Escape From Myanmar/INLE LAKE

Now bound for Inle Lake, I arrange a taxi to the airport for 6,000 ks, a little less than a tenth of all the money I have left. Inle Lake is famous because it has a lake, and people live in and around the lake. You can take a tour of this lake, and see the people living in and around it. For some reason, this seemed really exciting at the time. Onboard the plane, an American girl across from me and I talk for a bit. She asks if I want to share a cab, so that's taken care of. Her name is Tiana, and she's from Santa Barbara. We share the taxi with a French-Canadian couple, one of whom is a screenwriter who is noteworthy because he is the only person I've ever met who's heard of the obscure Jay Baruchel film The Trotsky. He says he's been to Myanmar a dozen times, because it's good for writing. No distractions.

The dream.

He also jokes that he's graduated from backpacking into mid-range accommodations, and Tiana and I watch jealously as the couple is dropped off in front of their hotel, and greeted with glasses of cold lime juice. Meanwhile, we get dropped off at some dusty shit-heap that Lonely Planet claims has the cheapest roofed spaces that can qualify as rooms.

Turns out they're full. Across the street is Little Inn, which charges a whopping 12,000 ks a night (if you'll recall, I'm down to less than 30,000 at this point). They're still cleaning the rooms though, so after leaving our bags and "promising" to book a room, we have some time to look around. Tiana is somehow even more keen than I am to bargain hunt, and us two badasses of thrift set off on a price-checking expedition the likes of which this fucking town has never seen.

The search is confounding at first, because of the number of non-licensed guesthouses which aren't allowed to rent to foreigners. Of course, they don't tell you that. Instead, you'll walk ten minutes up the road to a place, hopeful and sweaty, only to be told at the desk, "It is not suitable for you." And while Lonely Planet's prices are wildly out of date, they do accurately predict we'll run into the aggressive owner of a certain Teakwood Guesthouse (teakwood! I know what that is now!). When checking out their establishment, this old pitbull of a lady comes out to give us the business. She makes a big show of reluctantly dropping her initial asking price from 15k to 12k, but no further! She is adamant. After we've pointed out some of the other quasi-lovely places we've looked at, she launches into the hard sell:

"We have hot shower! Powerful shower! Delicious breakfast! You like! Little Inn not good shower, not good breakfast!"

She stopped just short of cursing the ancestor's of Little Inn's proprietors for their contribution to a substandard lineage of hoteliers, but we were unswayed. Not literally unswayed, because this lady could really push you around, but we moved on to the next guesthouse down the road. They're called Joy, and their name gives happy coincidence when we find they have the lowest price yet: 8,000 ks. Tiana immediately has them hold a room for us, so we can go get our bags. But I'm not satisfied. Not quite yet. There's still one more entry in this Lonely Planet that sounds like they could be cheaper yet, and that's Gypsy Inn. Tiana is reluctant, but acquiesces. I can see there's a thirst for savings in her bones that can never be fully slaked.

Unfortunately, Gypsy Inn only matches the 8k offered by Joy. We start to walk off, but some people checking out ask us if we're planning to stay, and mention that they have complimentary pancakes with their breakfast. Well then, ladies and gentlemen. Show's over, doors are to your left, we do not validate parking.

Pancake Town, population: Hungry

Oh, and Tiana manages to talk them into giving us a room with an attached bathroom. That's cool, but it's no free and delicious breakfast staple. She also retrieves our bags from Little Inn and deals with the fallout of canceling the room they just prepared for us, because I am a pussy and my conflict radar is pinging like an internet utility testing the reachability of a destination network host. After the awkward-dust has settled, we grab lunch at Inle Pancake Kingdom, because synchronicity is important to me. Also, I keep seeing the signs, and I am an advertiser's wet dream. You know who buys every novelty "limited edition" candy bar, or fast food menu item? I am customer zero. I had a bowl of Oops! All Berries once, and am doomed to roam the Earth in search of a new marketing gimmick that can recapture that simple magic. Although, I do order a crepe at the Kingdom, so maybe there is hope for me yet.

After I take a nap, Tiana finds me and says she found a Polish couple to split the cost of the lake tour. Score! Although it occurs to me I'm basically vestigial to Tiana's backpacking adventure. This is confirmed when she tells me the next morning over breakfast that she's moving out of our room so she can get her own place. She says it's because she hasn't shared a room in a long time, and doesn't like the feeling (and I promise you, Dear Reader, I slept like a traumatized eunuch the whole night, curled up fetal on my edge of the bed like always). Apparently, she was worried about me hearing/seeing her tossing and turning the previous night. Could be, or it could have something to do with me that she doesn't like, but the astounding unlikeliness of that...Perish the thought. Insecure tosser-turner she is.

