Vang Vieng, Laos

Historically, adventure-seeking roughians traveled the earth along trade routes. They congregated in remote outposts to buy and sell, curse and drink, and chat up the local ladies. These days, the global economy's running shit a bit differently. Now, the remote outposts are holiday destinations for college students and quasi-bohemians with big backpacks. However, the buying, selling, cursing, drinking, and lady shmoozing continue.

Angela and I left Vientiane on a bus bound for the Laos countryside. We bumped along dusty dirt roads and swerved around dusty kids pedalling oversized bicycles. We passed rickety bamboo house-huts half buried in the jungle canopy. Villagers in conical hats tended to roadside rice paddies and I felt about as far from home as I've ever felt. After a few hours, the mountains grew into vertical stone skyscrapers and the road turned into a slithering snake. We twisted about on the snake-road for a while before arriving at the riverside village of Vang Vieng. The village has zero traffic lights (after all, there's only 27 in Lao's capitol city), only a couple of semi-paved roads, and intermittant electricity. Many of the village's buildings are fashioned form a haphazard mix of bamboo, sticks, and jagged planks of weathered wood. Here, halfway around the world from home and deep inside one of the world's poorest, most underdeveloped countries, westerners drink Beer Laos and wander muddy streets in sport sandals.