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Lost in Laos Kuang Si Waterfall Luang Prabang, Laos 2/15/06 Today I'm back in Chiang Mai after an amazing 2 weeks in Laos. I've been here for 2 days recovering from a speedboat ride up the Mekong to the Thai border. The ride itself was great - the space they squeeze you into was not. Imagine being stuffed into a space not much bigger than a milk crate for 7 hours. OK for a short skinny Asian person, but not for me bent up like a pretzel. Move the wrong way and your leg goes to sleep. Move the wrong way and your leg cramps up! I haven't been that bent up since I tried Yoga 30 years ago - when I was 125 pounds soaking wet! Needless to say I'm not that limber person I was 30 years ago. We stopped every hour and a half to refuel so we got some time to stretch a bit and walk around. But it was still pretty brutal. There were a couple of really tall guys on this trip who had it a lot worse than I did. One consolation - I had a very nice Australian lady sitting with me  - the only other English speaking person on the boat as well - and we were able to laugh about the whole thing making the ride a lot more bearable for both of us. My ass and back are still killing me! My time in Laos run the whole gamut of emotions. I went from total bliss too total sadness after learning that my sister's dog Goldie had died from Lyme Disease.. She was 4 years old and the happiest dog I've ever known. My family is devastated. It took a few days to recover from that news. Vang Vieng was an absolutely beautiful place to see and hang out. I stayed there longer than I had planned - 5 days. The scenery was spectacular and the whole atmosphere was great. Little shaky bamboo bridges to get across rivers. Driving a motorbike across them was one of the scariest things I've done - just imagining that at any minute that I'd hit the throttle at the wrong moment sending me and my bike into the river. It happed to someone when I was there - didn't see it but heard about it. This is a town where the local townspeople go down to the river everyday around 5 o'clock to bathe. This is a big social event. Amazing....... After 5 days in Vang Vieng I went back to Vientienne for a night where I caught a plane the next day to Luang Prabang up in northern Laos. Spent 6 days there pretty much just hanging out. Very relaxing until------- 2 days before my Visa was to expire I tried to book a flight to Chiang Mai - found out they're all booked up till the 28th of Feb. So now I'm trying to figure another way to get out of Laos. Either take a bus to Vientienne (7 hrs.) , then take a bus to Bangkok (12-14 hrs. - absolutely out of the question), take the slow boat up the Mekong, or take the speedboat. I opted for the quickest but most insane way to go. These guys go really fast and crash all the time, but I did it anyway. It wasn't so scary...... So I went to the bank to get a cash advance - got some cash to hold me over till I got back to Thailand, and went out walking and taking pictures. Got back to my room about 6 hours later. As I looked into my pack I noticed that my passport wasn't in it's usual place. It was gone - lost along with my ATM card. I went from sheer bliss to total panic. It was now 10 PM. My first thought was cancel the card, so I ran down to the internet cafe, got online and got all the info and phone numbers I needed. They had an international phone for 40 cents a minute so I said OK, after all this IS an emergency. Got through to Wachovia but the connection was so bad that it kept cutting out and when I could hear it sounded like I was under water and miles away. This wasn't going to work and I hung up the phone, paid the lady her 40 cents and walked outside. It was now 10:45 and everything was closing. Standing in the middle of the street, I thought to myself - Hmmmnnnn - - this is quite a situation I'm in here, as I came to the hard realization that there was nothing else I could do till the morning. In the morning I got up early and walked into town trying to retrace my steps. First I went to this temple that's on top of this big hill that overlooks Luang Prabang. After climbing 139 steps up to the ticket booth, I asked the guy there if anybody had found a passport. I don't know  if he understood me, but he said no. I decided to take his word for it because with 190 more steps to the top, it was way too early for me to be sweating the way I was. My next step was the internet cafe. Finding a place to plug my laptop in I started up Skype and called Wachovia. Got right through, signal clear as a bell and talked to all the people I needed to talk to. Had a hold put on the card which hadn't been used. Then I went online and got all the info I needed too get my passport replaced which meant going back to Vientienne to the US Consulate. After getting copies of my passport printed out, which I had in my computer, I decided to go have some breakfast while I waited for the bank to open which was another half hour. After speaking to some people, they all said that my passport will probably turn up and that the people in Laos were generally very honest people. I was keeping my hopes up, but I wasn't too optimistic quite frankly. I was bracing for a long ordeal and my Visa was going to expire in 1 day. So - when I walked into the bank the guy sees me, smiles and yells hey - holding up my passport. Needless to say, I was the happiest person on the planet when he handed me my passport AND my ATM card! In a moment of absent mindedness I had left my passport on the bench with my card inside. Laos is a lovely place and the people are incredible. AND DON'T THINK I'M NOT COUNTING MY LUCKY STARS........... Everything is now as it was.............