "designer" belts someone on the next street is sure to offer.  Amy goes into a convenience store, and buys something called Baijiu.  From what I've read since, it's a Chinese liquor with 5000 years of history and a number of distinctive complexities.  But that's all bullshit.  Actually, it's a fifty cent flask of Fuck You Firewater.

All that Chinese on the label is calling you a pussy, and your mother something that doesn't really make sense to Westerners but you should probably be offended anyway.  Like, she's a donkey that doesn't go to church enough.

Passing around the one flask of noxious spirits is enough to get all of us in the group staggering.  Before standing balance becomes impossible, we walk into a bamboo park and take seat around a table in the center.  Kids run around nearby, rough-housing and learning just how much violence their parents will let them get away with (a lot, so long as it is performed in the manner of kung fu).  Next to our table sits a dirty diaper left by a previous family, which bothers one less after they've seen how Chinese mothers will often let their infants take standing dumps in public.  In fact, you'll often see babies with split opening in their pants for just this disgusting purpose.

We drink a round of beers, do the usual reminiscing about Korea, and before long David and Amy have taken off to catch their train.  Sarah and I meet back up with Mitchell, now off work, who brings us along for the real Shanghai past-time: Bootlegging.

First, we head to an entire mall of counterfeit stores, where Sarah is able to buy a pair of knock-off Lady Gaga Heartbeats earphones, and I buy some of those sweet sweet Mao souvenirs that go against everything he and the Republic he founded stood for.  Next, Mitchell takes us to where he personally buys his bootleg DVDs, which is, no joke, in the back of a bookstore through a secret passage behind a swinging bookcase. In addition to DVDs the store in the back also sells the photocopied books I became familiar with in Vietnam.  Sarah buys a couple books, while I just stand there, ecstatic that I actually got to go through a trick bookcase in my lifetime.

As I said earlier, it was Sarah's last night in Shanghai, and the end of her time traveling with me.  After a lavish dinner at an amazing Hong Kong-style restaurant, we retired early back to Mitchell's.  I buy a plane ticket online for Bangkok, and Sarah leaves me a parting gift: $500 cash (in Chinese Yuan), and a bottle of Xanax.  The cash in case my debit card didn't work, and the Xanax for "making friends," she said.  It was one of the tougher goodbyes I've had to say.  Without human companionship, or a working mp3 player, it was going to get lonely on the road.  But, at least I had a new bottle of pill-shaped friend-makers to help me along.

Floating Down Whiskey River/VANG VIENG

Happy Shakes are not an opponent to be underestimated.  Sarah had ordered a "Medium" and was starting to tweak, whereas my "Strong" shake was flattening my consciousness into a narrow, dust-flecked tunnel of strained thought and uncertainty.  In an effort to stave off The Fear we made the rounds of a few Friends bars, but the more we watched of mid-series Central Perk and Ross and moistmakers, the more horrified I became.  The only solution seemed to be sleep, and dreams sure to be haunted by oddly-muscular David Schwimmer talking about being a director.  Nebbish pecs everywhere.  Awful.

On the way to the hotel I stop for a banana pancake, and Sarah goes into a nearby convenience store for something dumb like water or whatever.  Back in our room, Sarah realizes she left her brand new 64GB iPod Touch (with a great deal of vacation photos on it) back at the store.  Somehow I hadn't noticed her leaving it behind, for reasons that escape me.

Now I remember.

There's nothing to be done now: without rest, The Fear would wring her mind into a cross-eyed, shrieking vortex if she were to contend with the store clerk in her present state.  To calm the nerves, we watch some Dylan Moran stand-up on my netbook until sleep comes at last, grateful.

After eating a couple American Breakfasts, Sarah and I look for any place that might rent inner tubes.  The driver of a tuk-tuk (basically a truck with seating in the bed that acts as a cheap taxi) hears our inquiries and herds us into the back.  I couldn't help but notice that all the other passengers already had their inner tubes, but I was sure the driver knew what he was doing, and didn't just throw us on here because he only knows the word "tube".  We find ourselves driven to the river, which is a little ways outside of town, and where you are expected to already have a tube.  Luckily, we were able to negotiate a couple tubes from the expats at the starting point bar.  They cost us 50,000 kip, or around 6 dollars.  The expats throw in the cost of the deposit, as they have no way of getting these back, and in reality are just selling us random tubes that went unclaimed, or simply were lost floating down the river.  Still, a victory nonetheless.  Time to float.

