Advertisement
Published: July 20th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Apologies for the dodgy pun in the title, but sitting in a hotel room in Luang Prabang while the rain comes down for the third consecutive day I have to admit to being somewhat lacking in the creativity department.
We have now been in Laos for around 2 weeks or so, and frankly I am struggling for enough material to write anything of interest. We began in Pakse, a town about two hours from the Cambodian border. Thankfully, following our 12 day run of one street dust bowls in northern Cambodia, Pakse is a bit bigger. We booked accomodation for 4 nights and decided to slow our pace a little, partly through necessity - to get clothes washed for example - and partly due to everyone telling us how slow the pace was in Laos. We took a day trip to the Bolevan plateau to visit coffee and tea plantations, local villages and numerous waterfalls, but otherwise we didn't do a great deal. Pakse itself has little to offer beyond the now customary faded colonial delights and numerous temples. Oh, and a very good and incredibly cheap Indian restaurant where we ate like royalty for about 3$ each!
We
then took a local bus north to Savannakhet, a sleepy town on the Thai border. We read somewhere that since the border opened Savannakhet has boomed. If that is the case I would dread to think how quiet it was beforehand. Life in Laos is indeed a lot slower than elsewhere, there is no sense of urgency for anything, nobody moves at more than a leisurely stroll and to be honest that suits us just fine at the moment. Unfortunately though, it doesn't make for interesting blogs! So, lets move north to Vientianne. After two nights in sleepy, rainy Savannakhet we took a 10 hour bus journey to the capital. The highlight of the journey, aside from the endless miles of lush green countryside, rolling hills and blue sky, was watching the driver strap a motorbike to the roof. It was that kind of bus ride.
Vientianne has a population of around 600,000, around 10% of the total. We spent three days walking the streets, pointing at traffic like members of an amazonian tribe (the previous 5 places we stopped were really really quiet obviously), marvelling at the choice of restaurants (see previous comment) and generally enjoying life in
something approximating a city again. I hate to admit it, but we even paid a small fortune to have a cappucino. Actually, in comparative terms, everything in Laos costs a small fortune. In Vietnam and Cambodia bus journeys worked out roughly at 1$ per hour. So an 8 hour trip would cost about 8$. In Laos, it is double. Food and accomodation are also a bit more pricey than elsewhere, and Tuk Tuk drivers won't start their engines for less than 3$ no matter how far you want to go. There is a double economy in Laos, with officially recognised prices for locals and tourists. Essentially I have nothing against such a system; Laos is incredibly poor and tourists by comparison are rich. I don't mind paying a bit more than the locals every now and then provided the money is used wisely. I do object to paying 10 times the price though, and although it sounds like I am being an inconsiderate, whingeing Falaang (foreigner in the local lingo), I don't expect to pay European prices for Asian goods and services. Rant over, sorry!
In Vientianne we visited some more temples (they begin to blur into one after
3 months), wandered along the riverfront, then finally booked some bus tickets (9$ each for a 3 hour ride, that is half our daily budget gone already!) and travelled east to Vang Vieng. I have to be careful not to rant again here, so please bear with me.
Vang Vieng is one of the most visited tourist sites in Laos. We searched long and hard for the towering happy buddha statue, or the 500 year old temple, or even the local tribal villages, but found nothing. Apparently, the reason tourists come here is not cultural. Well, not in the traditional sense of experiencing the culture of the country you are in. Seemingly the idea in Vang Vieng is to take the worst elements of Friday night culture in the west - binge drinking, loud beats, skimpy attire and general debauchery - and transport it to an otherwise tranquil riverside town, while floating down the river in the innertube of a truck tyre. Vang Vieng is the home of the craze known as tubing. Basically, you jump in a jeep in the morning, drive about 6km out of town to the start point, then get in the water. The tubes are
big enough for an adult to sit/lounge in and let the river do the rest. Along the way back to Vang Vieng are countless bars, all keen to attract the passing trade. They throw out a rope, haul you in, and charge a small fortune for a few drinks. Then it's back in the water to go to the next bar.
We opted to go kayaking and caving instead, though we did stop for a drink on the way back in the kayaks, and we did explore a cave from the relative discomfort of a tube. As it is the rainy season the hordes of tourists were missing from the bars, but it was still a sight to see. In summer I imagine it to be either an amazing spectacle or the saddest indictment of the failings of western society known to man - depends on your point of view. It may be obvious, but just so you know, I'm going with the latter.
If that wasn't enough, the rainy season has now definitely arrived. It rained most of the time we were in Vang Vieng, and as I write from the comfort of an unusually posh hotel
in Luang Prabang it is raining again. In fact, it is midday and it has been raining for about 13 hours on and off. Not that I'm complaining of course, 13 hours of rain in a day is still one of the driest days on record in parts of the UK, but still....Also, the rain has stopped us doing some of what we had planned, as various places are flooded at the moment. We wanted to go trekking in the north - too wet. We wanted to visit Tha Khek and Konglor Cave but were warned the town was under water also, so frankly the days can't pass quickly enough until August when we are heading south and hopefully to sunshine!
Anyway, after the rain of Vang Vieng we took another 8 hour bus over a remarkably scenic mountaintop road to Luang Prabang. So far this is by far my favourite place in Laos. It is a small riverside town in the bottom of a valley, with verdant hills rising all around, genuinely charming colonial buildings lining the streets and a general air of relaxation about the place. It probably helps that we booked a posh hotel to celebrate
our anniversary, although given the weather at present the swimming pool is a tad redundant.
So for the last four days we have lazed around when the sun has shone, wandered the streets, and on the day of our anniversay we splashed out on a massage. Now, having never had a massage before, I wasn't sure what to expect. The cliche suggests a tall Scandinavian or Eastern European blonde, all soft carresses and harsh vowels. The reality was a 5ft bloke whose name I didn't catch with the hands of a carpenter. Traditional Lao Massage is not easy to define, it is more of a combat sport than anything, where your muscles, joints and bones are vigourously attacked by a sinewy human lobster. There is no gentle rubbing, carressing or effleurage, oh no, save that for the fancy European healthclubs. In Lao the traditional practice is to take any lump of flesh or bone between the fingers and thumb and squeeze hard, before moving the hand an inch or two and repeating the process. That is the warm up. Then comes the kneeling on your legs, the stretching of limbs as though on a torture rack, the elbows in
the thigh and the punches to the lower back. An interesting experience I admit, but not one I shall be repeating whilst I can still feed myself. Afterwards we went for a drink to unwind. It is hard to relax when you are fighting the instinct to punch someone.
Anyway, not much to report other than that. It is still raining, but tomorrow we are heading south (ish) to Phonsavon, where hopefully we can get back to enjoying and exploring this undoubtedly wonderful, if a touch expensive and rainy, country!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.042s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0187s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb