The Dog King/KO PHA NGAN

I needed to move on. No one should remain in Haad Rin this long. North of Ko Pha Ngan is the island Ko Tao, supposedly the best spot for scuba diving in the Gulf of Thailand. That's where I wanted to be. However, my stomach burn wasn't quite healed yet, so I was stuck killing time just a little while longer.

After taking some Xanax to celebrate finding their bottle, I try to think of something to do. Haad Rin seemed to have nothing left for me. I had no idea where the group from last night was, so I eat dinner alone, drink beers alone, walk the same loud beach alone. As I got to the north end, it occurred to me there still was something I hadn't done yet.

Once I've drugged my body into laughing, then I'll know I'm having fun!

So, I head to The Rock, situated on the opposite end of the beach from Mellow Mountain. It's built on the rock cliff face overlooking the beach, hence the name. Maybe it was popular in the days leading up to the Full Moon Party, but now it's totally empty.

After one of the workers disengages from bored conversation with the other employees, I order a Singha and some nitrous, for which they're charging 200 baht a hit. While I sip my beer, the guy puts a canister of nitrous into what looks like a whipped cream dispenser, and uses the machine to blow up a balloon. He gives me some instructions, but come on, I've been to the dentist. I think I know how to huff some fumes.

I grab a table by the railing, with a view of the entire shore. In one go, I inhale the entire balloon, curious if I'm being watched by any of the workers. I'm not. Unsurprisingly, the sight of another stoned foreigner is one they've long since tired of.

The effects of the nitrous come on quickly, scant seconds after inhalation. My vision expands and contracts, like I'm seeing through the eyes of a Stretch Armstrong being fought over. Upstairs in the brain box, it feels like a pile of quilts have been thrown over my cerebral cortex, comfortably smothering all higher and unnecessary faculties. Complex thought processes simplify themselves, until they resemble the pithy urges in a cartoon caveman's thought bubbles. The beach is nice. I wish that sign was lit up. Lights are pretty. The air is warmmmmm.

And then it's over. Logic, reasoning, and all the rest return, and my tunnel vision snaps back to normalcy. 5 bucks for 5 minutes of lights getting a little brighter, and me getting a lot stupider. Maybe doing it by myself, at night, looking at an existentially depressing beach scene wasn't the best environment for getting all the laughs out of my laughing gas.

This is all your fault, sign.

Still, there was a tempting simplicity to the experience. Maybe that explains what happened later. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I return to the beach, where I buy a whiskey bucket from the first drink stand to catch my eye. With the bucket comes a free shot, and more plastic jewelry. I was more excited about one of these than the other. The whiskey bottle's seal is broken, but the drink stand girl addresses my concern by showing me that the cap itself is still unbroken. However, when she pours out the bottle, I notice that she seems to have found a way to take off the entire cap without breaking the seal. Clever girl. She couldn't have watered my drink down too much, though, since the bucket still reeked of liquor just one grade above moonshine.

I drink my bucket at one of the benches and watch the midnight dancing. The fire ring comes out once again, and I join in. This time my keys were totally safe, because I no longer had keys, due to my room no longer having a lock of any kind. I have to say, the drinking was doing a good job of squashing any worries I might have had, though.

Once I got too woozy to keep jumping, I stumbled on down the beach and found myself heading up the steps to Mellow Mountain. I hadn't been back here since my last trip to Thailand, so why not hang out for a bit?

Mellow Mountain is divided into two levels. The bottom level is called Kangaroo Bar, which has much nicer tables and decor, and is generally a more legitimate, nicer place to hang out, and the top level is the Mellow Mountain bar, which has much sparer decoration, but is where the more illegitimate, namesake items can be purchased. I head to the top level.

The guy working the bar is very open and forthcoming about what they sell, so I inquire about prices. A mushroom shake is 500 baht, a half-cup of just mushrooms is 1,000, and a full cup 2,000. I buy a joint, for 250, and am soon joined by a Finnish guy, asking if he can share.

"Sure." I shrug, and he buys me a Chang. The Finnish man stays long enough to teach me how to say cheers (something like "Holkan kolkan"), before leaving for parts unknown. I take my joint downstairs to Kangaroo Bar, and finish it while watching a girl throw up over the balcony.

I snap a photo, because I'm all about the memories, and this pisses the guy she's with right off. "Oy! Wot the fuck?!" His voice sounds familiar somehow...He walks over. Just as I start to prepare myself for a fight by hoping really hard that his morals prevent him from hitting a drunk man, he steps into my light.

"Jamie?! Long time no see, mate!" It's Jake, from last night. And by the look of things, he's moved on from Bethany.