I think most people tend to have a similar experience of Vang Vieng, so I'll walk you through it: When you first show up at the river, you'll cross a bridge to the bar acting as launch point.  On this bridge, there's a tank of Lao Whiskey which you'll be given a free shot of, or two, or three.  If you're me, you find this to be a particularly considerate gesture.  Then at the first bar (where we got our tubes), you'll find yourself surrounded by people dancing, drinking, and playing beer pong.  You'll probably be greeted by some bar reps, and given more free shots.  Again, very thoughtful.  Then, maybe you'll spy the rickety-ass wooden rope swing tower set up over the river.

What am I, the President of Safety Town?  Let's do this.

And before your brain can remind you of the drunken foreigner mortality rate on the river someone spouted off in the tuk-tuk earlier, the rotgut whiskey you've been downing for what feels like hours (but in actuality it's only been 15 minutes) has you already on that tower and nodding at the Laotian guy who was asleep just two seconds ago.  Suddenly, you're in the air and splashing down into dangerously shallow waters as Laotian children laugh, the zipline operator goes back to sleep, and the bar barely waits for you to surface before offering yet more shots.

A process I repeated a few times, for research purposes.

Once you've bought a few beers and had your fill of cheap whiskey, you jump in your tube and drift on the slow current past the gorgeous limestone karsts that flank the river.  Every five minutes or so the roar of shitty sound systems will approach again, volumes cranked within an inch of their lives, blasting across the water the static-filled hits of 80s rock, 90s grunge, and this year's selection of pop, dance, trance, and reggae.  A flavor for every foreigner.

The hills are alive with the sound of Rihanna and white noise.

This signals the next gauntlet of waterside bars, where locals and foreigners alike are waiting, with weighted water bottles tied to rope for throwing to the tubers.  If you want to dock, you grab the bottle and hold on as the rope is taken in.  And, since many of the bars offer free drinks to foreigners who can get tubers into their place, there is never any shortage of people calling for you to come join the party.  From the bar you can drink, dance, drink more, eat the usual Western fare like pizza or fish and chips, and occasionally try one of the swings or slides or jumping platforms that some places offer (although many of them have been shut down because they're so pants-shittingly dangerous, even before you factor in wasted partiers).

In a way, tubing Vang Vieng is a metaphor for the whole Southeast Asia backpacker experience: thousands of foreigners floating down a beautiful, relaxing river as the locals (and the expats working alongside them) literally cast lines and try to reel in as many as possible.  The bait is the same as everywhere else: cheap booze, Western comfort food, the Billboard charts on a busted stereo, and a guy shooting a shot of high-proof whiskey into your mouth with a Super Soaker.  Or maybe that last one is just Vang Vieng.

Pictured: Really smart and incisive metaphor.

The Happy Menu of the previous night wasn't a lone incident, either.  Most of the bars you float by will gladly sell weed, mushrooms, or opium.  I had heard rumors of real, old-school opium dens in Vang Vieng, the kind of place you see in Once Upon a Time in America or From Hell, where everybody lounges half-dead on bunks with long pipes and Lo Pan-fingernails, but nobody I asked was able to provide any leads.  Maybe they were just rumors, in the end.

For some reason I was determined to trip on mushrooms, so each time we stopped I'd ask the bar if they had shroom shakes.  More often that not they did, but if they didn't they'd try to make up for it by showing off their freshly-rolled joints (and they just looked so crestfallen when I turned them down...).  I've never hallucinated before, and even after a couple of loaded shakes it looked like it still wasn't going to happen.  I had tried mushrooms once before in Thailand, and they hadn't done a thing, just like now.  It's hard to believe, but I've got something of a resistance to a lot of drugs, which can be frustrating.  A little dismayed, I smoked a few joints and continued on down the river, which had sadly not become a full-sensory journey into the darkest recesses of my being.  It instead continued to be warm and pleasant and nice.

You've probably already guessed that the place is crawling with party-bro types, and you're absolutely right.    Go back and read the bit again about the whiskey Super Soaker, those are the people for whom Vang Vieng is nothing less than the puka shell-wearing promised land.  The strange thing I noticed, though, is how skittish so many of them were about smoking along the river.  When I would stop at a bar and order a joint, I'd offer it around, but no one ever took me up on it.  Some people would already be too high, but more often I would get people refusing because they were "afraid of getting caught" and "the police might come by."  I didn't know what to make of it.  I suppose there might be some truth in it, and the police might occasionally stage a raid for appearance's sake, but it just doesn't make economic sense.  You're renting your tubes from the government.  If anyone knows what's going on along this booze-and-urine soaked river, it's the people in charge of the extremely poor country who make most of their cash off the debauched backpacker tourist trade.  If the cops were to crack down on the drugs, there goes the town's economy.  And even if there were a raid, most places like these will see 'em coming (or get tipped off beforehand) and warn the customers, because there's no sense in seeing your cash cow locked up.  Still, very few backpackers I met were taking the chance.

