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Published: January 9th 2007
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sarah -
Well, to start from where we left off, we had a good few days in Nong Khai, then hop skipped it over the Mekong river to Vientiane in Laos. We were told to look for the local bus #14 from the border, being the cheapest way to get into Vientiane. So, we walked out past the tuk tuks and mini vans confidently to come across... nothing. But after a while a bus drove past us on the other side of the road and virtually everyone in the bus (all locals) waved their arms out the windows and called "vientiane?!". Alas, it wasn't bus #14 but it was definitely the ticket. A monk sat in the back seat (apparently its reserved for them) and we had to climb over boxes of chips to get to our seat.
Vientiane was...well... the BEST LUNCH IN THE WORLD EVER HAD BY SARAH AND XAVIER! We sought out the Laos specialty, a baguette stuffed with Laos style pate, and were overwhelmed to the point of falling over almost on the first bite. Just imagine, a fresh baguette with some tasty pate, pork bits, pickles, spicy papaya, coriander, tomato and mayo and lettuce.
monks
These monks danced down the steps to the edge of the river and flung themselves up on the wall to sit down. Very calmly acrobatic! I don't normally like sandwiches but this one was out of this world.
Vientiane was a really lovely city - long boulevards of leafy trees, not much tinny cheap stuff like Nong Khai, and lots of crumbly wats and old french buildings. Tasted out first beer Lao (beer produced by the government) and wandered beside the river and along the streets for most of our time. We sat down to have a coffee somewhere and only realised afterwards that we didn't have any Kip, the Laos currency, so walked sheepishly up to the young Lao boys at the bar and they kindly spent about 10 mins helping us work out the amount in USD and graciously accepted it instead! Only in Laos. People are really lovely here and are never get nasty or pissed off. Everything is done in good humour and in a relaxed way - stressed people are nowhere to be seen (apart from in some American travellers we've seen).
Vang Vieng, well what can I say. Xavier threw up in a cave. 500m in. More soon. Vang Vieng has beautiful scenery and many activities to make the most of this (tubing, kayaking, trekking, biking), and
also many beautifully situated bars with mountain backdrops (and by the way, special mushroom shakes, happy shakes, the list goes on, which we decided not to try) but, regretably, hordes of boof head backpackers there for solely these purposes. We went on a day trip with a guide and one of our stops was at a rope swing out over the river right beside a bar. People 'tube' down this river (float in a big rubber tyre) and stop off at bars along the way, drink beer lao and soak in the surroundings. Unfortunately, most of the people at the bar with the rope swing were standing round in their togs / bikinis (totally innapropriate normally in Laos), beers in hand, doing that little head and knee dance you see some people do to house music (which, incidently was on the stereo. Loud.) Xavier quite insightfully pointed out that it seemed just like spring break.
Anyway, we had fun on our day trip. The others in our group turned out to be an American about our age who spoke fluent Lao (it was his 'thing' apparently, and was so impressive, (we first saw him chatting away to the locals)
and 3 other people who had grown up in America but were from Laos. They made very good tour group members, introducing us to a kind of sweet turnip that we all peeled and ate during our tuk tuk ride to the start of our trip and providing in extra detail in translation what our guide was saying. We visited a few caves, one in which Xavier (who had been feeling quesy all morning) threw up in, pity that it was the longest deepest cave and pity that we were almost at the very furthest reaches of it when the moment arrived, and pity the poor souls who visited that cave after us. Another cave we visited was a very low cave and had a large stream running through it, so we all climbed on tubes and took hold of a rope and floated our way into this cave, head torches and all! Our guide even sang us a few haunting lines of a Laos song as we went, very beautiful.
Our guide must have been the nicest guy on earth, a Laotian named 'John'. He fussed around xav and got the lunch place we stopped at to make
him a hot lime drink (good for the head) and then brought him a blanket to sleep under while we stopped at the rope swing bar. He also bought me a fanta - which looking back on it makes me sad as I later learnt that he made US $3 a day.
We managed (just) to find a couple of places to eat that didn't have television sets playing American tv programmes on them, and one night lucked it enough to get Bob Dylans Modern Times on the stereo.
Well, we're in Luang Prabang at the moment, and we've totally fallen for this city. Its not really a city, its a town full of old traditional and french colonial houses/ mansions, monks in orange robes, not many shops, just markets, coconut palm trees and chic little french cafes that Xavier feels right at home at. We've decided to stay put for a while (really its just me wanting to pretend I live here...) and funnily enough, our visas turned out to be 30 day ones instead of the 15 days that we were expecting so we are in no rush whatsoever.
I'm booked in to do a
day-long cooking school tomorrow, learning to cook proper Lao food (I have to do an entry just on food, we are going nuts over it), and then the day after that we're off to trek up the mountains and stay overnight in a hill tribe village.
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alex
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p.s.
Nice shades Xav......bahaha!