Laos is that little country that you learned about in 11th grade on the unit about the Vietnam war, and then promptly forgot because summer break was two weeks away. Tucked in a volatile corner of the world between China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma) Laos is easily overwhelmed in the news cycles by its neighbors.
We flew into Luang Prabang from Bangkok. After a 12 hour delay getting out of Ulaanbataar (Mongolia) courtesy of Air China. We spent a night on wooden benches at Beijing Airport before catching a new flight to Thailand. We had missed our connection to Laos, and so changed our ticket by one day, adding to our planned layover in Thailand.
Our reintroduction to South East Asia was friendly and warm, very warm, about 90 F and 90% humidity. But instantly we enjoyed the fruits of Thai hospitality. The information desk provided information, for one thing, and when I sold my Yuan for Bhat the staff told me they did not have a favorable Yuan rate (“That's OK, I am not going back to China” I said with a smile. Susan added “...EVER” and it was about USD6 equivalent). The last time I was in Bangkok, shortly after university, I let myself be convinced by one of my travelling buddies to stay in a really skethy hostel. For the three of us we spent $6 a night by agreeing to sleep 3 to a twin room. It was so hot and humid that you were wet with sweat before you finished toweling off from a cold shower. Brok was sort of caught up in the aesthetic of minimalism at the time, I can only hope that Yolanda (his wife) has retrained him of this since. I am happy to report that neither Susan nor I felt the need to rough it, and we spent all of $20 for a private shower, A/C etc. in a hotel with a pool.
Khoa San Road is the “backpackers ghetto” of Bangkok, and some would say the world. It's one long block of hostels, eateries, street vendors, and bars with a non-stop parade of western youths in various stages of backpacker evolution. The crowd is overhelmingly young, Susan and I were well above the median age. We also placed ourselves clearly outside the “backpacker in-crowd” by failing to sport the pseudo-Rastafarian braids, the horrible mix of ambiguous-ethnic-pattern shirt with patterned loose fisherman-pants and by drinking bottled beers instead of neon colored cocktails by the bucket. Khoa San is a sort of permanent spring break, freshman year with kids of all ages “gone wild”. It was fun to see again, and to realize that I'm not 23 anymore, thank God.
The next morning, stuffed again by delicious and dirt-cheap Pad Thai and fresh fruit we hopped to the airport for our flight to Luang Prabang, Laos.
The Bangkok airport has really upgraded, and now sports as many of the chi-chi western brands as a mall in Shanghai. It's a global world, and I was really getting used to the modernity of it all. Indeed in some ways more liberal and tolerant than the west, with a muslim prayer room and free wireless. Then I tried the wireless... it didn't work. Then we boarded our little bus to our little airplane... OK, I've been on smaller planes, so this one didn't phase me, but I did find it a little diconcerting that a lot of the Lao and Thai passengers were taking photos of the plane. You can jut see them going home and saying – can you believe I flew on this little thing! Haha! and there was this one guy, he musta been 2 meters, he couldn't even stand up in the aisle! Hahahahaha.
Clean, safe, fed and a ontime, we arrived at our destination. Easy peasy.
“Do you have a visa?” Uh oh. “Is OK, you can buy here. You need USD35 and two passport photos.”
Let me explain this. Everywhere we've been using ATMs, paying local currency and saving our limited US cash for things like buying visas which are often US-currency-only affairs, so we have plenty of this still. I also have two SHEETS of passport photos. I read this tip from somebody else's blog, that they used their photo printer to take these for things like rail passes, visas, what have you. Much cheaper than paying extortion rates at the one photo-booth outside immigration. Susan kind of rolled her eyes when I did this, but indulged my planning-geek side. So here we are in rural Laos, with need of US currency and passport photos. Right now you are thinking – Lars, way to go! You are like a hero! A kind of Indiana Jones of world-travelling! You have completely justified making Do-It-Yourself passport photos and carrying them through seven countries while protecting them from scratching and folding! Except that we have plenty of photos and plenty of US cash... in our checked bag... outside immigration.
OK, now before you demote me to funny-but-useless sidekick status; this was not my fault, really. Susan has been to Laos before, and since we bought a guidebook in Mongolia she's been obsessively reading it. Getting all excited about swimming in waterfalls and drinking fruit shakes is a pretty good therapy for two weeks of dried noodles and dust on the steppe. Now admittedly, I didn't ask, and while Susan “Team Razmatazz” is usually in charge of things like passports and airline tickets (anyone who nows me knows why this is a good idea) I (“Team Timtam” a kind of cookie that if you haven't had, well I'm sorry anyway... I) am usually in charge of the currency and paying the bills (more for reasons of physical stature than competence). So, I assumed we didn't need a visa, much less money for a visa, much less two photos each and money for a visa.
Even if I had asked, I suspect we would have been surprised. As Susan said after we deplaned and saw the sign at immigration; “I'm surprised!” Five years ago she didn't need a visa and “The book doesn't say we need a visa.” But the book is also outdated, a three year old copy was all we could obtain in Ulaanbataar. Rescue came in the form of some other Americans on the plane who loaned us twenty with which we could bridge the gap on visas and buy the photos. Crisis averted.
We hopped a “Jumbo” into town for $6 US. These are sort of oversized tuk-tuks pulled by a truck cab instead of a motorcycle. It was raining. We didn't have a hotel, but had a few targets from the guidebook. We ended up “splurging” on a really nice place in a French-colonial mansion with twenty foot ceilings and a big bathtub, which overlooks the monastery and makes Susan feel like we're expats from some costume drama. It's a cool place. We're paying about what you'd pay for a Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere.
Thousands of years of imperial wars in this region have subjugated SE Asia to the Thai, the Khmer, the French, the Communisits... and every encounter, for better or worse, has brought with it cultural exchange.
Most significant of these is food. Lao cuisine, like that of Thailand or Vietnam borrows from the best aspects of local traditions as well as those of adversaries and opporessors. As big believers of making the best of even a bad situation, we got ourselves some lunch.
Not surprisingly, it was great, and accompanied by fruit shakes and the national beverage, BeerLao. As we sat, I leafed through the guidebook for some ideas about things to see, local history, key phrases like “thank you”, “hello” and ... what's this... a chapter about visas?
(This photo seem odd? Susan Checking for Leeches after our walk in the Jungle!)
