Slow Tourture and Thai Delights

It is funny, there are things you can experience here that make you forget that you are in another country, you have to really notice the little differences, like the leaves on the trees are different, or the condiment labels are in a different language. Then there are things that drop you into the local experience without grace or remorse. The Slow Boat is one of the latter.
Luang Prabang sits roughly in the middle of Northern Laos, right at the convergence of the Mekong and the Nam Song rivers. There are a few routes to get to the Thai border, one involves roughly 12 hours in a bus on windy mountain roads south through Vientiane, crossing the "friendship bridge" into Northeastern Thailand. The other popular route is the boat trip from Luang Prabang up the Mekong to the an area called the Golden Triangle, the area spanning the rugged and mountainous region at the Thai-Lao-Burmese (Myanmarian?) borders. This takes two days. Sure, two days on a boat, that will be grand, a cruise up the river! Well, sort of. The first day was pretty nice, just long, the seats were padded and reclined, there was a table near the back, the bathrooms had toilet paper and soap. It was also about 2 ft above the water level and had a giant, loud engine, but hey that all adds to the excitement! The day was smoother and more pleasant than all of our bus rides, and the little village we overnighted in was nice enough, even if we did have to pull teeth to get a room with screens on the windows. It's okay though, I managed to rip the shower valve out of the wall, resulting in a constant jet of water that they had to tape up with plastic bags, so we both had annoyances to deal with, I feel that we are even karmically. But I must have done something really bad because the next day on the boat was a bit more colorful.
Gone were the padded seats and table. Our new boat had hard wooden benches, too short to stretch out on, and one dusty mat on crammed into a corner near the engine, which was just as big and loud, and considerably more livestock. Well, maybe not more, but certainly more liberated. In a desperate attempt to nap, I laid down on the dirty wooden planks near the bow, and closed my eyes. After a while, sudden choppy turbulence and some spray disturbed me from my rest (as sleep would have been inaccurate). I rolled over to find a chicken, sans cage, three inches away from my face, deciding which part of me looked the most like corn. With thoughts of avian flu cropping up in my mind, I quickly returned to my bench, inciting chuckles from the Lao crew, who scooped up the chicken and deposited it back to it's owner. I think that qualifies as a genuine cultural experience, don't you? To be honest, it wasn't really all that bad, the views were terrific, the experience was pretty exciting, and we had to get there somehow.
We arrived too late to cross over, and had to sort out accommodation in the border town. The beds were hard and the bathroom was lit like an opium den, but we only had to deal with it for one night. Then, we were in Thailand! Instantly, there were more cars than motorbikes, and the ATM's let you take out more that US$80. We got into Chiang Mai in the afternoon, found another guesthouse with more ridiculously hard beds (I don't understand this Asian Phenomenon of enduring extreme discomfort all night... maybe it is a conspiracy to support the massage industry?) and got thai food. Thai food, on it's proper turf, is incredible. I experimented with some condiments today, and it elevated the whole dish, which was an already delicious pad se-eew. I hope to absorb some of the culinary understanding in our cooking class tomorrow, and some exciting jungle culture on our 2 day trek: elephant riding, bamboo rafting and hill tribes! Oh my!