Happy Halloween =D

For the past two years on Halloween, I've decided to decline invitations to club parties full of drunk girls in lingerie and animal ears, opting to spend it with kids instead. Hands down, I have no regrets! The past two Halloweens have been the best I've ever had.

Here are some flashbacks from last year when I went trick-or-treating with my nieces and nephews and their neighbors' kids. The neighbors' mom didn't believe I was old enough to supervise them (probably because I was dressed like a ballerina with a sparkly pink tutu + glitter ballet flats, and was smaller than her teenage daughter), so she sent their dad out to come with us as well. I hadn't gone trick-or-treating in a few years and I had a blast. I miss these kids sooooo much!!!

Thai people don't typically celebrate Halloween, but we spent our last class session teaching the students all about it: the history of the holiday, how to say "trick-or-treat;" what a jack-o-lantern is... We showed them videos and pictures of children in costume and told them we were going to have a party on Friday instead of having class. The kids were so excited!

We spent pretty much all day on Thursday preparing for the big party. We cut out bats and spiders to hang from the ceiling, made ribbons and certificates for the future winners of the pumpkin (squash) carving contest, drew jack-o-lanterns and ghosts, and made decisions about food, lighting, and music. I couldn't remember the last time I had spent so much time with markers, construction paper, fishing line, scissors, and tape, but seeing everything come together was completely worth it.

Friday morning, we set up the big classroom with all the decorations, and the party energy was building up. I've always loved Halloween because I think it's so fun to make costumes and dress up. And I like chocolate too =) I was anxious for the fun to begin!

The kids started to trickle in, and it totally melted my heart to see them come with so much spirit, dressed in costume and toting bags to collect treats. I smiled watching their faces light up at the sight of all the decorations and candy, and hearing them say, "Trick or treat!" as we had practiced a couple of days before.

Ana and I did face painting for the kids. Our services were in high demand and the kids formed long lines, waiting their turn to be transformed into animals and zombies. Here are some samples of my artwork. Some of these photos really make me laugh!

 

The party was complete with too many sweets, sodas, and treats, as well as a costume contest, squash-carving contest (since they don't really have pumpkins here...), scary stories told by candlelight, and a few rounds of musical chairs. We even had a dance party for a couple of hours, reminiscent of 6th grade school dances in the gymnasium. Some of the kids we would have never expected turned out to be dancing machines! I was filled up on cookies and candy, and could actually feel the sugar crash happening by the end of the night.

All in all, everyone had a great time. Several of the kids stayed later than they usually would. It was almost 10:00pm by the time everyone cleared out. When some of their parents came to pick them up, they saw how much fun the kids were having and said they would stay and wait for them, so that they could enjoy themselves a little longer. Spending holidays with children opens you up to feeling a genuine spirit of celebration and excitement. In their youth, they're so far away from realities learned in adulthood, and watching them is like a touchstone to flowing with a carefree life. On Friday, I remembered what it was like to be a kid.

Halloween, I still love you. Even though I'm 24, I will still wear a costume and eat candy all day in your honor.

Serenity

We had to get out of town after our tubing adventures, and hopped on a mini bus to Luang Prabang the next day. The ride was several hours on a very bumpy and winding road. I guess the upside was that there were only 4 people on our bus. Ana and I both took a row of seats to ourselves so we could lay down and try to imagine we weren't actually riding the Grizzly at Great America for 6 hours straight.

When we got to town, it was quiet. The streets weren't full of rowdy drunkards. The greenery, and flowers, and nice restaurants and guesthouses and bookstores and art galleries allowed us to feel at peace with ourselves and our surroundings.

My favorite part of our stay in Luang Prabang was going to the waterfall park. I love the water. I think it's a Pisces thing. We took a gentle hike and ended up here:

I've always wanted  jump off of a waterfall, and I finally got to do so in Luang Prabang. So much fun!

There was also this temple at the very top of the hill not too far from our guesthouse that we would always see in the daytime, and also lit up at night. We had to climb a lot of stairs to get to the top, and were dripping sweat by the time we got there. We wanted to watch the sunset at the temple, but it was cloudy so we didn't get much of a scenic view. It was enjoyable to explore nonetheless.

Our original plan was to spend 2 nights in Luang Prabang, bus back to Vang Vieng and spend 1 more night there before heading back to Vientiane the next day to pick up our passports. The point of that plan was to avoid an uncomfortable, 10-hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. But the truth was, we never wanted to go back to Vang Vieng ever again. Ever. So we stayed an extra night in Luang Prabang and settled with the 10-hour bus ride.

Ana and I were both rather silent on the ride back. Perhaps we were both too busy internally lamenting over the hours and hours we had left on the bus. We felt like we had been away from Nong Khai for so long. I stared out of the window into the jungle and the scattered, remote towns of huts on stilts. I found myself thinking about what it would be like to grow up in such surroundings, and kept wondering if they knew what else was out there, or if they would stay there all their lives. It was quite common for us to see cows, pigs, roosters, and other farm animals and livestock on the road during the drive. Despite the audible sound of people throwing up while suffering from motion sickness on the winding roads, and the fact that we were sitting on a bus for more hours than an average person's work day, I still think it was worth it to spend one more day in this beautiful town.

