Laos, part one...

I know that I've been increadibly bad at updating my blog lately, it's been over a month. I'm so sorry, but traveling is just too busy! It's a hard life. Seeing interesting culture, astonishing nature, talking with nice people, eating tasty food and reading good books. Who has time to keep a blog? During one month in Laos I never felt like writing, but now I'm back in Thailand and I want to do an update. I just realized that it's going to have to be two updates...

Let me introduce Laos, a country that seems to be made out of waterfalls and caves, inhabited by the friendliest people you can imagine eating the stickiest rice in the world. Do I have to tell you I loved the place? Parts of Laos are sadly destroyed by tourism, though. But if you're adventurous enough to go to other places, you'll be rewarded.

The trip to Laos began with a two day boat trip from the border to Luang Prabang, the second biggest city and cultural center of the country. It is also the intellectual center, I read that in the Lao soaps, the doctors and lawyers always speak with a Luang Prabang accent (I didn't manage to distinguish the accent though). The boat trip was really nice and relaxed and it was also the place where I met Erik and Julie from France and Will from New Orleans. These three became my new travelling friends for a few weeks. Erik and Julie also became my french teachers. I hadn't expected that I'd practise so much french on my trip to Asia, but I have to say that my french now is much better than it was half a year ago.


On the two day boat ride, I encountered the third catagory of "travellers I don't like to meet", a kind that I unfortunately would meet alot of in Laos (and probably will meet in Thailand as well); the party people. The party people on the boat were sitting in the front of the boat smoking cigarettes (so that everybody in the boat could benefit by inhaling the fumes) and drinking beer lao non stop for two days. When they arrived in Luang Prabang, they soon decided to move on, since the pubs aren't open after 11 pm in Luang Prabang. And, as they explained it to us: "we don't give a shit about temples, we've seen enough". At first I thought that all of this was entirely their own business, but when I later went to Vang Vieng (the party capital) I realized how much that has been destroyed by the huge amount of european teenagers (yes, teenagers!) being recklessly drunk and stoned listening to terrible pumping music all day and night all year round. I can't even beging to think how it must be for the locals living there. 15 years ago it was a quiet town in a beautiful surrounding and now they have to live with the stupid party people wether they want it or not. This is all so sad to me and makes me ashamed for being a tourist. It's also hard to understand how all of that can be some peoples dream. The party people stay in Vang Vieng for weeks doing the same thing over and over: drinking, smoking weed and trying to get laid. That brings me to another thing I don't like about this group. Many times the guys will talk to a girl at first, but as soon as he understands that he's not gonna get sex from her, he doesn't bother anymore, but starts talking to someone else instead. I even heard some guys saying out loud: "oh, that's the girls who have boyfriends at home, there's no use talking to them". I could probably go on writing about this for a while, but I just don't feel like it and I'm sure you're thankful for that.


There's actually a fourth category as well, one that makes me so upset that I want to cry. That's the old, ugly, nerdy, white men who come to Thailand and suddenly find young, beautiful thai women. They're EVERYWHERE! If I start writing about this it will take all day, so therefor I will spare you. This time.







After Luang Prabang, I traveled north with my new friends to a small village called Muong Sing. The town itself is nothing spectacular, but around it is a large number of hill tribe villages. In Muong Sing we organized a three day trek to see the small villages around. Luckily we got a great guide called Mai, who new so much about all the different tribes we visited. We even got to stay with two families and felt genuinely welcomed by both. The kids in the villages were very curious about their guest and all wanted to touch my hair.

A funny thing about the trek was that we were walking in the jungle, with Mai in front to clear the path with a machete. Afterwards we found out that there was an easy way as well, but I guess the trek was going through the jungle so that the tourists (us) would feel like they were on a "real adventure". I felt so silly when we found that out. I even feel a little embarrassed now that I've been on an organized thing like that. But at the same time, we learned alot about the hill tribes and we all had a great time.

After trekking, we said goodbye to our Louisiana boy Will and took a bus 150 km east (this took 7 hours!), a tuk-tuk for another hour and then a boat for 1,5 hours to the small, wonderful paradise Muong Noi. Muong Noi is a village without roads, right by the Nam Ou river. The landscape around is truly beautiful, and the atmosphere totally relaxed. There were only a few tourists every day, so everybody talked with everybody and after a few days I felt like a small town girl, everytime the boat came in, I'd be curious at who would come visit the village today. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, there were plenty of things to do in Muong Noi, two really cool caves to explore and tubing down the river in slow motion.

