Made it to Luang Prabang...barely

Bare with me, this will be a rushed, sporadic post because I just made a quick internet cafe stop with a group of people that we've been traveling with for a few days.

I don't remember where I left off in Pai, but I don't think much else happened save for some good (or so I thought) food and more walks around town with the Poly crew.

We boarded our mini-van to the thai/laos border (I felt more or less fine at the time...slight upset stomach), and it was pouring rain.  It was a pretty nice van (think supershuttle), with about 10 seats and only 6 passengers.  We had to drive pretty slow around the same 5000 curve road that we took to get up to Pai (might have been a different road, just as many curves), and the drive went well for a while until we ran into the first tree that had fallen over in the road, blocking our way.  It was the first, but wouldn't be the last.  We ran into about 5 more, and each time all of the drivers would hop out of the cars to go help the road crew cut the tree to get it out of the road (still pouring rain).  About an hour into the drive I started feeling really sick to my stomach...about two hours in I felt more sick to my stomach...and three hours in I was in pain.  No more detail needed there, but the rest of the drive was miserable. We finally made it to our guesthouse by the border at around 4am, and I was struggling, and had to have some water or I really thought I might pass out--no exaggeration--and that's how I met one of the 3 new people we've been exploring with since, Cameron from nevada/slo (awesome coincidence), who graciously gave me his bottle of water (he later told me he wondered if I was mentally handicapped or something because of how curled up and terrible I looked on the bus--thanks, cameron).

The next morning I woke up feeling a tiny bit better, so we boarded the slow boat with our new crew of cameron, his girlfriend (also from CA), a finnish dude, Oscar, and two Israelis, and were off to luang prabang.  And it was all downhill from there for me...when we finally made it to our halfway point (a tiny village in bumf nowhere, laos, called pakbeng), I was a zombie.  We ended up staying the next day as well instead of taking the slow boat the rest of the way to luang prabang as planned, both because I was in no condition to boat and because the group liked the village we were in.  I can safely say I've never felt so sick/weak/like pakbeng might be my last stop.  The awesome couple that ran our guesthouse ended up taking me to the French doctor in town (it was an NGO run operation--free, and pretty interesting), who gave me a shot and pills and god knows that else...chances I was more than willing to take at that point...and he was overall a really helpful guy.  Special thanks to Emily, Cameron, his girlfriend Linda, and Oscar for taking care of me and not letting me die in the Laotian jungle.

By the night I was coming back to life, and got to enjoy the awesome view of the mekong from our guesthouse for an hour late in the evening--i'll post a picture...While we were sitting out there--around midnight--the power went out in the town (this happened about 10times while we were there), and it was silent and pitch black.  The only light was from the moon and the only noise came from the flowing mekong river, the birds, and the bugs.  It was so surreal--sitting there, just me, a guy from the states, an Israeli I had just met, the mekong river, and the Laotian jungle.  

I'm feeling a hundred times better now, and don't know what exactly was wrong with me, but i had severe acute dehydration, that I know for sure.  Glad I got that probably-gonna-happen-at-least-once-when-you-backpack-SEasia experience out of the way...i hope to never feel that way again.

We boarded the boat to luang prabang from pakbeng a day late, and I got to enjoy the slow boat this time unlike the first leg of the trip, and it was awesome.  The scenery was incredible--jungle everywhere and local villages I couldn't even imagine existed sprinkled along the way.  Near every village there would be a bunch of fishing boats and people fishing--clearly how these people survive.  It was really interesting to see that so many people still survive the way that these people did.  We stopped at a few of the villages and the village kids stared at us white tourists like we were aliens unlike anything they'd ever seen.  We got to Luang Prabang around 630pm, found a cool hostel, and explored the town.

So far, cool town, but definitely not quite what I was expecting.  Last night we all agreed that it felt like a wannabe European cruise stop or something---very touristy, too western, too many restaurants...I don't know, just not the same charm as the places we went in Thailand, even though they were also very touristy.  We did decide to give it a chance today, so we'll go around and explore the temples (of which there are many), and check out the nightlife tonight, and then I'll give a new luang prabang opinion.  All 7 of us are off to Vangvien (the main reason we came to Laos) tomorrow.  Hopefully I'll have more interesting non-illness related things to post next time, and sorry for the all-over-the-place with terrible writing and grammar post.  I'm gonna try to post a few pictures above..sorry, no time for captions.  [Note:  If you didn't already realize this, if you click on a picture you get a much larger version.]  Hope all is well in CA!