After 30 minutes, we stopped at a 7-Eleven, which are everywhere, to ask for directions. Four Seasons? Never heard of it. The uber-expensive eco-resort probably does not have much of a pull on local clientele. Robin and I made the decision to ride for 10 more minutes in the same direction, then turn around and go back if we don’t see it. Maybe we missed a sign or something, and we will catch it on the way back. I pealed out and stuck to the plan. I kept Robin, on his blue scooter and in a powder blue helmet, in my rear view mirror. After 10 minutes, I pulled over to consult with Bot-Miller. As I pulled to the side of the road, a woman with a load of sticks on her back passed by me. She had on a powder blue helmet and was riding a blue scooter. Damn, not Robin. I waited for 5 minutes, and when I didn’t see Robin, I turned around and headed back. Hoping I would see him, I continued until the turn-off back to the city center. No Robin. I waited at the turn-off in front of a Dunkin Donuts. After 10 minutes, I decided to go back to town and hopefully meet up with him at the hotel. I filled up on gas and made it to the main ringroad around the Old Town when who do I see? Bot-Miller! Nice, let’s get back to the hotel and head to the airport. Wait, random traffic stop. We were pulled over by two cops. We produced our driver’s licenses and waited to be let off on our way. However, the cop points to my bike, starts filling-in a form, and pockets my ID. He says, “Pay fine, get back ID.” This was a problem. It was 11am and we had a flight to catch at 3pm. When he pocketed the ID, Robin and I knew we were in trouble. So we started arguing with the man. Why did I get a ticket? What did I do? Can we pay the fine on the spot. In as few words as possible, the registration was out of date. He was not
going to give me my ID back, so we forced him to take us to the station then and there. He finally relented and started driving to the station, but totally attempted to shake us along the way, dodging traffic left and right and running a red light at least twice. I guess he had never dealt with Americans before. We stuck to him through it all and made it to the station in about 5 minutes. He walked me into the station as Robin tried to contact the Tourism Police (11-55 from a local Chiang Mai phone). The room was super hot and I had to sit at a table as 5 Thai officers decided my fate. Pay us 200 Baht ($6) for your transgression, they told me. Why the hell should I pay a fine for expired registration when I obviously rented the bike, I asked. After about 20 minutes of back and forth, they told me to pay it and then get my money back from the scooter lady. I looked him in the eye and said, do you really believe that I am going to get my money back? I might be foreign, but I’m not a moron. He laughed, then sighed, and told me to leave and give the fine to the scooter lady. Yes, I beat the system! I grabbed Robin and we booked it out of there. If we came across any traffic stops, there was NO WAY we were going to stop. After almost an hour of negotiations with various Thai police officers and finally getting my license returned to me, I wasn’t stopping for anything.Back at the scooter place, we raised hell with the scooter lady. She told us it was her daughters fault, and she would never let us go without having proper registration. B.S. I’ll believe that as soon as Glenn Beck says something sane. Finally, she refunded me 100 out of 150 Baht. Better than nothing.
We paid our bill at the guest house and jumped in a tuk-tuk. As we started to head for the airport, a random man jumped into the front of the car. He was bald, was missing several teeth, and apparently had a raucous story to tell the tuk-tuk driver. So he did. The tuk-tuk driver thought it was hilarious. We had no clue what he was saying, but we found it equally funny.
We got to the airport, made our flight, and a couple hours later were in Luang Prabang, Laos (herein referred to as LP). We got our visas on arrival for $35. No problem whatsoever. Actually, the Laos visa looks pretty cool, and that is very important to me. Why else would I drop $35? I want a colorful sticker in my passport for that kind of money. We hopped in a cab and went on our way to find a hotel for a couple of nights. After lugging our backpacks around for about 30 minutes, we settled on the Auberge Calao Inn. It was situated on the Mekong and we had a balcony overlooking the river, which was perfect at sunset since we pointed West. All in all, pretty awesome place for $65 a night.We had dinner along the river at a local place. How did we know it was local? No fans and no Westerners. We both had large vegetable soups for about $2 each. It was really good. After we made our way to the book exchange to get rid of our now complete Dan Brown books, The Lost Symbol. Spoiler alert. Not a good read. Skip it. Washington conspiracy theory? Stick to the Pelican Brief. I got Norman Mailer’s The Presidential Papers (really good) and Robin got Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (hasn’t started it, yet, he’s still on Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which I think should be required reading of every high schooler in the US). Then we went to Smile Laos for a drink before retiring for the evening. I had a BeerLaos (awesome local beer) and Robin, adventurer that he is, got the BeerBoom. The BeerBoom consisted of BeerLaos, Lao Lao Whisky and 7-Up. It also came in a bucket and was probably designed for 2-4 people, but since it was conservatively priced at 75 cents, we didn’t figure that out. I had to order another BeerLaos to keep up with his alcohol intake. We ended up loving the location, particularly for its great taste in Western music. Our favorite was Lil’ Jon’s “Get Low,” now the unofficial theme song to our trip. We stumbled home and crashed, ready to explore LP the next day.
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