last night kicked it with Khan, tuk-tuk driver by trade. "where's the local music", as I mimic, the essential musical elements of how to rock! Wasn't long until I was in a shady alley of a place called On the Rock pub watching a four piece; reverb, distortion, sick leads...yep, this will do. As I have slowly tired of sitting in the back of a tuk-tuk, I now ask to sit up front, which leads me to get to know Khan a little before we got to On the Rock...long story short Khan and I cruised tuk-tuk style to a bunch of hot spots of local music in Vientiane, beerlaos flowing, tradition lao dancing and singing, crazy lao girl wanting to slow dance, Sabai Sabai - easy easy. Manage to slightly tie one on nothing major, handful of 'go down easies', and my plan to bed myself down easy was more or less achieved.
Thai visa, check, shit, no idea it was that easy, and free. 3 month thai visa with double entry and only catch is you just have a wait a day for it. I feel a little silly now that I had made three visa runs (to cambodia, to laos, to burma) to get just another 2 week visa each time....ah learning the little secrets now.
All's well and really looking forward to getting back to Chiang Mai, via a 16 hour bus ride.... I definately miss the monkey...so yeah all in all, take time to get to know your local tuk-tuk driver, they want to hang and they want to have a good time...and they know all the spots! and more than not they know more english than you average local. In the end we ended up speaking more thai together than english...yes my thai is coming along, started taking lessons in Chiang Mai. Kyi Kyi's not to thrilled by it though, she'd rather me learn Shan, or Myanmar, and she's not the biggest fan of Thailand.....wow, how's that for a ramble!...........................
Phone Pasueth Guest House 160,000 kip....less than $20 bucks
$16,000 kip egg sandwich $2
tuk-tuk from friendship bridge to Vientiene - 100 baht.
bus ride from vientiene to Chaing mai - 1,250 baht
phone call to thailand 4,000kip a minute.
Today while waiting for the thai embassy to open a german girl living in thailand asked to play kyi kyi's classical that I've been lugging around. She asked me to play, so I ended up playing three songs in front of about 30-40 people waiting in line, pretty fun experience, some guy gave me a quarter baht afterwords...played a couple fo the new hits...mostly lazy days not knowing what's gonna happen or what I'm going to do, the tourist feeling is really wearing off and I'm losing the gung-ho, see all type of travel...but then, random little gems pop up here and there, more quality things I suppose. Again, like learning thai and being able to cominicate with a lao tuk-tuk driver better than in english....hmmm- what's next....
be well
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Hey thanks for the updates. We'll hold on to you stuff for as long as you need (especially your guitar!). I just got September 21-27th off and I plan on heading back to the Philippines and seeing the Cebu crew. I just jammed with the owner of the banjo up on The Peak last weekend it was pretty cool to play some of his really nice instruments.
ReplyDeleteTake care and stay in touch!
-Adam