Lower Laos = Lowsy Lowe

When most people leave Vientiane in a Southerly direction, they go all the way down the Mekong to the Four Thousand Islands, which are near the border to Cambodia.  I, however, decided to get off the beaten track and see some of the smaller towns along the way, more out of curiosity than desire to see any specific attractions.  I ended up going with the three towns highlighted in Lonely Planet, even though I typically make a habit of not using that book as I prefer to freestyle.  I'm also usually disappointed in their recommendations as they are typically more expensive than what you find on your own (the shoestring version recommends places that cost upwards of $40/night....that's literally 10x what I pay in some towns), and the activities section often miss a lot of things you can find by just walking around.  There are many view points, caves, etc. that aren't mentioned, because Lonely Planet focuses more heavily on tours you pay to go on.  Maybe I'll write my own series, the Lowenly Planet, a guidebook for the poor.  
Ready to start my journey, I took the twenty minute tuk tuk ride to the Southern bus station in Vientiane for 30,000 kip, haggled down from 60,000.  The price of my bus ticket for the six hour ride to Tha Khek, was 60,000.  It's insane how much a tuk tuk ride is in comparison to how cheap the public buses are.  In the words of Will Ferrell, it's simply mind bottling.  Tha Khek is supposed to have cool colonial French architecture... I couldn't distinguish how it was different from the rest of Laos.  When we arrived at the bus station, the tuk tuk drivers wanted us to pay 30,000 to go 2 kilometers into town, which everyone declined.  However, there was a local kid being picked up by his parents, who told us to hop in the back of their pickup for a free ride into town.  Peeps be nice!

Upon being dropped off, I started doing what I normally do;  I find a white person and ask them where the cheap guest houses are.  The dude I asked was from South Africa and offered to give me a ride around on a scooter to find a hostel.  So many nice fellow travellers!  He told me that guest houses were sparse and if I could find a room for under 100,000/night, I should take it.  He dropped me at a place that had a room available for 80,000 kip ($10), so I thanked him for the ride and went to scope it out.  However, there was no wifi and the dude working there immediately tried to sell me drugs, so I decided to pass and find something a little less shady.  I walked around for 30 minutes before finding another guest house, jeepers.  After asking for the price, I was told the only room available cost 150,000.  I told him I couldn't afford to spend that much and asked if he knew of any cheaper places.  He told me to head down the block to the Mekong River and turn right, where I would find plenty of cheap guest houses. 

Probably the classiest urinal I've ever used

Thailand, it's still weird to stare at another country across a river

The Mekong reminds me of the Mississippi, except it's not disgustingly polluted and can support life

Every town in Southern Laos seems to have these giant inflatable playhouses for the kids... I wanna play too :'(

Well, it turned out that dude just being a dick, as the only thing to the right were luxury hotels.  I don't know why some people gotta have so much hate in the hearts, gotta let a little love in there.  Thus I walked around for another thirty minutes under the darkening sky before a dude on a scooter asked me if I wanted a ride to his hostel.  I figured what the heck and hopped on.  It was also 80,000/night with no wifi, but the guest house was brand new and I was the first to use the room.  It was basically equivalent to the type of room I stayed in with Josh and Anna in Thailand, with air conditioning and plenty of floor space.  The dude even gave me a brand new towel that hadn't been unwrapped yet!  So in the end, everything worked out.  After checking in he even drove me back into town to a restaurant with wifi and then picked me up afterwards to take me back.

There wasn't anything much to do in Tha Khek, really my only option was to enjoy the river.  I took advantage of the downtime by doing a few timelapses, watching the sunset, and catering to my wifi addiction during meals.  I also made the most of my giant room by dominating three p90x/insanity workouts.  One day there was definitely enough though, so the next day I headed to the bus station to buy my ticket for Savannakhet, which was possibly the worst decision of my life.  