"So...much...research..."

Around 5 p.m. the last tuk-tuks back to town start leaving, or at least that's what was shouted at us by a probably-lying tuk-tuk driver.  Seeing a tuk-tuk driver wave frantically and yell that he's the last driver got us out of the river in a hurry, because we free-spirited globe-trotting backpackers really are nothing more than total sheep 90% of the time (and the other 10% of the time recovering from sunburns).  Too fucked up to do much else, I take a shower in our room and fall asleep, still in the shower.

The beautiful haze of this sunset provided by safe and sustainable slash-and-burn farming.

Dusk has set in when I come to, more than a little relieved to discover I haven't drowned.  Sarah wakes up from her more conventional (and some might say ostentatious) bed-nap, and we head out for food.

Meanwhile, the hot air balloons fill the skies for their nightly feeding.

We hole up in a Friends bar for dinner and some post-drinking cocktails, and spend the rest of the night people-watching on those rare occasions when Friends didn't have my complete and hilarious attention.

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA" -Everyone watching Friends

One thing I noticed is that no matter how sleazy or debauched a town could be, whether Vang Vieng or Pattaya or whatever, there are always a bunch of families hanging out.  Like, with young children.  Not that young children couldn't appreciate the beautiful scenery and rich culture of a country like Laos or Thailand, but really?  Of all the places you could take your 10-year old to, you chose the place at the top of every "Best Place to get Puke-Hammered" list?  And it isn't by accident a family could end up in Vang Vieng; the only reason people come here is to black out afloat on a rubber donut.  Sure, it has some caves nearby that are supposed to be neat, but so does every other place in Southeast Asia.  Oh, one of the caves has a Sleeping Buddha statue in it?  I swear I have seen more cave Buddhas than I've had hot meals, and my metabolism is crazy.

Seated near our table was a group of the most vile species of backpacker: loud, obnoxious gym rats who constantly mocked the broken English of the local workers, when they weren't openly resenting them for speaking Laotian.  The most annoying of them was really something to watch, like a douchey Tesla as he bravely pioneered revolutionary new ways to be an asshole.  After he was doing ordering his pad thai or whatever, he would bark "Now leave us alone!" at the server with a sneer, and go back to calling every girl who walked by "fit" or "slag", while his buddies chortled and guffawed in a British way that somehow made it all worse.  I'll forever associate them with the clothes that mark all bro-leaning gap year dickbags: Beerlao and "In The Tubing Vang Vieng" t-shirts and tank tops.  They're sold everywhere, and I don't know how, but if you wear one you become 150% more likely do something totally annoying when someone takes a picture of you, like flick off the camera, even if the person taking the picture really wanted it to be a nice photo.  Or even worse...duck lips.

If this logo is on your shirt, you're probably a douchebag.  Please stop date raping.

Our Friends bar closed surprisingly early, around 10 p.m., which seemed to be a common trend.  Despite all the talk of heavy partying, almost all of the bars and restaurants shut down well before midnight.  Sarah went back to the convenience store where she had left her iPod, but they shockingly knew nothing about it, and still wouldn't budge when she offered a reward "if [they] were to find it, somehow."  I consoled her on the loss, which really was very sad, and secretly was super relieved and more than a little amazed that nothing of mine had been lost or stolen.

We get up a little earlier the next day so as to spend more time on the river, and this time really scour the town for the tube rental shop.  It takes some time, during which I test out multiple ATMs and find that my debit card is still not working, but eventually we find the rental place.  The tubes not only cost more to rent than the scrounged-up ones we found yesterday, but the deposit more than doubled the price (and from what I hear, enough tubes got stolen each day from the bars that you are in danger of losing that deposit).  Then, we get to wait an hour for other people to fill our tuk-tuk, as it apparently isn't worth the driver's while to take only two people to the river.  Everything I thought about getting up early was being absolutely vindicated.

At the start of the river we're again given free shots of Lao whiskey, or rather I'm given shots, because Sarah doesn't want hers so the whiskey is thrust upon me.  I drink it all, of course, because of the starving children in Africa.  At the first bar we hit up the rope swing again, and when I swim back to the dock one of the white guys working there forces another shot on me.  "Swimming tax," he says with a smile.  "Nothing's free."  I know he was being cute, but I felt something dark behind those words, although it might have been my liver crying out like Marlon Brando was behind it with a stick of butter.

