Fire Water Burn/KO PHA NGAN

I take my first night in Ko Pha Ngan to set my bearings and acquaint myself with the neighbors.  There's a German couple in the bungalow next to me, whom I have a nice conversation with and then never see again.  In the lobby/restaurant/computer area I meet a British girl watching Napoleon Dynamite, with her leg wrapped in gauze and propped up on a stack of pillows.  She says a bottle fell on her foot and slashed it open the first day of her stay, leaving her effectively disabled for the rest of her vacation.  I know the feeling.  I know it so hard.

Back in my room I discover a hose attachment in the bathroom at about calf-level that does get water pressure.  Unfortunately, I find out it also doesn't shut off, leaving me with a shower head that doesn't get enough water, and a water spigot above the floor that is now spraying water all the time.  My home for the next week had no shortage of character, but it did cost 10 bucks a night.  Would it be petty to complain?  Probably.  Would writing in a professional manner take way more effort?  Fuck that one hundred thousand times.

So, the shower sucks, there's a spigot that won't shut off, the door won't lock, the wifi doesn't work, there's no AC, and my growing headache isn't psyched about the fact that the noise from the party beach reaches all the way up into these hills and inside my room.  Also, ants.  It was going to take every fiber of my being to enjoy this tropical paradise.

Before turning in for the night, I make a circuit of all the money exchange places in the area, looking for the best rate for my 500 dollars in Chinese yuan.  The general consensus I get is the exchange rates are pretty terrible on the island, and I'd be better off waiting till I get back to the mainland before changing the money, which is still drying out on my desk.  I take a couple Xanax to counteract the noise from the beach and go to bed early, so I can be nice and fresh for my 9 o'clock scuba lesson.

What a terrible fucking idea.  Thanks to the Xanax, I wake up late and feeling groggier than a pirate's hip flask.  On the way to meet the instructor I stop for a banana pancake, which makes me even later, but also makes my mouth and belly so very happy.

Ben10 is actually our country's biggest export, after child obesity.

My scuba instructor is an overweight, middle-aged Swiss man named Alex  He has a crazed energy when he talks, but that could just be his kooky accent.  At his shop I can see his Thai wife using the internet in the back, and his son playing computer games in the front.  I can sense an atmosphere coming on, where I'm late and he resents me for it, but I'm paying him and feel weird about being made to feel bad.  He takes me to a pool for the first lesson of my Open Water License.

There are worse places to learn.

This was my first time scuba diving, but I wasn't too bad.  Alex commented that my "hovering" (trying to float in place underwater) was excellent, and I discovered that the fingernails I had neglected to trim worked like tiny little flippers.  Alex and I chat for a bit, mostly about Steam sales and buying too many computer games, but he also mentions that Song Kran, or Happy Water Torture Festival, lasts up to four days in the North.  Christ.  We make arrangements to meet the next day for our first dive, and part ways.

As night fell I felt some regret about having signed up for the scuba course so quickly, as it meant I was going to have to hold off on the nightlife for the next few days.  In particular, I notice this:

SOLD.

But I'll return to that.

I finish my Open Water License over the next two days, doing a dive each morning at Sail Rock, a popular scuba spot about an hour's boat ride from Ko Pha Ngan.

Armed with our spearguns, the hunt for Ariel begins.

Sail Rock, supposedly the premiere dive site in the Gulf of Thailand, is a pinnacle that goes down 35 meters to the sea floor.  Before signing up for the scuba lessons, I had worried that diving would be overrated and an expensive, boring waste of time.  I was wrong, on every level (except the expensive part; holy freaking moly it is expensive).  Maybe it was just the crystal-clear blue waters talking, or the wondrously dense schools of fish rushing past like so many incandescent clouds, but scuba diving is kind of the shit.

Everything becomes the greatest thing in existence.  The slimy barnacled rocks around the pinnacle become an exotic alien landscape, full of mystery and life.  Some colorful nudibranches all of a sudden seem like evidence of a kind and loving God.  One enormous school of trevally swimming by was like that same God giving me a handjob, and it was the most kind and loving handjibber there ever was.  The most famous feature of Sail Rock is its natural vertical swimthrough, which is basically like a 12 meter chimney you can drop down through the pinnacle.  Swimming through that...if you could take the opposite of racism, that's what it felt like.  It was the anti-Hitler.  Every fish I saw was a perfect ball of magic in a universe ruled by love and Studio Ghibli movies.  Every tuna or mackerel or barracuda passing by was a little hug from underwater Totoro.

