Buddha Park or Bust

DAY: 35
LOCATION: Vientiane

The de-infestation failed. I lost round two of the mosquito battle, waking up with a swollen eye. At first I thought I was having an allergic reaction, but lo and behold it was a bite on my eyelid. The puffy sack itched like crazy, but touching it hurt. Wahhh. At least I wasn’t going to set, or waking up next to Levi.

Google informed me that ice might help, so I went up to breakfast and asked for some ice cubes. While I nursed my broken eye, the two guido guys from the pool sat down at the table across from me.

“Are you okay?” One of them asked me.

“Oh yeah, I just got bit by a mosquito on the eyelid,” I replied. “Those little bastards. Is your room full of them too?”

Theirs wasn’t, but they commiserated in my pain with their bad hangovers. They were on vacation from Italy, which for them meant ten days straight of partying.

“Not much to do here. We went out last night until 4, but pretty low key. We’re heading to Phuket today, that’ll be the real party!” the taller one exclaimed. I laughed. A low key 4am-er. Yikes.

I finished eating and went downstairs to get ready for the day. My plan was to rent a bike and ride it out to Buddha Park and then maybe along the Mekong around sunset. As I stuffed my backpack with snacks and water, loud music flowed into my room. From out the window I could see a gathering of young men in red and gold uniforms surrounding red and gold dragons. A parade! I hurried downstairs to watch it in the lobby.

The dragons finished their dance and I went in search of my rental bike. I found a shop in the tourist center of town, and gave the guy my ID and a couple dollars in exchange for a rusty but workable mountain bike.

My first stop was my hotel – I’d forgotten sunscreen. When I came back downstairs to retrieve my bike in the lobby, the Italians were there.

“Come sit with us! I have something for your eye!” the tall one exclaimed.

“You do?” I sat down next to him, intrigued.

He pulled out a tiny pot of mystery potion, and told me to close my eye. He dipped his finger in the pot and started applying whatever it was to my eyelid. It was oddly sweet.

“Marco got it for his mosquito bites in Vieng Vang,” he explained. Of course they’d been drunk innertubing. “How’s it feel?”

“Kind of numbing. It smells nice too…” I smiled. “Oh wait, no, ow, fuck, it’s burning. Oh god, it burns. Ow ow ow, hold on—“

I ran to the bathroom and placed my head under the sink, moaning as water ran over it. After a couple of minutes I turned off the faucet and grabbed a fist full of paper towels, rubbing the shit out of it. It still hurt like hell, but not quite as bad as before. However, in the mirror I looked insane. Bright red puffy eye, broken out skin, unwashed hair. Beyond sexy.

And yet still the Italians asked me to come with them to Phuket.

“It will be so much fun. I’ll pay for you, I feel bad about your eye,” he tried to convince me. “You can stay in our hotel room.”

I laughed. “I bet I can. No no, I’m going to a meditation retreat. The opposite of party. But I hope you guys have an amazing time.”

Their taxi arrived and the Italian gave me an inappropriately long hug and sad goodbye. Like maybe he’d already fallen in love with me.

“If you change your mind message me on Facebook!” he said, getting into the taxi. Even in my wildest club days I would never have gone to an island with these guys, but it did feel kind of nice that they wanted me to come. Trainwrecked face and everything.

I quickly memorized the route to Buddha Park, and hopped on my bike. It felt awesome to be back in the saddle, especially with such different scenery. Giant gold Buddhas, ornate temples, Laotian mom and pop shops, cows in the street just chilling. Unfortunately, the road wasn’t actually on the river, as it appeared on the map, and it was a little more industrial than I would’ve liked, but I did enjoy seeing random golf clubs like the “Long Thanh - Vientiane Specific Economic Zone.” So this was where the business men hung out when they came to Laos!

After what seemed like ages I checked my phone to see my progress. The sun was getting pretty hot and I was already feeling tired, so I hoped I was close.

Nope. An hour in and barely halfway. The rusty mountain bike wasn’t exactly great for covering ground. I wheeled it into a temple complex for a drink of water and a mini banana. Should I turn around? I considered. What if I get heatstroke or have an asthma attack like that cross country race in high school where I fainted at the finish line? I was definitely athletic, but things could go from bad to emergency room real quick.

Like at the Daintree, the Tom Minderhout side of me won out. Onward, soldier! I got back to peddling. Only 10 miles to go! But my god was my back hurting. And it was only getting hotter and my legs were really starting to burn. I envisioned my friend Jenny shouting encouragement at us from the podium in SoulCycle. “You got this, warriors! Give it all you got, leave it all on the handle bars!! Look at the silverlining, you’ve totally forgotten about your eye!!!”

