Laos - in search of the trek

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If anything will teach me to do a bit of research before going somewhere, Laos would be it.

Getting to Laos

Before coming to South East Asia, I had images of myself lying in a hammock strung up on a boat slowly flowing down the Mekong, with nothing to do but enjoy the passing scenery and a good book, maybe occassionally slapping the odd mosquito away - so when we saw a tour that said: Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang, by slow boat on the Mekong, it didn't take me long to whip out my money belt and hand over the cash. Oh if only I'd known...

It all started pretty well, with a minivan to Chiang Khong, a little village on the Thai side of the Mekong river. We were installed in a guest house with a view over the river offering us our first glimpse into Laos. Since it was only for one night, I figured I could put up with plastic pillows within the pillow cases, and the plastic sheet deftly collecting my night sweat in my fan room. The evening was highlighted by a visit at dinner by a giant moth. I'm pretty sure it had no idea of its own size, trying as it was, to penetrate the fluorescent neon light-bar like any other moth, completely unaware of the screaming, scattering girls in the dining area. When it finally settled down, one of the staff picked it up and some of us took turns holding it. It's amazing how strongly their feet grip on to your fingers. And if I had doubts about them in the butterfly farm in Chiang Mai, all hope that butterflies are not bugs like any other, went out the window at closer inspection of this creature. Nothing cute about them anymore, that's for sure!

Getting into Laos, was very funny. We had paid a small fee to get the guest house to help us with the formalities and thus managed to skip most of the queues - although, as they loaded us into a small boat, to cross the river and enter Laos, without my passport on me, was a little unsettling. On the other side, the border entrance, was basically just a steep street leading from the river up into a village, which seemed a mirror image of Chiang Khong, the village on the Thai side of the Mekong. We did get our passports back, complete with little stamps announcing we'd left Thailand and now entered Laos. We then picked up our backpacks from the river bank, and walked up the street, past the 'border control' in a little booth on the side of the road, while locals walked up and down the street without so much as a glance at the border police.

Getting to the actual slow boat after this, however, was a bit of a waiting game. It's quite funny how they seem to think that it's better to fill the waiting time with little exercises like: pick up your backpack, get it loaded into a bus/tuk tuk/van, wait for everyone to shuffle in, drive 500 meters, unload everyone, put on your backpack again, walk 50 meters, put down your backpack, sit around and wait for a while (for what I'm never really sure), count the group, give a few instructions, and then make everyone pick up their backpacks again, and repeat the procedure. (I have now learned to ask, why I have to put down my backpack when I arrive at a hotel - because frankly it's harder work putting it down and then having to heave it back on, than just carrying it with you to inspect the room, or go straight to the assigned room, rather than sit around with a bitter cup of green tea, before going to the room...).
We did however, finally manage to get onto the slow boat, which to my disappointment did not have any hammocks - it did, however, have two rows of very hard and very high benches down either side, which we were somehow supposed to balance our 'little tuches' on with our legs dangling in free air, with nothing but the seat ahead of us to rest our feet on. I feel very sorry for the people who had to share a bench, because luckily I got a bench to myself, so was able to turn sideways and take turns resting one buttock and then the other on the seat with my legs up and my back leaned against the side of the boat. Irt wasn't exactly comfortable, but at least bearable.
The two days stretching ahead of me would have been very long, had it not been for the Beer Laos that we soon started pouring down - they were very cold and very refreshing, and numbed the pain in my butt to a dull ache :-) Now I could finally do what I was supposed to on this boat: plug in my iPod and enjoy the ride. And it really was a nice ride. The scenery was stunning with steep hills rising straight out of the wide, brown river, and our captain deftly steering the boat from the left to the right bank and back again, following the flow of the water and avoiding sandbanks and big rocks jutting out of the water here and there. We stopped a few times, loading and unloading locals and goods - always with quite the crowd gathered on the river bank, either just staring at the 'falangs', or trying to sell us fruit or scarves or whatever else they could think of.

At nightfall, (after a heavy shower which made our captain undress to get out and tie up the boat,) we got off at a small village in the middle of nowhere, where we found a guest house and managed to have a shower and some dinner before bed time was marked by the turning off of the local generator supplying the village with electricity only in the hours between 6 and 10pm. They were all very nice, and the village was an interesting little walk, but you could definitely tell, that the majority of people were now counting on the daily arrival of tourists, and were trying to lure us into their restaurants, rather than the neighbours, even though they all had very similar menus.

