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Other entries in Luang Phrabang

Land of the Lotus Eaters

The same day that Kim left I decided that I couldn;t bear another day in Bangkok and so booked myself on the overnight bus to Vientiane. The following morning I found myself at the Loatian frontier and after paying my $31 for the visa (I had to pay a dollar extra it being a weekend and all). Anyway its probably just me but once the bus load of were in Laos there seemed to be a collective releiving of tension. I stepped off the bus in Vientiane to find...serenity. Unbeleivably the handful of tuk tuk drivers weren;t pushy and actually took no for an answer on the first go! I soon found a guesthouse and for a grand total of $3 had a room. It really took me a while to get over my intial shock over how laid back the capital was, not really a building over three stories and I'm pretty sure I could have walked down the middle of the road and stood minimal chance of getting hit by something. I changed my money with a minimum of fuss, and was soon the proud owner of 320,000kip. I spent my forst day in Laos wandering around the capital and having coffee in a slightly incongruous and very flash coffee house that wouldn't have been out of place on Yonge Street. I wandered down and had my first of many Beerlao at a table by the Mekong as the sun set. The following day me and an Israeli girl I met tried hitch hiking the 170km to Vang Vieng to no avail, the only people who would stop were Tuk Tuk's to our eternal frustration. Accepting this setback we took a tuk tuk to the songthaw depot. A Songthaw is basically a pickup truck with a cover and benches built onto the flat bed. For $2 we were on our way and three hours and considerable amount of dirt later we were in Vang Vieng. The trip itself was uncomfortable but interesting, we would stop at every little town along the way and people would get on or off with bags or goods for sale, one woman even had two straw bags full of live chickens thats she unceremoniously shoved under a seat. Vang Vieng itself is a quiet laid back place that would be even more so if it weren;t for the droves of travellers it attracts. One slightly baffling elemnet of the place are the 3 or 4 restaurants that are basically next to each other that just show episodes of friends back to back all day, why you would go to somewhere as beautiful as Laos and do that is beyond me. That evening I met Rafael and Brian who had somehow managed to fanangle a sponsorship deal from Eagle Creek and Columbia to help them fund their trip. We spent the evening at a riverside bar enjoying many a beer Lao. The following day we did the obligatory tubing down the song river. For the princely sum of $3 they drive you about 4 km's upriver and give you a big inner tube to float down the river back to town. Along the way a few enterprising Laos people have set up bars cum swings/zip lines. They basically hook you in as you float past and if you buy a beer you get to use the swing or whatever. Very touristy but a legendary time nontheless. Deciding to get out of town the following day the three of us booked a trek into the surrounding contryside. After a short drive and a walk through a village we crossed an extremely dubious swing bridge made of bamboo and apparently coat hangers. We walked through rice paddies seeing villagers at work and then got into the forest crossing a pass between two of the amazing Limestone cliffs that are scattered around the area. After lunch at a cattle station in a beautiful green valler we hiked for another hour to a great waterfall about 10 meters high for a bit of swimming and falls jumping which needless to say was awesome. We bactracked after that and spent the evening at the cattle station eating and drinking Lao Lao (rice whiskey) with our guides before going to bed. The follwing morning we hiked to cave and at the entrance Lam broke out some bamboo torches and just like Indiana Jones ventured into the cave wading through water that was at times chest deep. After caving we were driven further upstream and kayaked back to Vang Vieng stopping at various points along the way and finishing with a redux of tubing. We got on so well with out guides that they invited us to come and drink with them that night. We arrived to find them already stuck into the Lao Lao so I ran across the street and for a grand total of $1.20 got another bottle of Lao Lao and another of fruit wine both of which were polished off in short order as we passed around the bottle. After the drinks came the food and along with the sticky rice we had some dog which I am pleased to report isa not gross and actually doesn;t taste like chicken, more like pork actually. I got sick for a day and got stuck in Vang Vieng - as Dave Matthews says "Don't drink the water." But after that we were off to Lunag Prabang where I said goodbye to the guys and headed north to Luang Nam Tha, a more remote northern town that is growing in popularity due to a UNESCO sponsored ecotourism project. I arrived and booked a trek for the follwing day and off we went, staying the first night in a village a few hours trek from the town. It was very cool to see traditional ways of life in action and the people were freindly and the children undenaibly cute. I think that they have seen few enough foreigners not to feel them too intrusive as I think is the case in northern Thailand - hopefully the UN project can preserve that feeling. We ate dinner and got to talk with the village headman who was all of 40 years old. The story was the same at other villages we visited, although from the outside their lifestyle seems idylic and uncomplicated. Its too easy to say that they live in harmony with their environment. From my point of view life is a struggle for these people, there are women who look 65 but are in their 40's and the average life expectancy is not really above 50. I won't bore you with my thoughts on the anthropological dynamics of Laos or the costs of progress but suffice it to say that although they are smiling and freindly they live hard, short lives. One of the undoubted highlights of the trek though - apart from the numerous leeches - was the hike through virgin stands of ancient forest seeing massive buttressed 500 year old trees and stands of wild banana trees while resting at cool mountain streams in the punishing humidity. The next day, my visa in imminent danger of expiry I headed to Huay Xi on the Mekong and the border crossing with Thailand. I bought my bus ticket to discover that the ‘bus' was in fact 2 pick ups - about mid size with a big sticker on the side saying "15 persons". At a stretch I would have said you could get 10 people in them - maybe, but no they crammed them to capacity. When I saw the passenger manifest there were 35 names on it. For the first few hours I sat perched halfway on one of the benches and halfway on the edge of the tailgate. Finally me and a local man took turns standing on the cargo rack on the back getting progressively more and more filthy and we crawled at 20kmph down the 200km of partially completed highway dodging caterpillars and waiting for dozers to clear blast debris. Though woefully uncomfortable, there were moments when I was perched on the back of the pick up, with the sun shining and the wind in my face looking out over great expanses of virgin wilderness, when I was blissfully happy (and probably masochistic). We rolled into Huay Xai 10 hours later exhausted and filthy. The following morning I left Laos and later that day caught and overnight bus back to Bangkok heading for the beach for some sun and my last few days on the far side of the world.

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