Happy Birthday!

It's been a month and a half, but I turned 28!

Peter and I had a picnic on Saturday by the river in Yangsan.


(Pictures of me in this post are taken by him.)

He brought bubbles.


(I brought water guns. It was fun.)

That evening, we went to the city and saw Autumn. On Sunday, my actual birthday, Pete and Autumn and I had ice creamy waffles for breakfast and then Peter and I explored a mostly-empty building at the north end of Gwangalli beach.

Here's the view from the 14th floor (there are business on maybe 2 or 3 floors but everything else is empty.)


And looking down...


And then there was a visit to Me World and the drop tower.


Autumn's gift was *another* picnic (I really like picnics!) for which we walked to Shinsegae, the world's largest department store, to buy CHEESE and SALAMI and WINE and CAKE. These are rarities in Korea. (Well cake is not a rarity, but good cake is.)

Picture yourself in a boat on a river.

I do a lot of things so that I might look back one day and say, "I endured that." This is one of those things. Isn't it romantic to take the slow boat up the Mekong from Luang Prabang to Thailand? For awhile there, the water level was too low for the slow boats and they stopped the service altogether. I was quite pleased to learn that the boats were running when I wanted to leave Luang Prabang. I had heard horror stories about wooden benches with no cushions, so I was prepared to endure.

This was my first glimpse of boat 008, which would take me from Luang Prabang to Pakbeng.


But can you imagine my delight when I saw that instead of hard wooden benches, I would get to sit on a re-purposed bus seat?


This is a luxury riverboat if ever there was one. It looks like a shiny new camper or something. I can sit for 8 hours in a car seat. I've done that plenty over the last few weeks.

The water level is still quite low, and there are some nifty rock formations visible poking out of the water, like this:


And other, invisible ones scraping the bottom of the boat. The boat chugged along, though, slowing to a crawl as it navigated up rapids and taking me all the way to Pakbeng.


(I like to think that this is a family who decided to build their house on a barge, just because. And then they adopted a baby elephant for each of their children, and when they're not taking things up the bank of the Mekong, the elephants run and play on the barge like it's their own big backyard.)

It was not a eight hour ride. It might be eight hours downstream, or eight hours when the water level is higher. Today, it was not eight hours. Today, I was very ready to get off of the boat after ten hours.

Pakbeng is where the boat stops and you have to find a guesthouse. As usual, there are representatives from various guesthouses at the dock, or the top of the rocks you climb up when you get out of the boat.

There is nothing else in Pakbeng. There is no Internet. There are no karaoke bars. There are no bookshops. And the only way out in either direction is 10 hours of death. (Death is a boat, Guildenstern!)

The boat out of Pakbeng was this:


Here were the wooden benches with strict, tall backs.

Early in the ride most people abandoned the benches and built nests on the floor with backpacks, stolen cushions, and (thank you, Past Emily) travel pillows.



Maybe it was the different speeds that the water, land and clouds were moving, or maybe it was the fact that I had had my face buried in a book most of the day, or maybe it was that I had been dead for two whole days, but my eyes started playing tricks on me and the planks of the boat started moving. I didn't feel remotely nauseated, but I was pleased for my sanity to arrive in Huaey Sai, at sunset on the second day.


The ferry to Thailand wasn't running anymore, so I stayed the night and woke up bright and early to come back "home" to Thailand.

Sick Again

I frequently exclaim "How Romantic!" at anything that reminds me of Romantic poets, old movies, or dead rock stars. This entry might be a bit too much information for you. I'm just so excited and amused (by the able light of morning) that I had to share the... romantic thing that happened last night.

I was sick all day yesterday, and the only thing I ate was a half serving of rice for dinner. I was a bit hungry when I went to bed, which I thought was a good sign.

I awoke in the dark. Suddenly, I was in a sweaty, feverish rush to maneuver myself to the toilet downstairs. It was a daunting task, with uneven stairs and crazed, dizzy Emily. I sat down on the throne, worried that I was finally going to lose the only food I had eaten in 24 hours. In nauseous, dizzy agony I bent my head down between my knees and tried not to vomit.

***

A few seconds later I opened my eyes, confused about why I was arranged in such an odd position on the bathroom floor. I slowly pieced together that I had passed out and fallen off of the toilet, like ya' do. If you're Elvis Presley. Thankfully I had not made any mess of myself, so I started the endeavor of hoisting myself back onto the toilet and eventually back upstairs to my bed.

I feel much better today, save some sore spots from toppling onto the tile floor. I had some more plain rice for breakfast. Hopefully this will be completely over before Children's Day tomorrow.

I have no related pictures. You're welcome. Instead, to reward your fortitude, here is a picture fo my favorite beach at Ko Samet, Ao Nuan:

on the train to Bangkok

My last night in Pai, a Japanese artist called Harajuku Matisse made me beautiful.



I slept in a bamboo hut under a functional mosquito net, and awoke early for the rollercoaster of a bus ride back to Chiang Mai where I bid farewell to miss Elle, who stayed in Chiang Mai before a different adventure. It was a long weekend of travel, and I took a few seconds of video as my train approached Bangkok in the morning.



Hualamphang station greeted me, and didn't feel quite as underdressed as before. I'm comfortable in my dirty backpacker uniform.





The second-class night trains are like the one in Some Like it Hot with curtains and ladders. This train was not as luxurious as the one I took up to Chiang Mai, but I think that next time I'm going all out and bringing a maribou-trimmed dressing gown just like Marilyn.

When I arrived in Ban Phe I was tired and dirty and the skies were grey and melancholy. In the morning, my other travel companion Jamie left for a teaching job a few hours away. The cast of characters here is different, and the settings are a little different. Today I explored some of the places I had never been before (a park, the Rayong aquarium) and some that I had missed (I had some quality time with the ocean and ate street food for dinner at the evening market) and I think this place will be home, at least for awhile.