Happy Sunday dudes.

It has been over a month since I posted a blog; obviously my New Year's resolution has been swept up under the 2015 carpet to chill with all of the other dusty promises.

One of the reasons that I love living in Asia is that we get two New Year holidays. That means double the chances to screw up on a resolution. We get regular old January 1st New Year's and then we have Lunar New Year. In Vietnam this is known as Tet. Instead of boring you with all of the details, you can click on the link below to read up if you are interested.

http://www.vietnamonline.com/tet.html

For the Tet break, I traveled to Northern Thailand and Laos. Thailand is brilliant. If it were up to me, every single country would be required to have a mini Thailand (I suppose that may be one of the reasons why they still haven't put me in charge of the planet). I have been to Thailand twice before, but I have always stayed in the south. We took an express trip to Chiang Mai; it was just a matter of easiest possible transit to Laos. Allison, Yohnk and I arrived in Chiang Mai later in the evening and made it to our hotel by about 10:30. We dropped our bags on the hotel floor and headed off into the night. We didn't know where the hell we were going and just ended up at the first bar that advertised two for one mojitos. The only thing that really matters about this night is that we found a solid street noodle stand. We were loyal to this stand and hit it up the second night in Chiang Mai as well. Street cart loyalty is key on these mean streets.

I fulfilled several of my animal related life goals on this trip.  Our second and final day in CM was devoted to the Tiger Kingdom. Now, the legitimacy of the Tiger Kingdom has been questioned for years. The claim on their restaurant menu was that they do not drug the animals. They say that the tigers are usually more active at night and they are simply exhausted during the day. The tigres are also trained and monitored very closely. There are so many tiger tamers that I almost felt safe touching giant, carnivorous cats. It was overwhelmingly confusing at first to be in a tiger cage. For so many years I have been told: don't play with matches, look both ways when you cross the street, DO NOT jump into a tiger cage (#brookfieldzooproblems). I am not going to say that I wasn't scared. I was scared shitless when we were in the first tiger cages. We paid for a package which included interactions with "big, small, and smallest" tigers. The small tigers were the craziest. If these tigers were on drugs, all of the other tigers missed out big time. These guys were rambunctious as hell and we were discouraged from petting them. We watched as they splashed in the water and as they eventually started biting each other. That's when I decided that it was time to hang with the more chill tigers, bro. The bigger tigers were amazing, gorgeous animals and it was unreal to see them up close. I cuddled with a tiger and despite the fact that he didn't seem "too into it," it was another life goal achieved. Later, I instinctively treated the baby tigers like the house cats their sizes implies. Note to self: baby tigers do not like scratches behind the ears.

After three hours of playing with tigers, we hopped in our tuk tuk and bumped down the road to our hotel. Tuk tuks are an excellent mode of transportation and I want to bring them back to Chicago. You can sit back, relax, and enjoy the open air while a friendly Thai man updates you on his day/serenades you/attempts to overcharge you, but in a loving way. They are Jeep's more exciting, younger cousin. Anywho, we got back to the hotel and eagerly anticipated the arrival of Mr. Tim Parrington. We spent had a nice Valentine's evening full of market walks and live 90's cover bands.


The next day we were off to Laos. I had done minimal research before my trip and didn't know what to expect. We jumped on a bus for three hours and then another bus for two in order to reach the Laos border. Once we got to the city of Huay Xai, we searched for a hostel and had some dinner to celebrate our arrival. The only major attraction in Huay Xai was the Gibbon Experience. The streets were full of expats who were obviously only there in transit. It was a very local area; it only took about 10 minutes into my morning run to be covered in countryside. At 8:30 the next morning we all sat in a room to watch a film debriefing us about the mission of the Gibbon Experience. Needless to say, my excitement sparked major ADD and I missed the entire safety portion of the video.

This was the trip of a lifetime. If I had the money, I would pay for every single one of my friends to do the Gibbon Experience (It's a three day trip in the Laotian jungle where you zipline over the treetops and sleep in some of the world's highest tree houses. All of the proceeds go to the preservation of the jungle and protection of the wildlife. The guides are former poachers who are educated on the cause (Check it: http://www.gibbonexperience.org/). We rode in the back of a rickety truck for about three hours until we reached a small Laotian village called Bokeo. From there, we were greeted by our guides and put into groups. Tim, Allison, Yohnk and I were grouped with a lovely Australian couple and a friendly American (I know, weird right?) from San Diego. These were going to be our tree house mates for the next three days. We trekked up for about three hours until we reached a waterfall. We were all super sticky, sweaty and eager to get into the water. Despite our sweaty states, this water was snow cold. We all ziplined into the water. I am a firm believer that ziplining into something inherently makes it easier to handle. Walk into fire? No. Zipline into a fire? OK.

