3/14-3/15

3/14/2011
-Morning tea, then to immigration office, played the window bouncing game, and filled out some forms that made no sense completely wrong. they try to squeeze every last dime out of you at the office costs a couple thousand for the form, more for them to make a copy of your passport etc. finally got shit sorted and went to pay, they wanted $40 US but i didn't have dollars only Kip and the exchange rate was 10,000 to one for some damn reason, even though gov't propagandha is all about using kip over dollars, but the gov't itself punishes you for using Kip explain that shit to me...
-they held onto my passport at the immigration office, so had a bit of trouble getting into the American embassy, but eventually they let me in and i turned in the forms and paid the money to get my passport replaced, had to go back the next day once i picked up my passport, so they could copy it, ah the joys of bureaucracy.
-wandered around for a bit, hung out by a massive bronze sculpture on the mekong, behind the presidential palace, there were a shitload of exercise machines set up in the park as well, just in the view of the palace and nowhere else.
-back to the beer garden where i met a lovely couple from Washington, talked to them for a while, and went to dinner together, had two dollar duck noodle soup which was excellent.
-they went to bed and i went to wander around a bit before going to bed.
3/15/2011
-next morning went to have my morning tea and do internet stuff, and there was a kid with a big black eye and lots of cuts, he had the look that people get when they really want to tell a story, so i invited him to sit with me, and he laid quite a tale on me. he was a wounded Iraq war vet on the tail end of a nine month trip across Asia. Really a cool kid, from a rural poor family in TN, his journey was coming to an abrupt end due to a fiasco on the Slow Boat to Luang Probang. In the chaos of the offload and people trying to sell accomidation, he noticed a girl get offered a room for 160,000  LAK, while he was offered the same room by the same guy for 30,000 LAK, so he tried to get the guy to give the girl a fair price. things escalated, and wound up with the guest house guy throwing a punch. which turned into a brawl, where this kid came out on top in a serious way. guesthouse dude left, but returned a short time later with his brother and two other friends on motorbikes, armed with big sticks. he broke his guitar over the face of the first dude, which incapacitated him, and left him with no weapon but only three attackers. as one might imagine, they preceded to fuck him up pretty bad, broken foot, fat scabbed bitemarks on his back, pitch black eye, and an untold number of scrapes and bruises. he only escaped by jumping in the mekong and swimming to the other side. where he waited to die, until a south american guy he had befriended on the boat, chartered a small boat to go pick him up. spent the next night in jail, for fear that if he was out and about he would actually be killed. the next morning had a meeting with the police, the original assailant and brother. speaking no Lao, of course this meeting did not go in his favor. his choice ultimately came down to $250 or six months in Lao jail. Unfortunately, did not have $250 readily available, so it was looking like he was going to serve time and his injuries were going to go untreated. luckly, the same South American guy showed up to try and get him out, because the boat was leaving, and paid to free him. when i met him he was killing time before taking a plane back to the states. crazy.
-talked until about 1:30, then went off to get my passport and go back to the American Embassy, pretty easy, extension was sorted and passport stuff sorted.
-back to the hotel, ran into an Irish guy, Alex, who was just getting settled and had quite an impressive beard. spent the next two days hanging out with him. Impressive character all round, had a deep interest and skill at picking up language, deep insight into the world, well educated, a remarkable writer, and was on a bicycle journey around Asia.
-sat on the banks of the Mekong and had a drink with him, talked all sorts of things, then went to find dinner, we were both interested in getting out of the tourist district and finding some real Lao food, so we wandered for a while, conversation flowing like water, until we found a Falong free establishment well off the track, had some excellent beef hotpot, but realized part way through we were doing it all wrong.... no matter, was still delicious.
-spent the rest of the night on the balcony sharing music, really a wonderful treat.

dinnertime here, more soon