Lady Lightwave: A superhero's travel blog

Cows in the road. Motorcycles in the road. Little kids and babies and mothers and their mothers and fathers all- can you guess WHERE? Yup. In the road. In the 1 ½ lane stretch of (mostly) pavement that stretches from the Lao border to Siem Reap, CAMBODIA. 
This driver was not of 100% human race. I couldn’t place him exactly- but I believe he had an ancestor from the planet FASSERTRON- he showed all the signs::::: moody. QUIET. SILENT RATHER.  Constant use of oral fixations for distractions…aka gum or CIGARRETES.  Intense focus. And most of all INCREDIBLY FAST DRIVERS of any type of car, pod, bike, lolliator, etc… anything that has the potential to move, a Fassertron will drive it a MAX speed and do so PERFECTLY. -------This is when I knew he must be a mixed breed. Traditionally, when one is a passenger with Fassertrons you feel incredibly secure in their hands when going at lightning fast speeds- much like Dean in Kerouac’s on-the-road novel who reversed cars at high-speeds down mountaintops. Dean, perhaps was a Fassertron. But not this driver- he consistently initiated screams and shrieks and pleas to SLOW DOWN (particularly from the mini Sarah Palin in the middle row of the mini bus). HONKKKKKKKKKKKKK HOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNK ::repeat for 4 hours with nearly 30 people and 30 animals killed along the road in the meantime and our mini bus happens to arrive in Siem Reap without my need to rescue anyone. BUT MY HOLY GOD, that was stressful. I constantly had to look into my time-piece to the future as we raced along due to the most probable threat of smashing into a COW and hurling OFF THE ROAD with the whole lot of us white people. OH CAMBODIA, what to think of you yet??

Jen has a return-flight home to South Korea from Pnom Phen, Cambodia in just a few days… for this we are traveling rather quickly by human standards. WHERE AM I GOING? I have no clue! But I do hope you will stick with me for the JOURNEY.

 OYE! We have reached the MEKONG DELTA in a land called 4,000 Islands. I flew around and quickly counted them all--- and indeed, if one counts a single bush on a rock then there are 4,011 of them. Together we embarked on some wobbly river boats to cross over to the island of Don Det.

Together we FAILED at tubing the slow and impossible, muddy and epic-ly wide delta; seeing as how I forgot my cape, we had to wait until a sunset cruise boat arrived on a rescue mission due to our HOPELESS attempt to cross back to shore at the ONLY place in the entire Mekong Delta with a CURRENT! GASPPPPPP! TRY THAT in LA Adventure Girl! 

I love Lao. Despite a rough introduction this country has the best energy on the planet. It is also full of BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! Everyone seems to have a natural gentleness to them, and it took coming here to notice what an EDGE Vietnam has to it. Vietnam was friendly enough, but Lao is absolutely SPLENDID. Unfortunately about 300 people still die every year due to the ordinance dropped by the sweetheart US GOV back circa Vietnam. Every 8 minutes they would drop a plane load of this stuff along its Eastern border… I kept special watch on the FUTURE here via my golden time-piece…which allows me to see up to 22 hours ahead from my current location. I flew ahead once to SAVE the life of a 6-year old boy walking through the woods looking for mushrooms to sell at the market… WOOOOOOOSH!  I picked him up with minutes to spare and returned to detonate the land mine with my force-field before it could blow anything else to bits.

Back to how beautiful Lao is. I love it. Jen loves it. We paid back the Japanese man and went to the market to purchase fruits from many beautiful people. Where are we? -Savannaket, complete with a DINOSAUR at the city’s entrance.

Even the Lao bus station had a lovely AIR to it.

That evening we took yet another bus to Pakse- this time with plenty of rice and babies to my delight. 

Doing things the proper earth-way can be incredibly expensive and most frustrating. After borrowing money from the aforementioned Japanese tourist in the rear of the bus, Jen and I were finally on our way to getting our last stamp (one needs about 4,000 passport stamps at the Lao + Vietnam border) when the bus-driver, (whose ass I just saved!)…starts his engine and begins driving into the empty expanse of Lao. Fortunately Jen is one of about 10 individuals who are aware of my super human powers…I wait patiently for the last stamp on an incredibly beautiful watermarked visa that I think I would like to frame one day (seeing as it costs $40 as well) - grab Jen’s hand and fly ahead of time to where the bus breaks for lunch one mountain over. Unfortunately we get a head start on an incredibly un-appetizing meal that includes buzzing flies, un-identified meat and a strange root vegetable.