A couple of days into our stay in Chiang Mai, we resigned ourselves to the impracticality of venturing out to Burma as we had hoped. Turns out that the visa process has become even more difficult as of this January, and it’s both illegal (and extremely foolhardy) to cross overland and move into the country, unless you plan to do so on a so-called “visa run” where you sit in the border town for an hour before coming back. We learned that we might have been able to force the visa issue at the Burmese embassy in Bangkok by showing up at dawn, knocking on the wickets and greasing the right hands, but, well, we were in Chiang Mai already anyways. Leave it to the next time.

Slightly disappointed, we turned our gaze eastward and started thinking about Laos. Our hotel, and seemingly every other travel agent in Chiang Mai, advertised a package that included a Laotian visa and a 2-day “slow boat” ride on the Mekong to the historic city of Luang Prabang.

We signed on. Mind you, it took some talking on my part to convince Nazma that the boat would be a really great “experience”, and that she could really claim to have mastered the squat once she had tried relieving herself in a hole in the deck. Maybe that’s why they call them “poop decks”, but I’m not a sailor.

And then, as we are wont to do, we changed our minds the morning the boat was supposed to leave, following an innocuous visit to an internet cafe. The change was in part prompted by (a) an e-mail from Alia, a cousin of a cousin who was just a few hours away in a village called Pai, inviting us to visit; and (b) my discovery of a pretty unique trekking opportunity which I’ve alluded to before, but have been too lazy to report on, as yet. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want to listen to Nazma bragging about how empowered she felt with her newfound poop-deck talent for the next 3 months (”Guess what I just did…?”)

So anyway, suddenly, Nazma and I realised that we should just stay put in the north for another week and a half; laid-back Laos (we would hear later from others) isn’t really doable in the week or so we had available. The longer stay in Chiang Mai allowed us time to hit the elephant camp and for Nazma to blow more money on gifts (you lucky people).

(By the way, if you’re wondering just what the hell the title has to do with anything, it was in the AutoComplete from some previous user on this computer when I went to type in our actual title. Sounds like a far more interesting post than mine.)