Tiana and I meet the Polish couple at the appointed pier. I don't recall their names, but the guy was alright. His girlfriend, on the other hand, was a furious hellion who has never in her life been privy to merriment or good cheer. This is not helped when, upon meeting our boat captain/tour guide, he asks where we're going.

Towards the water, I reckon.

Never a great start to a tour in my experience, having to tell the tour guide where to go. After the Polish girl has screamed at him to the point where I start to feel sorry for the poor dumb guide, he takes us to a jewelry workshop.

We aren't long in the water before we see the one thing that makes this lake special- the local fishermen have a custom where they row the boat with their legs wrapped around the oar. It looks a little something like this:

Hell if I know if it's more effective, or even as effective, as any other kind of arm-centric rowing method, but it's kind of neat. Unfortunately, leg-rowing sets the bar a little too high for the rest of the lake. The jewelry workshop is pretty much like every other tourist trap in Thailand that a tuk-tuk driver will insist on taking you to before your destination, except that the building is on stilts. Because it's in a lake. So far, the 4,000 ks I paid for my seat on the boat may not have been the soundest investment.

Take it all in.

Our tour guide waits for us outside, playing a game on a beat-up wooden board. He takes us next to a textile workshop where the looms are worked by local indigenous people who have those neck rings that make them look like those aliens at the end of A.I., but poor and exploited. Although the tour guide says they are so happy to have jobs and be working, so what the fuck do I know.

Nothing, really.

Next on our docket is a massive blow-out from one female Polish passenger, upon learning that we are going to a market, but not the market she wants. Apparently there is a really big market that tours usually do, but it's only open on certain weekdays. Our guide insists that today is not one of those days, but she isn't about to let the concept of time dissuade her. No, our guide finally has to motor the boat over to where the big market normally is, so she can see that it is indeed closed before she'll relent.

The market we do go to is plenty big, though.

After passing aisle upon aisle of goods both tourist-centric and not, our group stumbles upon an area far from the entrance where a bit of shady gambling is taking place. Naturally, this is the coolest thing I've seen all day, so I snap a quick picture. The Polish guy makes the sensible/dumb mistake of asking if he can take picture, and immediately he's shut down and told what we're seeing is pretty illegal, and "The government maybe make problems."

I hereby declare this blog to be Fighting the Power.

The game drawing the most spectacle involves people placing bets on the six pictures you can see above, and then watching as three humongous dice, with those pictured animal graphics on their sides, are sent tumbling down a ramp. If your picture is face up, you win. It's fun to watch, fun to play, and the odds are almost certainly better than most Vegas games. Good on you, underground gambling ring.

There's talk of some nearby stupas that are supposed to be worth a look, so we go off in search of them with the help of some child monks. The stupas have been completely overgrown with green shrubbery, the white paint weather-beaten and exposing the brown clay brick underneath. A pretty good photo op.

The kids of course ask for some money afterwards, and it almost seems like this whole spiritually-superior enlightened monk thing is a crock of shit, and children will always be children and people are all the same everywhere. But then, that would imply that the backpacker quest for interesting people and exotic cultures carries with it an underlying racist fascination with the Other...Woof, best not to dwell on that too much. Check out this kid looking creepy as balls:

After that tiny peak of excitement, the tour slides again into tedium. There's a boat workshop...

And a weaving workshop...

And an iron workshop...

And a cigar workshop...

Although that last one wasn't so bad. They never pressured us into buying anything, gave out free leaf cigars, and watching these ladies roll actually made for an impressive show.

Before you start feeling like you just wasted precious minutes of your life reading about a kinda-disappointing boat tour, let me tell you the name of our final destination: The Jumping Cat Monastery. At least, that's what we heard it called at the time, but if it isn't their name then it should be. Clearly this monastery had been struggling to break away from the competition, and some young monk dynamo stepped up to the plate in a big way. Bet he was looking pretty pleased with himself come Christmas Bonus time. Or not, because asceticism.

What the fuck was I saying? Oh yeah, we go in, the head monk rings a bell, a woman comes out, and she holds a small hoop out for some cats to jump through.

