SF cable car, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.

(More photos on Flickr.)

Janelle’s flight back to Australia departed from San Francisco in the early morning hours of Wednesday, so I went down there with her for a few days beforehand.

Aside from a single day in 2001, and an airport transfer or two since then, I’d never been to SF, so it was pretty cool to see it. I think I had an image in my head from other west coast cities I’ve been to (Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, San Diego) but it’s actually very different. Older and more expensive, and less naturey — the downtown is definitely more Manhattan than West End.

We stayed in the downtown Hotel Des Arts, an “art hotel” like the Carlton Arms in New York, meaning that the rooms are small and basic, but painted with murals my local artists. Ours was done by Jeffrey Fish, and was really cool, with whimsical skulls (yes) everywhere.

We were only there a few days, and neither of us gets all excited about spending all day seeing the standard tourist sights, so aside from a trip to the SF Museum of Modern Art and the obligatory cable car rides, we mostly just wandered (always my preferred tourist activity in a new city). Highlights and random thoughts:

• After a couple of expensive, mediocre meals, we basically gave up on restaurant dining in San Francisco. I simply couldn’t get past the feeling that unless you’re into fine dining (which we aren’t), you can get food in Vancouver just as good for a whole lot less, once you figure in the abysmal exchange rate. After coming to that conclusion, we mostly ate Subway and burritos.
• SF burritos are yummy. Are they really all that? I’m not sure, since I didn’t get around to trying enough different places, but they are pretty good.
• Being at the intersection of the Financial District and Chinatown makes for interesting bar hopping, as we decided to do one night. We started in upscale wine bars and rooftop patios and ended up in a dive bar with old Chinese dudes and trannies, arguing incoherently, and having walked a total of about four blocks.
• I am too old to drink a lot. Never again.
• Seriously, the cable cars are not to be missed. Not only are the views spectacular, but in this age of litigation and safety regulations, it’s great to be in a rickety open car open to the elements, with standees hanging off the sides and hopping on and off in the middle of traffic. Just don’t try to catch it at Powell station — it had dozens of people waiting a good hour to get on, while the other stations were almost empty. In fact, we took the California Street line and had the car to ourselves for most of it.
• Seeing Milk and then going to The Castro was an experience. The place might have been gritty in the 1970s, but today, the place smells of money. Sweet, gay money.
• The SF MoMA is cool, but what I really dug was the nearby Cartoon Art Museum, which had Coraline and Watchmen exhibits, and a huge room full of Gene Colon originals.
• Probably my favourite neighbourhood was Valencia Avenue, which was like a cooler, slightly more upscale version of my beloved Main Street, with taquerías and bars instead of noodle houses and coffee shops. We spent an entertaining afternoon wandering the vintage shops, hipster art galleries and zine stores.

stark landscape, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.

I was back in The Skatch for Christmas. I had forgotten what -32C felt like, but stepping out of the airport, it all came back to me in a rush.

more pics

Aside from that, though, New York is awesome. I got to see the sights with my friend Janelle, spend some time working in the reading room of the New York Public Library, see Spamalot on Broadway (laughed our asses off), and sleep in a tiny fifth-floor room in a Manhattan hostel which had no TV, phone or internet, but had beautiful murals on the walls of all the hallways and rooms.

I’ll put up some pictures later, but here are a few observations from my time in NYC.

• Going shopping at Macy’s the last Saturday before Xmas was… pretty insane. You know all those shots in Koyaanisqatsi of crowds of people moving, but shot so that the crowds seemed like they were flowing and crawling like they were entities of their own? It’s like that. And it’s stressful. But I managed to buy a Samsonite suitcase at 50% off to carry home all the vintage clothes I bought!
• Speaking of which, shopping for vintage in NYC is almost too easy. It was fun to go to Williamsburg and visit some hipster-oriented second-hand shops, but Janelle and I visited one (admittedly pretty expensive) vintage store in midtown Manhattan which had hundreds of jackets, all organized by size and colour and style, neatly labelled and sorted. And I mean, dozens of old smoking jackets, corduroy suits, disco jackets, Elvis jumpsuits — everything. It’s too easy. There’s no thrill of the hunt. Sure, I bought a red houndstooth blazer, but I felt a bit dirty doing it.
• Abhi is right: tiramisu is a lot better in New York. So are bagels. Coffee and sushi, not so much.
• People in New York are not particularly mean, but unlike Vancouver, they don’t generally go out of their way to be nice. And customer service is mostly pretty bad — or at least, not reliably good. I wouldn’t say I’m a people person: I want simple transactions to be smooth and predictable, and I did find it irritating to have that overruled by the whims of pissy salespeople and surly waitstaff. Seriously, I don’t care if you’re having a bad day — just do your job, take my money, and you never have to see me again.
• My previous trips to NYC had been pretty much entirely in Manhattan, but this time I got to actually spend some time in Brooklyn (mostly Williamsburg). And for the first time I could actually see myself living in New York. I mean, you got trees and houses and people that know each other. Like a real neighbourhood. And you’re still only about 15 minutes from Manhattan by subway. And all this for only $1400-$2000 for a one-bedroom apartment.

