Thailaos

1) Years ago, when I first went to Chiang Mai, I preceded that trip with a four- or five-day bike trip through ruralish Thailand. I remember thinking how mangy, yet happy the dogs were in the country. In Chiang Mai last week, I got to find out how overstuffed, yet happy, the dogs were in the travel agencies. I dubbed this guy "Sausage."

2) The trip was Bangkok-Vientiane-Chiang Mai. Probably was the most unplanned, nonspecific trip I had done in a while. It was built around seeing a friend in Chiang Mai who is living there for a few months, but as trips usually go, plans changed. Sure, I got to see her, but spent much of the time in CM with a couple (He is American, she is French/American) who quit their jobs in the tech sector, left the Bay area, and are now traveling the world. One thing about traveling: You never, ever know who you will meet, and all of a sudden you can spend four days hanging out with someone, sharing life stories like you've known them forever, and you may never see them again. It's the joy of traveling overseas: when you meet another, you automatically have a bond, which makes striking up a friendship that much easier.

3) That said, I still hold on to my aversion of white people with dreadlocks.

4) Total hotel cost for seven days: $110 US for Bangkok, $82 for Vientiane and $85 for Chiang Mai. Total for eight nights of rooms: $277. While I no longer can stay in hostels, I don't mind staying in hotels that offer hostel rooms for other, younger peeps, which is what the first place was. The second was a sleepy guesthouse that looked generic on the outside, but much nicer inside. The third was the cheapest - $20 US a day, about - and was a steal. It looks fancier than what it is, and the bed was a little lumpy, but sometimes you have to forego plans to check out after two days and decamp to somewhere nicer when you realize that means you won't be able to meet up with the new friends you just met as easily, because they no longer will be staying on the same floor as you. Plus, as an added benefit, the guy who worked nights at the front desk of the Na Inn was usually hammered, and would always apologize for being so, because, "I just like whiskey!"

5) So what did I do this trip? A whole lot of nothing. I have a bad habit sometimes of freezing up in hotel rooms and not wanting to head out, but it wasn't so much this trip. Instead, i had already been to both Thai cities a few times and seen the usual sites. So I spent a lot of time reading, consuming coffee and lime sodas in cafes and scouting out food. One exception: going for a run one morning in Vientiane, which is located right along the Mekong River, with Thailand on the other side. (I proceeded to somehow hurt my knee doing said act, a first for me, since before I have always just screwed up my right ankle. Apparently, the injury is working its way up.) And second, I did an all-day cooking class in Chiang Mai. Pretty fun, though the French couple in the class was deathly afraid of putting chilis in their food (France, for those who have never been there, does not like spicy heat in its food, at all.). Thai food seemed relatively easy to cook, but anything is when everything is already gathered and prepped for you.

6) Ah, Vientiane. My favorite part of the trip. It's hard to describe a national capital as a town, but it really does feel like a town. It's getting more developed by the year - the latest project is they are building a park and promenade, complete with concrete walking paths, all along the downtown area by the river - but it still is a work in progress, to say the least. Touting is at a minimum. My guesthouse was along the river, but the development has not reached there yet; the road in front of it is still dirt, and you will get bitten by mosquitoes at night when you have a late Beer Lao in their awesome restaurant, which has 20-foot ceilings and overlooks the River. Laos is the most relaxed country in Asia, by far. You go there, and it's hard to get hyper about anything. You wake up, have a coffee, read, go for a walk, stop for more coffee, read, lunch, read, nap, watch the river float by, coffee, read, walk some more, have a cocktail, go for dinner, come back and read as you have a late Beer Lao. It's a city of old colonial buildings mixed with two-story generic buildings constructed in the last 20 years, with lots of sidewalks. What's there to see there? The river. The Arch. And that's about it. But if you want to chill out, it's the place to go.

7) For those wondering about mosquitoes, relax. If you are traveling in India or deep in the jungles of central Asia, you take malaria medicine. But for most cities, you just take the bites. If you read all the guide books, they make you think you HAVE to take medicine before traveling anywhere. It's the same guidebooks who constantly warn about water. Sure, there are some places were you want to drink only bottled water, like India, Cambodia, and much of Laos. But if you rinse your toothbrush with tap water in Chiang Mai, you will not die. Just like you won't die if you drink a fresh fruit smoothie in the night market that a friend heartily recommends. It's the problem of guidebooks: they keep on emphasizing how you need to eat and live like a local, but always warn you about eating fresh fruits and vegetables and drinking the water. If you use common sense and watch people prepare food, most times you are fine. And here's a tip: those restaurants you go to use local fruits and veggies. That salad you eat in Bangkok does not use veggies shipped in by air from Europe or the US.

8) And on a side note, I usually try to buy fruits from Malaysia or Thailand, if available. So why not eat them locally there? Especially when you get strawberries that taste, well, like strawberries.

9) A lot of cities on the Southeast Asia tourist track have restaurants that train (at-risk) kids as the main part of their mission. Siem Reap has one (in fact, it has a whole hotel devoted to training kids for the hospitality industry), and Vientiane has one, too, that I ate at my final night. Good Laotian food, done the way liberal white people like: in a charitable setting, but modern and clean enough to assuage our fears. It's the restaurant for NPR donaters, as I described it.

10) But the best part was talking to the new friends who are traveling the world. Their journey started when they took a cargo container ship from Philadelphia to New Zealand. Yes, a regular cargo ship; their cabin was about 180 square feet, and quite comfy, they said. The got to ride through the Panama canal, and no, they did not go crazy being on a ship for 4 week; having an awesome chef who made everything from scratch helped, they said. (It costs about $100 a person per day, far cheaper than on a cruise ship. And the rooms are the same, if not bigger than a cruise ship. You just don't have two swimming pools on the deck, or organized activities every day.) Needless to say, there description of this made me really want to do this some day. If you have an hour, I heartily recommend reading about their trip on the Cap Cleveland here.

11) Sometimes, in Southeast Asia, you get a taxi that is your normal, metered taxi. Sometimes, it's a regular car, and you negotiate a fee (badly, I must say, for me). Sometimes you get a motorcycle or a tuk-tuk. And sometimes, like in Chiang Mai, when you have your guesthouse call a taxi to take you to the airport, you get the pickup truck with a cap over the bed and to benches in back. Needless to say, no seatbelts were used.