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Traveling_with: Andy
Weather: Dark, hot, buggy
Health_status: Right as rain
Morale: Right as rain
Appeal: 20
Next_expected_update: Less than a week
Date: April 26, 2002
Time: 10:00 -0400
I'm just registering a new town, nothing to say about it really. Chiang Kong is a major border crossing spot, and hence, I'm once again surrounded by tourists, inviting-looking restaurants, and Internet cafes. But I'm surprised how easy it is to get away from the tourist track now. In fact, we nearly got a little too far off, we hired a pickup truck driver to take us halfway to Chiang Kong, halfway because he wanted way too much money for the full trip. So he took us halfway, just like we asked, and then dropped us off on a dirt road on the bank of the Mekong without another truck in sight, and without a guest house in sight -- i.e., if we hadn't negotiated with him to drive us the remaining 25 k (for six times the price of the first 25, though still dirt cheap) I'd have been using my extensive knowledge of how to read "Hello" and "How are you" out of the Lonely Planet language guide to ask farmers if we could sleep in their yards for the night. Would have been a good story, but I'll let somebody else write it, thanks. It was kind of funny, the truck driver didn't say much, he just stood by his truck and waited for us to realize that his price was well worth it.