My instructor, however, was not as super psyched about these things as I was.  Instead of all the pretty fishies, when we got back to the boat he wanted to talk about the oil crisis.  And corrupt Western governments, in particular mine, but also those of everyone else on the boat.  That accent could only do so much to kooky-up diatribes about corporate greed delivered with a thousand-yard stare (although, to be fair, everyone gets a thousand-yard stare in the middle of the ocean; there are, like, literally thousands of yards out there to stare at).  This brought me down for a little while, but then someone caught a seahorse in a bucket and we were right back to Totoro hugs:

THIS BUCKET IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OBJECT IN ALL OF SPACE-TIME.

And just like that, three people on the boat turned into Star Childs.

Meanwhile, Alex rants about Wal-Mart, and gives an in-depth treatise on how to cross international borders illegally, which...okay actually I was pretty into that last one.  You never know when stuff will come in handy.

Now that my dives are over and my Open Water License complete, Alex gives me some sage advice for the  Haad Rin beach parties.  According to him, on some nights a massive jump rope will be taken out, doused in kerosene, and lit on fire for any inebriated soul to jump through.  He warns me to stay away from such activities, as too many drunk tourists get horribly injured.  "I'll be safe," I promise.

I take the rest of the day to eat, rest, pick up laundry, and gather strength.  Somehow, I had managed to get myself sunburned yet again.  Not a hospital-worthy burn this time, but it definitely gave my skin that shade of Naked Mole Rat Pink that I had begun to miss.

At least it's even.

One thing I've learned about Southeast Asia is no matter where you go, laundry always costs about a buck-fifty per kilogram.  Across every country and exchange rate, it's stayed the same.  It's nice to know no matter how sideways things can get, at least I have one constant to hold onto.

Haad Rin as a town is about halfway between Vang Vieng and more upscale tourist destinations, like Kuta or Ubud.  The buildings are sturdy brick and concrete instead of wood and aluminum siding (and even the occasional glass storefront!), but there would still be almost-daily power outages from the heat.  I became used to going into a restaurant with my netbook to eat and use the internet, only to have the power fail and wait for the restaurant's backup generator to kick in.

Who am I kidding.  I was going to the Friends bars.  Could I be any more lonely?

Having been to several spots around Thailand before, I was surprised by the absence of open prostitution.  Nowhere did I see 24-hour massage parlors with girls of varying age lying around calling to the tourists at night.  There are, however, plenty of reggae bars:

Pictured: The most Jah shit you will ever see.

While I eat dinner at one Friends bar, a car passes by a few times with a speaker system in the back, playing "The Final Countdown" announcing a Muay Thai event happening later in the night.  I love Muay Thai, the ticket includes a free taxi ride to the stadium, and I get a pleasant reminder of Arrested Development.  I'm in.

I share a tuk-tuk with a gaggle of Chads, and once at the arena order a bucket of Sang Som Whiskey and Coke.  The stadium is actually pretty huge for such a small island.  While the fighters are getting warmed up, I have a chance to look over the match-ups.  They have 8 or so fights lined up, with the usual main event of Westerners, but I'm a little disappointed they don't have any girlfights.  In my experience, girls fight each other harder and longer, and generally make for a much better show.

The first match out of the gate is, per usual, a pair of younger boys.  They fight well, with good spirit and other such Bukowskian observations, and it marks the first time I've seen a couple of young Muay Thai fighters go at it and not end with one of them hit so hard that they collapse and foam at the mouth.

So, good on them!

As much as I love going to Muay Thai matches, I have to admit I've never seen any fights on the mainland.  I've heard that the bouts on the islands are played up for the audiences and aren't as serious, and if that's true, then someone forgot to tell this guy:

Because Chris Tucker is about to materialize in front of his face any second now.

