Crossing From Laos to Thailand

The sun hung blood red in the morning haze over Vang Vieng. It's burning season, the air is thick with burnt rice fields. Though the early morning air held a chill, the heat in my windowless closet of a room afforded me no sleep the night before.

Groggy, tired and feeling ill, I said goodbye to my friends Ana, Peter and Vet, and we piled into another grey van. I can't count the number of grey vans I've sat in since arriving in SE Asia this trip. The road to Udon Thani is pure hell. Walter described it as being in a washing machine. 170 kms takes 4 hours. An entire morning being bumped, jostled  and thrown around a grey van. Its the first time I've felt car sick in decades.

We stopped for brunch at the Full Moon Cafe in Vientiane (the word moon appears in every second eating or drinking establishment in Laos it seems), a cool little spot that offers the service of uploading music to your iPod while you eat for a small fee. While pouring through the list of music our DP informed me that he was bringing some weed across the border with him. You can buy the stuff anywhere in SE Asia, but not as easily as in Vang Vieng, where we had left. Still, it seemed silly to me. The penalties are severe for that kind of thing in this part of the world.

After the best burger I'd had in ages, we loaded up the grey van. Our first stop was to drop Walter off at his hotel. He was heading straight to BKK to pick up his gear. His daughter had already headed that way earlier in the week. I'm gonna miss that guy, forever blowing himself up.

A couple hours later we hit the border. Our driver grabbed our passports and hopped out of the van. Our DP and Wrangler decided to go duty free shopping. The poisoned mayo, so common in Laos, loaded onto my burger was haunting me so I ducked out to find a bathroom. After I searched a while I walked past the van when our sound guy yelled through the window that we were done. The driver took care of everything, we were good to go. Less than 10 minutes for all 5 of us. Brilliant. I called the rest of the crew and we were leaving Laos and entering Thialand. We crossed the Friendship Bridge and waited to get into Laos as our driver took care of business again. Love that guy!!

I neglected to take a pic of the one at Udon Thani, here's
its counterpart in Ko Chang.

While waiting I noticed a sign that had writing in both Thai and Laos, with quite a bit of info. At the bottom, in English it simply read "Severely Punished". On the left was a skull and crossbones superimposed over a collage of pills, white powder and a bong.
"I guess the punishment of E, Coke or Weed is death." is said. No one seemed phased by that, especially our DP.

Five minutes later we were back in Thailand. One more shoot day at a dam outside Chiang Mai, then 2 days in Bangkok and I'm out of here. Snow and hockey, here I come!

Blue Lagoon - Outside Vang Vieng, Laos

We had to be packed by 9am the day after our wrap party. The party ended up at a place called Smile Bar, a place that serves Disco Buckets; Thai Whiskey, Redbull, Opium, Weed and Mushrooms all served in a toy bucket, like a kid would take to the beach.  Needless to say, much of the crew was in rough shape whilst packing up the vans.

We said our goodbyes to the crew that were movin' on and watched them bounce off into the morning haze. With nothing left to do and a day off to kill we decided to visit Blue Lagoon. Walter, Digby and I rented 3 scooters, I handed over my passport as collateral. With Nick and Ana riding bitch we putted off on another adventure.

The road to Blue Lagoon is 7 kms, but it takes 40 mins to get there. The road is a moonscape of stones, craters and ruts. Single lane bridges with precarious gaps charge 10, 000 kip per vehicle. Each way. Construction almost foiled us, our scooters sinking into freshly unearthed ground. We made it past, and a couple of wrong turns later we came to the lagoon.

A small fees gains you access to both the lagoon and a nearby cave. (There are thousands of caves in the limestone mountains of Laos.) The lagoon is a little pool of water along a river. Downstream the water is too shallow to swim and too rocky or littered to wade through. Upstream the river is choked by vegetation twisting from the banks. The water is blue and small fish dart amongst the tourists. Swings have been hung for the tourists to play on. The heat of the day was stiffling, so I climbed up a tree with via a makeshift ladder nailed to its trunk, and traversed the overhanging bough.  The water, cool and refreshing was only about 8 feet deep and I touched bottom. Shortly thereafter Walter jumped in forgetting his glasses so I made a second trip to the bottom to retrieve them.

We played for a while, splashing about and swinging in. Eventually we got tired and climbed the banks. We took over one of the small gazebo styled huts and took turns basking in the sun and retreating to the shade. As the sun lowered Walter hung a makeshift blind to protect us from it's burning rays in our little hut. A small canteen kept us in beer and water.

