S21 and The Killing Fields

Before you read this post, please note - This post contains disturbing images, some of which depict the physical remains of deceased persons. Those easily upset or disturbed, or those ethically opposed to viewing such images should not continue. I have no wish to offend or upset anyone.

However, my intention with this blog was to illuminate on the salient points of my trip and I believe it would be a diservice to the victims of the Khmer regime not to accurately portray what I have seen today. The decision to include these images was not taken lightly, nor was the decision to take such pictures an easy one. The ethical question of being a "tourist" in such a location is a difficult one, but one that I believe can be resolved so long as the proper respect is given. As such, I have taken these pictures so that people who will never visit Cambodia, S21 or the Killing Fields will have a somewhat accurate idea of what happened there. It is not my intention to be disrespectful, and if some of you believe I have been as you read this post, I can only offer appologies.

With that in mind, a short bit of history.

In 1975, the Khmer Republic was overthrown by what is today referred to as the Khmer Rouge. This name is given to those who were followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the organisation which seized power in Cambodia, funded and armed by Vietnamese Communists.

While parading itself as the saviour of the people, the regime quickly turned to terror tactics, murder and even genocide in order to reshape the country as they pleased. Pol Pot, the leader, and his cadre wanted to make Cambodia a self-sufficient agrarian communist country, but went so far as to deny external medical supplies to the people, so that there was little or no real medicine available to the population. Many thousands died of treatable diseases, including malaria.

Suspected "capitalists" - professions, citizens from urban regions and especially intellectuals - were the targets of initial purges, but soon anyone with dissenting views became a target for an increasingly paranoid state.

Much like during the Nazi regime in Germany, those who had no interest in the political views of the party were conscripted into the workings of the regime or signed up before they could be conscripted forcably, simply because they would be executed if they failed to. Many of these people then found themselves as soldiers, prison guards and executioners. Of these, many were in turn imprisoned or executed as the state began to purge itself in a fit of paranoia.

The death toll is considered to be somewhere between 1.4 and 2 million - about half were executed while the rest died from starvation or ill health - in a country that probably only had seven million people in 1975. In percentage terms, a greater portion of the Cambodian population died under the Khmer Rouge than Jews died under Hitler.

Such things as this should never be easy to talk about, and one suspects that the true gravitas of the places I visited today will be incommunicable but there seems to me a real responsibility to try. When I was thinking about this earlier, I thought of a quote from a Battlestar Galactica character, Saul Tigh, speaking about the impending death of his unborn son and his love for the mother: "I don't need to say it. I shouldn't need to say it to anyone. Isn't it enough that I feel it? Shouldn't need to spout the words; I feel it less with words. Just let me Gods-damn feel it and I'll fill the frakkin' room."

To be honest, I often agree with him, and hate false cliched responses to emotional situations or events. I agree that it is enough to feel something and not need to dress it up in words. But words are important too, and sometimes it is necessary to speak of things, so that others can understand where you are, in your own head, as well as so they can learn some of the things you have learned. Hopefully, I will manage to convey something more than the simple words "it was awful" and the absolute nothing that such a bland statement manages to convey.

S21 was a notorious prison in Phnom Penh where suspected dissidents, high ranking or otherwise, were taken to be interrogated and held. Before becoming a site of torture and death, it was a school. Walking around it, some of the original blackboards are still in place, and you can see where the walls have been knocked through to turn rows of classrooms into prison-cells. Stains still mark the floors.

Several of the rooms have been left as they were, while others have been turned into photographic memorials.

I'll take you through it as I saw it. The first thing you notice is how much like a school the three buildings look. There's an eerie strangeness to that, because you know what you know, and cannot quite equate the two things together. It gets easier when you notice the fourteen white tombs in front of building A. A mass grave that was discovered in that area, several years ago. After this you notice the exercise poles, once used by students but turned into instruments of torture by the regime. Prisoners would have a their hands tied behind them and then the rope would be used to hoist them upside down until they lost consciouness. Afterwards, they would have their heads submerged in a far of filthy water to bring them out of it, after which the interrogation would begin again.

During processing the prisoners were made aware of the ten rules of the prison, which I will let you read for yourself -

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Kromin order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

The first floor of building A was where high ranking prisoners were interrogated. Iron beds and clamps to lock the prisoners are in each room, one to a room. These were people to be interrogated alone. Upstairs, the rooms might have two or three beds, indicating that man people where tortured in each room. Often the interrogations would continue without a break, for hours or days, with rotating shifts of torturers.

The spent ammunition cases which appear in most of the prisons were used as toilets.

The third floor is probably the least affected place. It retains its blackboards, a creepy vision of reeducation camps which existed throughout Cambodia, or prehaps merely an awful juxtaposition against which one may view the torture a floor below.

The bottom floor of the next building contains both pictures of the victims and also of Pol Pot and his cadre, all those who led the regime.

Building C was the main prison area. It is wrapped in a web of barbed wire and there is only one gate. The classroom were converted into small cells and the walls knocked through, presumeably to make easier for the guards to keep an eye on the captives.

The last building contains extracts from the only stories of the only fourteen people thought to have survived S21, as well as similar extacts from the biographies of those who were forced to work there, often fearing for their lives if they did not do as instructed by the their superiors.

Next, I travelled out to the Killing Fields, specifically the field at Choeung Ek. There are many sites around Cambodia that were used as execution grounds and contain mass graves. This is perhaps the most famous and the most easily accessible.

This place is much more like Dachau. The air here has a quality of silence almost impossible to reproduce. Those who have been to such sites, and so many of them exist, will know what I am talking about and those who haven't just won't understand what I mean. I often wonder if the sense of silence, of a hushed deathly stillness, is real, or if it is something we bring with us to such places. I have no more answers today than I have had before. It is more than just the quiet of solemn respect. Words are simply not spoken, and when they must be, there is a hushed, funereal whisper to them. I mean it when I say funereal too - it is not just some melodramatic conceit I've conjured up. It is not like when you are quiet in a church. It is quiet the way you are quiet in the presence of a body, in the presence of the dead.

The first thing you see and probably visit is a large stupa, or Buddhist shrine for relics. It functions as both a memorial and a shrine and is a place for silent contemplation of the deaths that occured here. From outside it is a beautiful building. At the front it is possible to get flowers and a stick of incense which can be left as an offering at the front of the shrine. You can also make a donation here.

