I am now in Laos, but it took me a little longer than planned. Chiang Rai is a nice little city, and I met a bunch of nice people there, Thai and otherwise. Whilst there, I visited the White Temple and the Black House, ambitious projects of two Thai artists. The White Temple is a proper Buddhist temple, but it is filled with and surrounded by pop culture references: American comic book superheroes, the matrix, terminator, aliens, dragonball, etc. I think the idea is to transcend them, but I thought they were awesome. The Black House is full of skulls and skins and bones of animals laid around tables surrounded by equally creepy sculptures. It's pretty sweet. I also found time to spend two nights in an Akha village, get drunk with some Thais, and go along on a School of Tourism field trip with over thirty budding tour guides.
I finally crossed into Laos, got sick within hours of arriving, and after a day recovering headed on the pricey but worthwhile Gibbon Experience. Three days, two nights of trekking around the Bokeo forest, whizzing over trees and across valleys on zip lines, sleeping high above the ground in amazing tree houses, hearing though not seeing gibbons, and eating a hell of a lot of sticky rice. We faced mosquitoes, leeches, spiders, snakes and millipedes and survived to tell the tale. Tomorrow, I leave with most of my new Treehouse Gang on the slow boat to Luang Prabang.