we live

sabaidee! we're not dead! no computer access for the last few days because of several reasons: the internet we used in pai closes for drinking on mondays, we took a horridly long bus ride from 11 pm to 7am from thailand to the laos border, then got on a boat for a day (can barely be called a boat: two rows of wooden benches that were constructed bolt upright or slightly FORWARD with a bench wide enough to fit three inches of buttocks), spent the night in a shady sleazy scuzzy town where the electricity for the whole town turns off at 10 pm, another day on the boat and now we are here! the boat-ride was eye-popping beautiful with crazy-jungle-covered-mountains that were so beautiful the clouds were attracted too and hovered around them. we went through picturesqe mist, light rain, heavy rain, horizontal rain and it was all so beautiful. i woke up from a nap to an immense vista of clouds and mountains and jungle. my first thought was (british accent) "shitting hell! i'm on the mekong river!" not one time for two days did i lift my head and look at the landscape and believe my eyes. so powerful.

we met a german, a south african and a canadian who are cool and have joined our party. between them and the beerlao (local drink of choice) the first day on the boat was quite pleasant despite getting off a bus after 8 hours. second day we were all grumpy as hell but are having fun now.

tomorrow we are hoping to go up to veng vieng to go tubing down the river. you just lay and float down river and rafts in the middle of the river throw you a rope and pull you over to give you beer. it comes highly recommended...don't worry moms - we'll stick together and wear life-vests.

gotta run since our group now consists of 5 people waiting for me instead of 2...
much love,
s