I took the flowers and incense and left my donation and entered the stupa. This tall structure contains 5000 human skulls in ascending shelves. Although I knew what I was about to see, it was still a surprise, the slow damning awareness of exactly how many of there are. 5000 is a number. Seeing so many actual skulls was something else. Seeing the broken ones, clearly beaten in or smashed was difficult, strange and affecting.

At this point I made the decision to take some photographs, which is allowed, though it becomes ethically vague. I hope that those of you who look at them now will be aware that I have taken them specifically for you, so you can appreciate both what I saw, and more importantly, what the Khmer Rouge did.

Following this, I spent several minutes actually praying, not to Buddha, or to God really either, but to whatever was listening I suppose, that some day, sites and sights like this need not be repeated. That we might outgrow our ridiculous penchant for violence at some point.

There are a few more pictures I would like to show you, but first I will explain exactly what the Killing Fields are. As part of its purges, the Khmer Rouge would collect state "enemies" and transport them to places like this. At first it was only a hundred a year, then only a few hundred, but eventually it was a few hundred a day.

People would arrive by truck and immediately executed, but as the number of people increased they had to start imprisoning them for the day, and continued into the killings long into the night.

The tree to the right is referred to as the killing tree. Children were beaten to death against it.

The bodies of the dead were then dumped in mass graves all around the field. Several of these have been excavated. In some of the graves, the bodies found have been headless (hence the skulls collected for the shrine). These graves are scattered around the area, but many have not been uncovered. Currently, it has been decided that no new excavations will take place. However, when there are strong rains, relics come up from the ground, mostly bone fragments and teeth, which are collected and put on display.

It's a strange thing, to walk in that place. Wouldn't it be nice to say that this was Cambodians killing each other? That it is nothing to do with us?

But we really can't. We may not have raised such a literal Golgotha, but we have our death camps, our own horrors. This place belongs, not merely to the Cambodians, but is a burden and a failure that rests on all of us. Not just because of international failures (of which there were plenty), but because humanity as a whole continues its genocides in other regions, in other counties.

It reminds me of this song, Right in Two, by TOOL, about these angels sitting watching mankind and wondering why God would have given them free will.

"Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
(and this is what they choose)

Monkey, killing monkey, killing monkey
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs,
They forge a blade,

And when there's one they're bound to divide it,
Right in two."

People often say things like, "How can God let this happen?" And the simple answer is that he did not let this happen. If there is such a being as God, and I am by no means convinced of that, He gave us free will, and with that we have chosen an endless cycle of violence and oppression. Given the gift of intelligence, we made knives and swords and went out to slaughter our brothers and sisters. To call the Khmer Rouge a Cambodian tragedy is to ignore its context within the wider angle of the Vietnam conflicts of the period, to ignore the Cold War in general, more recent genocides in Rawanda and Yugoslavia, to ignore Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and even further, the Somme, Carthage, the fall of Troy and an endless lists of other cities and other countries.

I won't preach about how it's time to put an end to this, time to stop, because people just like you an me have known that since ong before the Romans burned Carthage, massacred its women and children and salted the earth. People have always known this kind of violence in wrong.

That's the really sad thing, that we remain such silly monkeys, ready to tear each other apart for our own little piece of nothing that we so jealously guard. We know it, and yet it happens again and again, in cycle after cycle. One wonders, if in a thousand years, if there is still a humanity, if it has burst out into the stars to colonise other planets, will it be other races we practice our genocides against, or will we still be slaughtering each other by the bucketful?

Pity I don't have an uplifting, "but-it's-all-okay" punchline for you here. I wish I did, it'd be nice - and I could probably do with it more than you anyway! But it just isn't there.

I'll cheer up for next time,
Shane.

One for the boys . . .

9th November 2010

This one is for the boys . . . but ladies, you can look as well.

GUNS!!! BANGS!!! EXPLOSIONS!!!

Okay, no explosions. But definitely guns!

Bout 35 mins in a tuk tuk from the hostel in a shooting range, run by the Cambodia army. You get there, you get givin a menu, and then you pick your guns. I won't lie, this is an expensive trip, but something I've been planning for a few weeks now, and every so often you have to splash out on some fun.

I started with the AK47.

But before we start let me relate a little story that I think of every single time someone says AK47. Way back when we were in tranisition year we did this radio project, with Blackrock and St. Michael's. As part of it, we interviewed our principal, Mr Murphy (Carrie's dad to some of you and just a complete lunatic to some of the rest of us). At the very start of the interview, he made what we have all always hoped was a joke, but probably wasn't.

Speaking about his job, in his weird mixture of Russian and Kerry accents (he's not in the least bit from Russia) he said, "Some days I'd just like to line up all the students and shoot them with an AK47 . . . you're not recording that are you . . ." And we were, but obviously we couldn't use it! Pity though that nobody still has that recording! 

At first when he put in the slot thing, I was a bit like, meh - that sucks - but after firing it I was happy it was there. The kick on that thing was insane! It was also cool to see the little flare of flame bursting out the nozzle like a weird corona of some kind (corona is not just a beer, it's like a halo on it's side).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMiZHd2ZJ8

And as you can see, auto-fire just eats through bullets!

Next up, the handgun. This was really cool, but still the kick was unexpected. It really was strong. Not uncontrollable after some practice, but still, more than I would have expected. I did pretty well with this actually. Most of my shots hit near the centre and one hit the bull's eye. Again, all the BB gun shooting comes in handy sometimes . . .

Also, the gun kept jamming. I'm sure I could have sorted it, but the guy was very insistant that I not mess with the guns myself. At least while loaded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfHux-VvED4

And then my personal favourite, what I was really most looking forward too! And my favourite photo as well . . .

I CALL SHOT GUN SHOTGUN!!! (I call 9mm! Prizes if you get that joke and aren't Neena)

One thing I will say is that it's surprising how easy to pull back the reloader thing is. It's actually not as tough as they sometimes make it look in films. Very smooth.

The kick on this thing was mad, you'll see it in the video. I still have a bruise from it slamming into me, over and over. But it was so worth it. You'll also see me pop a round out by accident without firing it. I think it was just because I liked cocking it more than firing almost! So awesome though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc5TASRcJrw

And last put not least, I'll just give this picture a mention. It's not my favourite, though it's pretty awesome, but it is the one that has garnered the most attention from all of you guys! You seem to love it. I've even been told I look like a terrorist (thanks Jo-Anne!)! How awesome is that! I was going for freedom fighter from the future war against the machines, but hey!