"Hey, Jake. Your friend okay?"

"Aw, she's fine! Jos' too much mushroom shake." He gestures to a cup on their table, still two-thirds full. "These things are fuckin' strong! A full shake is jes' too much for one person. Want summa' this one?" He indicates again to the girl's cup, which I have to assume she isn't coming back for. Well, I don't want to be rude.

Voyeuristic maybe, but never rude.

Jake and I split the rest of the cup, and eventually he leaves with the girl to presumably have freaky pukey hallucinatory sex. I leave the beach, and wander back into town. Mushroom shakes have never really affected me in the past, although they were giving an interesting edge to the booze and weed, not to mention the Xanax from earlier still in the background, fuzzing out the edges. I become very interested in a dog trying to eat something in the sand.

Something about the image...spoke to me. Or spoke to the drugs, and really, they'll speak to anything. I drift through the streets as if on walkabout, my consciousness compressing, my sanity disintegrating. I found a video on my camera not too long ago from this night, which I don't remember taking at all:

Speaking of memories, have you ever had a blackout that you can actually remember? Where you can recall glimpses of what you got up to after losing all control? That was the rest of the night for me. A real stare-into-the-abyss-and-the-abyss-stares-back kind of night.

As I pinball around the town in an impenetrable haze, I come across a small pack of street dogs. The animals flock to me, craving attention, and I must have really wanted some companionship, because it's hard to explain what happened next...After hanging out with the dogs for awhile, I notice that they start to walk with me, loyally following in my steps. "Alright," I think. "I accept." I became King of the Dogs.

Together with my pack, we roam through the alleys and backstreets of Haad Rin, looking for trouble. They had accepted me as one of their own, and I was determined not to fail them as a leader. My first order of business was growth. Whenever we came across another dog, I would offer my hand, as an olive branch. Some dogs would accept, and allow themselves to be pet, and joined our pack. Other dogs, afraid of our gang's power, would instead bark and growl, but they would be immediately shouted down and drowned out by my troops. Before long, my pack of three or four had grown to almost a dozen. And they all obeyed me, their Alpha.

After a few run-ins with other packs and some thoroughly perplexed storeowners, our pack finally disbanded. The last thing I remember is seeing some sort of horrible monster in the sand, and ogling it with extreme trepidation, before passing out back in Venus. The ravings of a dangerously unbalanced mind, I assumed at the time, after waking up, feeling sober and absolutely shitty. But, once again, I found something enlightening in my camera much later:

So, yeah. Monster.

Fuck you, ocean.

The sun dawns on a new day, and I'm thrown from canine royalty back to lowly human commoner.The Half Moon Party's tonight, so after eating some recovery pizza and a fruit shake, I stop by Friendly Resort to see if anyone's around and interested in going. By the pool, I find Sander and Tyler, who tell me the whole group's going. Well alright then. I walk with them to the travel agent and buy a ticket to the party.

Back at Friendly, we're soon joined by the rest of the group. Whereas most Dutch people I've met walk around eyes half-lidded and seemingly on the verge of sleep, Sander is fearsomely energetic. To pass the time, he does backflips in the grass, while I find out that Tyler and I are both fans of the ska band Less Than Jake. Not really important, but I'm always pleasantly surprised when I meet anyone overseas who wants to talk about any music besides Oasis.

A van comes by to pick us up, and inside I have a conversation about horror movies with Sander, who remains to this day the only person I've met, and indeed probably the only person who exists, who thinks Hannibal was a better movie than Silence of the Lambs. I just...I chalk it up to him being Dutch, somehow.  The driver slips in a CD, and the entire van erupts into a nasally singalong of "Wonderwall", including Tyler, who was now dead to me musically. Last night I lost all sense of civilization and became nothing more than an animal, and this is worse. "Hotel California" comes on next, and in retaliation I sing it as loudly and aggressively as possible over their groans, with Sander's enthusiastic accompaniment. What is friendmaking if not naturally adversarial, anyway?

Janice looks much cuter tonight, which I think is due to wearing her hair differently. I cannot stress this enough: British people need bangs. If you're British and you're reading this, you are not exempt. Consider this your PSA. Bangs. Wear them.

At the entrance to the Half Moon Party, which happens to be situated rather deep into the jungle, we're issued free drink tickets in exchange for our entrance passes. Cashing in the drink ticket grants me a weak, watered-down strawberry daiquiri. Once inside, I buy a slightly stronger Sang Som bucket, for twice the normal price. Since the Half Moon Party is a closed event, they get to control the merchants and their prices, so everything is double what you'd normally pay around Haad Rin.