Of course, it's also probably true that the guy drives a tuk-tuk for a living and only does Muay Thai fights for tourists as a side income, hence the belly and the whole getting-his-ass-beat thing.  So not as serious, but also sadder and more worthy of a Russell Crowe vehicle.

The next fight was between a local in red shorts and a challenger from the mainland in silver.  And, in another first for me, I bet on the fight.  Red Shorts was favored as the local, but I could see Silver Shorts had some amazing abs.  I decided to go with my gut (get it?).  Surely such hardcore training and conditioning would trump the local advantage.  And just like that, I lost 200 baht as Red trounced Silver.

I wondered if I should take my old guidance counselor's advice, and stop  making all my decisions so ab-centric.

The fight between Westerners was supposed to be a Czech fighter versus an Israeli, but it gets canceled after the Israeli is reported sick.  As a replacement, a fight is added between a giant Canadian and an old Thai man who probably invented the word "underdog".

That isn't a trick of perspective, the Canadian fighter really is 8 feet taller than his opponent.

I decide to bet once more, and this time I know I'm going to win.  Then they tell me they're not accepting bets on the Canadian, and I reconsider.  I look at the Thai's record: 70 wins and 30 losses, compared to the Canadian's 11 wins and 4 losses.  I put down 200 baht on the Thai.  Maybe...maybe experience will give him the edge?

Noooope.  

The next few fights lend credence to the idea that island fighting isn't as serious.  The judges aren't impartial in the slightest, as they openly side with some fighters and even cheer them on, and another fight gets decided by audience decision (and was suspiciously filled with Superman punches and crazy spinning kicks).

Also, there's the matter of the free drink ticket that came with the Muay Thai ticket, that is cross-promoting for a pool party at a hotel called Coral Bungalows.  I don't know how many times I've said it: More marketing synergy needs to involve free drinks.  Once the fights are over, I meet a couple guys in the audience who happen to be staying at the same resort as me, and together we pile in a taxi for the Coral Bungalows.

The pool party is packed (predictably).  We redeem our drink coupons at a punch stand where a promoter is ladling out extra-strong Vodka Red Bulls, and we talk.  One of the guys says he hates the band The Killers.  Looks like I have some new best friends!  

The pool party is very confident in its own identity.

However, I don't have anything to swim in, I'm carrying a backpack, and I'm still sober enough to be scared to talk to girls (I heard they don't like backpacks??).  Interestingly enough, all the other men at the party seem to be in the same situation, as they're all crowded into a room inside the bar watching something called a "Man You" and a "Man See" play "Phut-Bawl".  They seem excited by whatever it is.  The "Man See" wins.

I usually justify not talking to girls by watching HBO dramas, but whatever works for you guys.

My new best friends, who are British and very angry about what just happened on the TV, ask if I want to head to the beach, and I agree.  We hitch a ride on the bed of a truck back to Haad Rin Nok, the party beach (and therefore, the biggest pool party), with a stop at an open-air fast food joint called Same Same Burger.  Once at the beach, I stop by my room at Venus to drop off valuables, and on the way talk to a couple girls who ask me what I think about football (I'm assuming the one I just watched).  I say I hate it, which turns out to be the correct answer, and for a while we chat about how sports are dumb and awful.  Out of the infinite combinations of brilliant repartee and body language, there must be one that led to me having a threesome with these two girls.  I didn't find it.  And if I had known what was good for me, I would've stayed in my room and pondered that.

But I didn't know what was good for me.  Really, I wanted the opposite.  I had it up to here with going to bed early, waking up early, and being constantly on the move.  I wanted to get some blood in my teeth.  Some grit in my bones.  In a trip already marked by irresponsible hedonism, I was going to really cut loose.

I leave my flip flops and wallet behind, taking with me only cash and the bottle of Xanax.  Remember that I am 22 years old, and a relatively common sedative still seems like a cool, subversive thing to have on my person. Returning to the beach I can't find my new best friends, but on the plus side, there's a foam cannon going, and that's never not fun.  I won't see my ex-new best friends again.  Still, foam cannon.