So that's it boys! Guns for teh wins!

It was awesome!

Talk soon,
Beardslinger out!

Angkor Wha? Or, the most obvious pun ever

7th November 2010

Last night me, Hanna and the German girls (see Chiang Mai and Pai posts), Josefin and Anna and their new German friend Lisa had a few drinks and decided to head to Angkor the next day at eight. Yes, let's have drinks and get up at eight, what a fantastic fucking idea . . . stupid Germans.

If you don't know anything about Angkor, you probably know more than you think. The primary temple is the massive Angkor Wat (Wat means temples), hence my truly awful pun of a title.

[note from the future: as I finish this off, I've discovered that I am not the only one with a terrible sense of pun-age - there's a bar in Siem Reap called Angkor What? And since I had already made the joke here, I immediately bought one of their t-shirts for my own enjoyment. I now wear it with a sense of pride in my own idiocy!]

Some of these temples have served as the setting for several films, including Tomb Raider, so some of them might actually be recognisable to you . . . you know, if you can remember that awful awful film.

So anyway, Angkor is a large district that consists mostly of the ruins of old temples. The reason why there are so many temples and few other structures is a religious conceit that only the Gods deserved permanent, stone structures, so whole temples and shrines were built from stone, homes were built from wood, which was either destroyed in a number of invasions and natural disasters, or simply degraded over time. As a result little remains except for some hundred major temple sites, and hundreds of smaller ruins scattered over a huge area. In terms of size, the spread of the original city probably rivalled that of modern day Los Angeles.

Angkor Wat is the main, and biggest temple, but on the urging of Hanna, we decided to go against the flow and visit Angkor Wat last.

We started with Prasat Kravan, which is apparently quite unique in its design for a Khmer structure. It was a decent place to start, being quite small compared to some of the others.

You can read a much more detailed account through that link there, but basically it's an old Hindu temple, dedicated to Vishnu and has images of Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi carved directly out of the brick used to build it.

By the way, to enjoy some of these temples, you have to really like old stuff, or temples, but I'm good in that department.

Afterwards we headed out to the Tomb Raider temple, perhaps one of the most famous of the lot, Ta Prohm. It's not only famous for being in Tomb Raider, but also by the degree to which it has been reclaimed by the forest surrounding it. It's a very eerie place, where you can see exactly how much nature gives a shit about the works of man. Trees grow up through everything, ruining brick litters the area and dispite ongoing conservation efforts, still place is more ruin that any of the other temples we visited.

I think this was one of my favourite places here. It looked amazing, and seemed like something out of some many books I've read, ruined cities, dead in some apocalypse or another, a warning or a promise of some future cataclysm to come for the rest of us. Were the population of Ireland to disappear tomorrow in less than a hundred years, our homes and town would be forests, the tumbled bricks poking out here and there, whole cities subsumed into forest. And since my imagination was running away from me anyway, I could just about conjure the faces of old, dead gods slumbering beneath the ruins, ready to be awakened, some fabulous beasts emerging from some story - a story that part of me is already writting, a story sprawling across Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, maybe even Vietnam . . . but who knows, let me get the first book out before I get to this one maybe?

After this we headed to Ta Keo, which was fun because it involved walking up steps designed for a midget's feet at an almost vertical angle to a height of 21 metres above the ground and I have a slight aversion to heights. But it actually was quite fun!

We climbed in shifts, four ahead and one behind with the cameras - all the cameras, to take pictures at each of the different terraces. Some of them were actually quite a distance from each other, so the ones of me are all very hard to make out but there's a decent one of all the girls (and some bloke who walked across at the last second), which is better anyway because they're much prettier than me. And you know what I look like . . . unless you've already forgotten . . . :-(

The way down was a bit more interesting, for me at least. Turned around and walked down backwards. It's just easier. The last thing I wanna see before I die is the ground rushing at my face like a train - I'd rather watch the sky as I fall backwards!

Afterwards, we headed for Angkor Thom, which contains two temples and two terraces full of wonderous goodies that I won't talk about all of because you'll probably kill me. Bayon (above) is the main temple here. It's quite cool, and filled with bas-relieves, which I think I put on Facebook - I'll check and add them if not. There isn't room here for everything.

Two most interesting things about this temple are this. It's built on three levels. The lowest is Hell, though this is more of a purgatory than the Judeo-Christian version of Hell as an eternal prison. The second is earth, while third, pictured here, is Heaven.

There are also dozens if not more of these huge faces carved into the rock. Someone told me there are 54, each representing a region of the Khmer Empire. There are also another few hundred statues with the same face. Apparently these are of Avalokiteśvara, "the Lord who looks down", a benevolent guardian spirit. Some researchers think that the face may actually be of the King who built the place, so it's also a little weirdly Big Brother too.

The next place on the walk was Baphuon, described as the world's largest jigsaw puzzle. It was largely collapsed and ruined but a restoration effort was ongoing in the 1960s which involved taking apart some of the remaining structure. When the Khmer Rouge (see upcoming blog on the Killing Fields) came to power the notes and maps were lost, leaving only a pile of rubble behind. Efforts to restore the temple began again in 1995.

Next up was the Terrace of the Elephants, which wasn't up to a whole lot, but did have some really cool sculptures of elephants - did you see that coming? I beat you did, you're clever, you are!

Next up was the slightly creepy but also very cool Terrace of the Leper King. It was originally thought to be dedicated to a particular, leperous king of the Khmer but actually, it seems to be a shrine to Yama, the Hindu Death God.

Take a look at a few pictures please.

This particular one on the right is my favourite, a weird and worn demon face shrouded in cobwebs in a death-god shrine? Why wouldn't I love it?

In this Shrine you walk around a you shaped corridor full of these carvings, and then walk up a small hill to the statue of Yama that you'll see below. The coridor seemed long at the time and there were so many awesome carvings, though as I said my favourite is the one up there.

Let's scroll down and take a look at Yama shall we?

