ok, don't judge this place by its name. muang ngoi sounds as bad as mangalore, india but i assure you, this is one of the top 10 places i've been in the world. village idyll with readily available opium products and diet coke lured me to stay and live the simple life for nearly a week.

electricity is available only between 7pm and 10pm after which the entire village goes dark and is illuminated by the stars and an occasional full moon. laotian food is acceptable to my delicate palate but in addition, my guesthouse owner cooked up a mean tuna fish "samdwich" w/ "french fried". when warm out, the locals bathe naturally in the river adjacent to the village:

i attempted to bathe with them but was relegated to a corner of the river away from suspicious women and farm animals who thought i was there only to perv (hey, i wanted also to clean myself... and peep). may god help the villages downstream from where i released my stored toxins and putrid waste products into the water.

turns out women bathe in full sarong and the only ones without it are butt naked children and the occasional old lady whose sagging breasts challenge any heterosexual man to remain so. i tried the sarong bit but it didn't take. i also tried to hire a local for exfoliation purposes but that didn't take either.

if only they could work on getting rid of the rat problem - but i suppose the french are allowed to vacation in the village as well.

back to the daily grind of traveling from city to city. soon i'm back in bangkok where some jerks from california are flying out to join me in 2 weeks of suffocating heat and projectile ping pong balls.