Thai Massages: Apathetic Endings

We did get massages, but not THAT kind of massage, you pervert.

Greetings from Houay Xai, Laos! After a whirlwind few days in Thailand (it's hard to believe we're only on day 3...it seems like a week), we crossed the mighty Mekong River.

We made it across the river safely, and are resting up in a guest house where we're sleeping on a couple of slabs of concrete cleverly disguised as beds. They're comfortable in the same way that sandpaper underwear is comfortable.

A quick recap of the past few days:

- I made a quick trip to the Grand Palace in Bangkok yesterday morning, and the place quite literally knocked my socks off. That palace has more gold than Li'l Jon's grill (not sure if people are still making Li'l Jon jokes, but I thought I'd test the waters).

- We hopped a flight to Chiang Rai in the afternoon (narrowly making our flight due to the slowest taxi in history). Chiang Rai is the "Gateway to the Golden Triangle"...the Golden Triangle is where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet and is infamous for its poppy production. For those of you who saw American Gangster, this is where Denzel came to get his heroin straight from the source. Stuart and I failed to make any such connections...yet. It was nice to get out of Bangkok and into a quieter town where we weren't approached every twenty seconds by a street vendor trying to sell us something. There were definitely fewer farrang in this part of the country ("farrang" is Thai for "gringo").

We had an exceedingly pleasant time in Chiang Rai (picture of me in front of some sort of gold thingy in CR above), highlighted by dinner in an open market where we feasted on grilled squid, crab, friend chicken tendons, spring rolls and a few Leo beers. It was a warm night, a full moon shining down on us, and there was a stage set up where traditional Thai dances and a troubadour sang sad songs about lost love (that was our guess, at least). Stuart and I soaked it all in and talked about life, and it was good.

We then retired to a bar where Mr. Poole proceeded to fleece me in Connect Four, and my warm feelings toward him from our dinner at the market quickly turned cold.

After an interesting/cramped/sweaty bus ride through the countryside to the Thai-Laos border this afternoon (picture of Stuart looking awesome on the bus is below), we'll be heading into the jungle with the Gibbon Experience tomorrow morning, where we'll be ziplining through the jungle, hiking to waterfalls, and sleeping in tree houses for three days...life is so hard.

An update on the official "Perpetual Sweatiness Level" (sponsored by Old Spice), today was:

Spotty

Damp

Soggy

Soaked

Now we're off in search of dinner.