Laos in a (long) nutshell

Hey There!
Well, it's been a while. Since my last entry, Ryder and I ventured down the Mekong and through parts of Northern Laos and have now landed in Vietnam. It's a bit crazier here than Laos, and since we've only just arrived a couple of days ago, I will be giving stories from here at another time. For now I'll focus on Laos...
The float down the Mekong was beautiful,despite being uncomfortable. We were on an old, traditional, wooden boat (with a motor of course) and they just threw in some hard wooden benches for passengers to sit on during the ride. It was cramped and crowded and took two days with an overnight stop in a village half way down the river. The sunrise and sunset were beautiful and we passed our time reading, listening to music, drawing, and teaching 5 other people how to play backgammon. We ended up spending a fair bit of time with a few of the people we met on the boat: a gal from Australia, a guy from Ireland, and two more from Canada. We arrived in Luang Prabong in the evening, caught the sunset and found a guesthouse. Luang Prabong is an old colonial city and it is a beautiful mix of French colonial architecture and traditional Laoation architecture. It has the charm of a European city with Asian flair, and it is definitely geared toward the tourist contingency. Although it's far cheaper than Europe, it's still quite a bit more expensive than most other places we've been visiting. We skipped all the baked goods, coffee shops and French restaurants and searched out our corner noodle shops where communication was very limited and we often ended up with chunks of liver in our vegetarian soup. That's life in Asia. There are many temples in Luang Prabong and we spent a day walking around admiring the beautiful roofs and the golden buddhas. We also crossed the Mekong to visit a pottery village where they manufacture all sorts of work, mostly coil pots made on a wheel that the potters spin with their toes...it is quite impressive! I know my toes aren't half that skilled. Overall, we very much enjoyed our time in the area and I personally loved the night market with beautiful with hand made crafts from all over Laos lining the streets. They do amazing quilting work as well as bags and clothes with detailed cross stitch common in the Hmong tradition. We didn't indulge this time around, but promised ourselves a trip back when we are living in Chiang Mai.
From there we headed to Mong Ngoi, a tiny village on the Nam Ou (river). You can only get there by boat and there are no cars or motorbikes in sight. Rather, you are surrounded by impressive mountains and pristine river. We found a very cheap, slightly tattered, bungalow for a couple dollars a night and settled into life in the village for a week. Although you escape the sounds of cars and horns, you do not escape the sounds of roosters. Never in all of my life have been woken by such crazy roosters. It doesn't matter if it's 2 a.m. or 6 a.m., the roosters in Laos (in city or village) want to wake the world up. It starts with one cocky little fellow, and before you know it the whole neighborhood is resounding with endless rooster calls. It took about 3 days to get used to, and then you manage to sleep through most of it. Anyway, we passed the time swimming in the river, taking random trails into the jungle, hunting wild grapefruit, canoeing up the river and back down, eating food (of course...this time our favorite dishes were noodle soup in the morning, and fried bamboo with egg, fried seaweed, and sticky rice for dinner), and observing village life, which revolves around the river. Everyday the women were out in the water collecting the seaweed that serves as a staple in their diet. They beat it into sheets with some tomato and garlic and hang it to dry in the streets. Later they fry it up and eat it with sticky rice. Quite delicious really. They also grow all their food there, so at some restaurants, you'd order your food and see the woman go into the garden, pick the vegetables for your meal, then serve it up. Truly fresh dining. Here the historical relationship between America and Laos became clear as we noticed the American made bomb shells all about. People used them as benches and railings up into their house. Although resourceful, it makes you think twice about what we've done to the world. We later read that during the Vietnam war, more bombs were dropped on Laos alone than all of the bombs dropped over all of Europe during World War II. We dropped so many bombs it was the equivalent of dropping a plane load every 8 minutes, around the clock, for nine years. That's a lot of bombs. And later as we traveled toward Sam Neua, we saw craters everywhere (more on that in a minute). Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history. And you have to wonder why...it all seems a bit misdirected. The Laos people are gentle and quiet. It seems worth mentioning here that Ryder got into playing soccer with the village boys in the evenings on this crazy, bumpy field. Needless to say, it quickly took it's toll with a sprained ankle. After a couple of days rest, he was back on the field and on the last day he got rammed into by another player, fell and hurt his wrist. We were hoping it was not broken, wrapped in up in a scarf, and started the ibuprofen doses. We'll come back this in a minute.
After we left Mong Ngoi, we took a horrendous (but entertaining and very beautiful) 12 hour bus ride through some of the most rugged terrain in Laos to Sam Neua. We passed over jungled mountains and watched the sunset and the moon rise as we made our way East. We also passed through countless tiny villages where everyone lives in bamboo huts and live more simply than the American mind can imagine. Even in the bigger cities, many restaurants still do their cooking over open fires as do all women at home. It's pretty neat to see what you can do without all the fancy kitchen gear we are used to. Anyway, Sam Neua is the second largest city in Laos at 60,000 people. The entire city was destroyed during the war, with the exception of two buildings. They have rapidly rebuilt and created a quiet, friendly city. We really enjoyed it there as it is a bit off of the tourist track. We took a day trip to Viang Xai, where the communist leaders and the people moved into caves during the war. They created a full city throughout the mountains and we got to explore some of the living quarters, the theaters, and the artillary caves. It was pretty amazing to see how they developed the caves and made them home. Looking through the landscape you can also see why the lived in caves; there are bomb craters everywhere. It was the only place to hide. We also took some time to visit the hospital because we thought that Ryder's arm really should be looked at. This was a moment that Michael Moore would have been proud of. We found the hospital, paid 2,000 kip to get a consultation (that's about 23 cents), had a doctor come in, look at Ryder's arm, chuckle and say "You have just sprain, I just come from surgery on compound fracture in leg", write out a perscription, send us to the pharmacy and that was that. At the pharmacy we were given 2 different pills to take down the swelling, some kind of icy-hot stuff, and an ace bandage for a total of 19,000 kip (that's a few cents over 2 dollars). So our running total at the hospital in a communist country where it took all of 10 minutes from walking in to walking out with perscription in hand cost $2.26. Wow, now that's revolutionary.
I really ought to write these more often so they aren't so collosal. If you've read this whole thing, nice job! And more to be coming soon. I've added some photos, a couple from Chiang Mai becuase I never did before, and a few from the beginning of Laos. I still have yet to get the rest of Laos pictures off the camera. I promise the next will be shorter maybe even with more images! Sending you all our best from Vietnam....

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