Nothing that I can write will do this trip any justice. Our three days were full of unsupervised ziplining, trekking through the jungle, and avoidance of the treetop toilet. This trip would never fly in the western world because it would be excessively commercialized.  Everyone would be forced to wear helmets and be under constant supervision. The company would be required to worry about all of the potential lawsuits that come with running a hotel in the trees. No one wants to zipline on eggshells. Our guides taught us how to use our harnesses once and then zipped off into the abyss, leaving us alone to figure out our own shit. It was terrifying not to have constant reinforcement before leaping to my potential doom, but I was grateful for that feeling. One thing that will always stick with me is how loud the jungle was at night.  All of the animals and insects were making some sweet tunes together and it was one of the coolest things that I have ever heard. I know that I could easily go on YouTube and listen to jungle noises for three hours, but actually being there was something else. The jungle band was top notch and the stars weren't too shabby either. The beauty of this experience rests in the stark contrast between the jungle and Ho Chi Minh. I'll take insect legs rubbing together over motorbike horns any day. Showering in a tree house was pretty stellar, too.

So did we experience any gibbons on this trip? We saw some black monkeys and heard the gibbons screaming in the morning, so for all extensive purposes the answer is yes.

After the Gibbon Experience, our little group was all tuckered out. We boarded a slow boat to Luang Prabang the next day. This thing was a longer, thinner version of a Titanic lifeboat. Tim and Allison found true happiness on this boat. I found lots of melatonin. The boat stopped at a little port town after eight hours so we could rest our weary heads. We grabbed a hotel, were given free shots of banana whiskey, and were back on the Mekong early the next morning. When we arrived in Luang Prabang, we were SOL. Apparently during Lunar New Year, every single person from China vacates to Luang Prabang.  After walking for hours with our vacation lives in our backpacks, we finally found a Chinese hotel that was overpriced and very from the city; we were ecstatic about its availability. Supply and demand, ya'll.



Luang Prabang was a wonderful little town. It reminded me of Hoi An in Vietnam. For me, its charms were rooted in the classic French influence (sticks pinky up). While in Luang Prabang, I accomplished yet another one of my animal related goals; I played with elephants. Elephants are unreal. Their skin felt like asphalt on an 105 degree day. The Elephant Village made me feel giddy, yet conflicted.It is an elephant sanctuary that rescues elephants from cruel working environments, such as the logging industry. However, I can't imagine these elephants are too stoked about having humans riding on their backs all day. I guess it becomes a question of the lesser evil. I chose to be happy for these rescued elephants and had a blast feeding them bananas. The elephant that I was riding started running at one point and that was scary as hell. Elephants are much scarier than tigers but they are superb animals. Did you know elephants cry when they are sad? They also have hearts that can weigh up to 28 kg. They are the only mammal that cannot jump. Elephants and I have that in common. Stay gold elefantes.

After Luang Prabang we headed to Vang Vieng which is a notorious party town. It used to be a lot crazier before they shut down a lot of the bars along the river on account of too many drunk/high tourists dying from tubing accidents. Luckily, I got food poisoning day one in VV, so I narrowly avoided death. I finally got to spend some much needed time with my main man, Ron Swanson (Yohnk and Tim also got sick during this trip. Watch out for Laos in terms of food safety, friends).

Overall, I can confidently say that every single one of you should visit Laos. It's a place that would never have been on my radar had I not moved to Vietnam. It is a beautiful country and I would love to go back. If you would like more intimate details about Laos or my trip, let me know. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Other things that happened when I was too lazy to blog:

-I went to Danang to play in a Gaelic football game against the Hanoi team. We won the game, had a great night out, and went to the beautiful beach the next day (I coerced a bass player into letting me sing with a bar band, so naturally I had fun). Danang is great and they have a dragon bridge, what's not to love?

-I was sent my flights home! June 16th-August 1st. Watch out pizza, whole foods, and beards.

-One of my best friends left Saigon to go back to the land of koalas. Katrina, you will be missed and I can't wait to see you in Oz. xoxo

-My lovely co-teacher and wonder friend posted a fake engagement photo of my fake finger on Fakebook. Chaos ensued. I could have easily deleted it, but I wanted to turn it into a social experiment. For those of you who thought I was actually engaged, I'm sorry to let you down. To be fair, if you really thought that I was engaged, you have no idea what's going on in my life.  I am single as fu** and it is OK...I'm still alive, breathing even. One picture on Facebook can change everyone's mind and THAT'S CRAZY. We live in a very strange world.

(^single as fu**) 

The power of social media my friends (Denounces social media, posts a blog).



I think that's all I have for you humans today. I am on spring break this week! Come hither amigos.

                                               
                              I'm staying in Ho Chi Ho this week. I can't afford anymore fancy vacations.









Songs you should listen to: