The Lazy Travellers

I seem to have taken my lazy trait along with me back home all the way up north in Laos. Siew and I are probably the two laziest travellers the world has ever met, but we’ve quite good reasons.

For instance, when we were having one of the most laidback times ever in Vang Vieng, we were so complacently lazy that we, um, kinda didn’t do anything for two whole days (separate days of course). Didn’t do anything as in without any actual activities, just lazying around, watching a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother (Season 1) on Siew’s iPod (which is HILARIOUS btw) and reading Life of Pi.

Life was perfect, at that inherently lazy-laidback level.

Vang Vieng was a perfect little hideout – there’s a 5-10km long river (depending on your start-off point which depends on your willingness to pay) where you can go tubing on, which was relaxing and scenic at the same time: imagine part of a Sunway Lagoon attraction except that this is completely natural. Imagine drinking cheap Beerlao every other night (not that I drank like a fish..). Imagine watching movies/Friends (aka the Friends phenomenon which I shall talk about next time) in restaurants and staying there, lying there relaxing for ages.

Some travellers liked it, some didn’t like the over-commercialised town, but I loved it.

And now I’m in Luang Prabang, a town I didn’t like very much. Which is why Siew and I spent three days doing next to nothing. :)

You know when I said I was feeling depressed on my first day in Vientiane? The heavy heart and the absolutely lack of joy in anything I do (which somehow magically disappeared the next day in a heart-stopping kayaking trip when I nearly lost my camera)?

I have been having dreams about the rather routined life I lead in Malaysia and I finally know what it meant. I was homesick. Yawn I know, I was dismissing it to the back of my mind because how can I, someone who has been secretly harping on and looking so much forward to this trip, be homesick?

But yeah I suppose it happens at all levels – whether you’re abroad for studying, travelling, it probably doesn’t matter.

Jesus I’m supposed to blog about little snippets of what happened recently during my travels but I got distracted by chatting on MSN. And this cybercafe is closing at 10pm wtf.

And did I mention that it’s horribly freezing here? Every morning mists will come a-rolling and that will be when I feel at my worst. Mornings and nights are absolutely at its coldest in Luang Prabang, and I detest it.

I would’ve blogged yesterday as well, were we not invited to our guesthouse owner’s granddaughter’s 7th birthday party at night. It was definitely something – celebrating a local’s birthday – and after that we hung out with the other guesthouse’s foreign guests (a French couple, a young Frenchman, and two Swiss sisters) at a bar. Drinking Beerlao by the Mekong.

Definition of drinking the country’s best beer by South East Asia’s famous river: legendary.

I’ll be heading to a village with no electricity (save from 6pm-10pm) tomorrow, after which some long-ass bus rides which I seriously have no love for (what more in local buses) all the way to Chiang Mai.

I hope I’ll survive it – with my senses dulled by generous amount of Beerlao.

And did I mention Siew and I won’t be bathing for the next 3 days? When our guesthouse doesn’t provide towels, we’re too lazy to dry our own and hence this particular unhygienic bit of news. Plus we bet guesthouses in a village with no electricity will be least likely to provide towels.

Laziest travellers indeed.