The beach is maybe a quarter mile long, with bars at regular intervals each hosting their own separate parties on the sand.  Like the riverside bars in Vang Vieng, each provides a slightly different selection of music and drunken activities.  The foam cannon is blasting away around the most popular bars, where the usual soundtrack of Top 40 Dance is playing (before I leave Ko Pha Ngan, I'll have heard "Empire State of Mind" far more than human ears were meant to handle).  Also like Vang Vieng, everyone seems to be wearing Tubing Vang Vieng wife beaters, but something about foam makes it so hard to judge.  Trillions of bubbles had me loving my fellow man, be he douchebag or no.

After wading around for a bit and realizing how hard it is to dance in the vile quicksand that foam turns beach into, I rest on a foam-adjacent picnic bench with a 3 dollar bucket drink and pop a couple Xanax for fun.  The whiskey in the bucket is lethally strong and tastes similarly I imagine to xenomorph acid blood, but for 3 dollars you just can't beat that value.  As I sit and murder my liver, a little Thai girl marches over to me, and thrusts a travel-size Connect Four board in my face.

"You play me!  One hundred baht!" she demands, with a vicious sneer.  She couldn't have been older than twelve.

Not to brag, but I'm pretty great at Connect Four.  When I worked in Korea I used to play a Connect Four app on a friend's iPhone in between rounds of darts, and I got fairly good.  Good enough to beat some punk little girl, and win back some of that boxing money I foolishly gambled away.

We play, and it's over with the speed of a car crash.  The little girl slaughters me.  But that's to be expected. I'm getting drunk, I haven't played in awhile.  She challenges me again, and it's my turn to smile.  I clear my mind, focus my chi, and gather my wits.  I'm ready for her.

She ruins me like an insane warlord cruelly ignoring the Hague Conventions.  I give the little girl her blood money, not quite understanding what just happened.  She gloats, the sadistic mini-harpy, and challenges me yet again, but I wave her off.  As the pre-teen Connect Four shark leaves to find a new victim, an older Thai woman approaches me.

This mysterious new stranger is pretty in a gentle, relaxed way, and her age could be anywhere from late 20s to early 40s on account of her trim body and fair skin.  She stands next to me on the bench to keep foam away from her dress.  I think we have a conversation, but at this point the Xanax is kicking in, making a peaty stew of my thoughts.  The gist I got was she thought I was very cute, and wanted to know if I lived nearby.  I gesture towards the Venus, and she grabs my hand, leading me along the beach.

I was fucked up, but come on.  Of course I knew she was a prostitute.  But, I kind of wanted to see how things would play out.  Plus, the Xanax had me thinking about making snow angels in soft sheets, and everything felt pretty good.  After we had walked about half the beach, I tipped my hand.

"Yeah, I wish I had some money, but I'm broke," I slip seamlessly (probably) into our conversation.  Then, with somewhat less subtlety, I bark: "Broke!  No money!"

She stops walking and drops my hand.  "You have no money?" she asks, incredulously.

"Nope!"  I give her my best golly-gee-shucks face.  Your move.

She laughs and shakes her head, suddenly looking much older.  Her blue dress whirls a 180 and she walks back to the party.  I wonder what I expected.  That, really.  The Xanax keeps my spirits bobbing along, and I move on to another party.

I'll never forget you, headless Thai beach-ho

The night speeds up as I guzzle more doomsday whiskey and dance in the sand.  I find myself handing out Xanax to a small group, wondering if I can convince them it's something cooler.  Unfortunately, one girl (impressively) recognizes it for what it is, and with that my bottle of friend-makers is rendered useless.  In hindsight there's some moral grayness about handing out unidentified pills, but then they were only being taken by people who had no interest in knowing what it was.  No harm (probably), no foul (right?).

The foam cannon stops, but only to make room for something greater.  Something jaw-dropping.  Something I had specifically been warned against.

YES.

Fire rope-jumping.

A couple local boys unraveled a 20-foot length of tightly-wound cloth, poured out a couple gallons of kerosene from a couple battered aluminum buckets, and, taking posts on some raised wooden platforms opposite each other, lit the sucker.