Luang Prabang

The next morning, we got onto a different, smaller boat which meant that everyone now had to share seats, but luckily the seats were lower so we could actually reach the floor on this one. The day passed much as the one before, with a slightly changing landscape outside. The hills were slightly further away from the river and were somehow more distinct and different. In the late afternoon, we finally spotted some temples on the hills ahead, and then the houses of Luang Prabang came into view. Apart from the temples and a set of wide stone steps leading down to the river, it didn't look like much more than the other villages we had passed along the way. But once we'd walked up from the river, we were surrounded by tuk tuk drivers and hotel owners trying to beckon us with them.

Gerard and I had made friends with two English couples and decided to share a tuk tuk with them to look at a couple of hotels. We found a very nice and fairly cheap one and then settled into slow city life for a few days. Among the things to do in Luang Prabang, we spent a lot of time in the vast night market. We also took a trip up Phu Si, which is a hill in the middle of town with a number of temples dotted around - and this is the spot the catch the sunset. Slap on the mosquito spray, bring a drink of water (you need that after climbing all the steps up), and charge your camera as you'll want to take loads of pictures of the town spreading out below you (only up here do you realise how big it is, whereas down in the town center it all seems so small and close together) and of the sunset, of course :-)

We also visited the local waterfalls, which was a nice drive through the hills, then by a little boat over the river and all of a sudden you were next to a wide stretch of white water, which was running down the mountain. So different from the other waterfalls I've seen along the way. This didn't come crashing down from far up, but rather was a lot of water running over rounded steps. The water was nice and cool, and very pretty to look at, as the bottom seemed to be white somehow, which made the water look very clean. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, as I'm finding it hard to describe this place with words. We were also offered an elephant ride here, but I chose just to look at them. Some of the elephants didn't look very old. But I suppose it's an easy life hauling round a few tourists rather than clearing forests or whatever else they use elephants for here.

We unfortunately realised that one of the trekking options we were very interested in, was not near Luang Prabang, as we had thought, but rather back near the Thai border, 11 hours drive away... So we spent a few days, relaxing and looking around town, trying to figure out where else we could do a nice trek. But none of the tour guides sounded very enthusiastic about their trips, or else, they seemed to consist mostly of driving a lot, and then they cost a fortune. So when we started feeling like we were wasting time, we booked a minivan to Vang Vieng, which is a must-see location for all backpackers by all accounts.

On our last morning in town, we got up very early, as we wanted to see the famous almsgiving. We were just in time, walking bleary eyed out into the street together with local ladies, carrying pots of rice and blankets to rest their knees on, while rubbing the sleep from their eyes. We were not the only tourists there, waiting anxiously for something to happen, not entirely sure what to expect. You could feel the tension in the air, the expectation - and then you knew something was happening around the corner... People staring down the street, taking pictues. Finally the first orange clad monk turned the corner into our street, and slowly walked in our direction, followed by a line of young men and boys - barefoot and wrapped in bright orange cloth, carrying a metal pot on their right side, which they would lift the lid off, as they passed the old ladies sitting on the side of the road, allowing them to dump a lump of rice in without any physical contact. They all walked slowly past, eyes mainly straight ahead, with a solemn air.
It's amazing how many monks there were. In Laos, and in Luang Prabang in particular, being a monk is a kind of rite of passage that every young man goes through for a few months or years before deciding whether he wants to rejoin the secular world or dedicate his life to Buddha and meditation.

Vang Vieng

And soon after this quiet ritual, we were on the road again - a crazily windy and curvy one of them as well. The only thing to do during the 4 hour drive, was to look out of the window, because anything else, made you seriously car sick! But it was so interesting driving through the mountains and hills, so green and lush. And through villages with people going about their business and kids playing on the side of the road. It's amazing how both kids and animals know not the run into the street from a very early age. You'd never see parents in Denmark letting their kid of 3 years running around on their own next to a main thoroughfare...