Walter and Nick decided to head back to the city, and Digby, always the adventurous sort, decided to check the cave. He opted not to pay for a guide. Ana and I sat and talked about the film we were shooting and watched people basking in the son. One girl I recognized from 2 nights earlier at smile bar. She had been wearing a dog chain at time. She must have left that home today. Digby had been gone for quite some time and we were getting worried.

When Digby finally arrived he told us he got lost and finally ran into another adventurous spelunker whom he followed out. It was time to go, but he wanted to get a bite first and urged us on. We made plans to meet back for dinner.

Ten minutes into the ride back I asked Ana if we had made a wrong turn. The road was WAY worse than it had been. on the way in. It was soft, and loose, making the little scooter almost impossible to handle. I got my answer a moment later when a grader came rumbling up the road, exchanging craters and ruts for loese earth. Ana suggested we try cutting through the rice paddies and taking the path behind the communist flag across the river from the Silver Naga hotel. Ok.

We took the first road that had a sign and followed the path marked by trampled ground and white flags. Eventually we came across a family of french people purchasing the right to visit a cave from two young Laos. We asked if we could get back to town this way and they said no. Damn.

We headed back and stopped to take a picture. I said to Ana, "You know, I have yet to be lied to by a Laos person, but that doesn't mean he's right, lets try another way." She agreed and we took a left into the rice paddies.

The thing about rice paddies is, they need to be kept full of water. To do that, small burms create boarders around patches of earth to make up a field. Being dry season, we cruised the fields easily, but the mounds of earth were hard to navigate. A couple of times poor 'ol Ana almost got bucked off. Others times she had to get off while we practically lifted the little scooter over the border.

After several wrong turns, more than a few hard bumps and some genuine worry we'd made a reckless mistake, we found our way to the back of the communist flag mountain. Hurray. We circumnavigated the landmark and found the walking path back to town. Our last hurdle was a walking bridge railed on only one side. Ana suggested she get off for that leg of the trip. After everything we'd been through she didn't trust me to get us across safetly. I'm sort of glad she didn't, my confidence on this one was pretty much shot, but I made it ok, and the tourists on the bridge politely moved out of my way.

When we returned out scooters the guy checked them all over for damage. I was quite shocked there was none, but relieved to get my passport back. I was exhausted and sore but still managed to get some dinner before crashing. We had a 14 hour travel day ahead of us.

Back to Chiang Mai...

Working on a Film - The People You Meet

Walter is our special effects guy. He's 62, a big lad missing the tip of one of his fingers on his right hand. Walter enjoys blowing things up. Walter set himself on fire t'other day.

The film we're making has been unfortunately underfunded and over staffed. The term time is money applies more to the film industry than any other I've worked in. We were running out of both. When people run out of time they attempt to make up for it by rushing. Rushing leads to mistakes. 

On this particular day, Walter was creating a series of large fiery explosion to replicate the misfire of a rocket. Being pushed to fit in as many explosions as possible, some black powder Walter was carrying came into contact with a pot that hadn't cooled enough and went up. The flame climbed his left leg and arm. Walter simply jumped into the nearby river. He was picking bits of burned powder out of his skin on the way to dinner that night.

When I asked Walter if he was OK after his little ordeal he said he was fine. Brushing it off as a minor incident compared to some of his other mishaps. One time, I think while working on The Thin Red Line (but I could be mistaken I listened to quite a few stories) a hard packed explosion went of between his legs. Milos, Tom and I looked at him in awe.

"You know what a palm tree looks like eh?" he said spreading out his right hand. Then he pointed to his outstretched thumb. "That's where me dick was"

A collective gasp went through our group was we clambered on down the patch work roads of Vang Vieng. Walter's mishap cost him 4 months in the hospital and several skin grafts to repair the damage. 

Over dinner Walter told the three of sabot working on The Matrix, Thin Red Line, Australia and others. He had stories about other people getting blown up, insane but brilliant requests from out of control directors and different techniques to getting better explosions. It was all very enlightening. It make me feel like film was the right choice. Lets wait and see.

Welcome to Laos - The Thing about Crickets is...

The coolest part about travelling is meeting new people. Spending the past 2 weeks in Laos I've made friends with a couple from Vang Tien. This evening after work they took us for some real Laos food just outside the main area of Vang Vieng.

The restaurant "Full Moon 2" (there are many bars restaurants and shops with 'moon' in the name here)  was brightly lit with thousands of Christmas lights. The kind of lights that are wrapped in a plastic tube so they look like rope. As we walked up several people sitting in the dining area looked up at us, then started to scramble. I realised we were the only customers, the other 15 people or so were staff.

Caught a cricket in chop sticks.
Take that Daniel-san!!