They started swinging the rope, slowly, in half-time with the music, and invited participants.  Anyone could join.  I watched as the first few jumpers ran in.  Most ran out almost immediately, but some tried to keep with it.  The boys swinging the rope would sadistically increase the pace, until the jumper gave up and dived out, or fucked up and got nailed by the rope.  Which, if you've forgotten, is on goddamn fire.

But other than that, pretty safe.

You can only drink and watch that sort of thing before the bug gets into you, under your skin, pulling you like just such a freaking moth.  I was a drummer once, you might think.  My sense of rhythm is impeccable.  I'm practically a human metronome.  You just might think those things, and jump in.  I did.

And it was fine.  At first I do the weenie thing of jumping and jumping right back out, but then I stay for a few swings, getting used to it, or as used as you can get to being inside a flaming tornado in front of an audience.  Then they start to increase the pace, and it isn't so fine.  The weight of all that whiskey and Xanax is dragging down my limbs, and they can't keep up.  I feel a horrible sting across my ankle as the rope slaps into it at full speed.  My legs tripping over themselves, I sprawl onto the sand, as the swingers quickly pull the rope taught and off of me.

I scramble to my feet and dash out of the danger zone, where the rope is swinging again and people are already jumping back in for more.  Normally, when the rope hits you, it bounces off too quickly to do any actual damage, thus preventing most serious injuries.  I check my feet, and to my relief they're fine, with just a few singed hairs that smell fantastic.

The sun rises.  As I watch, I'm approached by a partying Thai girl, young, between 18 and 20.  I'm a little wary this time, but she seems innocent enough.  She just wants to keep partying.  My veins are still pumping heavy waves of adrenaline, so I'm inclined to agree.  Sure, she's a local, but to assume that she has ulterior motives would be pretty darn prejudiced.  I'm just not that kind of guy.

The girl calls a friend over, a boy about the same age, and the two of them suggest we go somewhere.  As I look around for any place that might still be open, I look down at my stomach: I have a 3-inch burn splashed across the left side of my abdomen, right above my belly button.  As it turns out, while you might not get burned if the rope bounces off, the same is not true if it bounces off and then lands on your stomach while you're still dazed on the ground.

I can't do anything but laugh and point at the blisters forming across the surface of the ruby-red streak.  Before I say anything, the boy reaches a hand out to my stomach and pops the largest blister with his extra-long fingernails.

For the first time, I feel the searing pain of the burn explode under my skin.  The boy laughs as I think hateful thoughts about him and his nasty fingernails that only a gross jerk would grow out and the multitudes of hellish bacteria that no doubt live therein.  He and the girl give me some of their bucket drink.  I exist to forgive.

They buy a water, and offer it to me.  I can't remember the last time I drank something that didn't taste like Red Bull and battery acid, and take a couple grateful glugs.  Then the two of them ask if we can all go back to my place.  God dammit.  Maybe there's something to be said for profiling.  Even if I had wanted to try the no-money gambit again, and I wasn't starting to crash hard from the adrenaline and the Xanax and the booze O! the booze, there was still the matter of this extra guy.  I give a vague answer about "some place on the beach," and hand back the water bottle, preparing to walk off.  The girl picks up on my disinterest, and exits.

However, the boy keeps up with me, pressing me for details about where I'm staying.  My body is weak, exhausted, at the brink, and the boy dances around me like a demon, goading me about some awful "party".  My brain fumbles and spills through thoughts like a hobo rummaging a dumpster for cans.  Where did the girl go?  Why is the boy still here?  When you have a boy and a girl trying to pick you up for sex, removing the girl is the worst possible solution.  Then the boy strikes like a sexual viper and grabs my crotch, cutting suddenly through my mind-fog.  It occurs to me that everything about this is terrible.

I can't let him know where I'm staying, and if I tried to fight him off, or do anything more strenuous than keep walking slowly in a more-or-less straight line, all my joints would cease to be and I would collapse onto the ground in a dead pile of useless limbs.  I try to tell him off, but either he ignores me, or more likely the language center of my brain has finally dissolved, drooling out a monotone of word soup.  Desperate, I look for an escape.

We pass a hotel complex with an open pool, and I make my move.  "This is...it," I slur.  "You wait...here.  Yes..."

