Laos

We've been exploring a bunch of tiny tiny towns in the eastern highlands of Laos. No one speaks English and everyone is THRILLED to see us after they get over the initial shock of seeing whiteys. So much has happened that I don't know where to start, so I'll just "list."

We crashed more than one Lao New Years' party, one in someone's yard and one that was a giant party with bandstands and food booths, both times making some new Laotian friends, and in one case, they brought us up to the front of the stage where the band was playing and I won some kind of contest. I don't know how I won, but the prize was a plain white t-shirt and 300 Laotians cheered and wrote "BK" in red lipstick on our foreheads and cheeks (BK Construction sponsored the dance party.) Everyone kept pouring me beer and being confused by Matt not drinking any but giving it to his wife instead.

We met a baby monkey who was adopted by a dog and rides on her back. The monkey chews gum. He is tiny and let me take a bunch of pictures. This was not a tourist-trap monkey, this was some dude's monkey that lives at the entrance of a nature walk. (We also did the nature walk.) Matt rode a roadside zipline. We toured an enormous and creepy cave (Dad, Google-Earth "Kong Lor Cave") by longboat in the pitch black with flashlights. We had two boat guides, neither of whom spoke English. Matt's flashlight burned out and so did one of the guides' headlamps (one of his guide-buddies eventually fixed the headlamp by cutting some wires and gluing them back together by melting a used Ziploc with the end of a cigarette).

We were at a viewpoint (a scenic overlook) looking at the amazing mountains and rock formations when a Thai tour bus pulled over to look at the same view, and instead took pictures of (and with) us.

We ate dinner at a restaurant that features such comfort foods as "Pigs' trotters prepared as false dog meat" and "Iguana head" and "Shrimps dipped in frying powder" on its menu (we chose the chicken and potato soup, which was amazing).

We searched and searched for some waterfalls that we saw on a map and finally asked a girl who lived nearby if she knew where they were. She offered to hike with us back into the jungle and take us up to them. We ended up doing this crazy 4km hike with these two nutso Lao teenage girls who totally kicked our asses climbing up these crazy rocky jungle cliffs (they were in flip flops and simultaneously texting on their cellphones while hiking). The waterfalls were cool.