One day it rained very heavely from 6 in the morning until late afternoon. As soon as the rain stopped, my new argentinan friend Gregorio and I thought it would be a great idea to walk to the nearby village Banna. What we hadn't considered was that the whole way was a mud path, and we had mud up to our ancles the whole way. Wet mud is very slippery, that's what I learned. I also learned that it takes a long time to walk in mud. The walk to Banna took two hours instead of one and I fell twice. For some reason Gregorio didn't fall, although it looked like he would at least 100 times.

When we arrived in Banna we were rewarded with yet another paradise. The village only has 100 inhabitants, all of who work at the huge rice fields you have to cross to go there. There is, however, a small, very basic and cheap guest house hosted by the friendliest woman I met in all of Laos: Mama Kham. Gregorio and I soon realized that the sun was about to set, so we had to say goodbye to our new mama, but decided to go back to stay one night the following day.

In Banna everybody lives in bamboo houses on stilts, work on the rice fields and wear traditional clothes. Everybody exept for Mama Khams son, the rocker. This guy walks around the tiny village in baggy jeans, black rock t-shirts, a rocky kind of hair cut and piercings. Gregorio and I were both very surprised to find him here, he looked like he might as well belong in any European big city. When we came back to Banna the following day to spend the night, the rocker was glowing with happiness to see us again. I don't think he gets a chance too often to practice his english and hang out with other cool kids. :)

Leaving Muong Noi after a week was not easy, but luckily I met this guy, Julius, who took me on his amazing motor bike from 1955 down towards Luang Prabang again. I was supposed to go all the way ther with him, but as the bike lacked a footrest for the left foot, my leg was cramping after one hour. The motor bike also broke down once, and I realized how hard it must be to travel by motor bike. And Julius had done it all through Vietnam! With the old bike and all our bags in the back, we sure got a lot of attention on the roads through the villages. Everywhere people were waving, yelling "falang!" (tourist). Yes, that's what I am: falang.

Enough is enough...

Ten days and 88 hours of meditation later, I'm back in Chiang Mai. So, how was life at the monastery named Wat Ram Poeng, you wonder? And why are you back so soon? Well, it was - how should I put this - not quite satisfying in every way. Not terrible, but definitely not great. So now you're wondering: did I expect it to be great? After all it included fasting after midday, rising at 4 am, sleeping for 6 hours per night (as most of you might know, that's just NOT enough for me to function well), being completely silent and meditating for 10 hours per day. In other words, not exactly the typical vacation in Thailand. However strange it sounds, I actually enjoy all of those things (except the lack of sleep), so I did expect my stay to be a whole lot greater than it was.

My biggest issue was the walking meditation. The course included an equal amount of walking and sitting meditation. Since I had very little experience in walking meditation, I was really looking forward to learning that. But even after 44 hours of walking in slow motion back and forward, I still felt like that's all I was doing, merely walking - without meditating. Walking extremely slowly, trying to focus, failing and instead thinking. Thinking about everything that's ever happened to me, everyone I've ever met, everything that will ever happen in the future and so on. Frustrating as hell! Except thinking about all those things, I also started asking some questions (and you might want to enlighten me on some facts here):

• Does anyone get anything out of walking meditation?
• Why is there such a useless thing, why not just sit?
• What are the exact benefits of this terrible invention?
• Does it even qualify as meditation, why not just call it walking in slow motion?

Needless to say, walking "meditation" is not my new big addiction. Actually I don't think I speak falsely if I tell you here and now that I will NEVER again take another step of walking "meditation", unless the life of someone close depends on it. And that's just not gonna happen (lucky me)! Ok, I'll quit boring you with the detailed description of my feelings for walking "meditation" now. Just one more thing so that you completely understand my situation. It was 35 degrees and around 70 percent air humidity. No fan in the world could prevent the sweat from pouring down my back, front, arms and legs (I could have just written pouring down my entire body) as I walked there, in slow motion, wearing my long sleeved white clothes, dedicating thoughts of hatred to whoever invented this ridiculous form of mind training.

The monastery itself is quite nice, beautiful buildings surrounded by trees, Buddha statues and paths. I had my own room and bathroom, and that's not very common during meditation retreats.

There were around 70 meditators and only around eight were foreigners like me. Going to a monastery for a couple of days every once in a while to practice meditation seems pretty common in Thailand. During the other meditation courses that I've done on this trip, the foreigners have always dominated the scene. At Wat Ram Poeng it felt more as though I was doing something that is a part of the thai culture, not another tourist attraction. There were so few foreigners, that when one of the monks showed some new people around and he saw me, he said to them: "Look! Another foreigner! Say hello!", whereupon the new foreigners all obediently said "helloooo". I would love to see that happen in Sweden, hahaha... Most of my fellow meditators were women and the ages varied between 16 and 70. They didn't seem to care too much about my presence, but many smiled in a friendly way and some helped me when I seemed lost. A few young girls asked me questions in poor english about being at the monastery.

My favorite little lady never smiled at me or helped me, she never even looked at me. Despite that, I felt like we had a connection. We both used the library (see picture above) for meditation and the two of us were definitely the most frequent meditators there. The others came and went, but the little lady and I stood strong every day, every hour. The little lady was tiny, she probably reached my shoulder, but nonetheless radiating strong determination, strength and power. No one would try to get in her way! During the first couple of days, she constantly walked straight towards me during walking "meditation", even when there was plenty of room on the floor. The first few times I moved out of her way, quiet and irritated (typically swedish behavior by the way). But when I realized that she was testing me, I didn't move an inch. After a few times, the never walked in my way again and we started to live in some kind of symbiosis, she became an important part of my days at the library. I think that the reason why I liked the little lady is that she reminded me of my great friend Anna (who is also really short, strong and determined) and how we first tested each other when we met in Gavle in 2004, before we decided that we absolutely loved each other.

Now let me tell you about the food. Whoever said that Thai food is great, sure wasn't talking about the cafeteria style That food that I was served twice daily. Imagine that you don't get dinner, only breakfast at 6.15 and lunch at 10.30. Wouldn't you hope that the two meals you got would be tasty? And if they're not tasty, wouldn't you at least expect to get enough to satisfy your hunger? Well, if you answer yes to these to questions, I suggest you never set foot at Wat Ram Poeng. I shouldn't exaggerate too much, I did after all undertake the fourth precept " to abstain from false speech" only two days ago. So, to be honest: all the food wasn't absolutely terrible. Sometimes we even got ok food and sometimes I even got full. Let me remind you that I'm never picky with what I eat, as long as it's meatless. I love almost all food. Some of my friends even tell me that I'm not reliable when it comes to evaluationg food just because of that characteristic. Well, trust this: most of the time the food was disgusting! The chef obviously thought that slime and sugar could save any dish. So what's on the menu? Slimy, tasteless, gray meat imitations in a slimy, gray sauce and then a pink, milky, super sweet soup with little cubes of jello and weird wooden-textured fruits for desert. Are you getting hungry? My worst memory must have been the morning when I was starving for breakfast (after 17 hours of fasting) and I was served a small scoop of brown water with a tiny bit of rice swimming around in it, nothing else. One more thing about the food: after lining up, being served and instructed by the strict nun on where to sit, we all had to chant Buddhist songs in Thai for half an hour before we were aloud to dig in. And then the food wasn't just repulsive, it was also dead cold.

After seven days at the monastery, my teacher Pra Ajang Suphang asked me if I wanted to stay longer than the mandatory ten days. Despite my problems with the walking meditation, the food situation and the fact that I didn't really feel comfortable and happy, I said yes just because I'd told myself that I would. Pra Ajang Suphang then started talking about increasing the hours of meditation, going for twelve instead of ten. That's when I started to panic. I told him that I couldn't do twelve, ten is probably my absolute limit. He aswered something that became the definite final drop: "no problem, just sleep less, you only need four or five hours of sleep". My reaction iside was: "NOOO!!! Can't, won't, don't want to, not possible, GET ME OUT OF HERE! After another hour of walking "meditation" (thinking "have to leave, have to leave, have to leave"), I went back to him and told him: enough is enough.

Two small funny things that I just have to add:
One: If you're a 15 year old school kid in the monastery school and you know the lastest trends, then you know just how to carry your pink plastic mug in your mouth as you're waiting in line for lunch. About 50 cool guys were all doing this, looking pretty damn street! Maybe I should be the first to bring this trend to Sweden? I'll buy a bunch of pink plastic mugs, sell them and istruct on how to carry it the chilled out way - in the mouth!

Two: One night I had a moth invasion in my bathroom. It looked like a battle field the next day. Nice...

All in all meditating at Wat Ram Poeng was ok. I wouldn't do it again and I'm glad I decided not to stay for three weeks. I did however enjoy the sitting meditation and I feel that it was beneficial for me in many ways.


Now I've decided to go to Laos earlier and then back to Thailand to take a diving certificate. After all, I think you'll agree with me when I say that diving has a great capacity of being far more stimulating than walking meditation...