If there's a pool, there must be a nearby bathroom.  I find it, and lock the door behind me.  I drop to the floor, and start waiting the gigolo out.  A janitor bangs on the door, telling me to leave.  I keep waiting.  It's all I can do.

Time passes, maybe five minutes, maybe twenty.  I emerge from hiding to an angry janitor and no one else.  I'm free.

It's past 7 a.m. and it's with great relief and the very last of my energy that I make the rest of the walk to Venus, and pass out immediately on hitting my bed, maybe even before.

Morning comes, like a bitch.  By the time I finally muster and get out of bed, it's 5 p.m.  Stumbling to the bathroom, I survey the damage.

In my pockets, I can't find the bottle of Xanax, or any cash left.  Probably the boy-whore stole it, I figure.  Maybe those weren't totally innocent crotch grabs.  In my defense, it's hard to notice anything else when a relentless catamite has his talons around your shaft.  I remember starting the night with about 50 bucks in cash, but I feel worse about the Xanax, it being a gift and all.

I do find one of my bet receipts from the fight.  A handy reminder of the general consistency of decisions I made last night.

You are NOT my boy, Blue.

Outside on the steps, I see a huge dead cicada being eaten by a swarm of ants.  I can identify.

That's the feeling.

Tomorrow's the Full Moon Party.  Christ.

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."

Fried Locusts and Other Culture/HANOI - VANG VIENG

To say that I woke up refreshed would be an understatement.  I woke up as the earthly avatar of Contentedness and Well-Being.  Rather than a hangover from a night of smoking and drinking on a swaying boat, I felt more refreshed and invigorated than I had in a long time.  Maybe Southeast Asia turns all that booze and THC into vitamins, or maybe I was feeling the effects of Eating A Goddamn Snake Heart.  Regardless, I felt great, with just a touch of existential hopelessness, because oh yeah I watched The Deer Hunter right before going to bed.

And the view waking up wasn't too bad neither.

One of our last sights on the tour is The Kissing Rocks, which, let me describe them for you, look a bit like two rocks kissing.  As we came near they kissed:

Like so.

And then parted.

Like so.  Oh, and there's a story about how this is supposed to be sad, if you want to feel bad about rocks.

Our last sightseeing over, the hosts of the cruise finally let us have our breakfast.  But first: cooking class!

Work for your food!  Di di mao!  DI DI MAO!

Guess what a bunch of tired white people on a tour don't want to do before they eat?  Learn how to roll the spring rolls they've been waiting to eat.  I wish I could've been cool like the German non-couple who abstained, but I wasn't.  I rolled a bunch of damn spring rolls while the snake energy coursing through my blood hissed and left me in disgust.

After eating breakfast, including the spring rolls we had collectively made (and for which I was complimented on my rolling skills by the tour guide, natch), our ship made for the mainland.  While waiting for the docking boat, an ambiguously gendered child of an Australian family wandered over to where I was drinking beer and playing my Nintendo DS.  S/he had never played Mario before, and was able to quickly and soundly defeat my theory that Anyone Can Play Mario Immediately After Picking It Up.

"Who is the turtle?" "He's evil, he stole the princess, and HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?!"

After about five minutes and a frustrated exclamation of "I HATE the mushrooms!", the boy/girl gave up on Mario forever.  Sad news, but dry your tears Shigeru Miyamoto, at least the kid seems to have found a strong anti-drug stance.

From the dock our group is taken by van back to our individual lodgings.  There's a conversation between some Aussies saying they came north to Asia for the heat, and an American man blown away by this revelation ("That's amazing!  We go SOUTH to get warmer!").  Shut up, you're judging him too.  Back at our hostel, we ask the front desk where's a good place to get pho.  After a week in Vietnam, somehow I'd still only had it the one time.  The restaurant Highway 61 is recommended to us, so we grab a cab and hightail our starving asses over there, and learn that pho is not actually on their menu.

So, instead we buy a bunch of son tinh liqueurs.  Same same?

Rather than pho, the menu is filled with an assortment of unusual items that at first I assumed to be targeted towards tourists, but a lot of them didn't even seem to be Vietnamese in origin.  Like, say, ostrich steak.

Not a bad steak, really.