I stopped here to say a brief prayer. Some of you may find this odd, although I don't. Were we members of a polythesistic culture, I really do reckon I'd probably say my prayers to Death. Does that sound awfully morbid? It probably does, but only because you aren't seeing it the way I do. Death is a terrible thing, tragic and hard to deal with, but Death-Gods are not the bringers of death. In fact, they have little or nothing to do with the dying of a person in most mythologies, but rather with the afterwards. They are most often psychopomps (guides) who lead the spirit of the deceased from life into death, helping them to make the transition. Perhaps the best representation of Death I have ever come across is Neil Gaiman's Death of the Endless, a spunky little Goth in appearance. Death is never easy, but I think sometimes we forget about what it must be like for the dead, if there is an afterlife. If there is nothing then it doesn't matter, but if there is some life after this, I like to think that something was there when my grandfather and grandmother passed, something to comfort them and help them along their way. It doesn't really matter if it's an angel or some God or spirit or a Goth with frizzy hair and too-pale skin. It would just be nice to think that someone was there on the other side to hold your hand and tell you, "You know what? It's gonna be okay?"

So yes, I stood at the shrine of Death and thanked him for his service to my dead and bid him look after them and those of mine that come after, and I honestly don't care how strange that may seem to some of you.

We did visit other temples but they all get a bit same same after awhile, so I'm gonna jump from here all the way to Angkor Wat.

I'm not even sure what to say about this place other than IT IS FUCKING HUGE!!!! Seriously, I could go on and on and on, but you still wouldn't get how big it is.

It's not my favourite but it is the most popular, probably because it's so big. It is cool though, don't get me wrong.

Of note was all the Buddhist monks around. Although it started out as a Hindu temple it was later reconsecrated as a Buddhist one and the Hindu statues removed. I suppose it's a major site of pilgrimage for Buddhists, seeing as its the largest temple in the world. Here's two monks walking out the main door.

There's quite a lot of fantastic bas-relief work around the temple but to be honest the wiki article does it more justice than I can do it so it might be worth your while to flick down through that. Some of them are awesome.

I don't really know what to say about the whole thing. You kinda do just have to see it to get the scale, and Angkor what is all about scale.

I did get this one really cool picture though, see just below. Dunno if you've seen the Searchers, with John Wayne, but I've always loved that final image of the door, looking outside from the house, where you see him on his own, seperated by an open door from the family setting of his brother's household. He's something apart, as this gunslinger figure.

Anyway, this shit is very reminiscent of that I think, though in the distance you can see a large statue of Buddha, looking back and for me it's more of a seperation of me (or the looker) and the Buddha as an idealised, abstract figure enclosed in a different space. Anyway, there you go. I think too much, in case you never noticed that.

So anyway, some more pictures and then I'm gonna leave Angkor. This is a shot of one of the four towers of the inner enclosure. There are outer ones too.

We also climbed to the highest spot, which houses the shrine to Buddha and is pretty cool, but restoration work is continuing all over the temple so there are plenty of spots where it isn't open at the moment. Probably, the whole thing will never all be open at the same time. Which is a pity, but what can you do? Something like this should be conserved so I can't complain. There are so many European sites that are lost and gone, like Carthage and Troy, that it would be amazing to be able to see.

It's important to appreciate the ones that are left and make sure we don't lose them, and we're very lucky we haven't already.

Anyway, it was about four at this stage and we were dusty and wrecked and it was time to go home, so we told our driver, home dude, let's go home.

It was about a forty minute drive and I nearly fell asleep. Dropped Hanna off at her place and then barrelled up to the room and changed straight into my swimming togs and hit the pool. The Germans did the same and we had a very pleasant hour throwing plastic balls at each other and chatting to a few of the other people around the place.

I had ordered some chips as a snack so had to jump out and eat them and then straight back in. Felt soooooo much better afterwards, it's not even funny. There was actually a bit of a surreal moment when I was getting back in, because about five more girls had arrived and was the only bloke in there, but to be fair I got over it and I really don't think they gave a shit.

We were all pretty wrecked after the day, so that night we just chilled in the hostel, me, Anna, Josefin and Lisa. Hanna was back in hers, also wrecked. We watched Yes Man, and then me and Josefin played the longest game of pool ever, because the table sucked and neither of us is in anyway good at pool, at all. And then in the end I won! Yay!

So that was Angkor guys, hope you weren't bored. I wasn't!

Anyway,

Talk soon, and much love and all that,
Shane.

The Long Road Out of Laos

4th-5th November 2010

And lo! upon that night did this One Who Wanders strap up his boots, throw bag upon his back and begin the journey out of the Land of the Lao and into the territories of the ancient Khmer, a realm far in distance, alone in body, but never in soul, for on his dusty trail he knew he would find others, and that old friends might again grace him with their presence.

Setting out at the darkling hour of eight, after my lift was late, I was pretty happy to discover the Maltese Falcons and the Tasmanian were on my bus as far as Pakse (South Laos). They were heading for the 4000 Islands while I was going all the way to Siem Reap in Cambodia, but it was still cool to have a few people around.

It didn't really matter too much, because this was the sleeper bus and the idea is that you get on an you go asleep. Unfortunately, my bed was at the back, and we felt every bump and turn. Also, I was sharing with two Aussie guys, who had grabbed the left and the right. In the middle, I had nothing to brace my feet against so more than once I found myself sliding out of the bed into the aisle.

The Maltese had a novel solution. Valium. You can by perscription drugs over the counter in nearly any chemist in Laos, Cambodia or Thailand and the doses can be pretty high. Where at home you get 2mg tablets, you can get up to 20mg tablets from the chemists here, nearly as standard. Might have been a good idea, who knows - I don't like tablets though, so I really wasn't bothered. I don't even like headache tablets.

Anyway, the lads took some valium. But they didn't think it was working so they took some more. And when they finally woke up in Pakse ten hours later they were fucking out of it! It was hilarious. Anyway, once in Pakse, we waited around a bit and our other buses turned up. They all headed on one, while I got the other on my own. This one was a VIP bus, which was actually pretty nice and had a toilet on it.

This one lasted another ten hours, but it was okay because I had a few things stored up on my laptop to keep me going, including the latest episodes of House and Lie to Me. And I was loving my book, Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which is awesome and you should read.

Well maybe. Set in the fictional world of Bas-Lag Mieville's novel focuses of one particular city that might easily be a representation of New York or London, a multicultural melting pot where other races doesn't mean black, white, Indian or Chinese, but rather human, bug-people, or watersprites etc. Racism plays a huge role in the novel, as well as being replete with meditations on ghettos and government control of populations. Mieville is a socialist (and has written at least one book on socialism) but this book is not exactly a socialist tract. It's just that as a socialist, socialism obviously colours his sense of justice and fairness and also dictates some of the things that interest him. However, I think even the most ardent capitalist would find it hard to slate the book for some of its conclusions. It also has some elements of steampunk and plenty of eroticism and lots of fantasy horror. Totally awesome book - click here to buy now - and if you want something a bit more real world, try this one!