This must be like gazing upon the face of God for some specific people.

And that was it. Not the most exciting tour, but definitely plenty of stops, some weird boat-rowing, some illegal gambling, some jumping cats...I've seen worse. But this Polish chick is not satisfied. She demands to see more, who knows what but she wants to see it dammit. Her persistence convinces the guide to take us to a coffee shop on the lake, and the whole time he seems as mystified as myself about why she is so keen on absorbing as much tourist trap bullshit as possible. She mutters to herself the whole way, and I learn that Polish swearing sounds very similar to Russian swearing. We drink some instant coffee, and the guide takes a nap. Tour over.

Still, these guys were pretty neat.

Back at the guesthouse, I wait for Tiana to come back, and try to think of ways I can convince her to stay, lest I be forced homeless since I can't cover the cost of the room by myself. Unfortunately, while pacing frantically around I notice that all of her stuff is already gone. I confirm with the front desk that she has indeed checked out. Panicking, I ask if they have any single rooms, and how much they cost. They tell me they understand my situation, and I can keep the room I'm already in, for the half cost that I'm already paying. Cool relief washes over me, and allow myself to relax for a few precious seconds. Now I need to find a share taxi to the airport for two days from now. Should be a piece of cake.

I check a dozen places, and none of them have an open spot in a taxi. There is no cake, and the bakery's been burned down by anti-cake fanatics. Teakwood mentions that a Dutch pair was looking, so I leave a note for them at the desk. While I'm wandering around town in silent hysterics, I run into the Polish couple. We have a nice, stressful dinner at a chapati joint where the Polish girl, who of course is vegetarian, thinks her food has meat and screams accusations for a much longer amount of time than you would think a person could physically be angry. When I get a beer at Gypsy after dinner, however, I'm given 100 ks extra in change. Maybe my luck is turning around.

The next morning I eat breakfast with a British photographer, and regale him with my tale of woe, the whole stolen backpack bit. He counters with a story about he too was robbed in Thailand: he lost $19k USD worth of camera equipment. No one likes a one-upper, guy. He says he'll come by later so we can rent bicycles together. He doesn't.

I did meet some people who would be my friends though.

After some more fruitless inquiring about taxis, I decide to just stay in. My new netbook with its bootleg copy of Windows has shockingly become corrupted, so I take two Xanax, ignore my hunger pangs, and lie in my mildewed bed finishing The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and listening to Aphex Twin. I feel like the coolest, hungriest motherfucker alive. For lunch, a side of Mandalay Rum. No food, need to conserve money. I think it was Matthew Lesko who let me in on that little trick.

Life-hack.

Somehow, I pass out and wake around 9:30, too late to do anything about a taxi now. Which I need tomorrow morning. I ask the Gypsy people, and they suggest getting my own for 15k. In fact, all I have left now is 15k, and I'll need 10k for taxis when I get back to Yangon. This will not do.

Also, I cracked my sunglasses. The seas are pretty rocky right now for the USS Jamie.

In the morning I resolve to keep my wits about me. Someone has to have a taxi, and everything will be fine. I will not be trapped in a third-world military dictatorship with no money or place to stay. You know, hopefully.

I take a shower to relax, but when I touch the hot water knob my arm spasms, and an intense pain rockets through my body. Confused, I touch it again, because I never played with wall sockets as a kid and learned that valuable lesson. I'm electrocuted again, and in my head I can hear Mathieu singing "Danger! High Voltage", mockingly. I wouldn't have expected that in a country with so little electricity to spare, that they would splurge some just to fuck with me on this particular morning.

My flight from Inle Lake back to Yangon is at 10:30 am, so I check out nice and early at 6. It takes about an hour to get there, so that gives me about 2 hours to find a ride and get to the airport before the check-in counter closes. Should be no sweat. Just don't think about what happens if you fail, Jamie. Dammit, you went and thought about it. Now just look at all this sweat.

The guesthouse gives me directions to a pick-up stop where I might be able to hop on a truck that's airport-bound. It's not a lot to go on, but it's something. On the way there, I see some guys outside of Teakwood loading into a taxi. The Dutch pair! I approach them as un-desperately as I possibly can and ask if their taxi's full. They say they only have 3 people, and can totally take a fourth. Finally seeing a ray of hope, I ask the driver if it's cool for me to jump in. He says no. The Dutch guys shrug their Dutch shoulders. "Sorry, mate," one of them says. I watch as they drive off, fourth seat completely empty. Sorry, mate. Sorry mate.

