Hey everyone!
Two things before I tell you about Laos. Firstly, a HUGE good luck to my year 12 boys Jacob, Nic and Dorian in their exams this week!!! You can do it A team ;) Secondly, I heard through the grapevine that Geelong beat those filthy Magpies today! WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
So Laos…
I was able to organize a very seamless journey over the border from Thailand and into Laos. From Chiang Mai I caught a minivan to the border crossing at Chiang Khong with a group of about six other tourists. In Chiang Khong we were set up in a guest house for the night and asked to hand over our passports and the departure tax for Thailand. I have long since resigned myself to that fact that I am often expected to surrender my passport while some local ‘fixer’ goes off to sort the details for me. It all turned out for the best… passports were returned in the morning with our exit stamps in place.
Next we were taken to the riverbank where we climbed into a very small, very fragile looking canoe with a small outboard motor attached to the back of it. We crossed the vast Mekong (I’d say it was at least 40m across!) and found ourselves standing in Laos PDR (Peoples Democratic Republic). We very quickly found that the local joke, Laos (Please Don’t Rush), is a perfect way to describe the national ethos of the very relaxed, very friendly Lao people. A new ‘fixer’ was waiting for us on the riverbank and he explained that we must pay for our Laos visa and be processed through immigration. This all went off without a hitch and my passport was returned with a very large Laos visa pasted across the page. Stiena it’s true… the most tin pot countries have the most paperwork and the take up the most space in your passport!
Next my new travel companions and I climbed aboard the slow boat that would take us on a two day journey down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. As is often the case, the companions I shared the journey with are just as memorable as the trip itself. To Ben, Helen, Emma and Phil, thank you for a wonderful trip or more to the point, Khop Chai La Lai xox
Without sounding too sentimental, the landscape that we traveled through for the next two days was breathtaking. Forests and mountains of the most iridescent green, clouds that drifted slowly down to greet us on the riverbank, lazy water buffaloes wallowing on the riverbank and Lao people greeting us with smiles and laughter. It was a trip spent playing card games, drinking Beer Lao, spotting animals on the banks ( Phil and I discovered a new species which we dubbed the pig-goat… in hindsight it may have simply been a pig), listening to good tunes and gazing in wonder at scenery that was absolutely beautiful. We broke the trip with one night at Pak Ben, where we all drank too much Beer Lao, were served special ‘off the menu’ Lao food by our host and came to the unanimous conclusion that Laos was pretty damn awesome! Before I knew it the two days were up and it was time to disembark and explore Luang Prabang.
Luang Prabang is described in the Lonely Planet guidebook as a, ‘romantic town of misty mountains and dreams of a never ending stay.’ The cynic in me thought this all sounded a little bit too romanticized… but I take it back. The misty mountains, the serene monks, the cool mountaintop temperatures, stunning waterfalls, the fantastic local crafts, a great selection of places to eat and a huge range of funky watering holes, all capped off by the beautiful Laos people, made me fall in love with Luang Prabang. I managed to limit my stay to only three days… but I left wishing I could stay longer.
My boat crew all boarded a bus to head south to Vang Vien, a town that is famed on the banana pancake trail because it offers a chance to go tubing down the river, stopping along the way at bars that serve buckets of whiskey, ‘happy shakes’ and joints. I had been hearing about Vang Vien since I landed in Malaysia, and although I will admit it sounded like fun, the truth is I can get drunk and float down the river at home (Mez can testify to that!). But actually, the reason I opted out was that the roads in Laos during the rainy season are very very bad and a two day trip can actually become a much longer journey. I took a cheap flight to Vientiane, which meant I could see the beautiful scenery from the sky and arrive at my destination in one short hour. I spoke to other travelers in Vientiane who told me the 6 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang actually took 22 hours due to landslides, and the 4 hour ride from Vang Vien to Vientiane actually took 11 hours due to flooded roads. I think I made the right choice J Also I heard that since January this year 11 backpackers have died while tubing in Vang Vien… with a combo of alcohol, weed and the fast flowing Mekong this is hardly a surprise.
Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is a decent town worth wandering through for a day or two. I spent the evening taking in the sunset on the banks of the Mekong, wandering through the night markets and sharing a drink with some fellow travelers. Next I caught a ‘VIP’ ( they have a vastly different understanding of the term VIP over here) bus to Tha Ket, where I was hoping to make a trip to the Kong Lo Cave, a 7km cave that you can travel through in a small canoe.
