"Saigon cafarde, a bitch, nothing for it but some smoke and a little lie-down, waking in the late afternoon on damp pillows, feeling the emptiness of the bed behind you as you walked to the windows looking down at Tu Do. Or just lying there tracking the rotations of the ceiling fan, reaching for the fat roach that sat on my Zippo in a yellow disk of grass tar. There were mornings when I'd do it before my feet even hit the floor. Dear Mom, stoned again." -Michael Herr "Dispatches"

It's against the law for a person from Laos to sleep with a Falang until they are married. I mean, they can sleep with each other, but no jiggy-jig. It's plenty frowned upon elsewhere, but this is the only place I've encountered with a law on the books. I wonder where else is like this - I wonder if it works.

Something tells me it happens anyways. Laws, like windows, are made to be broken. Especially laws about fucking.

I'm drinking coffee with sweet milk and recovering from an intense night. The power is out because it rained for eight hours yesterday and the river rose four feet. Four feet puts little at risk. It happens often enough that most structures are safely out of the way, or at least outfitted to handle the rise.

It sparked a story from a new Laotian friend, of when the river rose fifteen feet in July of this year, covering the first floor of her house in six feet of water on the wrong side of the river to get help or supplies, stuck on the top floor and unable to swim. For two days. I trucked across the bridge with her to unplug electronics and move anything ruinable off the floor. When I crossed the bridge, the stone footpath on the other side, normally dry, was river-water past my ankles. After, we headed back to the other side, which has a large embankment and most of the stores and businesses, making it the safer side. We played eight ball with a dark and drunken Brit until the rain stopped and the waters receded early this morning. It could have gone either way.

We asked why we couldn't tube the river yesterday and the Australian who owns one of the local drunk shacks said, "just a little rough today, don't want anyone dying this year, bad publicity, that."

Dead power lines and dead business and dead tourists, god bless. Too much water here, not enough there. Garbages filled with edible matter and starvation prevails. Intelligent design. This is monsoon season and that's why I cant have a damn fruit shake this morning. Stupid electric blenders. I bet the grapes would have been fucking sour anyways. I joke because it stopped raining.

The storm sweeps in from the mountains like a tantrum - a patter then an uproar. It makes rivers of the streets, waterfalls of the roofs and muddy death of the river. My pool game was off all night.

Location:Vang Vieng, PDR Laos