"This is a place where time reverses//Dead men talk to all the pretty nurses//Instruments shine on a silver tray//Don't let me be carried away" -Elliott Smith

I've made it to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, but it's just a pass-through and I don't have anything to say yet - so I'm going to talk about the lost children of Vang Vieng.

If I haven't explained it proper, V.V. is an intractable cyclone of hedonism and sin, of alcohol and promiscuity, of mushroom tea and squandered wealth. Our three days felt like a month, and the people we met who had been there for real months had a far-offness to their eyes that spoke extensively of their experience.

It's a bit like Peter Pan if he'd had a nasty toad-licking habit. "I don't wanna grow up..."



For every night in Vang Vieng that you don't pass out drunk, they allocate you a strip of colorful fabric to wear around your wrist. The long-timers have armfuls of them, though most have many fewer than the days they've spent. You get another wristband if you injure yourself substantially. Lots of those. Drunken tubing accidents and other missteps in a place full of opportunities for accidental self-harm.

We re-met a girl we'd already spent time with in Luang Prabang. She'd arrived four days before us, spent all her money and gotten a job at a bar slinging drinks for free room and board (and drinks). We met another guy who had the same story, but had been there three months. In Vang Vieng, it's easy to float and hard to save up. He couldn't afford the flight home or else he didn't want it.

Almost every long-term party person you meet (almost everywhere) has a happy-go-lucky attitude that reflexively blankets a sort of bleak darkness. Sometimes it creeps out. Young people who haven't gone through shit, but have still seen a lot. Shock without the shells. War without the war.



When you sleep with a girl three times in V.V., but don't officially date her, your compadres will sneak a shot of piss into your night of drunkeness. To be fair, you shoulda known better. People sport affairs for an hour or a minute, drifting through the room casual as grocery shoppers. They eat little and drink too much. The days slide together like tectonic plates. They party hard enough for everyone in the world to take it a little easy every once in a while - they've got it well covered.

In Vang Vieng the local Laos whiskey, Tiger, is free. At most bars. Whiskey is free. As in, you don't pay to drink it. They hand it to you - then you drink it. Not sure how the subtle economics of this works, but I guess dependancy instills brand allegiance. Like dollar-cheeseburger day. What a tumultuous and exciting place. How sultry. How ensnaring.

It's not the only place we've met wayward sons and daughters, lost amidst an ocean of cheap booze and party paint (I didn't know what it was either), but Vang Vieng appears to be the internationally agreed upon epicenter. Brits and French, Americans and Canadians and Irish and Finnish and Norwegian and goddamnit everyone comes together to pray at the altar of the shitfaced gods - to pledge allegiance to the flag of the burgeoning-alcoholic. The Israelis are here too, but they've mostly just finished their two years of military service. They have a different demeanor. One Israeli girl said to me, "I think America is like a movie. Like nothing is real." I asked if it was at least a good movie and she shook her head no. I asked if it was the shitty kind you go see just to eat popcorn in the dark and she shook her head again, smiling.



Vientiane - rain today and ligaments of altar-incense smoke floating and melting into the haze. Gongs again in the distance. Flies escaping the rain with me, landing tentatively on my toes and ankles. I met some east coasters, a Laotian sweet-talker, a Korean government man and some southern Chinese folks that were keen on white girls. Ha, who isn't? I saw some nice temples, heard some shit music, ate some decent food and walked around a bit. South, south, south. Tha Khaek, Savvanaket, the islands and Cambodia beyond them. Couldn't boat the Mekong. Gonna expend our water travel getting from Phnom Penh to Siam Reap.

Spirits in the mist. I'm feeling cynical. "Dispatches" isn't helping.

Location:Vientiane, PDR Laos