Spring Break 2009

It seems as though every time Ana and I land in a new place, we are completely bewildered as to how we got there and where we're actually supposed to be. After crossing the Laos border, obtaining our Laos visas, and dropping off our passports at the Thai embassy for a Thai visa extension, we tuk-tukked our way to the public bus station. We eventually figured out that we could just get on any bus with a sign that said it was heading to Vang Vieng, so that's what we did. And 3 hours later, the bus dropped us off on the side of a road and apparently we were at our destination.



Remember in college when people would go to Tijuana or somewhere equally as crazy during Spring break? That's what Vang Vieng is like. People pretty much just go there to party and have a good time. The town is full of tourists, mostly Europeans and some Australians, from what we could tell. We were sure that they all thought we were locals in an escape from tending our shops because we were two of the very few people of color that were in town just hanging out. After we followed our new American friends into town, we settled into a guesthouse that charged about $6 per night, walked around town a bit, had dinner, and then got a good night's rest before the main event.

Type "Vang Vieng" into any search engine and it will pull up pictures and articles about drunken tubing adventures in the river. That's pretty much what the town is built around, and we just had to partake in the activity while we were in the area. Admittedly, Ana and I were quite excited for our first adventure out of Nong Khai, but we had no idea what we were in for!

We rented our Cheerio tubes and got onto a tuk-tuk full of anxious river ragers. We were dropped off at the first bar and greeted with shots of Tiger whiskey being poured into our mouths. The guides showed us the different bars that lined the river that we would be floating down, and told us that no one makes it back by 6:00pm (which is the time that you have to return your tube in order to get your full deposit back) because everyone loses track of time. From where we were standing, a few feet away from where the tuk-tuk dropped us off, we could already see people zip-lining and swinging off of trees and into the river. We bought ourselves a bucket full of some alcoholic concotion to prep us for the day.

We floated from bar to bar, stopping to spend some time at each one to take a free shot, eat a free banana, zip-line into the river, listen to techno music, and mingle with our fellow tourists. We made so many friends!

All right, all right... you got me... I don't remember any of those people's names or anything about them. Except for the last guy. We recognized him because we saw him in a deep slumber at the lounge we were at the night before. He would not wake up, despite the waiter's attempts, and probably awoke in a chair the next day.

One of the stops was at this bar that had a mud pit. I'm writing about this mostly so I can post embarassing pictures of Ana, because she had way too much fun playing mud volleyball.

And then the sun started to go down and the party was almost over...

I believe we left the last bar a little after 5:00 hoping to still make it to return our tubes in time to get our full deposits back. We were told that we had to float down the river for about 50 minutes to get back into town. But we had no sense of time or direction. And we were still buzzed. It started to get dark, and also started raining. So I found myself floating down a river in a foreign country, in the rain and darkness, with my left foot hooked under Ana's tube in an attempt to keep us together.

On this dark and arduous journey to land, we climbed out of the river a total of 3 times before we actually made it back to where we were supposed to be. The first time, we were "saved" by some random local boy. We don't even know where he came from! But somehow he latched both of our tubes and swam us across the river and onto the bank before he started demanding us to give him money. Ana was not about to give him the 500 baht that she had in her waterproof pouch. (1) We didn't ask for your help and we don't know where you came from. (2) You don't have change for 500 baht. He threw Ana's tube into the river, visibly upset that he wasn't making any cash on this deal. I jumped into the river to save the tube and we continued to float on. Why we didn't just get off at that point, I'm not really sure...

The second time, we climbed onto the river bank at a place where we saw lots of lights, thinking we were in town. The only problem was that we had climbed off onto an area where there were a bunch of restaurants overlooking the river, so we were basically underneath a deck in the backyard of some restaurant that had barbed wire fencing. We had no choice but to keep on floating...

By this time, I figure we had been floating in the dark for over 50 minutes and there was no one around us... We floated under a bridge, and someone fishing on the bridge shouted out, "End of the road!" So we climbed out again, crossed the bridge, and were told by the fisherman that we were about 1 kilometer from the town we were supposed to be in. It would have been a long and cold and dark walk back. And by this time, Ana had also lost one of her slippers to the river.

Luckily, we spotted a tour group minivan close by. I ran up to the van as Ana hobbled behind me with one slipper, and knocked on the window, brokenly communicating that we needed a ride back into the town. There was space for us and the driver even took our tubes and put them in the trunk. We were saved by a group of Thai tourists! They were all stifling their laughter at the 2 girls in their swimsuits who crawled out of the river and ran from the middle of the darkness carrying inner tubes to their vehicle in hopes to hitch a ride to the town they floated past. But we really didn't care at this point. We were so thankful...

I'm not sure what time it was when we actually returned our tubes, but it was definitely after 6:00 and we had to pay extra because Ana lost her life jacket somehow. We were kind of upset about that, but looking back, we realize that things could have been a lot worse, and are definitely grateful that we somehow made it out all right.

At the end of the day, all we knew was that we were not in college anymore and we could no longer put up with this Spring Break lifestyle.