The previous night, Motta had opted to sleep with his old host family across the Mekong, in a nearby village. He returned to Luang Prabang the next morning toting his surrogate little brother. We were quick to give him a squirt gun.

Scott was finally recovering from his two odd days of illness, and while he executed the last bits of pulling himself together, Stew and I took off into the city. It was early, so many of the merry-makers were still setting up their water battle stations. Stew rode a full-size rental bike, which had a seat attached to it. His host brother had set up shop on the seat, and as we rode, we would call out potential targets to him and he would spray them down. The little tyke showed amazing promise with his use of the weapon. Having never owned a squirt gun before, he was very quick to learn to lead his target, and how to arc the stream to increase his range. A smart kid to be sure.

When we finally got a call from Scott, we returned to the guest house to meet up with him.

By then the madness of the day before had once again begun to reign, and we found ourselves pinned down on the steps of our guest house, where they turned on the hose, leaving it to drain into a large metal basin from which we could refill dippers to be used in soaking those who drove or walked by.

Without planning to do so, we had now established our own little Pi Mai Lao battle station. We took great pleasure in representing the home front, and managed to become quite soaked, covered in tapioca and black-faced in the process. It was glorious.

We bid goodbye to our little friend, and headed out wheeling on our own. We found more of the same, but with Scott back in action and along for the ride, we can present it to you with a richness of imagery that was previously unavailable, so perhaps I had best let the images speak for themselves.

We rode that evening to the bus station to attempt to purchase tickets for the next day back to the capital city of Vientiane. As we rode, we began to notice that Scott’s bike was emitting strange noises, almost like something was intermittently hitting the spokes of his cycle. When we stopped we were unable to diagnose anything, so we decided to monitor it and keep wheeling. At the bus station, we found that all the scheduled busses from Luang Prabang were booked for the next few days, presumably by other Pi Mai merry-makers on their way home. We would need to show up at the bus station and get on another one of the unscheduled-type buses that we had used to make the original journey. Fine by us – that’s why the AsiaWheeling mobile pharmacy includes anti-anxiety medication. Scott and I wheeled back to town and feasted at the same night market that had eaten and then regurgitated my backpack.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 11:21 am and is filed under Lao, Scott, Woody. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.