the good, the bad and the ugly... in Laos

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Laos

So far we've sat by the Mekong with a Beer Lao in Luang Prabang, taken a bus ride to a giant waterfall and swum in the cool turquoise waters, watched a tiger pace around its cage while black bears siesta'd nearby, walked across rice fields to limestone caves filled with ancient looking Lao graffiti, rope-swung, card-played, eaten fresh spring rolls and walked up the mainstreet of Vang Vieng trying to find dinner that didn't come with obnoxiously loud repeats of Friends, Simpsons or the Family Guy... perused menus of happy pizzas, garlic bread, funny lassis and "O tea".

In Luang Prabang the sun burned its way across the sky and shadows lengthened over the concrete chess table outside the guesthouse, over palm trees and the remains of a swimming pool filled with rusting 40 gallon drums and corrugated iron. We arrived after a killer bus trip from Kunming in Yunnan provice of China, add wheel troubles to the advertised 27 hour trip and we pulled up at 2am, to see a town that had well and truly gone to sleep for the night. The sleeper bus... 3 rows of narrow beds, end to end. I naturally ended up with a bed over a wheel arch which meant it had a very nasty angle as well as an extra pole halfway down to prevent you from getting close to comfortable. The trip was a blur of sleep deprivation, scattered conversations in Chinese ("yes I'm very tall but no I don't play basketball, my parents do though", dodgy Chinese roadhouse food and dehydration. Not to mention 5 hours in the eminently forgettable town of Mengla where we sat and cooked in the bus while mechanics stood around smoking and waiting for some missing part.

So eventually we made it. At 2 am I managed my first sentence in Lao "heu-an pak yoo sai" = where is a guesthouse, and was answered in reasonable English that they were all closed for the night but I should try the town centre. We hopped on our first tuktuk in Laos and headed for town. Very dark. We knocked and woke up one guesthouse attendant to find out they were full, but luckily next door had some space. Sabaidee! No worries! See you in the morning.

Our time in Luang Prabang was all about adjusting to the pace of Laos, after China's whirlwind of bodgy conversations in Putonghua, manic markets and busy city streets. Luang Prabang is a tourist bubble, but at least the locals look relaxed. On our second day we did manage to drag ourselves off the plastic chairs lining the Mekong's restaurant strip and take a ride out to Keung Si waterfall, where we watched a tiger pace around its cage, and black bears sleep on top of a jungle-gym.

Then we thought we'd drop in and check out Vang Vieng... this is where traveller's disenchantment really set in. Vang Vieng is located in a stunning river valley lined with rice fields between jagged limestone cliffs and tree-covered hills. It has a main street lined with English-menu bars and restaurants, many of which blaring out continuous episodes of Friends to the wasted-looking patrons hiding in the shade. Not a great first impression. We stayed in a little guesthouse recommended by someone in Luang Prabang, which had a bar out the back and was a little way away from the Friends epicentre.

The countryside is beautiful, all dusky limestone cliffs which blur into the haze at twilight and endless placid cows munching yellowing rice straw and kids happily naked from the river and bright orange monk robes strolling up the street with umbrellas to keep off the heat and fishermen in long narrow boats casting their nets wide into the Mekong, and toothless old ladies smiling in the street, and concrete chess tables outside the guesthouses...

We took a motorbike taxi out to one of the larger caves and spent a while exploring its airless interior. One cave stretched about 400m into the hill, huge caverns of dripping limestone which are sadly not as spectacular or well-cared for as those around Margaret River. But the lagoon was fantastic, watching Zippy - our new Israeli/American friend, jump repeatedly off a rope swing or tree trunk while her husband tried to record it on video was fantastic. We shared a tractor-taxi back to the toll bridge with them, talking about klezmer and Ian Thorpe.

On our last night I worked behind the bar which was run by the modern day 3 amigos, Brett (Aussie) Eligh (NZ) Geeda (London): endearingly obnoxious beer and whiskey pouring backpacker-seducing blokes who took to calling Tegan "kitten" and me "lanky" which took me right back to high school days. When they were too drunk to look after their customers their Lao apprentice Lair and I were there, dj-ing and keeping the cash box in order.

Vang Vieng may be some people's idea of a dream destination. Don't let me hold you back. Maybe I was just unlucky in only meeting people who wanted to get high and talk about sport or who went back to who's hotel room last night...

I became filled with cynicism at the contrast between the hedonism of the tourist and the Lao people who don't seem to give a rat's arse how the visitors behave at all. I found myself wishing for the end of oil so that only people who had persistence and patience would travel, with respect for geography and cultural distance. It's also possible that I am a snob who can't relax.

Anyway we finally left, and took a fairly grim 4 hour local bus down to Vientiane. There was negative leg room, no headrest (so no sleep) and plenty of motion-sick passengers. The bus got fuller and fuller, and the stops more frequent until suddently there were no gaps between the houses anymore, and we were at a bus station filled with touts. Feeling ambushed by tuktuk drivers we dodged and escaped to the street, found our own and headed off into town. Our tuktuk deposited us vaguely near where we wanted to go. By near I mean a half-hour walk. We trudged in the midday head along the Mekong which is lined with restaurants cranking out Thai pop songs. THe Mekong was heartlessly flat and shiny in the sun.

There is some kind of end of year festival on, and it took a few tries to find a place to stay. We've ended up with a cheapish room just outside the town centre, our host is a cheerful old man with a wicked combover - in the mornings it flops rakishly to one side, peeling away from his head.

We satisfied our bus-hunger with vegetarian buffet and headed off to do our democratic duty at the Aussie Embassy. Seemed like they were doing a roaring trade in democracy that day, the visitor's book was filled with entries declaring the purpose of voting. It was relatively simple, and I got a huge rush from seeing Scott's name there on the pristine paper...

We collected our Cambodian visa application forms and then headed back to explore the city centre. Vientiane has only a little over 200,000 people. It has great food, as well as the ubiquitous "tourist fare" served up through Laos so far.

Today we achieved visa liftoff and also visited a magnificent old temple called Wat Siskawet, which is filled with Buddha statues of all varieties, some of them severely damaged by the various wars which have used Laos as a battlefield. Buddhas with no heads, or completely missing their upper body - hands curled peacefully on knees but nothing from the elbow up: gathered up to protect them from further injury. The inner sanctuary is filled with ancient murals, peeling slowly away as salt creeps up between the bricks and plaster. A friendly man gave me incense and candles to make an offering. The garden is filled with funeral stupas, where rich families pay to encase their loved one's ashes on sacred grounds.

We went separate ways at lunch, Tegan shopping for presents and I to sit by the Mekong. I walked down the riverside past the restaurants platformed above the wet-season high water line, where bunches of high school kids in immaculate white uniforms gathered for lunch. This restaurant playing "how deep is your love" while another plays what sounds like Thai hiphop. I found my way to a fairly swanky looking restaurant with lovely tree-shaded tables and drank iced coffee and watched a lone fisherman walk the sandbank in the middle of the Mekong. Eventually I was joined by a visiting dignitary from some small French islands near Madagascar (Comoros?), in town for a conference between French-speaking countries I think. He asked me if I am a writer, and proceeded to tell me how lonely he gets travelling by himself. I assured him that I had a friend in town and wasn't suffering.

And the bulk of my evening has been spent trying to rid my camera of a nasty virus picked up in some promiscuous internet cafe further north, and it's taking ages.

If all goes well there will be pictures added soon.

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Photos

view from Phou Se
Phou Se, the sacred hill of Luang Prabang, hosts a small temple, a golden stupa, monks' quarters, a footprint of the Buddha and countless shrines.