Laos: Let's wrap this up...not messing with the pull and pray this time.

Sorry for the three month delay on this one.  After absolutely destroying ourselves in the Hell that is Vang Vieng, we hopped on a bus up north to the beautifully named Laotian town of Luang Prabang.

As we were ready for a break from our rock and roll lifestyle, Luang provided us an opportunity to get in touch with our badass outdoorsy sides.  We took an hour long motorbike ride out to a big waterfall.  At the base of the waterfall, there were smaller pools with neat activities like the above rope swing.  You had to walk across a slippery log to reach the rope swing which was incredibly dangerous, but we did it anyways.

Watch out!  Six-pack alert and that guy isn't even flexing.

First ever bear plank (Photo was taken before planking was killed).

In addition to having rope swings, there were some mentally handicapped bears at the base of the waterfall.  I didn't really know bears could be mentally challenged, but it was confirmed once it made noises that sounded like this lady:

On our way back from the waterfall, we stopped by a rice paddy farm that was full of bulls.  This particular bull was also mentally handicapped because he made a bowl noise (growled?) and came charging at us.  Bastard is lucky we decided to drive off before we grabbed him by the horns and went Me, Myself, and Irene on him.

Other fun Luang Prabang activities included getting shaved by mentally challenged barbers and riding around with mentally challenged bikers.

I used to think riding on a motorbike would make anyone look cool

Hey meng, we in Vang Vieng

After overdosing on chill vibes in Pai, we needed to get back to our party bro lifestyles ASAP.  Luckily, our next stop was Vang Vieng, Laos.  Vang Vieng is mostly known for a brown river that flows through the town.  Normally, a brown river sounds boring and somewhat gross, but this brown river is bordered on both sides by wild bars with slides and rope swings.  Lots of people started dying on the rope swings so the strict Laos government spent about 10% of its  budget to send a commie down to chop down the rope swings.  Now, I would estimate that only about 8% of tourists that visit Vang Vieng die.

Our first night we met some Brit Bro's who were pretty cool.  One of them was named Lovedoody or something of the sort.  We were planning on taking pictures of every bucket we drank, but you can tell we got confused on whether this was bucket 4 or 5 and the pictures pretty much ended there.

Later, we went to a bar that provided markers to write on yourself.  Andy cleverly placed a "509" over his 6 pack.  Unfortunately, the marker rubbed off on our sheets, and we later had to pay $30 to reimburse the hotel.  $30 could buy a house on the river in Laos, so needless to say we threw a huge fit when we were handed the bill.  The old-fashioned Mexican standoff ended with us giving the bellboy a stink eye and forking over the cash. 

Here's a picture of the Vang Vieng river and one of the bars.  Looks like a crazy time, huh?

We were told that everyone started showing up around 1pm, but when we arrived at 1:30 it was pretty dead.  Luckily, we made friends with a homeboy from Idaho who worked at one of the bars.  He told us what to do and got us some free drinks.  This guy was real cool, too.  Not only was he jacked and been partying for 20 days straight, but he had this badass goatee looking thing and was very friendly.

Here's a picture of some Israelis who were staying at our hotel.  The Israelis constantly yelled at us "Be Safe!", "It's dangerous!", and "Lifejackets, LIFEJACKETS!".  To get to the next bar down the river, you had to either intertube or swim.  We decided to swim and talked the Israeli girl into swimming with us after assuring her that Andrew and Max were certified lifeguards.  After throwing some sweet front flips into the extremely fast flowing river, we noticed our Israeli friend came up choking on water and missed the bar.  Fortunately, Max was able to manhandle the situation and save her from certain death.  The Israeli bros were not too happy with us.

Franky being a gnarly guy as usual.

By the time we got to the 4th bar, we started getting a little out of control.  I'm going to place all of this blame on our Idahoian friend who was showing us the ropes.

Early in the day, we were somewhat on our own level.  We were definitely enjoying ourselves though.

There was a cute little girl who was working as the beer pong ball retriever.  Sometimes people would let her shoot for them.  She sucked...didn't even see her come close to making a ball.

Finally, DJ Drewsky was allowed to get on the mic and get the crowd going.

Minutes later, all the party bros were gathering together and getting down.  That is all the party bros except for Franky.

Franky was too busy doing other cool things like going down water slides...

And laying down the Franky mack of course.

Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, it's grand salami time! Pai oh My! - Dave Niehaus

"What the People Want" - Andrew

(Kids don't try this one at home)

Current world Ranking #8 see me!

 Just a couple tired party bros/ lions another hard day in the life of a back packer

 Uber chill party bungalow/ love shack

 Do I look cool or what

 Loced out nias goin crazy

Yeah I know Curtis!

It seems that people these days are always worried about "things".  Cars, computers, clothes, badass DVD collections, basketball cards, etc.  But really, these are just "things".  We don't need these "things", we need nature, relationships, and a sense of being.

I don't really feel this way, but a stoned guy told me something like this once, and it stuck with me.  When we arrived at Pai, we decided to embrace the hippy town's culture of being uber chill at all times.  This involved talking slowly, purchasing scrubby rasta colored bracelets, and having discussions about chill activities with fellow chillers.

We spent our days in Pai renting motorbikes and cruising around the hillsides enjoying the scenery.  We got our motors running, headed out on the highway, and looked for adventure in whatever came our way.

Our first destination was a multi-leveled waterfall that was flowing with chill vibes.  We cooled our steaming hot bodies in the fresh pool areas while butterflies slowly danced above our heads.