About 4 of them hung around as we attempted to order. Unfortunately for me and one other in our party, the menu was in Laos. My friend Vet began ordering in Laos for us. When she was done, the other westerner in our group asked us what she'd ordered.

"Chicken tendons, duck necks, prawns, soup, and deep fried crickets" At first I thought she was kidding, then she said "Oh and some french fries"

The chicken tendons came first, deep fried and served with a sweet sauce. Other than the unusual chewy, stringy texture, they were surprisingly good. Next the bad news came. No duck necks. Vet rambled something in Laos and the waitress (or waiter, I really couldn't tell) tottled off to the kitchen. Sweet N' Sour pork. Awsome!

Next came the prawns and the crickets. I don't like sea food so I opted for the crickets. To be fair Ana went first. She closed her eyes, pushed her shoulders up and made the strangest face as she chewed frantically. She said it tasted like prawns.

Great.

It took me 10 minutes of eating french fries and changing the subject to work up the courage. When I was finally ready to eat the damn thing my phone rang. Saved by the bell.  After dispatching my call I was immediately called out for taking so long. (Actually Ana called me a pussy)  My friend Peter was ready with his camera (His name is actually Peter Pan, I didn't believe him at first) I took a deep breath...tightened my grip on my chop sticks and popped Jimeney down the hatch. Crickets are not nearly as crunch as I thought they'd be, and that was somehow comforting. The poor little guy broke apart in my mouth. Mostly flavourless and about the same texture as the skin on a peanut, it really wasn't so bad.

I washed my latest snack down with some beer Laos and had another french fry.  The rest of the meal was fantastic and I have to say, I really like Laos cuisine.

Valentines Day -Laos Style

It's V day here. Actually it's V day home too but you are all still snug as bugs in bed. The 14 hour time change does my head in.

Valentine's day actually snuck up on me this year. It seems that commercially fabricated holidays designed to increase the sale of Candy, Cards, Flowers and assorted Red Junk are not that popular in SE Asia. Back in Canada, I'm sure the last month has been a red blur of candy coated heart shaped advertising.

Last Valentines day I had just landed in Aus. Romance was in the air at my hostel where groups of backpackers went off to dinner, only to return 6 hours later, drunk and horny. The Valentines day before that I got into a fight with the girl I was dating while were were away for the weekend and we broke up. Happy days.

I was really made aware of Valentine's day a moment ago. I gave my friend's 3 year old a red marker and some post it notes to occupy her while I tried to work. She immediately drew misshapen red circle and handed it to me proclaiming, with a strong Laos accent, that she loved me. Our editor then announced "Aw, It's Valentine's day!"

I looked down at this happy little girl holding up a day glow yellow post-it, proudly emblazoned with a home made heart and said

"You're not my type, I think we should just be friends, now please leave me alone so I can get some work done" She stuck it on my arm anyway and toddled off blissfully unaware of how badly she'd just gotten dissed.

I love holidays!

Working on a Movie -Adaptable

You need to adapt. To all sorts of shit. Hours, conditions, equipment, people, schedule, surprises...the list goes on.

On this trip I started out working at an amazing 5 * hotel with one guy. He taught me a lot of stuff. Then two more people joined our small little suite. But the view was great. Elephants walking by the grounds each day, babbling river, fantastic staff catering to us. Life was good.

Then we moved. To an alright hotel. Alright if we hadn't been at an AMAZING hotel the day before. My room was full of mosquitoes. The water was brown for a few minutes when you first turned it on. The staff was slow. Our little edit suite was now half a hotel room that the editor was staying in. There were 4 of us there and it was hot as hell. The AC worked but it was LOUD.

Oh, yeah, and 'people'....that's an important one. People are quirky. And they have habits and ideas and ways of doing things. And idosycracies. We all have 'em. It takes about a week for them to start to appear. About another 3 days for them to become annoying I figure. Add that to a tiny hot room with four people working long hours in it...well, we're lucky to be alive I figure.

Now we're in Laos. We are within walking distance to everything and have much more access to the rest of the crew. We get to go out and do things at night, see the sites. Have fun. The motivation to work a 14 hour day is waning. But, some days you have to. You need to adapt.

I'm not too bad at adapting. Working conditions don't bother me much. Shit, SFS was either freezing or boiling at all times, sometimes both in the same day. I just pretty much need a chair and a computer and I'm good to go. I don't deal well with bullshit though. If you can't give me a solid reason for wanting me to do something, I'm going to question it, and get annoyed. Sometimes I need to relax that rule though.

Its now 3am. I just finished work. I started at 10. Just part of the deal. Have to roll with the punches.