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Published: June 23rd 2008
Another blog, another country, each one managing to top the last, I hope it continues this way. Today finds me in Laos (pronounded L-OW! for those of you not in the know) a country that sits between Thailand and Vietnam. I have not spoken to a single person who has been here who didn't like the place, it has that kind of appeal. Its essentially a quieter version of Thailand and easily the most laid back country I've ever witnessed, the people are geniune and friendly, the weather warm, the sights stunning and the atmosphere relaxed, its hard not to like it. It has been said that were Thailand, Vietnam and Laos tuk-tuk (or taxi) drivers, the Thai guy would take you to your place via a random shop, the Vietnam guy would nearly run you over for your custom, whilst you would probably have to wake up the Laos guy and then persuade him to take you somewhere. There are no big cities, heaving traffic, people harrasing you, there's even a severe lack of prostitutes and lady boys, which is actually weird as I feel less wanted, one minute you are sex on legs and being groped at every opportunity
and then you come to Laos and nobody wants you-most upsetting!Although in saying that they are all walking tripods anyway so i'd rather avoid them at all costs. Laos is also the greenest and prettiest country I have seen anywhere in the world, unmanaged vegatation covers 85% if the country, add into that the fact it is also the most bombed country in the world per capita and you begin to realise its an intruiging place.
So when last we spoke I had just left (sniff) my two travelling companions at Bangkok airport, them heading to Sydney and me to Laos. They got a nice Quantas (not sure who it was) style flight with good seats, free drink, in flight movies etc, I did not. I found out after I took the flight that apparently my choice of airline was on the FCO's list of dangerous transportation organisations up until last year, oh fricking super! Approaching the plane I realised it looked like it had been made by a ten year olds mecchano set, it was tiny, one of those twin propeller 15 seater kind of jobs, in fact I counted 10 people on the flight in total, always
Showing the rough scale of the jars
Please also note the rather fetching pink umbrella I am sporting..a good sign. Nevermind I thought, I'm sure safety standards on all planes around the world are pretty high these days, I'll just find my lifejacket...its here somwehere I'm sure..oh hang on, what's this notice on the drinks tray.. "in the event of a collision over water, please use the seat cushion as a floatation device". Words failed me, should we crash over water I was not to panic as I could use my trusty old cushion to keep me bloody well alive. Let me also add that Laos is landlocked so the chance of a collision over water was slim anyway!I looked around in a mild panic, some people had already nodded off before we even took off, if they are calm it must be OK then surely, oh look here comes the emergency instructions..tighten seatbelt like such, your exit is here, then he sat down. Soooo, no oxygen, lifejackets, stupid useless whistle that only a dog 2 feet away could hear, not even the pitiful light. I have jumped out of a plane from thousands of feet up with only a parachute attached and felt safer than I did now, in fact I'd have felt safer riding a
paper aeroplane through a rainstorm. Reminded me of a Woody Allen quote "I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens", that was me. In the end the flight was mercifuly calm and only slight turbulance and in 1hour 10minutes we were touching down at Vientiane airport, well I say airport I mean driveway, well I say driveway I mean garage. It was about the size of the plane. Even immigration was semi eventful, two Iraqi (rough guess) guys were also on the flight-yeah that filled me with confidence too, I was checking out their shoes ans everything-and in front of me in they line they got pretty much interrogated with about 50 questions, where are you going, where are you staying, whats the name of the guesthouse owner, and other such stupid random questions and were eventually led away, I never saw them again. I was terrified as I was next up, I'm way too pretty to go to jail you may have noticed. The woman asked where I was from, UK I said, and are you here as a tourist? Yes I am, OK through you go. Happy days. Another airport
Typical tubing scene
Some laze about at the bar, some swing, all good fun. You can see some of the other bars further down too survived with my firm yet nubile bottom intact and virginial.