There were also some natural waterslides made of jaggedy rocks that dropped into shallow water.  We would have gone down head first like the locals, but we stupidly forgot to bring our jeans and t-shirts to go swimming in. 

"Hey man, check out this natural water massage chair I found!"

It became clear that we were engulfed by the chillness of Pai.  Even a straight faced, serious man like Andy could not help letting his guard down and enjoying a water massage in his Patagonia swimming trunks.  If this isn't evidence enough of how Pai-y we were behaving, we even had a 15 minute talk with two stoney FRENCH guys with terrible breath.  Instead of just making frog croaks at French people like we normally do, we gave them a chance to remind us how toady they really are.

Sorry if you get sick of us using the word chill so much in this post, but I can't really think of another word to describe most this stuff.  To further up our chill levels, we drank some local Kombucha's (also note the chiller bracelets in the background).  If you do not know what a Kombucha is, go spend $4 at Whole Foods for one and prevent yourself from getting cancer.

Here's a panoramic photo Andy shot from a Wat on a hillside.  It's a pleasantly quaint valley full of hippies and strange hill people. 

Another cool site we came across was the Pai canyon.  It involved some dangerous trekking (not joking, we could of died from one slip, but for some reason we weren't acting like our normal pussy selves), but the canyon rewarded us with some breathtaking views.  This picture kind of sucks and doesn't do it any justice, but imagine a similar view that's way better.

At the canyon, we maxed out our chill levels by doing some meditating.  This lasted for about two minutes before Andy took a loud piss that ruined the serene atmosphere.  It was fairly boring anyways.

The best part of the motorbikes was gaining the freedom to get away from the touristy areas and really interact with the locals.  We waved at these local fisherman from the top of a bridge.

Just kidding, the best part of renting motorcycles was smashing twenty beers and cruising down the highway at a 100 kilometers per hour.  We weren't idiots about it though and kept our helmets near by.

At a different waterfall, we were lucky enough to spot a rare weasel monkey inside a cave.  This was just the beginning of our good karma with animals.

One night, we met a loyal dog who we called Jonas that was begging to for us to be his master.  Andy informed him that we were going to be very strict, but fair masters.

Jonas ditched his bitch and hung out with us for the next three nights.  Boy, was he a party animal.  He fought off other dogs, ate hot dogs, and even drank brews with his bros.

Overall, Pai was chill.

Lions and Tigers and Beers...Chiang Mai!

A two hour flight out of Phuket took us to the largest city in northern Thailand, Chiang Mai.  It's still a rather small city, but it's filled with interesting activities for culture enthusiasts like ourselves.

Ohhhh Hello from Chiang Mai

We were lucky enough to find a trust worthy guide named Chan.  Not only was he friendlier and less weasely than our former subordinate Meta, but he was also full of neat facts.  For instance, "chang" means "elephant" in Thai.

 

The first place Chan took us was to a temple up in the hills overlooking the city.  It provided an excellent opportunity to purchase chiller bracelets.  There were also lots of people praying, ringing bells, and conversing with monks.

One evening, we attended another Muay Thai fight event.  The fights were a lot less professional than the one we saw in Bangkok (there were seven year olds and girls fighting), but there was one really cool battle royale match where everyone was blindfolded.  The chunkster you can see in the back dropped the ref with a nasty right hook.  The ref then got up and drop kicked Edmond Honda flat on his face.

The next day, we took a trip out to an elephant park.  They are extremely big and eat 500 pounds of food a  day!  They can also paint, put hats on people, and play shooty hoops.  Max's shirt was covered with elephant snot after this photo.  It looked a lot like buck snot.

We even did an extreme elephant trek.  Everything went smooth until the elephant ran Andrew's head into a metal roof.  Luckily, his rock hard head shortened the tear flow to under a minute.

After elephant trekking, we stopped by a snake show.  Andrew conquered his ultimate fear of snakes, and only had to run out of the park one time.  To be fair, one of the snake masters threw a snake from behind a wall in front of Andrew.

The best part of the snake show was the announcer.  He made lots of funny sounds such as "pshhhh watch out!", "psssh ooooohh be careful", and "ohhhh you can die".

 

This crazy man jumped in a tank with an anaconda and came up with the snake choking him.  He was even missing a finger from when he was previously bit.

We continued the animal binge by going to a night safari.  Giant giraffes would stick their head in the train looking for big bananas.  They're some freaky alien looking things, and it was a somewhat terrifying experience.

Other exotic animals we saw include: zebras, white bengal tigers, white lions, bearded wolf, a liger, yaks, hippopotamus, rhinos, pumas, deer, hyenas, emus, black bear, tribe people, long necks.

No homo.

After all the hard animal watching, we relaxed with some classic Thai massages.  Andy realized he had some extra room in his pants and invited Andrew in.  Andrew, feeling even naughtier than normal, hopped right in.  Two for one happy endings!

Shortly after Andrew saw he reached number 14 in the planking ratings, he one upped himself again with the first ever Jesus plank.  Look how happy Johnny B is with this plank!

As if the massage wasn't explosive enough, we visited a hot spring where there were some "natural" geysers.  Andrew gave out a very crisp "wooohhhhh!"

Finally, we enjoyed some chill vibes at the Roof Top Bar.  Andy, being an incredibly chill never tense dude, shared the chill vibes with some hang loose signs.  They offered mushroom shakes, but we stayed away after seeing a slightly older looking man losing his mind while giggin' on the dance floor.  Believe it or not, it wasn't Johnny.