on packing

I packed very light for a five-week backpacking trip, and I’m really glad I did. You can see what I took here. Oh sure, I needed to buy a few things, but they were all cheap. (Incidentally, nothing on that list did I actually regret bringing. I owe a debt of thanks to the Travel Independent packing guide for the “pack light, buy what you need” philosophy and tips.) However, there were a couple of things I really wished I’d had at times.

Number one was a lightweight, windproof, waterproof, hooded windbreaker. For travelling on boats, mostly, where it really can be cold, wet and windy. I even have one — I just forgot to bring it. I tried to buy one, but not until I was in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t find one that fit me and didn’t suck.

Number two was a pair of jeans. I had a pair of light cotton pants, but just one. And while it’s always possible to get laundry done, it can easily take 24 hours before you get it back, and you don’t want to be in the mountains of Northern Thailand in the middle of winter for a day and a night in a pair of shorts. Now, persons of conventional dimensions might have been able to just pick up a pair of jeans in Asia — it’s a big continent with lots of people, but my problem is, I’m too damn short for Western sizes, and too damn… “cuddly” for Asian sizes. So getting a pair of off-the-rack jeans that fit me simply didn’t happen.

on Lonely Planet

The Lonely Planet books are useful for getting a handle on regions, but are best ignored for details. Once you’re in a town, you don’t need the LP to tell you what a good guesthouse or restaurant is. Just take a look around first, trust your first impressions, and you won’t go far wrong. The problem with the LP books is that they are so popular (especially Southeast Asia on a Shoestring) that pretty much anything that gets a mention is going to be packed, while places just as good — or, often, better — but unlisted will be half-empty. I also found a much better source of recommendations in simply approaching friendly-looking backpackers who have been in the place for a while.

Incidentally, for maps and trip-planning info, I found South East Asia: The Graphic Guide to be an excellent alternative to the Lonely Planet, with a lot less hand-holding.

on pre-planning

Speaking of accommodations, before I left, I was kind of nervous about travelling at the highest part of the high season, so I booked a few places before leaving. This wasn’t a bad idea, but it was mostly unnecessary, not to mention limiting and probably more expensive. Turns out there’s always something available. Even arriving in Luang Prabang the night before New Year’s Eve, or in Saigon at 2AM, I had a room in under an hour. Not that it wouldn’t have been nice to have a place waiting on those occasions, but really, I needn’t have worried. And you know, I’d heard such planning was unnecessary, but still I needed to do it for my peace of mind.

Also, because I only had a few weeks in Asia and was coordinating with other people, and generally didn’t want to waste time, I ended up flying a lot, which meant holding to a pretty tight schedule, which meant planning things out in advance. The plus side of that was that I did actually make it to all the places I wanted to see. The cost, though, was flexibility. For instance, I really, really loved Laos and wanted to stay there longer, but I had a whole itinerary for Vietnam that I had to get to. I’m glad I actually got to see all the things I did, and staying longer was simply not an option, but next time, I’d like to go for a longer, more flexible trip.

across Asia in Chuck Taylors

Japan has embraced the consumerist lifestyle with a fervor that we in North America can only hope to aspire to. Everyone is attired in the most conspicuously expensive brand names at hand, leading to oddities like the greasy middle-aged security guard in the Burberry tee-shirt, and groups of women in completely identical outfits, like Ugg-and-Chanel shock troops. Even sex is a matter of conspicuous consumption, with porn megastores advertising $70 DVDs and clubs decorated with pictures of sexy girls and coy lists of prices that never quite tell you what they’re for. But whatever it is, it ain’t cheap.