Several water and backpack breaks later, I finally rolled up to the Buddha Park, panting and dripping sweat. I locked up my bike, paid the entrance fee, bought a fruit shake, and drank half of it on a bench. Who cared if the ice in it gave me food poisoning, I needed this drink.

The park itself was pretty bizarre. Conceived by a single man in 1958, it houses a mixture of Buddhist and Hindu sculptures that look really old, but are not. I wandered through slightly dazed, sipping on my shake, watching people pose with a Boddhisattva here, a Shiva there.

If I’d biked out all that way only for the park, I would’ve been fairly disappointed. But I’d done it mainly for the bike ride, heat and fatigue and back pains and all. I chose a different route back, the Google walking path, and this time I really got my money’s worth. It took me on a ridiculously bumpy dirt path through rice paddies and farmer’s backyards. It was LEGIT. Also, semi-terrifying, considering I was completely alone in the middle of nowhere with zero service on a bike that could pop a tire at any moment with lungs that may start spazzing out, but otherwise it was incredible. Bright green fields, baby goats, tiny huts, piles of trash – this was the raw Laos no tour guide will be showing you.

The return trip seemed somehow less arduous thanks to the rural short cut. Of course, I was still a sweaty exhausted mess when I got back into the city, in need of a shower and a heaping plate of vegan food. Thankfully, Reunion Café was not only open this time around, but serving free food. Yes, free. The entire buffet lunch, on the house to all who entered.

“Tell all of your friends! We want to feed as many as possible, it will provide us good fortune in the New Year!” The spirited owner encouraged me to take as much as I wanted. Hey Jordan and Austin, if you come to Vientiane you can get a free lunch!

Two Laotian sisters sat across from me at the communal table. They spoke perfect English, having studied in London for university. They’d been vegan for ten years and vegetarian for five before that.

“Wow, that’s so great!” I commented. “How did you come to that decision?”

“One day I just realized I didn’t want to eat animals anymore,” the younger sister said. “I told my sister and we did it together. Our parents thought we were crazy. It wasn’t part of the culture at all.”

We talked about the spread of veganism, and the spread of Western culture. After being in Luang Prabang, I found Vientiane’s huge Heineken billboards with diverse gorgeous partiers jarring. The worst was a billboard for a motorbike featuring a beautiful Asian girl on a red carpet as a Ken doll white guy rolls up on his new Honda two-wheeler. So incongruous with the rice paddies and thatched huts of Laotian reality.

“We know what globalization really means,” the older sister said. “Homogenization. The erasure of heritage. We don’t want it, but it’s so hard to fight.”

By the time we finished chatting, it was starting to get dark. I returned my bike and watched another blood red sunset over the Mekong. It may have been thanks to pollution, but it was still stunning.

My body ached from all the biking and walking, so I got a massage at Champa Spa. I neglected to mention it in Day 34, perhaps in an effort to forget, but the night before I’d received the worst foot massage of my life. It started off decently, with a strong woman working my arches, but after ten minutes she got up and left and the guy who took over was terrible. He did the same feeble stroke on the same area ad nauseum. I should’ve said something or gotten up and left myself, but I felt like a bitch for complaining about someone literally rubbing my feet. Needless to say, I was leery about Vientiane spas, but it was only 6pm and I didn’t know what else to do.

Champa was fantastic. Excellent setting, experienced masseuse, relaxing music, nice temperature – if you’re in the city, come here. It’s a few dollars more, and you’ll want to leave a generous tip, but worth every penny.

For dinner I ate at Dhaka on the quai. Over surprisingly delicious chana masala I considered my upcoming travel plans. I was flying to Surat Thani in the morning, and I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do. One of the major reasons I’d come on this trip was to do the vipassana at Wat Suan Mok. But the more I studied their website, the more insane this seemed.

For one thing, David had been texting me a lot about Berlin, and to cut off communication for seven days right before the festival was not going to bode well for our work relationship. And that was another thing – the retreat was ten days, not seven. Before you begin, they ask if you’re ready to commit to the length of the retreat. Sure, people left after a few days, but to go in knowing full well I’d be leaving on day seven at the latest seemed like the wrong foot to get off on. Finally, my body might not be ready for waking up at 4am, not eating after noon, and rigorous meditation for 18 hours a day. I’d been meditating maybe 30 minutes a day for a few months. It was like walking three miles a day in preparation for a marathon.

While it seems like a no-brainer, it was really hard for me to make the decision not to do the retreat. I felt like a quitter, a coward, like I was taking the easy way out. And maybe I was. Or maybe it was my perfectionism ridiculing myself for not being hardcore enough with my spirituality. Either way, as I looked at yoga centers on Koh Samui and booked a hotel on Chaweng beach in my room later, I felt light as a feather. I had no doubt I would do a vipassana soon, but right now was not the time.

Tropical beach and yoga, here I come!