Sabaidee Pbeemai!

Happy Laos New Year!! It's Songkan tomorrow. The coolest holiday I can imagine. The whole of Laos, and Thailand, for three days, is one big water fight. If you step outside, or into a store or drive down the road, you'll have buckets of water thrown at you, or sprayed by a squirt gun. Everyone is getting ready today, and I'm already soaked. Everyone puts on new cloths, and colors a mohawk, and puts powder on every face they can get their hands on. Then comes water. No one, not even tourist are safe. Ah it's so fun!
Ok so here's where I've been. I am now super healthy! Back on my feet and eating food. After 8 days, 6 being sick, In luang prabang I was ready to leave the next morning. That night however, I was playing music on the street, and met a guy I met a month before in south Vietnam. The next thing I knew I spent 4 more days there, and found my way into a really really fun group of people. Ah! And went to the best water fall I've seen. Rope swings and cliff jumps and hidden caves behind huge falls. It would be worth coming to Laos just for that. We had a really good time in Luang Prabang. Being a conmunist country, there is a curfew at 11:30, where everything has to close, including bars. The only place open after 11:30 is . . . Bowling! Crazy!! Everyone gets kicked out at 11:30 and then they all go bowling, it's the only place that still serves beer, for those who drink. I've never seen anything like it. You could be in any small town in the states, in any normal bowling ally, but there's a bunch of Laos people. Hahah it's crazy at 2:00 in the morning to be bowling in Laos, and everyone is there. Weird! So from Luang Prabang, our group of 14 people, we basically all met in the hostel. Left for Vaing Vien. Now, I was not planning on ever going there. It sounded, and is the worst place on earth, but everyone I was with were so fun, so I joined them. I ended up having a really good time, despite how terrible it is. Vaing Vien used to be a small town next to beautiful cliffs. Now, it's a town built for nothing but partying, really really hard. There's no Laos culture, 15 tourists per 1 Laos. It's famous for its Tubing. Floating on a tube down the river, banked by 15 bars. And getting really really drunk, every day. It has the highest death rate, tourists die every year, from downing, or drunkenly trying to do backflips into the river, only to land on rocks. Laos people wont go near the water, due to bad spirits. The whole town is built perfectly for these people. All day long all the restaurants show family guy, south park, or friends on repeat. People there wake up, start drinking at 10:00 in the morning, and drink all night till 3:00am and then do it again. It's the craziest place I've ever seen. I was talking with someone about it and we were thinking it would be strange if there were 20 of these people. But there's hundreds! Where do they come from? I left the drunken debauchery of Vaing Vien, for the exact opposite. The past three days I've been alone, in a tree house in the jungle. Really beautiful, quiet, no electricity, and full of bugs, frogs, spiders, mosquitos, lizards and snakes the size my arm. A pleasant retreat from the world. I was taking about 10,000 naps a day, and just quietly laying around, looking at bugs. Now it's time to get a boat load of water balloons, a bucket, and a gun, then I'm ready for 3 days of a country wide water fight!
Sabaidee Pbeemai!!