paranoia…

there are many hill-tribes living around here in the mountains and other than corn, their main cash crop is opium. over and over as we drove by random people, they would offer to sell us some. now, on one hand, we were curious to try some, but on the other hand, all of us had read in the guidebooks how drug offenses here are severely punished and that people can get anything from several years in a small dirty inhumane prison to death. of course, curiosity killed the cat, and we couldnt resist the temptation.

we bought 4 tiny packets of stuff from a tribal person on the road, and from that moment on, the day was filled w/ paranoia. we rushed to the hotel cause we didnt want to keep the stuff on us, and jamie hid it behind a shingle in the room… so far, that we were almost unable to retrieve it later. we began to imagine police behind every corner ready to arrest us and ship us off to jail.

of course we still needed to buy a pipe in order to smoke the stuff. while we shopped for one at a local souvenir shop, we kept looking around, thinking the store owners would know what we’re up to, or even call the cops on us. seriously… things were starting to get ridiculous. when we got back to my bungalow, we took huge care to make sure none of the packets touched anything in the room, and then at first started only smoking it in the bathroom cause we were scared that someone might walk by and see us thru the window. finally, we got up enough courage to come out of the bathroom, even though still we would jump every time we heard a noise outside. looking back on it now, it’s pretty funny just how freaked out we were and how much overreacting we did.

so, in the end, the opium was less than spectacular. in fact, none of were sure whether we felt absolutely anything at all. i still maintain that we were all stoned ever so slightly, but tom and jamie think that there was no affect whatsoever. *sigh*. all that trouble over nothing. but oh well… at least we tried!

-v