Reached the Cambodian border and had to pay and unofficial stamp duty to get our visas stamped as having left Laos - in other words, the dude in the office demanded a dollar from each of us to do his job, and then put it in has back pocket, but you best get used to this if you're planning on heading out this way. It's just the way it is.

On the other side we'd to do the same to get our passports stamped for going into the country. And also pay for the visa. What you gonna do like? It happens, and it's not so much. And if you don't pay, you don't go over the border, everyone there is in on it, and there's no one to complain to, and if there was, they'd probably just take the dollars for themselves, so really what does it matter?

Anyway, then it was a few more hours on the bus, maybe 8 or 9 all together, until we stopped. Most of the people on the bus were going to Phnom Penh, while the rest of us were going to Siem Reap. We got taken off our fancy air-con bus and brought to a mini-van, which was bringing us the rest of the way to Siem Reap. I'm about 20 hours in at this stage. I shrug, who cares. While waiting to get on our bus, which looks like it might have died before I was born and it kept going by a mixture of sticky tape and angry shouts mixed with pleading prayers, the few of us there kind started chatting. There was a Japanese guy, an English couple on their honeymoon, a Japanese guy and a girl from Dun Laoghaire, Hanna. Small world, no?

Anyway, ended up having a pleasant bitch for the first two hours, finished my book in the second two, watched some more TV and swapped some music with Hanna and eventually gave the Mieville book to the English guy.

Eventually, when we got near to the outskirts of Siem Reap we picked up this drunk Cambodian guy who said he would take us all out to our hostels for free. Obviously we were not stupid enough to think this was anything but a bit dodgy, but still, we didn't know what sort of dodgy.

We pulled over at the side of the road, about 11 at night, at a stop full of tuk tuk drivers. This guy had obviously paid the bus company to drop us there so he could bring us into town. This is very common. Anyway, we were smart enough to know that we didn't really have any choice but to go with him, while we were also aware that we'd have to play this very carefully.

Me and Hanna and the Japanese dude all went together, and the drunk guy came with us. While on the road he tried to get us to book him for the morning, to take us to Angkor, but without saying no, we tried not to agree to anything. Eventually he kinda lost it and dumped us on the side of the road, in the dark, and fucked off. If he were sober we'd probably have managed to keep him on side, but he obviously wasn't doing the best job of keeping his cool and we obviously weren't really biting, so he kinda flipped.

So, there we were, in the middle of fucking nowhere, big bags on our backs, looking lost as no born lambs, with no idea where the hell we were. And then the Japanese dude just fucked off.

Awesome.

Can you say shark bait? Coz I can.

We were lucky. My laptop had died on the bus, and I had only written down the address, not the phone number of the hostel, though it was obviously saved on the laptop, because what could go wrong there after 28 hours on a bus? Nothing, clearly.

Hanna though, she had the number of her hostel and we found a market stall with a guy willing to let us use his phone. She managed to get her hostel to pick us up from there - after the dude who owned the phone explained where we were -  and then I was able to use there wireless to get onto the net and ring my hostel to come get me from her place. But still, not the most auspicous start.

That said, Siem Reap is actually a lovely place and you are safe walking around at night, so long as you know where you are going and don't look like a little lost child with a giant bag of stuff that probably represents a year's worth of clothes and a fortune in goods, never mind the money in the pocket to wrong kind of very desperate person.

Let's just say I was happy to get to the hostel, not just became I'd been travelling for more than a day! Once the bag is off, you feel a lot less vulnerable, a lot less like a target. And once the bag is locked up in the hostel all you can have stolen is some money, which isn't so bad. The bag however represents everything!

Anyway, thanks to Hanna, it all worked out and I got home safely, and the next day the German's showed up in my hostel, which was awesome! So loads of company!

A long day, but from one group of awesome people, to another. It's so nice to be travelling on my own!!!

Talk to ye soon,
Shane!

Comments, Questions . . . or just abuse . . . ?

Talk to me bitches!

Not really, but I just thought I'd take the time to say, you may all feel absolutely free to leave comments if you feel like it . . . It's been 9 weeks and 28 posts and not a single comment.

Which is fine, unless people feel like they shouldn't be leaving them, which of course they can! I don't mind.

Anyway, just so this post isn't wasted, I thought I'd include something else.

Click here



















That's right, you've been rickrolled. How juvenile of me!

Later dudes,
Shane.

Vientiane, where there really isn't much to do . . .

Vientiane . . . It's just a place you go to leave.

Sorry, Vientiane, but really, it is true.

It's a strange place. We arrived in the afternoon, found a place to sleep and headed off to find the Thai embassey so Cork and Bekaa could get multiple entry visas for Thailand. You don't need them but they do make things a little easier. Basically, on arrival by airplane you can get a 30 day visa no bother, but if you cross over by land, it's only 15 days. This cracks down on people staying for too long . . . or something, I don't really know why they do it. I'm sure it's with good reason.

Anyway, if you want a 30 day or more you just go to an embassey and get it sorted. It's not very difficult.

Unless the bloody applications office only opens til 12, that is.

So, wasted hour. Or sort of anyway. We did get to see a replica of the Arc de Triomphe though . . . Good for us, eh? Yeah, well worth the hour walking . . . No, seriously. It was . . . Totally.

It's called the Patuxai (various spelling exist - just that that as a given in Laos). It looks a bit like the Arc all right, but what makes it funnier is that it was built to celebrate those who died fighting for independence from France . . . also funny is that it's supposed to be an airport.

The American's wanted an airport in the area for use during the Vietnam War, so the Laos took the money, and then built that instead. Loves it!

Afterwards we got some food and planned to watch a film, but the girls fell asleep before we got that far. I read, went to sleep.

We got up the next morning and went back to the embassey, where I ran into Curry again. After they got their applications in we went for a walk and found a wholesale market thing. Basically, it seems to be where all the street sellers go to buy the stuff they then sell to tourists. Check this out! All the shoes!

Then later that day we ran into the Maltese Falcons again and decided to meet them at 7 for food and some bowling!

Bowling, you say? Yes! There are two bowling alleys in Laos. One in Luang Prabang and one in Vientiane. No word of a lie.

Before bowling we went for food, by which time we'd found Duncan and Swedish Chris, newly arrived from Vang Vienn and Ivo and Tazmania (Alan) from the slow boat - Laos is a fairly small country.