Vang Vieng I spent a brief night in the capital and then the next morning made my way North to Vang Vieng, the home of tubing. The place itself was tiny, the scenery was stunning, the cliffs and mountains backed the town serenly and the mighty Mekong River flowed unceasingly past them, although we actually tubed on the Nam Song river. The town was geared towards the tubing, which basically involved hiring a rubber tube for 2quid, being driven a fair way up the river, throw said ring in the river, jump on it, and float downstream. Along the way you encounter around 15 bars on the riverbanks, a man at the bar throws you a bamboo stick which you grab, you pull yourself in and proceed to the bar. You then get very drunk on the ever cheap (little over 50p for a large bottle) Beer Lao, or the Koh Phangnan style buckets and even an occasional free shot of amazingly strong local made whisky. At each bar there is a high rope swing or slide etc(the best swing is above on the video,you can practically
hear me thinking Weeeee!), and its all backed by Bob Marley or Stevie Wonder blaring over the speakers. Some bars had volleyball games on the go, others a 5 a side pitch. You basically spend several hours floating downstream from bar to bar, getting ever more drunk and doing evermore stupid things off the swings. This would never be allowed in the UK, but there is no health and safety here, the most I saw was one sign that said something along the lines of 'We hold no responsibilty for injury on the swing, but one jump equals one free banana', well if you're gonna offer me a banana I'm straight up there! Throw in a pineapple and I'll land on a bed of razor blades for you.
It was all a bit surreal too, at one point I was floating down the river with a beer in hand enjoying the scenery and looking out for the next bar when i realised back home it was a Monday morning and I should be getting up for work about now..sorry did that sound like I was rubbing it in? Cough. Everyone hits the same bars and you encounter people all
along the way and form large groups, it was a brilliant day, so good in fact that I did it twice in 3 days-one in between for hangover and rehydration purproses you understand, see I can be sensible. Eventually, usually after dark, you drag yourself out of the river, go home to shower and then resume the drinking in the bars, it was a tough day all in all.. The place was so small that there were only about 4 bars in total, and Laos being the place it is they all closed at 12!! You would literally just get to the drunken 'lets cross dress stage' (for me anyway..) and then the bars would close and you'd have to go home. Well usually, we always found some mad antics to amuse ourselves but there was no more beer to be had! The other major talking point in the town was Friends, every cafe in the town showed Friends on constant loop, you would go and eat food on couch type seats, then lay back and watch countless episodes without realising, our record one night was 4 hours straight. Vang Vieng was either drinking or Friends, not a bad mix
all in all. I hung out with the Kiwi's from Koh Tao mostly but also met a couple of cool Yanks who I would later rendevouz with, so more on them later. Oh and I also got a haircut here, and the guy butchered me, I now look 15, I would have felt safer in the chair of Sweeney Todd but you live and learn! Oh and I am also now fully aquainted with Israeli folk and techno music after swapping my ipod with an Israeli guy for a 3 hour bus ride, just call me Rabbi Clements. Overall, Vang Vieng was a great place and I wasted 5 days there and could have easily stayed longer.
Luang Prabang And so I headed further North into Luang Prabang, a Unesco-protected World Heritage city, the result is a beautiful location, stunning wats/temples all around, orange robed monks, French influenced houses and Mekong floating mightily by with limestone cliffs framing the city, it was easy to stay here longer than I planned. I met up with the New York boys Adam and Anthony here and also a random Aussie named James and the four of us spent most of
the days and nights together so it was a cool little time. We did lots of the touristy sightseeing stuff which included some amazing little temples, some of which were actually inside rock faces and caves, I had never seen the like of them before. To get to them also meant a 2 hour boat ride up the Mekong which afforded us some great views and scenery. The cave itself was surreal, they unlocked a gate and you entered it with a tiny crappy Laos flashlight each and delved down deep into these random seemingly unconnected tunnels and caves. The main Buddha and temple bit was at the front but we persuaded our guide to take us down deeper to explore, which we did for about 30minutes. At this point I would also like to make it clear that our guide was a 10 year old boy, so we felt totally safe there.. We became completely lost and disorientated very quickly whilst trying to find bats and not suffocate with the heat, but luckily the kid managed to find our way out and we survived to tell the tale. The children are the biggest entrepreneurs in Laos and will haggle
with you for everything, the kid guide refused to leave without a decent tip for example. To get back across the river we needed to hire a boat, which meant negotiating with an 8 year old kid and 12 year old girl, who I can tell you drove a hard bargain and didn't give an inch. I imagined they would do the deal then call a parent to take us across, but no they jumped in and sailed us across in a barely there boat. It was like a scene out of the kids Bugsy Malone movie. I expected them to bust out a rendition of "We could've been anything that we wanted to be" any second. Am now singing that song in my head, tragic.