Spirits drop even lower when I get to the pick-up stop, ask which truck goes to the airport, and I'm told this is the wrong spot, and I need to walk up the street for the airport pick-up. No worries, I'm sure it totally exists. Let's go there now. About a half mile up the road there's another pick-up stop, and everyone here says there is no airport pick-up, because apparently I'm in a surrealist nightmare from which there is no escape. Completely out of leads, I'm left milling about and badgering these guys for a ride.It's now past 7, and I will fucking learn Burmese if I have to, but I am getting out of this goddamn country.

A couple of the touts say they'll take me, for 10k. It's difficult to describe how utterly void of fucks I was at this moment. Like...a celibate black hole. That's the look I gave these guys. I tell them I have five thousand, and I would like to go to the airport for five thousand. They say eight thousand.

Maybe I can just knock one of them out and steal his motorcycle. I say five. They say seven.

If I am stuck here, I am going to make a throne out of all of your femurs and sup wine from your hollowed-out skull, for I will crown myself BattleLord of this infernal place and fight you very violently. I say five. They say six.

Oh god, what am I thinking, I'm going to die here. I say five again, ready to beg on my knees. One of them must sense my last shred of humanity about to slip, and directs me across the street to where a scooter driver will do it for five. I find this fabled gentleman, and miracle of miracles, he says he'll do it. We just need to go to his house for an extra helmet. Okay. Okay. Okay. We can do that. Let's get a helmet, and then my heart will stop exploding.

As an added bonus, he gets me to the airport in half the time it's supposed to take. What was I so worried about? I read until the Air Mandalay counter opens, whereupon I'm actually patted down in security for the first time in this country. After everything it took to get here, these banal airport procedures are somehow immensely comforting.

I manage to share a taxi from the airport in Yangon with an old woman, maintaining my $5 limit. At Sakura, I pack up the various things I left with Madoka while she watches a DVD of Cider House Rules. She's making sushi for a potluck and gives me a couple pieces to try, an almost cruel gesture since all I've had to eat all day are some stale chocolate cookies in the airport. Soon, though, I'll be living a life (night) of 5-star luxury. Like I deserve. At 5 pm I leave to catch my 7 pm flight, using my last 5 dollars.

This is all I have left. Two unusable shit-bills totaling 40 cents USD. Clearly, planning is for wusses.

It should come as no surprise by now, that this is the first flight of my entire trip that gets delayed. The plane finally departs around 8:30 pm, but this being Air Asia, I'm given nothing to eat or drink, and have no money to buy anything. Water in the airport costs 500 ks, so I'm nearly as thirsty as I am hungry. Seated next to me on the flight is a gentleman who was smart enough to buy a meal with his ticket, so I get to spend the entire flight watching him noisily slurp instant noodles through betel-stained teeth, which I'm pretty sure is the 2nd or 3rd circle of Dante's hell.

Of course, the flight takes longer than estimated, and we finally arrive in Kuala Lumpur around 1 am. Not great, but still early enough for a good night's sleep before check-out. I am finally able to withdraw some precious, wonderful cash from an ATM, with which I buy a bus ticket to the Golden Triangle, KL's main shopping and nightlife district, and where my hotel is located. Unfortunately, the bus from the airport doesn't leave for another half hour, and I drastically underestimated how long the bus ride would take. And the subsequent transfer to another shuttle.

All told, the shuttle finally pulls up to the lavish entrance of the Shangri-La Hotel at 3 am. The reception is waiting for me and oh-so-happy to help me with my bags, and oh we're so sorry to hear about your flight delay, yessir we can absolutely offer you a late checkout at 4 pm. That French-Canadian was right, it feels damn fine to graduate from backpacking accommodations.

They give you fresh fruit in your room! Like I'm some kind of Apple Royalty or...a Kiwi King.

Just look at all this stuff I found in the closet! And none of it's covered in lice or semen! Yet.

Now I have a choice: stay up using the first decent internet I've had in weeks to masturbate in relaxed luxury, or sleep in this bed that feels better than taking a shit on ecstasy, and be fully rested for the free gourmet breakfast buffet that ends at 10 am.

You read that right. Better than a shit on ecstasy.

I ain't no fancy man. I masturbate and sleep for 3 hours so I can make the free buffet. It is rapidly occurring to my hungry, sleep-deprived mind that this whole 5-star thing may be wasted on me. Still, it's nice to pretend, if just for a night, that I am a Kiwi King.