Though there are definite plusses — the vending machines are amazing in their quantity and comprehensiveness.

vending machines to infinity

However, why bore you with my own dull writing, when you can read all about my visit on Tyler and Carla’s blog? As an extra enticement: there’s an anecdote about a monkey. A sad, sad monkey.

• Hello and Goodbye on Carla and Tyler’s blog
• pictures of Osaka

phones of Bangkok

By the time I returned, though, I was a somewhat more seasoned SEA traveller. I’d recovered from my initial culture shock, and after being in Hanoi and Saigon, Bangkok seemed positively first-world. There are sidewalks on which you can actually walk, and actual traffic laws that are often obeyed, and people don’t hassle while you’re walking down the street. At least, no more than in Vancouver.

I should also add, Bangkok is the easiest city I’ve ever been in for getting around. The skytrains and subways and river buses are interconnected, clearly labelled in English, and take you almost anywhere you want to go, or close enough that you can pay a taxi or tuk-tuk a buck or two to take you there. Most of the cab drivers are friendly and know enough English that you can communicate, though my attempts to pronounce the Thai names of places were usually cause for great amusement.

By the time I left, I’d spent over a week in Bangkok, all told, and was starting to feel pretty comfortable there. Even being alone in the city for several days didn’t bother me (aside from one time when I was riding through traffic on the back of a motorcycle taxi with no passport and wondering how long it would be until I was missed if I fell off). While I don’t think I would move there permanently, if I had a job that required me to spend, say, a year there, I would probably jump at it. It’s certainly not a city that will ever bore you.

Anyway, here’s my mini-travelogue of Bangkok.

a lot of the stores have great, bizarre names

shopping district

The downtown shopping district is huge. Massive, seven-story department stores, each for a different, well-heeled demographic. And malls with endless tiny shops. Many of the little shops are identical but for the name — Siam Centre has about five shops selling just Converse sneakers and about twenty selling the exact same selection of knock off designer brand bags. But there are also plenty of unique shops selling, for instance, handmade tops or Thai-made Western gear. Patchwork cowboy hats! Yellow quick-draw holsters!

We also walked through the trendy teen shopping district. Little shops selling clothes and do-dads identified as “trendy”, “cute”, “sexy” and/or “lucky”. I’m not really sure how the last one fits into the consumerist experience, but I saw the phrase “trendy and lucky!” more than once.

guardians of the green buddha wat

royal palace and green buddha wat

By the time I visited Bangkok’s Royal Palace and Green Buddha Wat, I had seen roughly umpteen wats and a fistful of palaces, and while they’re impressive and pretty cool, the differences are, shall we say not always obvious to my undiscerning and unappreciative eye. The palace is neat, but you can’t actually go in it, so you’re stuck wandering the grounds in the sticky heat with ten thousand other tourists. I didn’t stay all that long.

The highlight was actually in trying to get to and from there, since the best approach is by boat. The river is actually one of the fastest and most pleasant thoroughfares in Bangkok, with regular stops, interesting sights and a cool, if occasionally pungent, breeze off the water. You can also hire river taxis that ply the city’s many canals to dodge the diesel fumes and constant traffic jams.

oh, hey, I’m a backpacker too

khao san road

Alex Garland (The Beach) wrote that Khao San Road is “a decompression chamber for those about to leave or enter Thailand; a halfway house between the East and the West.” And that’s about right. It’s Bangkok’s backpacker ghetto, a long row of guest houses, burger-and-beer joints, tattoo parlours and internet cafes. There are a few long-time travellers here to stock up on toilet paper and shaving cream at the Boots drugstores and 7-11s, but mostly it’s twenty-year-old hippies and hipsters with fresh tattoos and bootleg brand-name tee-shirts living the backpacker dream with the comforts and familiarity of home. The multinational crowd of Europeans, North Americans, Israelis and Aussies is utterly homogeneous. It’s a place that tries desperately to live up to its own stereotypes. I know I sound kind of down on Khao San, and I suppose I am, but it’s kind of fascinating, too. It’s the pure SEA backpacker experience, stripped of any specificity of place or culture, and I found it oddly attractive.