Without sounding too much like a whinger the trip to Tha Ket was a total bust!!! We arrived late, but there was a group of us so we shared a tuk tuk and found the one hostel in town. The hostel offered day trips to the cave, but they were rather expensive if there wasn’t a big group. I teamed up with three other backpackers and we negotiated the price down to about 350,000 kip each ($45AUD). This was a VERY expensive tour!!!! At 7am the next day, the four of us boarded the minivan and began the three hour journey to the cave. Three hours later the driver pulled up at the cave, turned and smiled at us apologetically as he explained that the recent flooding meant we would probably not be able to enter the cave that day. He offered us two choices; wait until about 4pm to see if the water level went down (it was only 10am at this point) or pay to do an overnight stay in the local village and tour the cave tomorrow. What annoyed us all about this situation, was the fact that he told us all this information before he had spoken to anyone else (in person or on the phone) which could only mean he had been aware of this situation before we left Tha Ket THREE HOURS EARLIER!!!! Long story short, we waited a few hours, the water didn’t go down, we boarded the minivan and made the return trip to Tha Ket. Our collective complaints meant that we each got a small refund of 150,000kip… but this still meant we paid about $25AUD to drive three hours, only to turn around and drive three hours back. On the bright side, I spent the day with three wonderful travel companions who made a disappointing day fun, saw six hours of beautiful Laos scenery and didn’t exactly go bankrupt in the process. To Ben, Holly and Camille, cheers for a great day J To Tha Ket Travel Lodge… get bent!
Next I jumped on a bus to head for Pakse, six hours to the south and in an area that is not so heavily traveled by backpackers but has enough of an emerging tourist industry to provide fun activities and make things easy enough. I was the only ‘falang’ (= tourist) on the bus and it was a wonderful day full of friendly local people, local food and beautiful countryside. In Pakse I took a day trip to the Bolaven Plateau, where I toured tea and coffee plantations, visited a local village, saw many waterfalls and visited a local school. The tour was fantastic, but the school visit was by far my favorite part of the day. The local kids were being taught about landmines and UXO’s (unexploded ordinances leftover from the war), how to spot them and what to do if they did see one. This is the sad reality of Laos, it is still dealing with the after affects of being heavily bombed during the Vietnam and Cold wars. Still, the children took a break and took great delight in posing for photographs, using my camera to take pictures of themselves and practicing their English phrases on the falang.
My final stop in Laos was on Don Konh, an island in Si Pha Don (the 4000 Islands). This dreamy little island is just one of three places you can stay in Si Pha Don where the Mekong stretches out and there is little to do but chill in a hammock and watch the world float by. I spent a few days in Don Konh lazing in a hammock, riding a bike through the rice paddies, watching the swollen Mekong roar down the local waterfalls and trying to navigate my way through some very flooded and very muddy village streets. In the dry season the river is a beautiful turquoise and you can float about in a tube or paddle a canoe down the stream. But this is the rainy season, the chocolate coloured river was running hard and fast with water gushing all the way from China, and the unusually bad flooding had caused Don Konh to become a great big puddle. Still, the people were friendly, the banana shakes were plentiful and my bicycle ride through a thunderstorm was exhilarating. True to form I fell off my bike and got covered in mud… but the whole thing was a laugh. I had just watched a group of local school children ride through a big puddle so I assumed I would be able to follow suit. I was not able to: P When I returned to my room ‘papa’ the 80 year old man who ran the guesthouse laughed uncontrollably for about five minutes, I could hardly blame him and I was laughing right along with him. When he stopped laughing he motioned for me to follow him to the yard, where he proceeded to spray me with a garden hose until all the mud had come off my clothes. Not my finest hour. Stiena the score remains, bike 2, Nadia 0.
When packing my bag for the trip across the border I realized that I didn’t have my hiking shoes, and that I actually hadn’t seen them since Pakse. I looked all over my room, stomped around and swore for a few minutes and then stopped and tried to be serene. I looked out my door at the Mekong, realized that I am having an amazing adventure, took a deep breath and accepted that my shoes were gone. I won’t pretend I’m not annoyed at my own stupidity, but the truth is when you are surrounded by poverty it feels a little bit ridiculous to pout over a pair of shoes that can easily be replaced.
And so I left Laos and crossed into Cambodia. I can’t really say why I loved Laos so much; certainly the Lao people had a lot to do with it. They are simply more friendly and relaxed than those in their neighboring countries. If you ask the price of an item the answer given always seems fair enough not to bother haggling, if you say you don’t need a tuk tuk they leave you alone and if you ask for help of any kind they are more than happy to provide it. The fact that the countryside is spectacularly beautiful is just an added bonus J
xoxo luv to you all
Nads