Everywhere are vendors hawking day-glo body paint, but it's rather easy to find some expats who've already brought a load and want nothing more than to share. Once my face has been painted up by some Europeans, I get to dancing on tables with the remains of our group that hasn't already wandered off to some other corner of the event.

Just casual as all hell.

The decor is certainly impressive, even if the atmosphere is ruthlessly capitalistic, what with the 20 dollar entrance fee, and 10 dollar drinks prices. The central decoration is a massive white tree surrounded by abstract spikes, ripped seemingly straight from the nearest tribal tattoo.

Wife beaters mandatory.

Skilled fire-twirlers twirl their fire to the beat of professional DJs, spinning club tunes only slightly indistinguishable from any other night on the beach. There's a flyer listing the DJ schedule, but none of them are the four or five maximum DJs I could name off the top of my head. Still, they are all very adequate at pushing play on a deck and making the speakers go "uhn tsh uhn tsh uhn tsh".

As more members of the group splinter off, I find myself talking to a German, who is very insistent about me acting as his wing-man during the party. "Ve shall get ze girls together, ja?" Sorry, but nicht. I've got enough drama keeping up with this crowd as is. I go to find Sander, who is currently chasing after Cyndi, the most naturally drunk girl in all the land, who keeps burning people with her mooched cigarettes. Cyndi, meanwhile, wants no one but Tyler, because he's tall and she's predictable. Elsewhere, I notice that Bethany has sussed out Jake somewhere in the party, and they're most definitely back on, the Mellow Mountain girl vomiting over the railing a thing of the distant past.

But my attentions keep coming back to Janice. Those bangs, man. They make all the difference. I chat with her and Ted from Australia about ping pong shows, which Ted claims to have never seen, despite living 9 years in Ko Samui. Bullshit, says I. There's just no way you can live in Thailand for 9 years, and not end up seeing a baby chick being swallowed up and then emerging from a woman's vagina at some point in your life.

Ah, Thailand.

Janice and I leave the party together, but I'm shut down at the door to her room. "I'm really just so tired..." says she. But...the bangs...

I should've known. I wanted it too bad. I wasn't expecting the unexpected. I leave her to be tired or whatever, and return to my own room to brood. To think I pruned my fingers for nothing. Certainly food for thought. Also, gross.

The next day I'm supposed to meet Sander to rent scooters and see more of the island, but I don't know his room number, and anyways I'd rather sleep in. Finally I've resolved to get off this island, so I've bought a ticket for a boat early the next morning to Ko Tao. I head out for food, eating a subpar bacon sandwich and end up drinking in another Friends bar, where I'm approached by a Burmese man who asks my name, where I'm from, says nice to meet me, and leaves. My last night in Ko Pha Ngan, and I can already tell it's going to be something special.

As if on cue, I walk back to Venus to drop some things off, and in the almost-total darkness, I swear I see a willow-the-wisp. Or, whatever optical phenomenon begat the willow-the-wisp story. For context, I was walking around in this:

When a green light, just a dot, starts moving around my eye line, before zipping off into the trees to my right. It was too immaterial for a firefly, and far too green, but too independent and lazy for a sunspot or effect from the inside of my eyelids. Whatever it was, I put it out of my mind, and continue on to Friendly Resort, to meet the Sander and the rest of them.

After regaling Sander with an extremely abridged story about trying nitrous the other night, I get him curious enough to try it with me at Pla-Bla. They charge the same price as The Rock, and deliver the gas in the same balloon-filled manner. Being in a brighter bar however, filled with patrons, huffing the gas at the same time with a compatriot, makes quite a lot of difference.

Look at that smile! And I'm not even high yet!

Even better, Pla-Bla is showing a movie, so we have some visual stimulation. Unfortunately, the movie is The Beach, and it's at the very nihilistic end, which is not so great for doing drugs to. Still, Sander has a great time, while I just kind of wish it was the scene with the glowing jellyfish. That would have been nice.

On the way back from the bar, we run into the main group, and venture to the beach together. They're set to make their last night in Ko Pha Ngan something to remember, and immediately start ordering round after round of drinks. But not me. I actually have something different in mind for tonight. I'm going to finally try mushrooms, totally sober.

I've always been disappointed with my shroom experiences, and a friend pointed out to me that the common denominator seems to be that I'm always drunk when I try them, which dampens their effect. So tonight I'm going to go in totally clean (well, except for the laughing gas, but come on) and see what happens. I excuse myself from the group partying on the beach, and make my way to Mellow Mountain and order a shroom shake.