patpong

One night, Janelle and I visited Bangkok’s infamous red light district. From the stories I’d heard, I’d imagined it as an endless row of seedy bars and brothels. But it’s not. Oh, sure, it’s impressively seedy, but it’s really about three blocks long, and one is entirely geared toward Japanese salarymen, and one toward gay men. There’s a row of trendy restaurants at one end and a Starbucks at the other and between them about a hundred shady-looking dudes asking you “pussy show? ping-ping show?”, one after the other, while flashing menus of the shows available and their prices. I was kind of intrigued by the “woman boxing match”, but ultimately declined. But even these enterprising young men are far outnumbered by invitations to buy low-quality Diesel knock-offs from the vendors whose stalls line the streets.

As we left, we saw a tour group of about ten scared-looking Europeans creeping toward Patpong, camcorders at the ready. “Hey, mister,” we muttered. “Ping-pong show?”

5:30 AM

Wake up. Finish packing. Hike up the hill out to the resort to the road, where the cab will meet us.

6:00 AM

Catch cab. Drive into town. Watch the sky, glowing softly blue and orange behind the trees and mountains.

6:30 AM

Arrive at the airport. We need to get on the waitlist, but the Vietnam Airlines staff is unanimously unhelpful. Finally, we get a guy to take our passports and write down our names. More travellers arrive to be be waitlisted. Some, like us, have flights out of Saigon the next day and need to get off the island. Nobody knows what’s going on.

7:00 AM

The ‘long-timers’ arrive. These people have been on the waitlist for days. Information starts to flow. Ferries haven’t been running for three days. People have been camped out at the airport since then. Some are desperate and close to breaking down after waiting for three days. We find out where we are on the waitlist. There are over 80 names ahead of ours. This is not good. No, wait: this totally sucks ass.

7:30 AM

I stay with the luggage while Janelle hops onto the back of a moto (motorcycle taxi) and visits a travel office. No Superdong. No ferries. No nothing. Now way off the island.

8:00 AM

By now everybody trying to get off the island is at the airport. We join the chorus of travellers cursing Vietnam Airlines, the Superdong ferries and Phu Quoc. We later hear conspiracy theories that the government (which owns the biggest resort on the island, as well as Vietnam Airlines and the Superdong) has simply stopped the Superdong at the end of the vacation period to keep the resort tourists on the island spending money. Nobody finds this hard to believe.

Two Canadians from Montreal who have been waiting at the airport for three days are panicking because they too have flights out of Siagon tomorrow.. Unlike us, they are finally next on the waitlist. One of the VA people comes to the counter we have all crowded around. He has tickets. He does not give them to the Montrealers. Pleas for information are ignored. A Vietnamese family who we saw before flashing money and ID is looking pretty happy. It is obvious some chicanery is going on. We discuss bribing the airline people, which at this point we would be quite happy to do, but have no idea how one bribes Vietnamese airline clerks. We give up on getting off Phu Quoc. Maybe ever.

8:45 AM

We are discussing trying to change our tickets out of Saigon when a four-fingered cab driver we’ve never seen before comes up to us.

“You want boat to Ha Tien?? You come now! Boat leave nine-thirty!” Is it legit? How much will it cost? How will we get from Ha Tien to Saigon? It’s on the mainland, but nowhere near Saigon or on the bus route to Saigon. Who knows? We are just happy to have some hope of being able to give someone money to get us off this fucking island. Not leaping at it is simply not an option.

Our four-fingered Vietnamese saviour drives us across the island like a maniac, swerving to avoid dogs, chickens and motos. We get to a little concrete pier on the far end of the island. Roughly a hundred people are there. Vietnamese. French tourists. The two Quebecois dudes. A group of about ten ladyboys. We give stacks of 50000 Dong notes to the cab driver nad boat captain and are happy to do it. Whatever you ask. Yes. Yes. Thank-you.

9:15 AM

The boat arrives. Oh my God. It’s a little wooden fishing boat. It’s bobbing like a cork in a fountain. There’s no way all these people will fit on this boat.

10:00 AM

All the people are on the boat. So are several motorcycles, lashed to the deck. And a puppy in a travel cage. A lucky few are in the cabin with the captain. The rest are on the deck. Sure, it’ll be cold, but we have sweaters and jackets. The boat sets out to Ha Tien.