Further adventures were had at a stunning multi-tiered waterfall, which fell down over limestone formations and ended up in lovely turqoise-green pools at the bottom. You could climb up either side of the waterfall and even cross it in the middle which was a really cool experience. Me and the boys kind of free styled it and made our own route, which in hindsight now was completely stupid and fairly deadly, but what
it resulted in was us swimming in areas nobody ever goes (mainly as it was too dangerous) leaping off trees and rocks into the water, sitting on the lip of the flow and clambering up, over and around things to reach places when a slip either side could have been fatal. It was so good we did it 2 days in a row! We also had many a night sampling the bars of Luang Prabang, which were actually very Western and trendy, but of course still closed at 12, the only nightclub here closed at 12:30. But they had an ace up their sleeve, a bowling alley, which for some random and bizarre reason was allowed to stay open till 3am. Thus it was that many a night found us in the surreal situation of drinking and bowling-barefoot may I add, no stupid shoes over here-in a bowling alley until the small hours. It also appears I bowl better drunk than sober as I got my highest ever score, I may try the same logic to teaching.
Phonsovan Next up was Phonsovan, whilst the Yanks headed South so sadly it was back to being on my lonesome again, although
I did meet a few cool people on a day trip. This place was even more remote and quiet than the rest of Laos, a fact brought home to me by the guesthouse owner proudly celebrating the fact they had their first ever ATM installed the day before I arrived, oh and they only had proper electricity from 2003. Most people come here purely for the Plain of Jars, which in essence is a Stonehendge kind of place, there are thousands of jars spread out across the area and nobody knows what they are for or how they got there, even the dating is a guess but they put it at around 2000years ago. We could only visit three of the sites due to all the bombs(more on that later) but it was quite interesting and a bit bizarre, their latest guess is that they are burial urns as they found bones in one. In all I was glad I saw it but I found it a similar experience to Ayers Rock, you go a long way to see it, you admire it for a while, kinda shuffle your feet, view it from a different angle, look up and down,
breath out deeply, purse your lips, stick around longer than is needed because you feel like you have to after going all that way, and then you waddle off having ticked that box.
I found much more interesting the place itself, because as I said Laos, and in particular this eastern and North Eastern area, is the most bombed country per capita of any in the world. The logic was that the US wanted to keep the Vietnamese out, but it resulted in them running 580,344 missions between 1964 and 1973, dropping over 2 million tons of bombs and costing $2.2million a day. Re-read those astronomical figures and it makes the head spin. To make things worse, around 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos failed to detonate, so the country is filled with Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). The impact of this is still felt today with about 30 people a year dying and about 60 being injured by stumbling across bombs etc. It even affects the economy of the country as they can't use most of the land up here because it is covered in UXO, the British Mines Advisory Group are clearing them up but at current rate
it would take more than 100years to make it all safe!It makes for semi exciting times as you are really tempted to wander off the beaten path or just throw a rock in a random direction to see if anything blows up, well I did anyway. The evidence of war is then all around and you can't escape it, the Laos people re-use the old bomb casings for everything, the school bell is an old bomb which they whack with a stick, people make fences by stringing together several large bombs, at one stage I was sat on a bench chilling outside my guesthouse, then looked down and realised I was sat on an old bomb, most surreal. It was a real eye opener to the extent and impact of war too which I imagine will increase once I get to Vietnam.
Vientiane Finally it was back to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, which is easily the most subdued and quiet capital I have ever seen. I saw most of the sights in one day and am currently sat here awaiting my Vietnam visa which takes 2-3 days, upon which I then have the joy of a 22hour bus
ride to Hanoi, I could have flown but the bus was 8 quid and the flight 60, plus I imagined it would be a similar plane ride to the last one, no thank you my son. I suppose I should have done the blog after that journey because lord knows what randomness and border patrol type fun will happen there but I am bored and this wastes time. In other news my travelling jinx has struck again, in a few weeks I was due to head to the Philippines and yesterday I read that a typhoon went through there and 700 are dead, I will assess closer to the time on that one but I don't want to miss out like I did Burma. I would just like to suggest that when I am a few weeks away from coming home you all leave the UK for a while-just in case.. Also, Chris's arrival is now just 6 weeks away and we are both giddily excited about that, honestly its sickening sometimes, look out Canada though. Oh and despite Laos sweltering in above 30degree here right now I have managed to pick up a cold and tonsilitis again, deepest of
joys. Anyways thats me done people, next stop Vietnam, I wonder how many movie quotes, cheesy sayings and obvious gags I can fit into the next blog, oh the possibilties! Blog you when I can, same blog time, same blog channel..missing and loving you all my people.
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Sarah-Jane
non-member comment
Is a pink umbrella essential kit for the modern traveller? Thought you were meant to be roughing it?! Manly colour too! xxxx