Frogress Is Made/KO PHA NGAN

Enough sitting around. I book a boat tour of the island, especially interested in a series of waterfalls that are supposed to be spectacular, and a special beach that some tourist brochures had me really psyched about. Anything to get out of Haad Rin for a bit.

An awful heat hangs over the morning, a real crack-sluicer, as I wait for the tour van to pick me up. The van stops at a place called Friendly Resort near Haad Rin Nok, the sunset beach, where I meet the rest of the tour group. They register my presence with some surprise, as it turns out everyone else going is from a travel package group, making me the outsider butting into their planned boat ride. Play it cool, Jamie. Don't let 'em see your crack sweat. The head of their travel group makes some introductions, but I confess I was too distracted by the very angry cold sore on her lip to memorize a dozen British names on the spot.

Once the boat leaves the dock, the waters start to chop and wave. Our captain has a chat with the cold sore girl, which she relays back to us: Due to possibility of getting trapped by a storm, we won't be stopping at the waterfalls or the special beach. Alright, I probably had that coming. Anyways, I have bigger concerns: This is the first time I've worn my swim trunks since the night I tried my hand at fire rope-jumping, and I never noticed that a 3-inch hole was burned into the crotch, so now I get to spend the rest of the boat ride playing How Many British Strangers Are Going To See My White American Dick.

Quit lookin' perv

The boat pulls into our first stop at Bottle Beach, where the group is led to lunch at a beachside open-air restaurant. After eating a plate of fried rice, I find myself back on the boat sunbathing with a couple other guys from the group, chatting about the Dragon Tattoo movies, The Inbetweeners, the general state of British film and television, and...goddammit. They were nerds. Stupid, smart, interesting nerds. Still, baby steps. I was making progress. Friend progress. Frogress, if you will. No, definitely friend progress.

The tour stops next at a snorkeling spot about a half mile from shore. Masks and flippers are handed out for everyone who wants to get wet. While half the boat is jumping in, the captain starts throwing bride slices out onto the water, setting off a feeding frenzy among the sputtering neon-banded fish nearby. Really, the opposite of everything I had just learned about not disturbing marine life in scuba diving classes. I watch the sight for a bit before diving in myself.

Sorry, Environment.

The area has a great deal of coral, but in lifeless gray-green hues, like the pea-soup screen of an old Game Boy. Still, the water feels great after the day's oppressive heat. Back on the boat, the woman who we'll just call Cold Sore Sally is warning her travel group about fire rope swinging. Apparently one of the Thai rope swingers she knows dropped the rope for whatever reason, only to have it coil around his leg, while his jeans were soaked in kerosene. His legs were horribly burnt, and being too poor for medical care, became infected.  In the end, both legs had to be amputated.

Meanwhile some other assholes complain about their boo-boos.

Snorkeling turns out to be the last activity for the day, and the boat heads back to port. Almost as soon as we start moving, I realize I have to pee, and this is one of those apocalyptic all-consuming needs to pee. Without any handy sinks around, I consider my options. I could try and sit as nonchalantly as possible, legs crossed tighter than the Gordian Knot, feet spasming uncontrollably, and wait for my kidneys to explode, or I could simply announce to the others my basic bodily needs, and have a beautiful, soul-soaring piss over the side of the boat, announcing myself before all creation. I go with not peeing, which somehow feels more shameful, and wait to die.

After three or four years, we come in sight of the dock. "Does anyone else feel like jumping off the boat right now, they have to pee so bad?" someone pipes up. All round the boat, every single person shouts and/or painfully moans their agreement. To think, what would have happened had I been the pioneer to let it fly over the side? What could I have started? Imagine the sight; the boat floating magically, wonderfully into the air, carried aloft by the sheer force of so many desperate golden arcs, our ship soaring out of this world and into the story-swapping sessions of grizzled sailors at their drunkest, telling the impossible tale with hushed voice into an empty whiskey bottle. 

Our group disembarks and the dozen of us all crabwalk over and around each other to the nearest bathrooms. As much as I'd like to make plans to meet up with my new nerd-friends again, my bladder trumps all. I ditch everyone else running into their bungalows to have a good, old-fashioned public urine-bonanza right there on the pier.

Now the narrative is going to try and stumble on.  In the meantime, here's a crab spitting bubbles out of its mouth.