10:15 AM

Wheee! The boat crashes through the waves, each wave sending a spray of warm seawater over the deck. Within minutes everyone is soaked from head to toe.

10:30 AM

We are all completely wet and cold. It’s windy. The boat rides waves up, every once in a while landing with tooth-loosening crashes in the troughs. Imagine you are standing in front of one of those huge, movie-sound-stage style fans turned to full. And then someone starts throwing buckets of salt water in your face every thirty seconds and throwing you hard to the ground every five minutes, too.

11:00 AM

Janelle starts to seriously fear for her life. She’s no the only one. The vomiting begins. The mate comes up on deck and tells us not to lean over the side to throw up. “Just do it on deck! Water wash away!” We have many hours left to go.

11:30 AM

We learn later that around this time a woman tried to get the boat to turn around. This seems somewhat reasonable, as the island is still quite visible and, in fact, does not seem to be getting any further away. We do not turn back.

12:15 PM

We stop fearing death and start to welcome the prospect. We are now one big shivering, drenched, huddled mass on the deck. At some point we got a greasy, fish-smelling tarp, but it is far too small for all the people on the deck, and just covers our bags. Mine has all my books, my iPod and my camera in it. To keep up my spirits, I make a shopping list in my head, since there’s no way any of this stuff will survive.

1:00 PM

Janelle has managed to find a cozy spot between me and one of the Quebecois guys, under a few square centimetres of tarp. I’m still getting the buckets-in-the-face treatment.

2:00 PM

We were supposed to be at Ha Tien by now. There is no sign of land. Somebody is crying. Nobody has thrown up in a while, though, which is nice. The mate comes and holds up a single finger. “One hour!”

The sea, amazingly, is quieting down. We see a rugged coastline with strange and surreal towers nestles between low mountains.

3:00 PM

Ha Tien. Jesus! Hundreds of fishing boats like ours, all tied to corrugated tin shacks with old-fashioned TV antennae on the roofs. Rusting industrial buildings past that. Fish canneries? Who knows. The air is thick with blue-grey diesel smoke.

Suddenly, we are boarded! A half-dozen motorboats latch onto our boat and the deck is soon swarming with Vietnamese men missing teeth and fingers and shouting at us! Loudly! And agitatedly! In Vietnamese! They try to get us onto the boats, but our bags are still in the hold. It’s completely bizarre. Being boarded by pirates would be no less surreal. Finally, some kind of order emerges, and people are matched to bags and everyone bound for Saigon ends up together on one boat, which then zips away from our “ferry”. The whole thing takes all of five minutes. The motorboat pilot whips out his cell phone and starts making calls. One of the Vietnamese children translates. He is arranging some kind of bus or cab. The boat pulls up to a tiny wharf.

3:15 PM

Apparently, we are now all waiting for a bus to Saigon. This confuses us, since there aren’t any buses to Saigon from Ha Tien, only Rach Gia to Saigon. The two Quebecois guys are especially concerned, since they’d been waiting for three days to get off Phu Quoc and figured they would have to get to Rach Gia. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Mostly, after a five-hour boat ride, I just need to pee. Very, very badly. I communicate my need through creative use of mime, which the Vietnamese dudes find hysterical, but gets the point across.

3:30 PM

The bus arrives. A not-uncomfortable air-conditioned minibus. Another round of questions about times and places. Another stack of 50000 Dong notes. We go about 3km to a pho stand and eat some tasty noodles. Janelle and the Montreal guys go out and get some Pringles and Oreos and weird Vietnamese candy. It seems like you can get Pringles and Oreos anywhere in Southeast Asia, even industrial backwaters straddling the Cambodian border. Even Coke is less ubiquitous.

4:00 PM

The bus leaves Ha Tien. The long journey to Saigon begins. The driver tells us it will take 6 hours, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, since it’s 6 hours from Rach Gia to Saigon, and RG is a lot closer. Mostly, we’re just happy to be on our way.

It’s hard to say what the Mekong delta is really like, since we mostly passed through it in the dark. But it seems to mostly be the bad roads, random factories and concrete buildings that make up the rest of the country. We bounce over the rough roads in the dark, stopping occasionally for meals and toilet breaks.

