May 26: Luang Prabang

Today was a bit more, erm, adventurous than either Shelly and I planned. In short: I got lost.

Only I wasn't actually lost. I knew where I was all the time. It's just that other people didn't.

We spent today on a short elephant safari about 15 km outside of Luang Prabang. The first clue that the day would be more interesting than planned was when Tiger Trail, which operates the Elephant Park Project, didn't pick us up at 8:30, or 8:45 or 9:00 or 9:15 or, really, until 9:45 when a tuk tuk showed up to take us to the park. Seems the company had run into a hard-to-please French family which had thrown them off schedule. If only they knew what was still to come...

Our tuk tuk driver didn't seem to know exactly where he was going -- he asked for directions at every intersection we encountered, practically, but that was better than getting lost -- but did eventually deposit us at the entrance to the elephant park. Waiting for us down a short flight of stairs was one of the smallest boats I've ever seen for a quick trip across the river. After climbing up a muddy slope, my real adventure began.

Shelly and our female tour guide were walking a few steps in front of me when I realized I had to pee. Not so badly, really, but it would be much more difficult to do it on top of an elephant, so I hollered that I would be right behind them. Mindful of the land mines still littering southeast Asia, I modestly waited until they were out of sight, then unzipped. This area was almost certainly mine-free, but you never know, and I really didn't want to find a forgotten mine with my foot.

Sixty seconds later, I was zipped up and following them up a hill. At the top of the hill, there were a couple of buildings set a hundred meters back from the trail, but no signs that I could see and certainly no elephants. So I took a left and kept going. And kept going. And kept going. And wondered why it was such a long trek to the elephant camp and, if there was a turn I should have made, why neither Shelly or the tour guide had waited for me.

I didn't have a watch (I had broken the crystal a couple days earlier, and didn't want it to get rained on again), so I didn't know exactly how long I had been walking. I finally came upon three young girls and asked them -- or tried to ask them -- if a foreigner was on the trail ahead of me. This question came out, roughly, as: Falang? followed by a round of gesturing up the trail, which earned me an eager English "Yes!" from the girls. I took that to mean there was a foreigner, presumably Shelly, ahead of me on the trail, so I kept going.

Eventually, the general uphill trail turned to a steeply downhill trail, and I decided I had either made a wrong turn or that, if I was going the right way, I really didn't want to ride an elephant that badly after all. Plus, I was running low on water, not having planned for a 60-minute hike through the Laotian sunshine. So, I turned around. If by some chance I should have kept going, I'd just wait for everyone back at the boat.

Ten minutes after turning around, I heard Shelly yelling for me. Gee, she had been looking for me for an hour and, by the way, how the hell had I gotten all the way out here? They had looked for at the river, in the jungle around the trail, at the river again, and were heading across the river to get mountain bikes to look for me on the trail. Frankly, I would have preferred to be rescued by elephant than by mountain bike, but you take what you get.

Yes, the buildings I had seen four minutes into my hike were actually my destination for the trip. The three girls did turn out to be helpful, confirming to the tour guide that, yes, they had seen a fat foreigner hiking up the trail. I saw a centipede the size of a cigar on my hike, and the elephant ride turned out to be quite a bit of fun. Not exactly what was advertised, but not a bad day, either!

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We sampled one of the foods that Luang Prabang is famous for tonight: Grilled, dried river weed. It's better than it sounds, but not as good as those crickets we had in Vientiane.