On the walk back, I notice an old woman reading tarot in the sand, and it's one of those great idea moments, light bulb over the head and everything. The mushrooms haven't kicked in yet, if they would indeed have any effect at all. After paying for the session, the woman asks me to cut the deck, which I do. She has me draw several cards, and then turn them over in order, analyzing each one in turn.

"You...are very good with money. Yes?" Whoof. Not a great start to divining the universe. "Sure, I'm great with money. Love the stuff," I reply. "Keep going."

She turns over another card. "You...have many girls back home! Yes, many girls I can see." Swing and a miss! But I don't want to be a dick about her fortune telling: "Oh yes. Lots of girls. All the girls." She nods sagely, turning over the next card. She explains something about cups, and further elucidates just how good I am with girls. It's my turn to nod sagely. "But they want your money!" she explains. I wouldn't count gold-diggers on my top 5 list of life problems, but she continues on without pause.

Another card is turned. This time, she hesitates before speaking. "You like...men," she states, matter-of-fact. There isn't any question in her voice. She waits for my confirmation.

"No?" I'm not quite sure how to let her down. She's so confident, I feel bad for being straight. Maybe I have been living a lie, and I just chose the weirdest possible way to be outed. That kind of adds up, I think.

"You're sure? But...you like men." She examines the cards more closely, looking back and forth between them and me, positive that they very clearly reveal my homosexuality. After refusing a few more times, she relents, although I can see in her eyes that she's going to continue under the assumption that I've lied to her and will continue lying about my sexuality, asshole that I am. She turns over another card.

"Okay, your future." Serious business now. "You will marry girl in foreign country, and have," another card turned, "three child!" I shrug, and accept my fate. With no more cards to turn over, she indicates for a tip, but in a kind of resentful way that says she still knows I lied about being gay, and ruined my own tarot reading. I give her a buck.

Walking on, I rejoin the group on the beach, one of whom, Hefina, has order a hookah for the table.

The foam machine started up, prompting the others to get on their feet. As everyone dances in the sand around me, I take seat at the table as the mushrooms come on in full force. Finally, I have what they call a breakthrough experience. Everything becomes poignant, and full of incredible meaning. I could see into the actions of everyone around me, understanding their thought processes in full, as they happened, and realize that person's ultimate place int he world. Everything became obvious, and okay.

Somehow I end up sitting cross-legged on top of the table. I am a buddha amidst the fire and foam. Even the douchebag tourist meatheads had their place, and it is in a way reassuring to see them perfectly filling that role. The prepubescent Connect Four girl makes an appearance, and her hostility is revealed to be a gimmick, as I catch her smiling while pulling out Jake's chest hair, trying to goad him into a match.

I was people watching on a sublime level. I could almost hear Ken Kesey saying "That's her thing, and she's doing it" as Hefina, a Welsh girl known to have a boyfriend back home, makes out with a birthday boy in another group. Janice, who would talk so much about not liking or needing these girls, still finds herself following them into pictures, into their dance circles. Cyndi, drenched in foam and seawater, a desperate guy tentatively touching her ass as she mooches cigarette after cigarette, hands me her cell phone, so fucked up that the screen only glows white and won't stop vibrating.

And the hookah, neverending. I'm Alice's caterpillar over here, the only one puffing. Hefina tries briefly to learn from me how to blow smoke rings, but soon gives up and dances back into the bubbles. Everything, its place. I am peaceful, and complete. Very groovy thoughts, man, like "I should get water. Water is just in general a good idea" or "Cigarettes are just so...dangerous," of course after I get burned by one of Cyndi's as I stumble my way into the foam, on a whim. I simply stand there, enjoying the texture of it, before taking my place back on top of the bench. I look up occasionally, and see the stars moving, shifting slowly about each other. The moon is orange, and for all I know the moon is actually orange tonight. Still, I try not to stare, because I've decided this is a secret trip, for paranoid and druggy reasons. I tell no one, and they seem to not notice. Occasionally I'm asked to dance, which I do for a minute, loose-limbed and with an enigmatic smile, before going back to the bench. I understand the difficulty I've been having with Ko Pha Ngan: I'm a big dog in a small house, left alone.

There's something of a wrench in the works when it's getting on to 5 in the morning, and I'm still the little buddha at peace with everything, but man I've also got to be up and moving to another island in 4 hours. I know better than to fight the trip, so I just go with it, sleep be damned. The others leave, one by one, but every time I think the shrooms are done with me, they come right back and show me who's really enlightened. The sun breaks over the horizon, and I walk sleepily back to Venus..

I respected the mushrooms, and they treat me in kind. I lie in bed for a few moments in soft euphoria, before lazily drifting off. One with everything. And just in case that's all bullshit, I set an alarm.

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."