10:00 PM

We were supposed to be in Saigon around this time.

2:00 AM

We arrive in Saigon. It’s surprising how active the city is at 2AM. Sidewalk food courts have dozens of people eating and hanging out. A French dude on the bus told us about a hotel that sounds okay. We take a cab there. It’s full. We wander around popping into random hotels and waking up desk clerks. Everything seems to be full. Well, the Sheriton has a room, but it’s $250US. We are tempted.

3:00 AM

We finally find a room at an anonymous little hotel. We open the door and geckos scurry for safely, but it seems otherwise clean. We raid the minibar (always a good deal in Vietnam) and sleep the four hours we have until we need to get up for our flight.

We did it. We made it. We survived. And it only took 21 hours of pain and stress and we didn’t die. Amazingly, our iPods and cameras survived, too, though all my books were reduced to fishy-smelling pulp.

The moral? Avoid islands. No, wait. Avoid everything associated with the ocean. A prairie boy like me has no business there.

The main reason we were in Hanoi in the first place was to see Halong Bay, a few hours away. The bay contains about 2000 limestone islands, which rise straight out of the water and are topped with lush vegetation. Only two of the islands have enough approachable surface area to be habitable, though a few of the smaller islands have little beaches backed by sheer vertical cliffs.

However, the entire bay is most definitely inhabited. Individual houseboats and even entire floating villages are moored between the islands, complete with shops and bored-looking dogs. It’s a really amazing place.

That said, I don’t have a whole lot of Halong Bay adventures to talk about. We took a two-day boat tour of the bay. At night we slept on the boat, and woke up next to a floating fishing village. (I don’t know that I’ve ever slept on a boat before. Guess I haven’t really lived.) We took the cheapo budget tour, which means the food was pretty basic (lots of rice and cabbage), but the people were interesting backpacker-types.

• pictures!

old Hanoi

Laos and Vietnam have so much in common — French colonialism, American bombing, decades of communism — that it’s actually quite shocking how different they are. Laos is pastoral and friendly; Vietnam is crowded, dirty, noisy and unwelcoming. It’s like Vietnam is trying to compress an industrial revolution that took two hundred years in Europe into a couple of decades. Everywhere you look, there’s signs of rapid industrialization — construction projects, insane traffic, and choking pollution.

Combined with this is a culture that treats foreigners like walking ATMs — we only spent a couple of days in Hanoi, but by the time we left, we had been asked to buy hundreds of items and taxi rides. And if you ever do inquire about buying anything, you get slapped with foreigner pricing. It seems common for vendors to charge foreigners five or ten times what they charge locals. And it’s official policy, too — the foreigner pricing on public buses is so high, most travelers take private buses run by tour companies instead, and by government mandate “foreign guests” pay triple the accommodation rates Vietnamese do. Not to mention, scams targeting foreigners are, apparently, rife. Now, I understand that to the typical Vietnamese, even a budget backpacker like myself is fabulously wealthy, but it is pretty disheartening to continually face this “money barrier” between you and the locals, especially after they way we were treated in (much poorer) Laos and (much richer) Thailand.

Hanoi alley

But I digress. Back to Hanoi, the most striking thing is the traffic. Little scooter-motorcycles account for probably 90% of the traffic, and you regularly see huge boxes and entire families piled onto them. Our cab into the city flew through them like a hand through a cloud of gnats. Traffic lights in Hanoi are infrequent, and even less frequently obeyed. We arrived on New Years Eve, and the scene in Old Hanoi was chaos. Like most old cities, the streets are both narrow and crooked. The moto traffic was so thick, it resembled nothing so much as hoses firing streams of motos down the streets, flying past each other at the intersections in four different directions. And honking. Gad, is there a lot of honking. Though in Vietnam honking is used differently than in the west. In Vietnam, honking means “I’m going to fly past you as fast as I can, as close as I possibly can, so don’t you dare do anything unexpected”. You hear this a lot in Old Hanoi, because the sidewalks are so full of vendors, parked motos and families cooking dinner that all foot traffic shuffles nervously along single-file in the two feet of space between the gutter and the moto traffic. Crossing the street is a matter of making sure you’re as visible as possible, stepping out into the traffic and praying, while buffeted by the breeze of passing motos.

