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Published: October 19th 2006
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Live from the Nam Xang
A great view of the mist shrouded karsts of Vang Viang. Arriving last night, we discovered
Vang Viang is reminiscent of a Mexican beach town, albeit no where near a beach or the ocean. It’s real laid back: no air service here preserves it from being over-touristed, reserving it for the diehard backpacker.
Vang Viang is a valley floor surrounded by karsts. These mountains with their crag-like tops are stunning. I’m hoping to upload a digi-pic or two, soon. I’ve never seen mountains like these - they are amazingly beautiful.
All the restaurants have these raised platforms with 2-3 steps up to them used for seating. You kick off your flip-flops, step up to cushions and pillows and a very low table. You sit cross-legged or with your legs extended under the table. Most of the restaurants play American sitcoms at night, like Friends and Family Guy, while tourists relax, eat, drink, talk. It’s very, very relaxing. The first night we stopped in on one and had a couple glassed of wine. Within 15 minutes we found ourselves nodding off. We were in bed, asleep by 9pm.
At 4am we woke to a busted pipe in our bathroom. It’s shooting at the bathroom door, running down the inside of
Cheese
Tubing is muy fun. it and onto our bedroom floor. The room is flooding. We scramble to get our stuff up onto the bed and run downstairs to wake the night boy to tell him what’s happening. As it turns out, he has no idea what to do, there is no water shut off in the room, and I only make it worse by trying to pressure the pipe to close and end up opening it further. The room is seriously flooding. The kid does, however, bring us a towel mop. A towel mop! Is he kidding?! We have to stop it before we can clean it up. Putting on my thinking cap, I tossed the towel mop over the burst pipe bit to redirect the flow onto the bathroom floor. All bathrooms have a tiled step-lip for an entry. It was only when the water shoot was hitting the closed door and running down the inside of it (or shooting directly out the bathroom doorway when the door was open) that it was going into the bedroom. With the gusher contained to the bathroom and all of our stuff on the bed, we headed out for an earlier than usual walk about.
Seeing these karst makes you want to get as close to them as possible. We headed out, fast walking as the burning of the trash seems to be a national pastime and it really lingers in the air making it difficult to breathe while running. It also throws an extra misty and clouded screen in front of a clear karst view. It’d be nice if they had some Santa Anas blow through here. I’d love to see these mountains with a big, blue sky backdrop.
We crossed the Nam Xong using a toll bridge. The locals exacting the toll had allowed us to cross without a toll as we explained, using lots of hand gestures, that we were only walking over the bridge, “no car, no moto.” After a ways, we thought we’d turn back when a local woman pointed us onward. So glad that she did… We ended up on a two hour hike through rice paddies at the base of one of the karst. Tre cool! We saw signs toward some caves but turned back when we realized they were further than we were planning to go that morning.
Lao people really seem extraordinarily friendly. I’m
Happy Happy Happy
With Buon, our guide extrodinaire all over with the “sabbai dee,” the Lao hello, and the Lao make direct eye contact and sabbai dee me right back. I’ve even got my hands on a couple Lao babies… they are the cutest. I told Barbara that I’m totally getting a Lao baby to bring home.
Fried rice noodles with chicken and veggies and a side of sliced cucumbers for breakfast was delicious. Barbara ate a full blown English-style breakfast complete with bacon and cooked mushrooms and tomatoes. You can tell from the menus that they cater a lot to Western tourists. We’re curious though, there was whole page of “happy funny” things to order, including “mushroom tea.”
We walked into a tour agency thinking we wanted to kayak, but he kayak group had already left for the day. Okay. So, we decide to do some trekking to caves and villages with some tubing involved. We had no idea how great the day would end up being. It was just us and the guide, Buon… a local Lao college trained to be a teacher, with good English and temporarily working as a guide… it’s good money until he needs to have a serious job, like teaching.
We were put into the back of a tuk-tuk then tuk-tuked around to collect our lunch: to a restaurant for baguettes, to another for fried rice, then to the market for some bananas. While the baguette is the staple sandwich bread, the Lao eat mostly sticky rice as their primary starch. The sticky rice is to the Lao as the tortilla/beans is to the Mexican.
Day stand outs:
Long boat crossing to Mong village
Tubing inside a cave
Learning some Lao from Buon
Lunch beef/veggie skewers
Tubing on the Nam Xang
Discovering M150 (redbull-like drink, good with vodka and lime)
Seeing a Lao roll a couple doobies at a river bar
Clean clothes after picking up laundry
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