Probably one of the better taxes, though.

We float on, the weather a little more overcast than the last day but still a lovely view, and very peaceful (or at least in the quiet stretches of the river between bars and boomboxes).  At Sarah's suggestion, we stop at a place that has tables and seating set up right on the water where it's shallow.

Sarah's Suggestion, Or: The Guy Under The Bridge With A Rope Won't Take No For An Answer

Sarah orders a mojito bucket, which when it came back appeared to be mint leaves floating in rum and pink lemonade.  Close enough, and also not bad at all.  I ask for a happy menu, and order a joint.  I was finally able to buy drugs without awkward scooter rides and exchanges in dark alleys, and I was going to take full advantage of it.

A guy comes over, says "Sabai dee," and shakes our hands, and with his other hand leaves behind a lighter and the joint I ordered.  Nice.  When we asked how much for the joint, as there was no price on the menu, he cheerfully replied: "Free!"  But...how...?!  "Free with bucket!" he says, referring to Sarah's mojito.  With every bucket drink, a free joint.  Now, the bucket cost about eight dollars, but that was a fair price for the area, and more than fair for a concept that hinted at a kinder, more joyful universe.

A universe that ends segregated seating with the mer-people.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of all of this was I had no hangover.  Whatsoever.  In fact, I hadn't had a hangover since starting this trip, despite many ample opportunities, but even after running the gauntlet of this river of sin I felt tip-top.  I can't explain it, other than annual virgin sacrifices by the locals that I'm really too culturally unaware to judge.

Many bars along the river give out loops of yarn in different colors, to be worn as bracelets.  Somehow I had completely missed out on this the previous day, but now I could see them on the majority of our fellow tubers.  Some had been here for weeks and weeks and proudly displayed full gauntlets made of dozens of bracelets, multiple rainbow spectrums encircling their wrists like rings on an alcoholic tree.  I had been warned before coming here that this place could be hard to leave, but after two days on the river I was honestly starting to tire of it.  And I know I sound like the whiny guy in A Brave New World, but the unrelenting gluttony, sloth, and exploitation of both locals and foreigners was wearing on me.  Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory was losing its luster.

Also, if the Oompa Loompas had babies hidden behind the chocolate river that they were struggling to take care of,  it'd be kind of a bummer.

We stop for the final time at one of the last bars along the river, where further drinks and joints are shared between the two of us, and I near full and complete catatonia.

God, I'm gonna be the next fucking Bill Bryson.

The owner comes out to talk to us for a bit, and eventually asks Sarah to help out with his sign.  "You write good English, yes?  What should my sign say?  Get lot of people!"  He offered her a sharpie and tore off the back of a cigarette pack to write on, and Sarah was happy to oblige.  In neat block letters, she wrote "Last Place For Jump + Happy Menu", emphasizing the sweet jumping platform in a nearby tree, and the last port on the river for drugs.

In exchange for her help, the owner gave us free drinks, which did not help when Sarah started encouraging me to try the jumping platform.  Wary of all the drunk tourists who drown each year, or break their legs, or rupture their eardrums, and can find no medical help nearby, but also wary of being a scaredypants, I decided to hell with it.

I'm gonna make a bad decision.

"Luckily, all that drinking has given me enough courage to do something stupid like jump off this drunk."

And hey, I didn't die, or even get a little pink-eye, which hey is also a thing around here.

I knew I was invincible!  Time to start living life like a Highlander.

Soon the tuk-tuk drivers became vocal again, and the time to leave the river drew near.  In town, we went back to the same restaurant we had gone to our first night here.  I hadn't forgotten their happy menu, and for my last night in Vang Vieng I was finally going to try some opium.

It's time.

I hadn't been able to find the classic opium den of my dreams, so I was just going to have to make do here.  After I order an opium joint and an opium tea (to really get that opium cherry popped), the owner indicates a table far in the back, on the bank of the river.  Here, there's more seclusion, and less chances of nosy cops from the road looking in.

Although we would miss all the decor of a Chinese buffet on Karaoke Night.

The tea and the joint arrive, and my anticipation builds to a fever pitch.  Finally, I would discover what men used to give their bodies and souls for, before meth came along and trashy-d up the place.

The coolest tea.

I smoked.  I drank.  And I felt...nothing.  It seemed to me no different from weed, except a little more expensive.  Then, the restaurant started playing the Macarena, and opium was ruined forever.  No one should have to chase the dragon to that.  I finished my opium, but only because I was raised properly, and we left.  "I should've waited for a den," I thought to myself in bed that night, over and over, clutching my pillow in sorrow.  "I should've waited for a den."