And then we went bowling. The prize? The respect and admiration of the group and this stylish medal, hand-forged, painstakingly, over several long seconds, by myself!

We really are making our own fun here. Seriously. The balls sucked, the lanes sucked and I'm really not just saying that because I suck at bowling. This was certainly a factor, but the balls were in fucking bits too. And the shoes had no soles, so everytime you throw a ball, you risked slipping down the lane after it.

Fun times! Anyway, Duncan won and we went and got a drink afterwards. Me and Bekaa played a new game - "Hooker and Pimp" - the aim of which was to spot who was hooker, and who was a pimp in the place. There were also half-points for spotting ladyboys. I won, which is probably not a good thing when you think about it. I know my pimps, apparently. (again, we're making our own fun)

Then went to another place and it closed more or less 5 seconds after we got there.

Me and Cork headed home while some of the others went of to try and find somewhere else to drink, but they never found anywhere and ended up having a "house-party" for about an hour before Bekaa turned up back at our place, quite possibly regretting her decision to stay out. But hey, she didn't throw up . . . which is a bit of a record for the time I've known her. Which is admittedly fairly short.

The last day was just a waiting game for my bus to Cambodia at half seven. And it was clearly late. Shrug. The girls left at 3, so the last four hours consisted of me, my book and my music, while trying to charge everything I own for a mammoth 24 (turned out to be longer) bus journey to Siem Reap.

So kids, that's Vientiane. The place you go when you want to leave, though it's never as easy as it should be.

Talk to ye soon,
Shane.

Vang Vienn, Tubing and Recovering

Okay, so to start this off, let me explain that there are multiple ways to spell Vang Vienn - Vann Vienn, Vang Vieng etc - so I'm just going to run with Vang Vienn and hopefully you won't mind that too much.

Arrived in the afternoon and more or less crashed after the evil bus journey. We hadn't been there very long when we started chatting to a few of the REALLY hungover people scattered around the common area, at least one of whom should probably have been in intensive care in the hospital . . . but since there is no local hospital really, he just had to ride it out. I'll get to the "sickness" later, since it's something quite common after a day or two tubing.

One of the things that came up was my Irishness, and the other Irish guy hanging around. It took about 4 seconds for us to realise that this was not just any other drunken Irishman, but rather our old friend Larros from Luang Prabang, raising serious hell on the tubing river of Vang Vienn - oh joy . . .

Less than an hour in, Larros was carried into the hostel by one of the bar workers, so pissed he couldn't remember his name or where his bed was supposed to be, so he was put to sleep in the TV room. This guy could be a poster-boy for what not to do in Vang Vienn. He was cut up, bruised, pissed, nearly drowned and patches of skin were going a weird colour (and not from the body paint, which I'll get to later). (And believe it or not, this is not the last I'll hear of Larros of Laos). This is a guy who is lucky enough not to be a statistic, despite trying really fucking hard to become one. At least one person a year dies in Vang Vienn thanks to the rough cocktail of alcohol, water and stupidity. Officially. Probably, the number is higher than that. And if it isn't, it's down to other tubers looking out for each other.

That said, tubing is also awesome if you aren't a fucking retard.

So, me, Chris and Matt had a quiet night that night. Had food and one drink in bucket bar, after which we headed back to the hostel and went to bed so we were fresh for our first day of tubing.

Before we get to that, I have to say a few things about the oddness of Vang Vienn. It's a town that appears to thrive entirely on the backbone of tourism, and seems to cater exclusively for us. There are a few touristy, sightseeing things to do, but by and large it consists of alcohol-related activities and things to do while recovering from alcohol-related activities. A huge precentage of the bars/restaurants show endless reruns of Friends, Family Guy and one place shows the Simpsons. Each one of these places shows the same show and some of them are even named after the show they feature - as in the Friends bar or the Family Guy bar.

The food is also extremely westernised, with most places serving pizza and burgers along with a very limited Laos menu. It's odd, but I suppose it works for them.

Not much else to say about our first night, although maybe Bucket Bar deserves a mention. This is the place where all the tubers still standing go. So if you've been tubing, you will know literally everyone in this bar. You will dance and you will drink and you will love it. If you only just arrived, you'll feel like you gate-crashed a private party. It's a strange place.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Vang Vienn has just discovered rope light, because nearly every sign is made out of it! It looks like Christmas on acid late at night!

So we had a drink, met one or two people from along the road or from the slow boat and then headed off to bed because there really wasn't f-all else to do.

Tubing - Day One - 29th October

Around breakfast in Spicy we got talking to a lot of other people, most of whom were going tubing aswell, so group slowly started to form out of a ragtag collection of different people. Some had been before and quickly became appointed our leaders. I really can't remember everyone, try as I might, but that's okay.

If you have no idea what tubing is, I'll give you a brief summary. You sit in a fully inflated tractor tire and float down a river. Tubing Vang Vienn style is a little different however. Here, you float a very short distance from one bar to another, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and jumping off high platforms into the water, swinging into it, or using (sometimes homemade) waterslides. It's as stupid and dangerous and awesome as it sounds.

The advice given to me, which I will pass on to you, is "Bring nothing." Seriously, bring nothing. I wore my swimming shorts and a waterproof pouch with my money. And nothing else. No shoes, no jewelry, nothing important. Chris brought his waterproof camera and still nearly lost it at least once. But thankfully he did because otherwise we'd have no pictures or videos.

When we were all ready, a good dozen of us, we started the short walk in our bare feet to the tubing place, led by our Danish guides, Elizabeth and Kristina (who probably don't spell their names like that). Interestingly, the tubing place had moved and they walked us right past it - great start girls, seriously, filled with confidence at this point.

It costs 55,000 kip to rent a tube, and a deposit of 60, which you get back if you are back before 6. After 6 you get 40 and after 7 you get 20. I only ever got the 40 back.

Basically works out at about €7 for the day when you get back the deposit.

After that you pile into a tuk-tuk and get driven out to the start-point at the appropriately named "Bar 1". And this where it all begins. Depending on the time of the year, buckets (think sandcastle bucket) of cheap-as-fuck whiskey cost either 10,000 kip or 20,000 (€1 or €2). So this is what we started with, clearly. There was also a bunch of body paint and stencils and a nice girl who would spray you for free. Sounds awesome? It really is! I also got tagged by Elizabeth, who I in turn tagged right back . . . silly girl . . . didn't think of that, did she! For some reason Chris got the word SLUT across his back . . .

