Lao BOW

Hi!
We made it out of Vietnam in the nick of time. Packed tightly in a bus resurected from the 1970s we trumbled through the Central villages of Laos. Every mile or so we slowed to a slow rumble to consume more people, animals and noodles on our roof, in the aisles and on my lap. A mix of Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and English were spoken however we never understood what was going on. The leader, a lao man dressed in camo proceded to bribe the customs agents while giggling and holding a giant wad of money, he hassled the passengers who decided to bring giant containers of salted fish and screamed SAVAY!!! at the top of his lungs for most of the 7 hours, luckily I was reading a book about riding local trains in India so this trip seamed like a piece o cake. We stopped briefly to buy chickens on sticks from the local children, Dan and I had only doll-hairs so we were nervous to buy the whole stick chicken, stuck w/ sprite and sticky rice i looked enviously on the crowd slurping down freshly speared and fried chicken parts. I think as a bus we consumed 47 chickens. Well, with the rain subsided, the mekong brimming with life and the people as jolly as swedish at the beach we are in Laos. So far we've met a German who wants to open a French Bakery but doesn't think the people are communist enough, we drank beer and we aren't on a bus. Talk to you soon.

yes Hue

after a four day trip to the central highlands we are in Hue for the night before jumping into Laos tomorrow as our Visa's are expiring. it's been a bit rushed due to our visa miscue (we could have gotten 30 day visa's but put an earlier leave by date on our applications thinking it wouldn't matter), but I am excited to have some time in Laos, where we will go to Savannakhet tomorrow and then Vientiene and possibly Luang Prabang before reporting to Bangkok for our flight to Istanbul. in the highlands we got minorly scammed in Buon Ma Thout when our motobike drivers for the day asked us out for beers after our tour - - - and then blank-faced when the bill came several hours later. oh well. more damage done to our trust than to our wallets, we scraped our way through another confusing local bus ticket buying experience to go to Kontum, a smaller town about 60 km north of there. determined to make our own way and not give an inch, we rented a motorbike (a cross between a scooter and a motorcycle and about 90% percent of the traffic mass in SE Asia.) since it was a lazy, small town without much traffic i was not as intimidated to do so as in the cities. i don't think i was graceful and linz didn't really trust me enough to ride behind for most of the day, but it was fun. we met this guy who worked at the church (a cool old french affair-most of the ethnic minorities in this area are Catholics) and he offered to take us to some villages, or rather lead us to them with us behind on our own bike. it was cool, opposed to the 'village' we went to outside of BMT, these were actually inhabited by honest-to-god villagers. slowly, trust seeped back into our hearts. we went to 5 or 6 villages and cruised through some pretty agricultural lands -bananas, coffee, sugarcane, bread-trees, manioc root, rice (in the gullies and near the river) and corn. i played volleyball with some kids and linz took pictures of some squeeling tottlers. we went to the orphanage by the Church where westerners come for babies. it was nice and the kids were happy and we went up to the tottlers room and were accosted by little kids who wanted to be picked up, where our sunglasses and moto helmets. grab onto our legs etc. the director spoke very clear english and had fought with the american side but as he only spent two and a half years in a prison camp after the war, was not allowed to emigrate to the U.S. After the tour the owner of the Moto shop invited us out for coffee. warily we excepted and it was very nice, although i was odd man out not speaking Vietnamese. after coffee we went out for karoake, taking turns singing in our own languages-really loud speakers in this small private room to the accompanyment of generic synthesizer music. We scored a hundred percent doing a duet on 'killing me softly'.

today we took an incredibly wound road through several jungle passes and some lush, remote hills descending to the ocean and up through Da Nang, across the DMZ and into Hue. Its impossible almost to imagine the violence that went on here, or to associate what our senses tell us with the war stories/books/movies we've grown up with. People we've met in the last few days seem to either giggle with shy xenophobia or take an avid interest in us, and I haven't detected any ill-will whatsoever. we sat next to three 70-odd year olds on the bus who are from the north and they seemed thrilled that we were there, laughing and talking and just plain looking throughout much of the two hour ride from Da Nang to Hue.

Now i'm waiting for linz to come back from the hotel to this internet cafe because she has all the money. hence the long, rambling post.

hope everyone is well, love you
happy birthday Grandpa!
Dan