Vang Vieng is described as the Khao San Road of Laos, which is a bit unfair, I think. I can see what they mean, in the sense that it's a backpacker hotspot, with loads of tourists running around the place, or hanging out in the lie-down restaurants, that show old episodes of 'Friends' non-stop. The advice is to steer clear of anything on the menu resembling a 'Happy Meal', as it will either have mushrooms or weed in it... Unless that's what you're after, of course :-)

We didn't intend to stay long, so booked ourselves on a tour incorporating almost everything the area has to offer in one day: Trekking, 4 caves, and tubing. What that entails is an easy walk to 3 different caves, that are then more or less difficult to access and navigate, being quite muddy. One was very 'civilised', with a big Buddha Statue, and a stalacmite that resembled an elephant - hence its name: Elephant Cave. Another cave stretched on forever, and I think it took us well over half an hour to take a tour of it, climbing on slippery rocks in pitch black with only a couple of small candles lighting our way. The third one we visited after lunch. As it's almost under water, you access it by sitting on the inner tube of a tractor tire. You then float on the water, hauling yourself through the cave by pulling on the ropes that have been attached to the rocks. In some places there was no more than a foot or two to the 'ceiling' of the cave, in other places it was quite high and you could see stalactites still forming around you. Spectacular.
Then we drove down to the river, where we climbed into our tubes again, and started floating down the river. This is the tubing that Vang Vieng is now famous for. It probably would have been really nice, if it hadn't been a slightly cold afternoon with intermittent rain - or maybe I just didn't get drunk enough not to freeze my arse off :-) It's beautiful gliding down the river looking at the karst mountains surrounding the valley that Vang Vieng lies in. And then stopping off at the occasional bar, having a beer, or maybe jumping into the river, by swinging from a rope on the riverbank.

After our excursion we went out on the search for the 'trek' again, realising that we were running out of time... And despite a couple of places telling us that all the 'good trekking' was up north, we eventually found a great place, which actually turned out to be the same organisers as the ones from our day trip - our, Lee, guide was so nice. Here we combined two daytrips with a homestay, so we would be gone for two days, one night, and then one night in Vang Vieng before we were going by kayak to Vientiane.

Trekking

So the next morning, we started out with our day-packs on our backs, with just the essentials, like a clean T-shirt and a toothbrush. It was really nice finally being on the long-awaited trek, and the beginning was easy walking, balancing between the rice paddies, in the baking sun - walking towards the karst mountains in front of us. Here we got to see how they were harvesting the rice, cutting off the top where the rice sits, and bundling them, leaving them in piles on top of the stems of the cut off rice. And in the distance we could see how they beat the already dry rice bundles into the ground to shake off the rice corns. It is back braking work!

Our first real test was walking across a rope bridge. I've walked on rope bridges before - and as long as it's only like 15 meters or so and you can see the end, it's ok. But now imagine Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones trying to cross a deep gorge on a bridge almost no wider than his feet, with holes along the way, and a sheer drop of 50 meters below him, with just some thin ropes to hold on to on the side, while the bridge wobbles and swings - except it wasn't Indiana Jones crossing this bridge, but little old me. Luckily there were no savages or nazis behind me setting the bridge on fire, but it was still scary! I had to hunch over as the 'railings' (and I use the term loosely here) were too low to hold on to standing up, while walking across the bridge crossing the Nam Song (River) which must have been at least 50 meters wide at this point, and the bridge a bit longer. I was absolutely drenched when I finally reached the other side and could start taking photos of Gerard who was walking behind me, making the bridge wobble even more!

We had to wear long trousers and hiking shoes or boots the office had told us, which, though it saved us from the thorns on many of the plants we walked past, meant that we had to take our shoes off quite a few times to cross streams that had no bridges. The water was nice and cool and felt great on my tired feet, but my socks were really dirty within just a few hours :-)

And then we reached the mountains and started our upward climb. It was hard work, and slightly scary at times too, walking on slippery rocks and narrow ledges with steep falls to one side. Sometimes it was ok, just walking up a dirt path, but there was a lot of rock climbing involved as well, with big boulders forming part of the path in places. It took us several hours to reach the top, and I was really proud of myself, even though I was completely drenched in sweat, and had taken way more breaks than our athletic little guide, and rock-climber, Gerard. That was until we started our downward climb, and two children, one of whom was carrying a massive rice sack on his back, practically ran past us up the mountain, seemingly not even looking where he placed his feet! That was humbling...

