On our last night in Huay Xai we were blessed with a blissfully peaceful night's sleep - a big change from our previous nights there, which were full of roosters with no time perception and dog fights (a bitch was on heat and every one of the 50 male dogs in town wanted a piece). I woke up in the morning feeling a million bucks and very positive about the 12 hour bus ride we had ahead of us, to our next destination, Luang Prabang. We caught a tuk tuk to the bus station and purchased tickets for the 9.00 bus. Just as I was pondering what a wonderful holiday I was having and how sweet life is generally, the driver approached us: "Bus no go. No people. Bus come 12.30. You wait. You have many time." My heart sank. This would mean an extra 3.5 hours doing nothing plus an arrival time of 12.00 am. But there was nothing we could do. Miserably, we accepted a free tuk tuk ride to the nearby Chinese markets (just in case that sounds like a fun activity, it wasn't) and to eat yet another bowl of breakfast pho. To give credit where credit it due, Jack was taking the whole ordeal much better than yours truly. The bus finally left at 1.00 pm and turned out to be my most hated bus journey of the trip so far. While fully aware of my previous complaints of drivers' insanity, this time he crawled along at a snail's pace which added an extra 3 hours onto our already protracted travel time. In addition to this, he didn't seem particularly worried about stopping for dinner. Finally, at 10.00 pm, we pulled into the Udomxai bus station where several bbq stalls were selling goodies cooked 4 hours ago when everyone else in the country got to eat, including duck heads, whole birds shoved onto sticks and big piles of intestines glistening in congealed fat. But we were starving! (The famous last words). We got two skewers of what we thought was probably pork and a plastic bag of sticky rice and huddled on the bus to eat it. We arrived in Luang Prabang at 3.00 am, where the tuk tuk drivers tried to rip us off by 50% and we decided, on moral grounds, to fall asleep on a freezing cold bench and wait it out til 6.00 when the rest of the drivers showed up.
By the time we checked into our hotel I knew that I should have gone hungry. The next two days were not spent seeing Luang Prabang's sights, but becoming acquainted with the back of our bathroom door. While feeling very sorry for myself at being cursed with the poos, I was spared the spews, so the whole ordeal was not as unpleasant as it could have been. I was able to participate in some non-taxing strolls around town, sampling delicious fruit shakes (you can get these everywhere in SEA but they are especially delicious in Luang Prabang), and comfort-food type goodies from the wonderful JoMa Bakery (including real coffee and more chocolate pie, but more importantly, bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese...heaven!) Luang Prabang is a touristy town but also manages to be extremely pleasant: wide streets, frangipani trees and lots of temples nestled amongst the houses.
On our third and last day, my bowels decided to be somewhat forgiving and held out for long enough for a fun day trip to the Tat Kuang Si Waterfall by motorbike. The minerals in the water make it an unusual blue colour (which I thought made for good pics...J thought I was being a little over the top). It was fairly cold so we only went for an obligatory swim, but also got to see the sun bears that have been rescued from poachers and are housed there. Next we tried to find a really cool-sounding 'handicraft village' we read about in Lonely Planet, where we thought we were going to get some awesome bargains on traditional Lao textiles. It turned out to be a line of expensive boutiques out in the middle of nowhere, and we were highly unimpressed. However the day was salvaged with a Beer Lao or two on the riverside and a trip to the handicraft night market to blow some kip!
Fully recovered, early the next morning we were up and at our favourite Laos activity (bus riding): this time on a very windy trip southeast to Phonsavan. This was an extremely windy road and we were crammed at the top of a double decker bus, minus air con or opening windows. This made for some definite queasiness but without any unpleasant material results! All in all it was a fairly undramatic trip and we arrived in Phonsavan (early!) in high spirits. We checked into a cute little guesthouse with a big comfy bed and bare wooden floorboards, which we got for a steal, and had a very pleasant evening drinking beer and eating at Nisha, the town's Indian restaurant (which was so scrumptious that we would go back for 4/5 meals!)
Phonsovan is a 3 km stretch of road lined with dusty shopfronts, guesthouses and restaurants. Its province, Xieng Khuang, was the most heavily bombed area in Laos (which is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history). The town's history is a sad one: it was here that the CIA, under the guise of supporting Laos' independence, recruited and trained a 'secret army' comprised of hill tribe people to prevent supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The army suffered terrible losses and the area is still riddled with unexploded ordinance (UXO). Apart from the bomb craters there is little evidence of this history in town, except that (somewhat morbidly) shop and hotel owners decorate their shop fronts with empty shell cartridges.
On our full day in Phonsavan, we rented a motorbike (from a man who, hilariously enough, asked if Jack was my FATHER...poor old grandpa!*) to visit Phonsavan's main attraction, the Plain of Jars. This consists of three sites where there are dozens and dozens of huge stone jars...just sitting there in the middle of freekin nowhere. It's a big archaeological mystery: nobody has quite been able to work out what they were used for. While they were kinda cool and undoubtedly fascinating if you're president of the Yeppoon Archaeological Diggers' Club, our attitude was that once you've seen one jar you've seen em all! However it was a very pleasant drive through the countryside(really different from elsewhere in Laos - brown and dry, with bromedliads and gum trees!), trying to locate the different sites and strengthening our relationship communication skills (my exceedingly poor sense of direction seems to be further diminished from the back of a motorbike). The most remote site required a short hike through some parched rice paddies and up a small hill, which apparently was enough to deter other visitors - we were the only people there. This made for some great inappropriate photo opportunities! There is nothing like toilet-humour-themed physical interaction with ancient monuments to make you feel like you are having a culturally enriching experience. Enjoy!
After enjoying Nisha (yet again) on our second and last night in Phonsavan, we were snuggled into bed and just drifting off to sleep when noises drifting through the open window signalled that our cute cosy little guesthouse had been transformed into a seedy prostitution dungeon, complete with lustful screams, bed banging, and old Chinese business men with 20 year old Lao women. A somewhat distasteful farewell to a town which we otherwise liked very much!
More very soon,
T & J xox
*The other weird thing that happens all the time is that when we tell people our names they unfalteringly respond with "same same!" or "same name". This baffles me because in my books two syllables could not be more unalike than "Jack" and "Tess". We have agreed that next time we will say that my name is Jake and see if we get a similar response. Stay tuned for experiment results.