Lonely Planet highlights Savannakhet for "it's honey colored French villas, which evoke a sense of grand nastalgia"...  Honey, the only thing villa about that write up is that it's villainous.  Who pays them to write/make up that crap? Savannakhet is a run down town, with crumbling buildings, potholed roads, no wifi, and limited guest houses/restaurants.  It's definitely not a backpacker town, I'm not even sure it's the type of town that a human being with a desire to live should enter.  

After getting off the bus and taking a tuk-tuk to the town's center, a few people asked the driver where to find guest houses and he said to walk up to the river and turn left.... Let's just say there's no guest houses in that direction.  It's strange because on one hand, maybe the guy truly didn't know where guest houses were and just made something up, but at the same time he's a tuk tuk driver in a town of 50,000 people...  He has to know where at least one guest house is.  It took me 45 minutes, but I eventually found a place, though the price was absurd at 90,000/night ($11), especially since it was the worst place I've stayed since entering Laos.  After re-hydrating and dropping off my big bag, I set out to find some wifi and see what the town had to offer.

The only thing French about this place was how much it stunk!!! bahaha, French people are stinky

Dudes making Buddha statues, I was a little surprised, because I thought the monks made them.

Lonely Planet claims the Dinosaur museum is an interesting place to spend an hour.  The museum consists of two rooms, each roughly seven paces wide by five paces deep.  Some of the display cases weren't even filled with dinosaur bones, rather occupied by fish bones and different types of rocks.  The dinosaur fossils were disappointing;  Incomplete skeletal remains or cheap models that were clearly fake.  I wouldn't have been shocked to find a Hasbro Made in China sticker on them.  The only way you could spend more than seven minutes in there was if you had no legs or arms and had to roll from case to case or if you were blind and had Morgan Freeman narrating each item with intense specificity. 

I walked around for another few hours, passing only three more guest houses and zero places with wifi.  There were hardly any restaurants, instead the majority of dining options involved buying meat on a stick from one of the food vendors along the river.  I felt like maybe I should eat some vegetables instead of just meat, so I headed to one of the few restaurants I had passed earlier.  I was keen for a break from Laos food, so I just went with a simple order of beef fried rice with a water to drink.  What I got was contaminated food and a beer.

If you're going to have a fake T-Rex, at least have it be Rex from Toy Story.  None of this Australian flag stuffed animal at the base of a fake skeleton BS.

This is the femur of the Seannosaurus Rex, the most cunning and ruggedly handsome dinosaur that ever lived

I awoke at 5 in the morning and felt like something was wrong, but decided to try and sleep it off.  Eventually I went to the bathroom and realized I had food poisoning, as it has a pretty distinct symptom list.  At 9 o'clock I decided if I wasn't sick for another hour, I would go to my next destination, Pakse, otherwise I would stay another night in that overpriced hell hole.  When the clock struck 10, I hadn't been sick, so I made my way to the bus station.  When I got on the bus, it was about 2/3 full, so I snagged the only available window seat, which was in the back left corner, just in case.  For local buses in Laos, it's normal to have a few more passengers than seats, with extra passengers sitting on makeshift seats of coolers, plastic stools, etc.  This bus however, was packed to the point where there were 6 people packed between my elevated back row and the row in front of me, in addition to an extra 15 people sitting on stools in the aisle of the bus.  

I was still feeling pretty awful when the bus rolled out, but with the cool breeze from the open window blowing across my face, I started to feel better.  That feeling was short lived however, as the bus broke down for the first time of the trip and workers started spilling out to inspect the front left tire.  Since no one got off the bus and the aisle was packed, I couldn't exit and enjoy some fresh air and started to feel sick again.  After thirty minutes, during which I sat with my head in my knees, the bus finally started up again and we were back on our way, but I was already past the point of no return.  I could feel my stomach churning and I started to dry heave, waiting for my stomach to wretch up it's remaining contents.  Since buses in Laos are made for locals, the window was half a foot lower than my height required, and I had to duck my entire head down and out the window to avoid the wind blowing my puke back into the bus.  