"Blurble"

Feeling like a sufficiently active and outgoing human being once again, I eat dinner for one at an Italian place called Mona Lisa. I order their homemade limoncello cream and chocolate mousse, but they're out of both, and I can only get regular limoncello, and tiramisu. That's the story of this whole trip, really. If you were just reading this blog until I nailed the perfect travel analogy, because you're the most weirdly specific reader in the world, well here's your stopping point, because home run!

Life is pain.

The ritual continues; paying 5 dollar ATM fees to get drunk in the afternoon, and by night dodging the Thais playing badminton in the street and the dogs sleeping on the beach. I'm starting to recognize the locals, and for better or worse they're recognizing me.

The next afternoon I'm having lunch in a Friends bar called Lazy House. On the TV is a UK Jackass-alike called Balls of Steel, which is a lot like Jackass, minus the charisma, personalities, creativity, or humor. While I sit and consider how far-gone a mind has to be to get pretentious about Jackass, the Lazy House bartender starts up a conversation with me. He confirms for me that the island is indeed now filled with Israelis and Estonians (?) for reasons unknown to him, and shares anecdotes about how after the Full Moon Party he'll find the restaurant filled with people after closing who just seem to wander in, despite the walls and furniture being put up.  He also complains bitterly about the same people who stop in, look at the menu, and then leave to find places that are 10 or 15 baht cheaper. "Assholes," I agree, all of a sudden very worried that he can see into my soul, and the guilt therein.

Along with a pork kebab, I order a few cocktails, including a mai tai, which has become something of a game for me. I've found that every bar and restaurant has them on the menu, but will make them completely different, usually with no idea as to what is actually supposed to go in one, so I get a surprise every time. A cat and dog pair saunter into Lazy House, looking for handouts. After playing Jackass 3D, they close early.

With nothing else to do, and not feeling particularly energetic, I'm about go home when I notice Club 9, a bar I had thought closed following the Full Moon Party, was open for the night. Curious, I go for in a drink.

Inside, the club is completely deserted save for two bartenders and myself. After perusing the menu, I order a "rocknrolla", because James Bond and Charlie Sheen taught me if you're just going to have one drink, make it count.

Club 9 offered Hangover Cures at the bar, which I thought a brilliant innovation. And maybe just a little foreboding.

While one of the bartenders futzes with the sound system, and I sip my oversold and overpriced vodka-Red Bull, the other bartender asks me if I'd like to play a game. Intrigued, and not sure how I could say no in an empty bar, I agree. From behind the counter, he produces...Connect Four. Not just the favored game of prepubescent scam artists, it would seem. What the hell. We play a few games, and the bartender predictably dominates. To make up for my loss, he pours me a whiskey sour, although I'm pretty sure I ended up paying for it anyway.

Two guys walk through the door, and I happen to recognize them. They're both from the group I was with on the boat trip, and they also both happen to be the only non-Brits of said group: Sander, from the Netherlands, and Ted, from Australia. Happy to get away from more embarrassing Connect Four defeats, I join them at a table in the corner. After a round or two of skittles shots, they mention that the rest of the group is going to be partying on the beach, and invite me to come. It would cut into my valuable losing-Hasbro-games-to-a-bored-bartender-in-a-depressing-nightclub time, but I tag along anyway.

Sander, Ted, and I find the others at the beach, and I'm greeted with a few surprised cries of recognition. My nerd-friends aren't here, and I got the feeling they weren't entirely missed. For a while I share in the others' drink buckets and make small talk with a Spanish girl who is oddly insistent about me friending her on Facebook, and then the fire rope comes out.

Hello, old friend.

This time, I abstain. Sander leaves for bed, and the rest of them have too much healthy self-preservation instinct to jump in. Without any interest to keep it going, the fire rope guys pack it in, and are replaced by fire jugglers, whom we watch transfixed while draining more heinously intoxicating and intoxicatingly heinous buckets.

Fire jugglers: Stroking the ego of amateur photographers the world over

Then out comes the fire ring. Sorry, let me rephrase that: they brought out a literal Ring of Fire. This time, abstinence is for ugly teens and dudes named Morrissey. I'mma go live a misinterpreted Johnny Cash song.

Sometimes I really goddamn love you, Ko Pha Ngan.

I jump through the ring again, and again, and again. My draw to it is so powerful, it's practically encoded in my DNA. 

Even though you can't actually see my face, I feel like in this second it's become at least three times as handsome.

