Really big day today. Got up early in Chiang Rai, found a nice vegan restaurant and ate my first vegetarian meal since arriving in Thailand, and boarded the bus for Laos.

After a two and a half hour bus ride I made it to the (no longer so little) border town of Chiang Kong. I quick hoped on the ferry and made it in to Laos. As I was on the boat I made friends with another traveler named Chris. He was quite the interesting fellow. We were the same age and seemed to have a lot in common, with the exception that, up until seven months ago, he had been a high-priced lawyer in San Francisco.

When Chris and I got to the Lao side of the river I suggested we stay at this cool hotel that Laurel and I stayed in about a decade ago. This hotel was once a French colonial office and has tons of interesting features and old teak wood everywhere. It is probably too fancy for me. Whenever there is a towel folded into the shape of an animal I realize that I could definitely paid half as much somewhere else. That being said it was great and still not very expensive.

After chilling out for a bit, my new friend Chris and I went out to explore the town. We climbed up a giant hill and looked around at a cool wat with many interesting and lifelike murals. Then we walked a bit along the ridge to an old French military fort. Unfortunate the fort was closed for the day.

Fortunately I decided to snoop around and found a caved-in wall that allowed up to go in to the empty fort and look around. Pretty awesome really. We were the only ones there. We even climbed up a broken down tower to get a great view of the city. I don’t think that would have been possible if the fort was open at the time.

After that we headed back into town to try and figure out Chris’s plans for tomorrow. He wanted to take the slow boat to Luang Prabang, so we walked to the pier to figure out the trip. On the way back we saw a neat restaurant with a large deck overlooking the river. Inside a large party was drinking and singing Karaoke. Chris and I decided to check it out. It started very casually with a few drinks and a bucket of ice, but we soon were invited into the party. The director of Laos’s Ministry of Finance had done an inspection of a local office and apparently it went well. The whole office including the minister decided to celebrate. We started it out real classy with me singing “Hello” by Lionel Richie. Things quickly went downhill.

Chris and I got a lesson in Lao culture. Apparently when your senior or superior orders you to “bottoms up” you must down however much is in your glass at the moment. Many of the workers were drunk before we even arrived. Luckily I can control myself to some extent, and, despite the fact that there are now images of me being ordered to dance “ram” style with the hostesses, I kept my composure under fire. The night ended with me bringing it home with the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way.” It was quite the hit.