And unfortunately some eejit tagged a dog for no apparent reason.
Bar one is basically a warm up. You have a bucket, get chatting, find out if you're with complete lunatics or not (I'm gonna go with our group was about 50/50) and then after around an hour, you grab your tube for the first time and hit the water.

And then about 30 seconds later there are some local guys throwing you ropes with bottles at the end to pull you in to bar number two, where there is more drink, more spray paint and a bunch of guys and girls (westerners) hired by Bucket Bar to give you a little wristband that entitles you to a free bucket later that night in . . . wait for it . . . Bucket Bar!

They also provide some interesting head/arm bands with slogans written on them. Some of my favourites are, "I didn't lose my virginity, I left it at bucket bar!", Chris's immortal, "Potential Rapist" and my very own, "I'm a necro, how well do you play dead!"

This bar also has the world's worst fucking slide. See video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAo0ltAjSXQ

What you can't see here is that at the last corner you smack into the side, then bang your head before getting tossed out, dazed, into the water, and a fairly strong current. Piece of advice? Stay away from the blue slide!

Then we hit bar three, which was okay and finally arrived in my person favourite, bar 4. The music was awesome and although every bar plays the same shit every day, who cares. Plus, this happened . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib8WpViDNM8
FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TOLD ME!!!

Yes, well, very . . . sorry, forgot where I was for a second there.


While I'm distracted, I'll try an introduce the main core of our group. See picture -

Left to right, there's me, English girl, Other Chris, Random Guy, Mexican guy, Savannah, Matt, Barbara, Chris, Random Guy2, and English girl2. Not pictured are Kristina and Elizabeth. Kristina is below but we don't seem to have any pictures of Elizabeth - sorry!

And yes, that is a tie spray painted on my chest. I'm a professional, remember.

After another bucket and much rocking to Nirvana and Greenday we headed off to Mudbar, famed for having a mudfighting pit, a shit slide and being the main source of pink eye in Vang Vienn. While here I was chatting to Ivo, a Dutch guy, who was getting an appology for WWII from some drunk German guy, so I asked him, "Did he get his bicycle back yet?" which caused Ivo to almost die of shock.

I always thought everyone knew about this, but apparently not. He's never met anyone who knew about the bicycle thing. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, the German's stole a significant amount of bicycles, presumably to melt down for the metal. After WWII the Dutch recieved an appology, but never got their bikes back, so at international sports fixtures between the two countries, the Dutch often chant, "Give us back our bicycles" (in Dutch). Dunno where I picked this little factoid up, but there you go! Five days later and Ivo still thinks it's hilarous that I know it.

We didn't stay that long before we headed off to our last bar of the day. I think it had a name. God only knows what it was though. I had my third bucket here, having just finished a beer as well.

It did have a very awesome waterslide though. Check out Chris giving it a go below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzvFckipO0

This was our last bar, after which we got in the water and floated for home.

As this picture illustrates, we basically created a convoy by grabbing hold of each other so we'd all float together, which is by far the safest way to go. The last stretch takes about an hour, but it was dark about half an hour and we decided to get off the river and head back by tuk tuk. A lot of them wait around the river banks for people just like us. Once it gets dark you really are better off out of the water. And you've lost your first 20,000 deposit because it gets dark at 6 anyway!

Once we got out of the Tuk Tuk we grabbed our money and me and Chris dived straight for the nearest street food stall and wolved down a burger each. We were hungry, and very very drunk.

After that we all went back to the hostel and raced for the showers on a first come first serve basis. I think I got fifth. And the showers were WARM!!! OMG, like I've never been so happy!

The next hour is a little fuzzy but eventually me, Matt and Chris and possibly Other Chris went for food. Yeah, I'm fairly sure other Chris was there.

While we were eating, Duncan, Swedish Chris and the Aussie girls Bekaa and Cork showed up. It's not a big place, so they were more or less guaranteed to walk past us at some point. The next 15mins or so involved them laughing at us for being pissed, and me reminding Bekaa that she owed me one carrying-home later! We said we'd meet them in Bucket Bar later.

Which we did. I got a free whiskey and coke bucket, and managed to get everyone moshing again when they played Rage (again) but by about 12 I was more or less burnt the fuck out and went home to bed. Chris kept going, but we'll get to that later!

Sleep, shockingly, came quite easily that night - despite the fact that my bed appeared to be made of a block of cement. Although, I woke up about 5 freezing cold for the first time in about 2 months. It was amazing! Stuck on my Metallica hoodie (at once the only warm thing I own, and also the only thing I brought that I actually didn't buy just for this trip) and went straight back to sleep.

Tubing - Day 2 - 30th October

I woke up slightly hungover, and hungry - and also broke, so headed out fairly early to grab a sandwich and some money. Ran into a few people as I was moseying along and was faced with the question, "Are you going tubing?" over and over again. At first, I had decided, nah, give it a miss. But each and every time, my resolve crumbled that little bit more . . .

By the time Duncan, Swedish Chris and the girls showed up, it took only the thiniest shove and I was back in my swimming shorts, shoving money in my pouch. Ah well . . . here we go again.

Funny thing is, while yesterday I was a clueless n00b, today I was leading the way . . . Don't do this, do do that . . . all that. It was a quieter day in general, but still awesome. The pattern more or less held from the day before. Bucket in the first bar, nothing in the second, beer in the third, bucket in the fourth.

Today I tried a zip line, which I hadn't done the day before. No video unfortunately. Now see, I just did what everyone did, which is hang on til the zip hits a stud about mid way and sends you flipping into the water - which hurt quite a lot. But apparently, you're supposed to let go BEFORE you hit the stud. Thanks for telling me, Lao-guy in charge. You're considerably awesome.

While we were here, all my ice and Bekaa's had melted, so I went and got some more for us. (And later, she got a second top up - this may be very relevant and you should probably not do this when you get to Vang Vienn)

We "lost" Bekaa at bar 4, in that she stayed behind with some other people, while we went on ahead, skipping mud bar and hitting up the one with the big slide, where there was more alcohol and more sliding and more other messing in general. And then we went to Slingshot, where we were offered joints, magic mushrooms and, as an afterthought, alcohol.

Other Chris managed to step on a nail on his way to the bathroom and was given a free can of coke, a spliff and two mushrooms by way of compensation. Yes, you did read that right. Clearly we are in the land of safety and responsiblity.