Once I've got all the ring-jumping out of my system, I settle down, dance a little, and have a couple beers to celebrate a successful injury-free experience. However, something feels amiss. I check my pockets. My keys are missing.

They're nowhere around the table, or the ground beneath. Clearly, they must have fallen out while I was jumping through a flaming hoop, not that there is anything about this sentence I could have seen coming. Desperate, I hunt the surrounding sand, but with all the foot traffic and the tide coming in, the search becomes hopeless.

I hope you're happy. And goddammit, I know you are.

I have no way of contacting the people at Venus to let me in, and it's far too late to get a room somewhere else for the night. I have two options left: Sleep on the beach, or find someone to go home with. Not wanting to be robbed and/or marked as territory by stray dogs, I put my game face on. My seduction face. Which sounds like I was making kissy lips or something, but it was really pretty much my normal face, except I tried to make my eyes more brooding-er.

With the stakes this high, I got to see just what kind of man I was. Turns out, I'm a man who's not very good at picking up girls. After Ted starts making out with the Spanish Facebook-enthusiast, and takes her off the market, I set my sights on a British girl named Cyndi. Cyndi is the kind of girl with a face that's made to be drunk, possessing the perfect elastic qualities and expression of coy bewilderment. She's already rebuffed Tyler, the playboy of their little group, but she's kept drinking steadily since then and seems very interested in Seattle (even if she does think it's somewhere in California). Let me be clear on this: all I really wanted was a place to stay for the night. If anything, sex would be working against my purpose, since everyone had roommates and any busted hanky-panky could result in me getting thrown out. I wouldn't say I was quite on the Light side of the Force here, but I certainly wasn't Darth Vader neither.

However, Cyndi is being very hot/cold, and just when I think I'm getting somewhere, she's pulled aside by the other girls and given a talking-to. There are a lot of comforting gestures, and every once in awhile Cyndi nods in my direction and loudly exclaims "He?!" I don't know what kind of grammar she's using to do it, but I can feel her slipping away.

I turn my laser-guided attentions elsewhere. A cute Asian girl joins the party, who turns out to have actually lived in Seattle for a bit. And, she's even lost her flip-flops in the sand to boot! I help her look for them for awhile, but they've been sucked out into that same bitch ocean with my room key. She thanks me for my help, compliments me for being such a nice guy, but she's really got to get to bed and good luck with your room situation! Exeunt cute Asian girl.

It's past 3 a.m. now, and I've given up hope. The group is disbanding, and starting to make their way back to their rooms in Haad Rin Nok. I tag along for a bit, wondering which part of the beach is neutral dog territory,  when another one of the stragglers, Janice, an attractive brunette with a stern air, asks where I'm headed. 

"Oh, nowhere really. I'm kind of homeless at the moment," I reply, and fill her in on my plight. To my relief, she's sympathetic.

"I suppose...you might be able to stay in our room. My roommate is probably going to be gone for the night, so there's an extra bed."

Yes! Salvation! Elated, I walk with her to get a couple toasties, while she makes some surprisingly catty remarks about the other girls in her travel group. But hey, whatever you want to bitch about, I'm interested. I even humor her by trying some of her Marmite and cheese toastie, and further humor her by not instantly spitting the Marmite out and rinsing my mouth with Abraxo and holy water.

Once in her room, I ask which bed she wants me to take. She doesn't care. I climb in the one nearest the door, and to my surprise, she climbs in with me. I mean, it wasn't a complete surprise, as I've read in books that girls like to do intercourse stuff too. Still, it was something of a concern. Not only was it past 4 in the morning now, and I was way too tired to be doing anything, but after talking to her it was clear that her roommate was likely to come back at any moment.

Not wanting to offend her or her hospitality, I did the only thing I could: scootched as far as possible to the edge of the bed and pretended to sleep. Janice wasn't satisfied. Every time I would trail off in conversation and close my eyes, she would wait a couple minutes, and then broach a new topic, her hand slowly and steadily moving across the divide towards me the whole time. By the time she started asking if I had seen "this American show 'Glee'", I decided to bite the bullet. Maybe the roommate wouldn't come home after all, and Janice and I could get in a quickie before she would finally let me sleep. I slip my arm around her, and by the waist pull her close. We make out, my reluctance and reservations melting away...

Then her roommate comes home, because of course she does. "Fucking hell!" gasps Bethany, Miss Roommate Herself. Janice and I disentangle ourselves and I go back to the fetal position against the wall.

