Where In The World Is Evan?

Van Vieng is a tiny rural town, essentially comprised of two intersecting streets and an adjacent ‘highway’. Yet for those who have been there, it holds an almost mythical status. Secluded from the world, on the edge of a slow meandering river, at the foot of sheer limestone karsts, and surrounded by jungle, the setting could not be more perfect for the town’s two main attractions—tubing and drugs.

DAY 1

Arriving in town after sundown I checked into a random hotel that a guy on the bus, Scott, had recommended. He’d been staying in Van Vieng for several days, and after leaving in the morning to go to Vientiane had stayed for a total of four hours before heading straight back. As I was soon to learn, this town is hard to escape…

After dropping my stuff off in my room a group of us who’d met on the bus sat down for some dinner in a restaurant recommended by Scott. As he filled us all in on the great fun he’d been having here, the suggestion soon arose to relocate to the local drug café—where opium, marijuana and magic mushrooms are all on the menu.

Feeling a little adventurous, we each ordered a mug of opium tea. Drinking opium, as I was to discover, is a very different experience to smoking it—not least because it tastes really bad. After what seemed like a very long time, the onset of symptoms hit me rather suddenly.

Lying prone on a pile of cushions I was raised to my feet and led through the town towards a small island in the middle of the river. Like in the rest of Laos, bars are forced to close at around midnight, however, because of their remoteness from the town the three bars on the river island are open all night.

In my stupefied state I soon lost the others from the café and found myself standing alone in the middle of a rickety old bamboo bridge overhanging the river. Deciding that this was as good a place as any to have a bit of a rest, I lay down on the bridge, stared up at the moon and let my thoughts wander.

Suddenly I felt my hands being raised above me and opened my eyes to see two women standing over me. They hoisted me to my feet and announced in thick Irish accents that I was coming with them. Having only the mildest idea of my whereabouts this seemed like a reasonable proposition.

It soon became apparent that whilst we were now on the right island we’d crossed onto it from the wrong bridge and were blocked from entering the bars by a five foot tall fence. Luckily another guy had materialised from out of the darkness, and between the four of us managed to tear down part of the fence to avoid having to go around.

Entering the first of the island bars we ensconced ourselves on a cushion strewn bamboo shelf overhanging the water and had a few beers. The opium had made me a little nauseous and quite dopey so I lay on my back rolling joints on my chest and talking shit to anyone who happened by.

The crowds of people had thinned out by around 2:00 am so I moved over to one of the numerous bonfires and sat around chatting till well into the morning.

DAY 2

After getting up in the late morning I joined up with some Canadians that I’d met on the bus and we set off to go tubing. Tubing essentially consists of inserting yourself into the inflated inner tube of a tractor tyre and floating down the slow moving river. You get driven by tuk-tuk about 15 minutes up the road and then dropped off with your tube. Along the stretch of river between the drop off and the town centre there are about a dozen little bars set up along the banks. In an attempt to differentiate themselves from the other bars some have built quite elaborate swings and flying foxes from which you dive into the water.

We stopped off at the bar with the largest swing, about 5 meters high, and had a couple of beers. When my turn on the swing came I climbed the bamboo scaffold grabbed hold of the swing and pushed off without really thinking it through. I swung out over the water at a much faster pace than anticipated and let go at the apex of my arc.

As I disappeared beneath the surface I gashed my foot open on a rock on the river bed and felt my lungs constrict as dirty river water rushed into my mouth. Bobbing back to the surface I thrashed around as I attempted to expel the water from my lungs. The Canadians, seeing I was in trouble, ran down to the edge of the water and were about to jump in and save me when I managed to scrabble back onto the bank.

Dragging myself up the bank, coughing and spluttering, I looked down at my foot to see it covered in blood. The gash had taken a chunk of flesh out of the top of my foot which continued to ooze blood for the rest of the day.

Getting back in our tubes we floated the rest of the way back into town, stopping of at a few more bars to smoke some pot and drink more beer.

When we arrived back in town we were all feeling pretty exhausted so we had quick showers and settled down in a café to have some dinner. After the nauseous effects of the opium tea the night before we decided to opt for a ‘happy pizza’ (containing dried magic mushrooms).

Unfortunately the staff at the café didn’t speak very good English and Scott ended up unwittingly getting the extra strong pizza that I’d ordered. As we sat about listening to music and waiting for the mushrooms to kick in, Scott’s behaviour started to become a bit erratic.

After a couple of hours, when we were all tripping out, Scott was not looking good at all. The hallucinations had gotten too much for him and the paranoia had taken hold. It wasn’t until the next day that we discovered what was going through his head; he’d become convinced that I was the Devil (complete with horns protruding from my forehead) and that the water I kept offering him was poisoned. Disturbingly he’d felt so scared by all this that he’d drunk the water anyway, seeing death as a release from the hell in his own mind.

Thankfully we were able to get some vitamin C into him, which brought him down quite a bit, and he went back to his room to be plagued by intense nightmares for the rest of the night. I however returned to the island bars and had a great night out.

DAY 3

After my personal success with the happy pizza the night before I decided to go for a repeat. Heading down to the café I ran into the Irish girls from my first night and settled down with them to have a happy pizza for breakfast.

Unfortunately the pizza wasn’t as strong as the preceding night, so I augmented it by smoking some pot and opium down by the river later that day.