Old Hanoi actually looks kind of cool. Lots of bars and restaurants and historical monuments. But being constantly hassled to buy things and the noise and traffic and pollution made the whole experience unpleasant. By the time we left, I was acclimating to the whole scene, but I would have had to be there a couple more days before I would have begun to enjoy it.

Janelle, on the other hand, seems to have liked it whole lot

As lovely as Luang Prabang was, I was curious to see other parts of Laos. And so I ended up getting up and dawn one morning and dragging Janelle from her hot showers and bacon-stuffed baguettes to the boat dock on the Mekong. We were going to go up the river.

A poor and sleepy little country, the infrastructure in Laos is minimal. There are few roads, and the power grid doesn’t extend far outside of the two or three largest cities. The Mekong river and its tributaries are the country’s main thoroughfares, and a popular route for backpackers. Popular being a relative term in Laos — the day we set out, at the peak of peak season, about a dozen foreigners got onto boats out of Luang Prabang.

The boat took us up the Mekong and its tributary, the Nam Ou (“rice bowl river”) to our first destination, Nong Kiaow. The trip was really spectacular. The rivers wind through mountains like pointed teeth, covered in thick, lush forests. Life in Laos continues along the river as it always has — men out fishing while the women cook and wash clothes and children help their parents or play in the rivers. The people, and the children especially, are amazingly friendly, smiling and waving at the boatload of weirdo foreigners. I’ve heard that deforestation is becoming a problem in Laos, but the forests we passed looked so vast and inaccessible, and the people so dominated by the landscape, that it is hard to reconcile that fact with what I saw.

the spectacular bridge across the Nam Ou at Nong Kiaow

And then, after hours of motoring down the river (and several breakdowns), we rounded a bend in the river and saw the spectacular bridge that runs through Nong Kiaow. We disembarked and climbed the hundred or so uneven concrete steps from the riverbank to the town.

The top of the steps might as well have had a sign saying “welcome to the third world”. A kind of courtyard with a couple of old Chinese trucks and a few kids and dogs playing in the dirt. There was a shack with a “tourist info” sign, but it looked like it hadn’t been open in quite some time, and a little unmanned ticket booth where you can buy boat tickets. The earth the town is built-on is dusty and a striking orange-brown, and covers everything — buildings, trucks, buildings, dogs, kids. To be honest, after the relative luxury of Luang Prabang, it was a bit of a shock.

However, we gamely made our way forward to the bridge to find accommodations, skipping the dodgy-looking guesthouse by the boat dock, and found the rest of the town to be much more charming. The view from the bridge is breathtaking, and while we crossed, we met a couple of foreigners taking pictures and looking quite relaxed. They turned out to be Canadian (and to know one of the profs in my department), and recommended a very nice guesthouse (the Sunset Guesthouse) which featured $3 rooms and a terrace overlooking the river where you can eat delicious food and drink Beer Lao and Lao-Lao (rice moonshine) while you watch the sun set behind the mountains.

Beer Lao, the cheapest, best and pretty much only beer

We liked Nong Kiaow a lot and debated staying there for a while, but I was curious to check out Muang Ngoi, another town we’d heard of further up the river, so the next day we left most of our gear in the guesthouse and headed to Muang Ngoi.

Muang Ngoi is smaller than Nong Kiaow, but attracts more backpackers, and has a few more guesthouses and restaurants. Not that it is remotely overrun, and the folks that make it out this far are generally seasoned and respectful travellers. Muang Ngoi’s only connection to the outside world is the river — there is no road and no motor vehicles, no banks, no phones, no internet, and in fact, no electricity, except for a couple hours after sunset when the town generator kicks in. Just two-dollar-a-night bungalows and nothing to do but get up with the chickens (really, you have no choice — they are loud), eat Lao food, drink delicious Lao coffee, and lie in a hammock reading and watching the river go by. When the generator shuts off around 8PM, you can eat and drink and walk the streets by candlelight, but by 10, it’s time for bed. And then you wake up and do it again. Our bungalow-neighbours were a pleasant Alaskan couple who had been doing just that for weeks. I could easily have stayed a month.

your narrator, considering staying in Muang Ngoi just a little while longer…

But alas, Vietnam beckoned.

• more pictures from up the river