"Look at this! Haw! Haw!" Behind Bethany is Jake, a topless brodude with the lumpy, ungainly physique of someone who eats too much protein powder. While Bethany gets into her bed, Jake can't sit still, and bounds around the room.  Janice and Bethany argue with each other for a spell about nothing in particular, mostly Janice asking where she's been, and Bethany trying her hardest not to say dry-humping with this guy in the sand. She looks embarrassed to have been caught with him, whereas I don't think Jake has ever been embarrassed in his entire life. Ripping off his pants, he jumps boxer-clad into our bed.

"Let's get this party started!" Jake bellows, starting a tug-of-war with us for our covers.

"Ja-ake! Come on love, just get into bed, yeah?" Bethany pleads with him. He's not having any of it.  He can smell sex in the air, and he's going to be involved in some fashion.

"Whaddaya say we have a four-way? Haw haw! Eh? You know you wanna!" I've started to burrito myself into the sheets, trying not to stare Jake's swinging junk, flapping in and out of the front of his boxers, in the eye.

But neither Janice nor Bethany wanna.  After being stared down by Janice, and berated by Bethany, Jake finally surrenders himself to bed. Bethany turns on the aircon full blast, and switches off the lights, pointless now that it's past 6 and the sun is rising.

"Only spooning, you two!" Bethany chides us before going back to bed, and wrapping herself around Jake.  You got it. If I fall asleep now, I can still get maybe 3 and a half hours of sleep before the girls have to check out of the room.

But Janice isn't interested in sleep. Just as soon as rest was in sight, she starts to grind into me, slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed. Like a sexual Terminator, she wasn't going to quit. Grabbing my available hand under the covers, she presses it to her breast as she continues to grind her ass along my pelvis. In the other bed, I can hear Bethany complain as Jake tries something similar with her. Whether they can see what we're doing, I don't know.

Janice is done playing around. She takes my hand in her left and moves it downtown, pushing two of my fingers into her vagina, while with her other hand she reaches back and starts giving me a very awkward, backwards, over-the-pants handjob. That she does all this while still facing away from me I found extremely impressive. That she was facing her roommate 3-feet away, well, that was something too. She keeps right on fingering herself using my hand as a prop, though if it's making any effect I can't tell. Her backwards handie wasn't doing much for me, but to be fair she would need at least a couple double-joints, and just about every other bit of this situation to be completely different, if she wanted to be very successful.

In the other bed, Bethany has finally had enough of Jake's molestations, and yells at him to either go to sleep, or get out. He chooses to leave, and collects his clothes, muttering the way out. I freeze, not wanting to disturb anybody. Janice has stopped working my hand, and seems to fall asleep, with my fingers still inside her. Without wanting to move, and risk waking her, or angering her roommate, I stay like that, holding hands with her pussy, for an impossibly long time. Minutes, hours, days, I couldn't say. I wonder if it'd be rude to wash my hands after this. My fingers have probably pruned.

After I'm sure Bethany is asleep, I finally withdraw my hand and release my sticky fingers to the light of day. Even if there was time, sleep is impossible thanks to the freezing aircon and morning light filling the room. Didn't I have the option to sleep on a nice, comfortable beach at some point? What happened to that?

Around 9 a.m., the girls awaken to the screech of a travel alarm clock. Bethany heads downstairs to see about extending their stay in the room, while Janice showers. I manage to at least wash my hands before I leave, making vague plans to meet Janice somewhere on the beach, sometime tonight.

I walk of shame back to Venus, but there's nobody there. In all my genius, I got myself locked out on the night before Easter Sunday, and now I get to wait for the family who runs the place to get back from Mass, whenever that would be.

The grandmother finally shows up, but the spare key to my room's padlock, wouldn't you know it, doesn't work. She unlocks the bungalow next door for me to shower in, while she attempts to saw the lock off.  The sawing is unsuccessful, so finally she calls her son in to bash at the door with a hammer, as the locksmith is unavailable because of the holiday.

This is what you get when you "fall into a burning ring of fire." That song is full of shit.

After an hour, he finally smashes the lock off, and I'm able to get inside and nap for a few precious hours. Once I finally feel fit enough to go outside again, I head down to the lobby for breakfast. It's there, on one of the tables, that I spy a familiar bottle.

Hello, beautiful!

The gigolo didn't steal it after all! So, there's a moral to all this bullshit in the end. Don't be quick to judge people. Or something.

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?