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Published: January 18th 2007
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I will defeat her!
Chris being overconfident - playing board games with a Korean couple Ignorance is bliss That's what i might have asked myself about a year ago - uneducated fool that I was/am I had never heard of Laos, but now I'm sitting in an internet cafe in a very cool town called Louang Prabang thinking that its a pretty awesome place to come travelling.
But, I'll rewind a little and mention some of how I got here, as it was a pretty memorable journey in its own right.
Your travelling companions can make or break your trip... We left Chiang mai on the 13th, having purchased a ticket to take us all the way through to Luang Prabang. The first part of the journey was a 5 hour minibus ride to the thai border town of Chaing Kong. On the bus we met some travelling companions who we'd see for the next few days - some of them good, and some of them bad... Within 5 minutes of getting on the bus we'd heard the most noisy, self obsessed (she was Australian as well), rude person I've ever had the displeasure to meet. However, we also met a couple of Dutch girls (Mirjam and Marjo) with whom we spent
Laos from Thailand
This is the view from our guesthouse restaurant - we were in thailand, and the other side of the river is Laos, acorss the Mekong river. the next few days trying to avoid the Australians...
Anyway, we weren't in Chiang Kong for very long so i can't tell you much about it - it seemed to have fairly limitied potential for the tourist, but then there might be all sorts of hidden gems there. We basically had dinner, a few drinks and slept there before leaving early the next morning to get into Laos. The place we stayed was on one side of the river in Thailand(the Mekong); the Mekong itself is effectively no-mans land (I think!) and the other side of the river is Laos.
Overtime??? So, the following morning we made my first proper border crossing which involved paying the Thai border police 10Baht (about 15p) to check my visa looked ok; and the Laos border police 20B as it was a Sunday and they had to be paid overtime... At the border town, we then took our receipts to a hostel where we had been told that we would receive our boat tickets - in reality we were confronted by an old women, who proceeded to give us little bundles of money for the next two days of travelling down
Only another 2 days to go
Mirjam - one of the Dutch girls we travelled down the Mekong with the Mekong. It was a bit like someone's granny giving you pocket money and telling you you would be ok.
Games o' plenty So, before we headed onto the boats Chris and me practised our juggling skills (we'd bought some juggling balls in Chiang Mai market after a 6 week search for them) before we got onto our boats to head down the Mekong. Fortunately we got some floorspace, rather the hard wooden benches, and managed to salvage some cushions to make the journey pretty comfy, as it would take about 6 hours. Unfortunately we were sat beside the Australains - still we soon learned to drown them out, enjoy the scenary and play various card/mobile-phone/strange Korean based games to pass the time. Actually Chris was playing the Korean game - was pretty funny really - the girl he was playing let him win the first game, Chris thought he was a natural, and then promptly got destroyed in every other subsequent game he played. Very funny for everyone else on the boat.
It's all about setting expectations That night we stopped off in a town called Pakbeng - not as dodgy as the guide book
described but probably not somewhere I'd hurry back to either. We set off from the boats with the Dutch girls with a mission to find any accommodation where the australians weren't going to be. We found somewhere pretty nice, and felt pretty pleased with our choice (apart from the signs telling us they accepted no responsibility if we didn't lock our windows properly when we slept and we got robbed...) until we heard the noise from up the corridor of our australian friends. Still, in the end we didn't hear them at all that night, didn't get robbed and made it onto the boat the next morning with no problems.
The second day on the boat was much the same as the first, except we had hard wooden seats this time, so things were a bit less comfy, but the views were no less spectacular and the puzzle bobble playing no less enthusiastic...! We arrived into Luang prabang about 6pm to enjoy a pretty spectacualr sunset, before heading off to find some accommodation. This time we avoided the Aussies and managed to get ourselves some really nice accommodation just a little outside the town centre.
Luang Prabang Luang Prabang is one of the few (maybe only?) towns in laos which hasn't had it's historical building and temples destroyed by invaders over the last few centuries and it is absolutely full of temples. As such tourists have flocked here in the last 10 years and the community has become really wealthy without become overly tacky yet. Laos is an ex-French colony and the French definitely left their mark and still love to come to Luang Prabang - this may be in part due to the range of delicious cheap baguettes, bakeries and coffee shops on offer in town. The market stalls that are set up are a shoppers dream (even I thought they were pretty cool and I hate shopping) and I think anyone who comes here goes home with twice their weight in luggage. The great thing about it, is its not the same old tat you see in all the other markets I've been to - you could argue its more upmarket tat, but that seems a bit harsh...
Hill-tribes, trekking and waterfalls Chris and I spent a couple of days (including today) walking around the town, seeing the temples and the museum and
just enjoying the atmosphere of the town. Yesterday, we went on a one day trip, which allowed us to see a local Hmong village - this is the home of some hill-tribe people who still live in bamboo huts and have a more traditional way of living - but also appear to have electricity, running water and satellite tv! So, I'm not really sure how modern culture and their exisitng culture combine, but they definitely have more of a community culture than the UK and a much lower economic standard of living. Are they happier - I don't have a clue, but they seemed to laugh a lot when we were there...
After visiting the village we went on a 4 hour trek through some forests in Laos (seeing thousands of funnel-web spider webs on the way) until we got to the Kuong Si waterfall, which was by far the most impresive waterfall I've seen on my travels. We took some pictures here, went for a swim (it was pretty freezing as always, but thankfully my Canadian trip has trained me for that!) and then seen some caged bears and a tiger which are resident in the same park.
When I say caged, the cages are pretty massive, and the only reason they are there is becuase they were rescued from poachers when they were young, and unfortunately can't be released back into the wild as they have been raised by humans. The stats for the decline of the tiger population in the last 50 years are pretty scary, and it seems that in the next 50 years its unlikely that there will be any wild tigers left unless something drastic is done.
Moving On Anyway, we are off again tomorrow to Vang Viang (7 hours or so on the bus), where we'll hopefully get to see another side of Laos.
Keep the messages from home coming
oh - cheers for all Xmas/new years/birthday texts that people sent and sorry if I didn't reply to all of them - the phones weren't working too well after new years when I was in Thailand which may have been something to do with the bombings in bangkok, but I'm not sure?
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Steve
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Kuong Si Waterfall 2
Thank goodness you packed your mask and snorkle!