DAY 4

Despite the apparent success of the opium tea I’d still not experienced the full extent of an opium high. I’d heard from several friends who’d experimented with opium before that to do it properly you need to spend a few days in an opium den.

Unfortunately the Laos government had been cracking down in recent years on opium dens, and it’s not uncommon for them to get raided with only the foreigners being arrested, in the expectation of shaking them down for a bribe.

Considering this, I decided that the best course of action was to buy a lot of opium and take it back to my room to smoke in privacy.

Opium, however, is one of the most difficult drugs imaginable to smoke. In its raw form it looks quite similar to black Nepalese hash, but as soon as you apply heat it begins to melt.

Traditional opium pipes don’t have a cone like hash pipes do, because the melted opium will just clog up the hole at the bottom. Instead they have a flat surface with a recessed hole in the middle, around which you smear the opium in the shape of a doughnut.

This is quite a tedious way to smoke as you can only use very small quantities at a time. Rubbing the opium into tobacco or pot works reasonably well, as it absorbs the melting fluid, but it’s still quite tedious as you can only add small quantities without jamming up the pipe.

The smoke itself is also very harsh and the taste of opium is like dirt mixed with fresh grass clippings—not really that appealing.

The insidious thing about opium, however, is not that its effect is highly pronounced, but rather that it’s quite subtle and placating.

You sit down with a full pipe and try to smoke it all, but once you’ve had your first good hit your mind wanders and you forget that you’ve even got a pipe in your hand. As soon as you come down a little, however, you suddenly want another toke. As you lie in bed, smoking slowly and intermittently, time slips away from you and you lose all interest in external events.

Before I knew it, it was dark outside and I’d finished all the opium that I bought.

DAY 5

First thing in the morning I went out for breakfast, before returning to my room with more opium. This time, however, I made a more concerted effort to smoke it faster. The placating effects of the opium made this quite difficult, as you just lose interest in smoking once you get a decent buzz going.

The build up of opium in my system from the day before and the increased rate of consumption certainly heightened the subjective effects.

About halfway through the day I found my mind drifting through the sort of amazing lucid dreams that I’d read about. When you’re high on opium you’re never really awake, nor are you asleep. You exist in a bridging state where your closed eye hallucinations take the form of dreams that you can exert control over.

Once you reach this state it’s quite easy to focus your mind and project your consciousness into memories of the past. In full living colour you can relive the happiest moments of your life, with the added ability to alter and control the outcome of events. For this reason alone opium is a terrible drug to take if you are depressed, as the temptation to lose yourself in happy memories of the past would be overwhelming.

The most vivid dream I had was the reliving of conversations and moments of physical intimacy with my ex-girlfriend, Lisa. When I came down form my high I felt for all the world as if she’d been there in the room with me—I could remember her face, her smell, her voice, her touch. The sense of reality, whilst not perfect as it lacked any temporal component, was still quite amazing.

After finishing off my opium I decided to grab something to eat before going to sleep. I’d been warned by several people that citrus products should be avoided when on opium, but without any explanation as to why. Being familiar with the negating effects of vitamin C on other hallucinogens (like psylocibin) I assumed that something similar might happen.

As I wandered up and down the main street in a bit of a daze I decided upon an Indian restaurant for dinner. What I didn’t think of until I’d started eating was that the curry I’d ordered had lemon juice in it. As I was already on my way down I didn’t really think twice about it, and kept eating.

After about 10 minutes, however, I felt really light headed. I just managed to pay my bill and stumble the 50 meters back to my hotel before crashing unconscious into bed.

DAY 6

When I awoke it was twilight outside and quite warm. I felt pretty well rested but couldn’t quite reconcile this with the fact that I’d seemingly woken up just after dawn. When I looked at my watch, however, I was in for a bit of a shock.

It wasn’t dawn at all, the sun was setting outside, and I had slept for 17 hours straight!

Feeling a little alarmed at the effect of such a small quantity of lemon juice I resolved to have a large breakfast and avoid eating anything else for the rest of the day.

After breakfast I scored some more opium and returned to the beauty of my lucid dreams

DAY 7

After three days of binging on opium I decided that it was time to mix things up a bit. I spent the day relaxing in the sun drinking beer, before meeting up with the Irish girls again and having another happy pizza.

At one of the bars I met a couple of great Dutch people that were travelling together, and we all went down to the island together to sit about talking shit and smoking pot.

DAY 8

By now I’d become somewhat of a fixture in this little town, as almost everyone that I’d met in the last week had moved on, leaving me behind.

As I really didn’t feel like going through all the hassle of meeting and socialising with new people I spent the day lounging about smoking pot, before getting a happy shake and heading down to party once more on the island.

DAY 9

It was at this point that I began to reassess what exactly it was that I was doing in Van Vieng. I’d come to this town to escape the boredom of Vientiane and to wait for an Israeli friend, Inbal, who was flying to Laos for a two week holiday. I’d gotten an email from her a few days earlier, however, telling me that she couldn’t come because of two recent deaths in her family.

As she has quite a hard line anti drug attitude I’d planned to have my fill before she arrived and then put it behind me for the rest of my trip. With her announcement that she wasn’t coming, however, I’d simply stayed on in town and continued to binge.

Recognising that this town could all too easily consume the rest of my time in Laos, I booked a bus ticket to Luang Prabang leaving the next day, scored some opium and went back to bed…

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