The lounge by the river -Utopia

View from the loungers

Sunrise at Utopia

Early morning gain = evening pain

Kyle, Charlotte and I got up early this morning and attended an hour long yoga class (taught by a local Lao woman) at Utopia. It was amazingly peaceful to be up so early in the morning, sitting by the river in silence doing yoga and watching the sun rise. It made me really miss yoga (Bikram's more so than this one) and realize how out of practice I am. It is now 15 hours later and I am already feeling the pain. I need to get some more yoga in ASAP!

A Blur of a Good Time

So two days ago (or was it three?) I got on the slow boat from Huay Xai, a two day trip (with a stopover in Pak Beng) that would leave me in Luang Prabang, and I am just now managing to update my blog. With good reason though, I met an awesome group of people and have been having a blur of a good time. My new traveling posse (a Kiwi couple (also in marketing), an Auzzie and a Brit) and I met while sharing the scorching side of the boat on day one. All of us had done the Gibbon Experience (though, all in different treehouses). Through our shared goal of cheap accommodation, we shared two rooms in Pak Beng and made it through 24hours, all 4 daylight hours of which we were offered every variation of happy shakes, happy pancakes, happy tea and the likes. Never have I been offered so many drugs in one period of time! And then we sat on the balcony over the river listening to Bob Marley (how appropriate) over "angry" noodles as we dubbed them (the non-happy version).

The next day we arrived at the boat, on time, to find the boats packed. Either they had chosen two boats with less seats to transport the same amount of passengers or had less boats, either way there were no seats. We'd heard if you kick up a fuss they often set up another boat but unfortunately for us, most other travelers had already given up and staked out a spot on the floor so our bargaining power was weak. We gave up and made our way onto the boat and found ourselves with the best spot on the boat (maybe our griping paid off?) when the captain himself escorted us to the kitchen! To give you a visual: the kitchen is about a 5x5 space at the back of the boat (behind the passengers, behind the toilets, behind the engine and behind the locals - back of the back bordered by the railing overlooking the water -shared with a barrel of water, two stoves, a cooler, a clothes line, some toothbrushes and cooking utensils. The five of us (three big guys and two little girls) sat in plastic chairs in a circle around our card table (a tipped over basket) and played every variation of cards possible with a deck of UNO cards (Susan from Germany you are our hero!) while drinking Lao beer and Lao whiskey. The best part: the captain himself came back and gave us a massive bottle of Lao whiskey, poured straight from a gasoline can, yup, you read it (don't worry Grandma, I tested it on the guys first and we're all still alive). We were joined by another awesome Canadian who brought further whiskey (which I am beginning to have more of a taste for with nothing else to drink out here) and additional UNO rules, all of which made the 9 hour journey not only speed by, but also a blur of a good time :)

Sent from my iPhone

I Survived, and it was Amazing!!

Ok so it was by a great miracle that I didn't read all of the trip advisor stuff on the Internet before going on the Gibbon Experience because there's a good chance I would not have gone. Turns out, there are warnings everywhere about all of the spiders. And not just spiders, but tarantulas!

So there I was, sitting in the back of a Jeep on the way to our treehouse in the middle of the jungle (where we will stay for three days) and the topic of spiders comes up and some guy tells a story about how he heard of some girl who went on this and one night was wondering why her pillow was fuzzy and it turned out to be a tarantula. "#%^*^%! Seriously?? Get me out of this truck!" is all I can think. So I pray that this guy is just pulling my leg and tell myself "they didn't say anything about this on the website...I'm sure it's ok.." all the way to the treehouse where it was confirmed that yes, there are oodles of stories all over the internet about how many spiders there are here and how this really isn't the place for arachnophobes. "#%^~+% what was I thinking coming here??" Thank god I had such a wonderful group of people who helped me through this experience because people, I did not sleep a wink the first night I was so terrified. And we even had mosquito sheets that I was sure these tarantulas were going to crawl through and eat me! My lovely flat mates calmed me down, walked me to the bathroom in the dark and kept me from leaping out of the treehouse when the one tarantula we did see materialized (it wasn't as big as a pillow but was about 3 inches wide and hairy and had front claw like a crab). Thank god for their support because I (along with a few others I might add) were up on chairs screaming as shrieking the moment we saw it. I would have gladly jumped the hundreds of meters down to get away from that thing. Thankfully though, that was the only spider we saw, and not only did I make it through this "experience" but I actually had an amazing time! I was so lucky to have the greatest group of people (8 of them from Switzerland, Germany and France) and the best treehouse out of them all. It was huge, only one year old and had four levels, one that you zipped into that had a bathroom with a shower overlooking the jungle (which I used twice!), a second level with a kitchen (though we never had to cook, the guides brought us hot food and prepared everything), a big dining room table, and one set of beds (mine and Rita's - the best view in the treehouse!) and then two more levels with beds. This thing was like a real life treehouse out of Hook! When we were going to bed I wanted to yell "Goodnight never never land!" lol.

The food was amazing, the zipping was so much fun and the scenery was beautiful. The bamboo in the jungle was so big it felt like we were in "Honey I Shrunk the Kids", it was amazing! And we even saw Gibbons the first day! and this experience was made even better by the amazing group of people I met who were so much fun :) awesome, awesome time. So worth it. Even though I saw a tarantula lol.

Thailand, river, Lao

I made it to Lao! And everything actually went very smoothly. I got off my bus, took a tuk tuk to the water (where I met some awesome Brits who had recently been to India, go figure), got a stamp at a hut for leaving Thailand, walked down to the water an paid 40B for a boat to take me across then walked up to another hut, filled out two forms, paid around 1500B and got my Lao visa! Then I literally turned around and exchanged my Thai baht for Lao Kip and was on my way. I like this country already! It's definitely poorer than Thailand but the people (locals an tourists alike) are already nicer. The only downside is it's hard to find free wifi and the signals you get suck, but hey I'm traveling right? Tomorrow I'm off on the Gibbon Experience and will back on the 5th so I'll try to update then. Below is a picture of Thailand and the river from the Lao side.