Alrighty, so much to say and this teeny little time frame/space in which to say it. SO I last wrote you from Nong Khiew, I think. From there we took the boat another hour upstream to Muong Ngoi, where we found ton more guesthouses and restaurants than anything else - though the town does still largely subsist on, well, subsistence fishing and farming - more sticky rice than you could ever imagine. And apparently I'd never had sticky rice before coming here. Stuff is crazy. You just ball it up and it sticks. Then you stick spices and whatnot to it. Good, but also not that good. Ben likes it a lot.

So we stayed in the very last guesthouse in the row, for 1$ per night each for our own bungalos only because the tour guide in Luang Prabang owns the place. And he came in on Saturday and stayed there for a night - the first night that he got to spend in MNgoi with his family all year - which realy gets you to thinking about how much your extra 50 cents of bargaining power means to him vs. you. And I guess at this point in my life it does mean a lot to me, but not nearly so much...

Anyhow, he invited us for dinner with his family, as we were the only ones staying there, so we obliged. Drank lao Lao (rice whiskey stuff - stronger than....) and had some delicious lao food - which is, as always, spicy as hell. Then we hit the sack. Oh, and at dinner - this was sort of weird - it was by candlelight outside (no electricity), and with only his wife, his brother, and another guy who we didn't discern his identity.
That day (before din) we had hiked up to Ban Na, a village about an hour away from MN, and liked what we saw - a Lao farming community with a sole guesthouse, so we decided to come back to stay the following night. In the interim, we went on a hill tribe trek, which is very different here than in Thailand as the cultures have not been destroyed already here, and as they are being better-managed. So we went to a Khmu village and a Hmong village. Which was cool, but not really that cool. Our guide was very very nice, though, despite the fact he was afraid of all animals. Weird.

Also on that hike it was hotter than the center of the sun. I mean, it made you want to literally die. Hotter than the hottest day in the heart of the apocalypse. Oohhhh...I came up with SOOO many good metaphors in my journal, if only it were here and internet weren't so expensive (whcih, of course, means that internet is less than 5 vcents per minute). But we made it back alive, barely, and somehow mustered the strength after the 5 hour jaunt into the jaws of hell, to hike for another hour to get back to Ban Na, where we ate and passed out.

Next day sort of just recovered from the heat by reading a ton, getting to know the family at the guest house (again, we were the only ones staying there - and we shared a bungalo. Pretty sure they thought we were gay...or just really really cheap. Which we are...the latter, that is).

Also we played a little soccer with some kids, and badmitton which is pingpong here. All the while avoiding the water buffalo poop in abundance. This game of soccer becomes sort of interesting later.

So then we got up the next day and headed out hiking again to a nearby (2.5 hours) Khmou village. The clouds were out the entire hike up, which was great, and it was a gorgeous hike. Very, very cool.

When we got to the village, two old men (one of them eighty!) invited us to sit with them and through our language barrier had a great time. It really was like walking into the 1800's. Thye marveled at our cameras and shoes, and then one of the women made us an absolutely DELICIOUS lunch of squash and sticky rice, cooked over the open flame in the kettle in the house. (by the way, bamboo is amazing - you eat it, build with it, burn it to cook...it does everything). (That said, this particular house was wood).

Then we headed down to a waterfall nearby with some kids and a guy from the village. On the way back up from the fals, the sun came out in force, and hte fears of heat stroke re-emerged, but we made it back to town alright.
Then that night (back in Ba Na), we hung out a while reading, I had a beer, etc. Then we ate Duck Laap - which is sort of a mince-meat dish here - Then, and what trip would be complete without this, I began to violently throw up. I felt it coming before dinner, but I don't know what the deal was. Near as I can tell, it was severe dehydration again, as it was reminiscent of when I broke my face years ago, and I think the violent vomiting/diahrrea (which, Oh YEAH came about in this round as well) were attributed to dehydration then, too. So I puked out of a couple ends for abit, until about 11:30 at night, and then my host, Boonyang, gave me cold black coffee, which i was willing to try out of sheer desperation, and that did the trick, amazingly. still felt like crap the next day, but at least not puking crap.

Yesterday we woke up to find UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) operations going on the soccer field where we played a few days earlier. Turns out, much of the "mines" in laos aren't mines, they're cluster bombs that didn't explode, and are all over the damn place. The US fought a "Secret War" in Laos while Vietnam was going on, and droped 1000 lbs of munitions here for EVERY PERSON IN LAOS. On the story just gets more and more outrageous as you learn more and more about it. Absolutely indescribable, really. Unbelievable. SO everywhere, there are bombs hidden. In a school nearby - sam neua - they found 356 bombs on the schoolyard, only to continue going back to find more. Here in Phonsavan, where we are now, there are houses decorated with old bomb casings, etc. Villages make candles out of landmines. It's absolutely nuts. ANd because of all this, the country can't develop, because you CAN'T BUILD A ROAD OVER BOMBS. And you CAN'T FARM OVER BOMBS. AAAAHHHHHHH SO STUPID!!!!

Ironic though how things just come together. In the book that I'm still reading now (salman rushdie), Rai is just now talking about this very issue of both loving and hating the US of grand old A. Anyhow, then we hiked out of Ba Na, managed a boat back to Nong Khiew, and hung out for the bus, which was slated to arrive sometime between 7pm and 12 pm, as it was coming all the way from Vientiane. It came at 11 pm as we were sitting in the toll booth reading, and we jumped into the vacant seats in the back row, which had a little step in front of them instead of a drop - you know, where your feet should go. So that was terrible.

But not really. What was really terrible was that that bus took 11 hours. That's right. I think we went a total of a little over a hundred miles in ELEVEN HOURS!!! And then got on another stupid bus for stupid 5.5 more HOURS to get to Phonsavan, which has so many different names here that when you tell people you want Phonsavan, they just look at you blankly. Why? we don't really know yet.

As touched on, this was pretty much the heart of carpet bombing during the war in Laos (again, more bombs dropped here than on Germany and Japan in WWII combined). And we intend to check out what it has to offer in the next couple of days before heading on over to Vietnam.

And such is the life in laos.