Then it was back on the river, and at this stage I was way drunker than yesterday and totally on my last legs. And hour floating on the river probably did me a world of good, even if Cork didn't take it so well. She'd barely had anything to drink, so I really can't blame that, but she still managed to get sick off the side of her tube. Motion sickness probably. Actually, it was either the precursor to the Sickness, or the reason why she didn't have such a bad dose of it. But we'll get to that.

We floated all the way back to Bucket Bar and then made our way back to the tube place to get our 40,000 back. It was, again, after dark. When we got there, we found Bekaa minding a very drunk girl who had lost her boyfriend - paying it forward was our Bekaa, at least temporarily. The Sickness is coming, remember?

Ran into Curry on my way there. "I thought you weren't going tubing today?" he says to me.
"So did I!" I say back, soaking wet with a tube slung round me like a bandolier!

I left Cork, Duncan and Swedish Chris at their hostel and me and Other Chris went back to ours, to find a very, very hungover Chris (confused by all the Chrisii? Believe me, we're aware - can't count the number of conversations I've had this week that went, "Wait, which Chris?") chilling in the common area. He'd been sick for most of the day and was only starting to come good now. Chris had been up all night, but he'd also been drinking buckets and he reckons most of them had Red Bull in them. Now, Red Bull at home is fairly strong, but over here, it has amphetamines in it and is like fucking rocket fuel. And they fling it into buckets like no ones business! I had to keep telling them I didn't want it!

After we showered and stuff, we met up again for some food. Bekaa had decided to go to bed for an hour or so, in order to perk up for bucket bar. About 5 minutes after we left, she was puking up and didn't stop til the wee hours of the morning! Sorry, we didn't now!

We went somwhere with some kind of bakery for dinner, I think, then rocked back to ours for so film watching, only to discover the TV was broken. I reckon, sober Shane could probably have fixed it, but not Day Two of Tubing Shane. He was fucking useless!

So anyway, we chilled, we crashed, we went to bed. And then, back home, Cork was sick too. But then, as I lay in bed, my own stomach  began a minor revolt. I spent the next twenty minutes or so, standing in the toilet going, will I throw up, won't I throw up. In the end, I didn't, but I continued to fel like shit well into the next day.

We actually reckon it might have something to do with the ice, or possibly the cheap whiskey, but far far too many of us managed to end up sick for it just to have been the drink. It could have just been the river water, but again, that seems a bit much. Everyone of us had ice, and Bekaa had the most, so really, it seems the most likely option.

Bout three that morning I heard some very drunk Irish accents, at least three girls, two of them trying to put the third to bed. It was actually quite funny.

Sligo girl - "Come on, into bed!"
Donegal - "Where am I?"
Sligo - "Home!"
Donegal - "I don't live here!"
Sligo - "Go to bed!"
Donegal - "Don't leave me here, I don't know where I am!"
Sligo - "Our beds are just over there!"
Donegal - "Don't leave me!"
And so on . . .

Eventually they settled down and I went back to sleep.

I actually met these girls the next day, and they were pretty sound. Funnily enough, one of them ended up in hospital a few days later from some sort of stomach poisoning thing. It really does go around.

Also funnily enough, although we didn't discover it until Facebook intervened, but one of these girls is the older sister of a friend of mine, Laura, from my masters class! Because, why wouldn't she be! I call it the Shamrock effect!

Chris and Matt left that morning, but I have no doubt I'll see them along the road somewhere. Probably at Full Moon, maybe in Australia. 

I spent the rest of that day chilling in the hostel with some Maltese lads, or, as we've named them - The Maltese Falcons. Duncan and Swedish Chris came up from their hostel and joined us, while Cork went with Aaron to some caves and stuff early in the morning. We all thought Bekaa was gone too because when we called for her there was no answer. Actually, she was just dying alone in her room. Oops . . .

In a bout of utter laziness, we even rang in for food, which was delivered right to the common area in the hostel, and which was very delicious, and even more so for the intendent indolence that went with it. It was also delivered by the hilarious Mama Lao, who may or may not have been the previous owner of Bucket Bar. She has great English and is a bit of a saviour. She rescued Adrian the Falcon from a lady boy the night before, and helped Neil (the Falcon) get a drunk-off-his-face Ryan (the Falcon also) home without losing his wallet, phone or iPod.

Later that evening, we went out for food, walked around a bit and then knocked back to the hostel for a chat and some hanging around.

The next day was again passed in a similar fashion, although Bekaa did ultimately surface and we stopped making jokes about how Cork had killed her and was just stringing us along.

The Irish girls were leaving that morning, and they'd managed to reset the code on their pad lock so I had to borrow a saw from the reception. I'm actually quite unnerved that it took me all of about 30 seconds to saw through the lock and break into their locker. Imagine if I was dodgy person?

For added laughs, the night before one of them, totally convinced she'd lost her phone while at Bucket Bar's bar, had gone mental at a barman, saying he stole it and all the rest. Guess where the phone was? Yup, in the locker. But of course it was! I'd like to point out this was the same girl who woke up with one of the Falcons in her bed, having been "shifting" (haven't heard that in ages) him in the mud at Mud bar the day before - and having little or no recollection of this. So perhaps it isn't that surprising!

Me and Cork looked into kayaking from Vang Vienn to Vientiane, because it seemed like a more interesting way of travelling, as opposed to sitting on a bus for 6 hours. Unfortunately the weather had been too hot recently and the river was too low. Pity really!

We did however book bus tickets to Vientene, because it's basically a central hub to get anywhere from. For me, it was Cambodia, and for them it was Chiang Mai - my favourite place on this whole entire journey of mine.

By that evening, Bekaa had managed to eat some food and we played some cards, did some shopping and then got to bed early to be up for the bus at ten. I sat down with the Maltese Falcons for a bit before bed and there were a few others around too. Also, Daragh from Limerick was passed out in the corner of the common area. Here's a cautionary tale. Daragh cannot swim. Daragh drank a lot while tubing that day. Daragh decided, without warning, to try a rope swing. Daragh still cannot swim. Luckily, one of his friends saw him climbing up at more or less the last minute and managed to get two guys to swim out into the river and grab him after he landed and started to drown. Daragh is a lucky boy.

Anyway, was in bed pretty early that night and thus ended my days in Vang Vienn! It shall be missed!

Final thoughts? Vang Vienn is awesome, and tubing rocks - just don't drink the ice! It'll kill ya!

Talk soon,
Shane!