Firstly you totally don’t get to call it a rainy season if it’s raining all the time. What that is is just that you live in a really damp place – you should get over it and stop spreading childish propaganda about your microclimate. Monsoon my ass – it’s always rainy and never sunny, like a shitty Narnia.
Whenever I see a guy in one of those jokey-vietnam triangle hats I always cringe a little, because it’s racist isn’t it? If you’re not Vietnamese and you wear one of these it’s a bit condescending and a bit awful and, well, you’re a terrible racist.
So yesterday me and Adam were having dinner (pizza à la mode) and I saw a Chinese guy wearing one and it totally set the cat amongst the pigeons. I mean, what’s his motivation? So all Chinese people are racists now which fits comfortably with my mental view of the world.
There are two things about Vang Vieng. The first is that there’s a huge landing strip right in the middle of town which Air America built to support the CIA’s drug smuggling efforts during the war.
Nowadays they use it as a marketplace where you can buy spent shell casings and crystal meth on a pizza. I’m not sure about the specifics of America’s foreign policy in the region (“uh, sorry”?) but I reckon you could chalk that one up as a win for democracy and free trade.
The second thing is that after you’ve seen the big concrete field there’s dick all to do except tubing, which is where you ride a tractor inner tube down river, get drunk at the bars along the way and try not to die, miss the bit where you’re supposed to get out and end up in a thicket three miles downriver – cold, wet, lost and surrounded by confused drunk people.
At least that’s how we did it. What we lack in good sense we more than make up for in style.
So that’s all from Vang Vieng: Adam is off to Cambodia to engage in some low-dose sex tourism and I’m heading to Bangkok to miss a transfer to Chiangmai.