And barbecued frog legs.

Legitimately delicious.

We did buy a local dish though: a healthy serving of fried locusts.

If you say you like these you're lying (but that's okay because I did too so I would look cool)

They were a little like popcorn, if popcorn had way, way more legs and tasted like dead bugs.  Sarah didn't want us to be "those people" though (the kind of people who order the wacky foreign dish only to not eat it and forever brand themselves in the eyes of the restaurant staff as White Tourist Devils), so rather than leave a shamefully unfinished plate of perfectly good locusts on our table, she wrapped up the remainder (re: 75%) in a paper napkin and stealthily threw the greasy bundle in an alley after we exited.  Offending the waiter and instigating a race war: Averted.  Image of a giant, bipedal locust standing on the side of the road and shedding a single tear: Terrifying.

After dinner we headed over to the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre for their Water Puppet Show.

All three words of the title are startlingly accurate.

The theater was surprisingly packed, even though there are several performances throughout the day, and even the show is...kind of boring.  The show being in a combination of Vietnamese and song didn't make things easy to follow, but I do remember a bald man with a gigantic head:

In the upper right, with the gigantic head.

And in puppet form.  Horrible, smiling puppet form.

And then at one point some of the puppets were on fire, but the thrill of danger was dashed on account of the whole show being in water.

Whomp.

After a long night of cultural appreciation and annoying fellow theater-goers when cracking smuggled beers, we spent our last night in Hanoi and left in the early, early morning for Laos.  At the airport I'm stopped because of a bottle of sunscreen in my carry-on that's over the liquid limit, so I tell them "It's only half-full."  Somehow, that works, which I'll be honest, I've never seen before.  But then, the security lady did have eyes that could see my body and face and skin.  At this point, sunscreen was pretty much my spirit animal.

From the Vientiane airport we book a bus to Vang Vieng, where we'll be staying the next few days.  We wait for a bit at a nearby cafe for our ride, while I eat flan and notice that my debit card isn't working.

Also the cat at my feet had huge tits.  I'm painting a portrait, guys.

I had enough money for the next few days, but it was still a concern.  But, there was nothing I could do at the moment, so I got on the bus and hoped the ATMs in Vang Vieng might work instead.

The ride takes about 4 hours, which was sufficiently uncomfortable and tiring enough that once arriving in town we rented a room at the first inn we came to.  At eight dollars a night, not too shabby.  Granted, the room did have a giant, dimly-lit stone bathroom with paint peeling everywhere, so it looked like our room was adjacent to the set of a Saw movie, but hey.  Eight dollars.  I take a nap, and get ready to go out.

Vang Vieng is famous for its river, which is lined with water-side bars and perfect for tubing, but it was far too late in the evening by now to check it out.  Now, everyone was wandering around the banana pancake stalls and Friends bars, another credit to Vang Vieng's fame.  Friends bars are restaurant/bars where you can lie down on pillows and watch old reruns on Friends.  Why Friends?  Because there's nothing more comforting to an overprivileged white tourist high out of his mind than an old episode of Friends.  Why is he high out of his mind?  Because most of the places here also serve drugs, that's why.

My opium-den fingernails were ready.

Some travelers will warn that, despite the prevalence of weed and what have you, rolling papers are exceedingly rare.  I'm here to tell you this just isn't true.  We saw them at a number of convenience stores, and even being sold at the front counter of our hotel (the same one that put a sign in our room warning not to smoke narcotics).  We wandered through the main strip for an hour or so, and I took note that Family Guy and Two and a Half Men had done a good job of supplanting Friends on many of the TVs.  If you want to know what it felt like to be the world's most pointless social archaeologist, it was making me hungry.  So we stopped in a restaurant.

Not the typical tablecloth for a hive of scum and villainy.

Sarah and I are each given a menu, but Sarah's turns out to have a little something extra inside it.

HELLO!

Fighting the urge to just order "one of everything", I get a pizza and a "strong happy shake".

Strong=Tastes like sipping on a bag of lawnmower clippings

The pizza was a disappointment, but that shake...I went comatose.  For the rest of the night, everything looked a little like this:

...Phoebe?  Is that you?