I can only imagine the scene as it appeared to the gentleman riding his scooter behind the bus, seeing this frantic, maniacal head pop out of a window and start vomiting onto the roadway.  Not to mention the tendrils of saliva infused vomit that were dangling from my mouth and blowing in the wind.  My head was also frantically darting backwards in between vomits to watch the oncoming traffic in case a semi or other tall vehicle was passing by, which would have decapitated me if I failed to pull my head back into the bus in time.  After a minute or so, I wiped my face and brought my head back into the bus, and luckily no one had any idea what the heck I was doing back there.  I'm not sure why my travels always seem to go wrong, but at least it's entertaining.  I never know what's going to happen next!

During our next stop, which was also due to the bus breaking down, I hopped off and secured some green cream soda to see if the carbonation would help settle my stomach.  Luckily it did!  I ended up pounding another soda at the next stop as well, but still had no appetite for food, which was unfortunate since I'm already on the final notch of my belt loop and will have to buy a new one if I lose any more weight.  I'm only a few pounds away from looking like Christian Bale in The Machinist.  When we finally arrived in Pakse after 6.5 hours and a third breakdown, I was pretty exhausted.  I was able to find a hostel a few minutes away from the bus stop and dropped off all my bags and went to find something to eat.  Unfortunately it was already dark and the only food I was able to find in a 10 minute radius was meat on a stick, which I didn't think I could keep down.  None of the restaurants I found had people that could speak English or had menus for me to point at pictures and the only other option was a buffet of bbq'd meats, which was out of my budget at $6.  I ended up settling for a can of Pringles and then crawled into my bed and watched some HBO..... I was pretty stoked just to see a TV, let alone one with HBO!!!

Whenever I see a track I just wonder, can anyone keep track of how many times the thought of me lying naked on a chaise lounge while eating freshly peeled grapes runs through their mind each day?....and then I realize it's 0 and cry myself to sleep.

Let the sky be clouded and your mind be clear.  Strong of body, strong of mind

If you want a dust covered, fume infused piece of meat on a stick, go no further. 

I spent my first day/night in Pakse shitting what appeared to be watered down KFC gravy, convinced I was going to die of dehydration or dysentery. Ergo, at 11 the next morning, I set out on a journey to find food to try and make the situation a little more solid.  I ended up wandering into what I suppose was the main town center, but still wasn't able to find any restaurants, instead just finding 30 atms and a bunch of shops.  I did however spot a grocery store, where I bought myself some bread and a $6 jar of peanut butter.  After months of Asian food, a peanut butter sandwich was so ridiculously, nostalgically delicious.

I ventured out again for a walk in the afternoon and grabbed some dinner, but I was still feeling less than a hundred percent, so I mostly just laid in bed and rested up.   Heck, I even started doing my taxes!  Damn you America, I haven't lived there for 6 months and I'm still going to have to pay the government a few thousand dollars...How is that fair?

I love flied foods!

The next morning I caught some of the Superbowl, but realized the Broncos had no chance after the first quarter, so quit watching and started packing up my stuff and getting ready for the day's journey.  I was finally heading to the Four Thousand Islands, the place I was most excited about in Laos.  I had to ride on another new form of transportation to get there, one that threatened the sanctity of my personal bubble...but that's a story for another blog

Random Gopros

Time Lapsing the sunset...Speaking of laps, I wonder, can anyone keep track of how many times the thought of me...

How do I even know that's a dinosaur tail, for all I know it's the tail of a fucking human

Possibly the place that poisoned me.  Avoid the minced shrimp Omelette, it's the cheapest thing on the menu for a reason slugger

The bus I puked out of.  The lady to the right kept sleeping with her head on my shoulder, apparently unconcerned that I looked and smelled like death

My shadow always looks crazy in GoPro pics

Watch where you step or you could end up tumbling into the slums below