We then walked through the valley between the mountains, along a stream that had cut its path into the grassy banks, and past a herd of water buffaloes, and then we started up another mountain side - only this time it was even more muddy, and we had to keep a close eye on our feet, as the place was full of leeches! I've seen leeches in Denmark as a kid, and remember them as fat little snail looking things - but these were tiny, some of them no bigger than half a centimeter and really thin. They walk by standing on one end, then arching themselves, and putting down the other end, and then lifting the first end up in the air and setting that down again - sort of like a gymnast doing a series of backflips. Very scary!
And then we reached a beautiful waterfall and could finally cool off in the clear water which we had all to ourselves, while our guide (after an impressive jump into the water from a 4 meter cliff) lit a fire and started preparing our BBQ lunch.

Now this would have been a perfect day if I hadn't done the unthinkable, and dropped my brand new camera into the water!! Yes, you heard me right. Not only did I make the rookie mistake of not watching my bag and thus getting my first camera stolen, I then made the second most stupid mistake when it comes to cameras: I forgot I had it in my lap, and hadn't tied it to my wrist, so it slipped and dropped into a pool below my feet, when I moved! So once again, I was without a camera... I mean, at least until I find out if it can be fixed.

On the way back, we didn't have to climb the mountain again - luckily as I was pretty tired by then - but rather had to walk under it! When we got to the foot of the mountain, near where we came down, we started climbing into the dark, navigating slippery and broken wooden ladders. The air was full of moisture - so much so that you could see the drops in the air. Our guide, Lieng, had found a stick of bamboo which he broke into 3 pieces and then started banging the ends until they cracked along the length of it. Once we got inside the cave or tunnel underneath the mountain, he then lit a stick for each of us, which was a very good torch for us to light the way through the cave. We had to take our shoes off again, and this was the worst part of the trip, having to walk for 15 minutes over rocks and pebbles in and out of the water and through the mud. 5 years in London had so not prepared my feet for a barefoot trek! But it was still amazing walking there, knowing that we were underneath a massive mountain, and that we had to get through before our torches burnt out. I could have sworn that somewhere in the dark down there, I heard a saxophone playing, but the others both claim they didn't hear it... Very strange.

Our homestay was not quite the kind of homestay I'd imagined - it was more like a primitive guest house, and not in anyone's private house. For dinner we went to a restaurant by the river, and by 8pm I was ready for bed! I slept 12 hours without stirring, I was so exhausted.

The next day we walked over another mountain - luckily this time without having to take our shoes off as many times. But it was an even harder climb getting us into the "Secret Eden" valley. We stayed in the valley for lunch enjoying the beautiful scenery, cooling our feet in a stream, enjoying another BBQ lunch, and then trekked back over a different mountain, getting us back to the Elephant Cave we had visited on our first tour in the area. I can't remember the last time I was this dirty - it was great! :-)

Vientiane

After another great nights sleep, we packed up all our stuff, had one last breakfast in the Organic Farm Cafe (where we'd pretty much eaten every single meal while in Vang Vieng, as they do a mean curry - the best - and mulberry pancakes for breakfast), and then we set off for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We drove for a couple of hours first on the back of a Sawngthaew (truck with two benches on the back) until we reached our starting point on the river. Here we unloaded the kayaks started down the river. It's the first time I've ever kayaked, but it went really well. Not that different from canoeing, which I've done my whole life. And it was really nice being on the water and quitely being able to take in the surroundings. We had a few rapids, which seemed very exciting on an otherwise quiet river. We had lunch on some rocks on the riverbank, and were able to climb around and jump into the water. Very relaxing. Unfortunately we reached the end of the kayaking part of the day very quickly, and then it was back on a bumpy sawngthaew which took forever going into Vientiane, because we kept stopping and letting more and more people on. At one point there were 17 people on the back of this vehicle, and we were all squeezed together and absolutley covered in dust.

A lot of people were going to town, as this was a big festival day in Vientiane. It was the 14th of October, and the big night before the Boat Racing Festival. The city, which apparently normally is very quiet and laid back for a capital, was buzzing with life, and walking around in the dark with our backpacks on while people stared at us, looking for a hotel, was not exactly my idea of fun... We did finally manage to find a nice hotel (Gerard's treat to himself as his holiday was almost over), and after a shower and some dinner I felt much better. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from the last day of trekking and kayaking or from the festival, as we were only using Gerard's camera, and he took his memory card home... Will try to post some when I get to Australia and get a copy of them.

The next day we went sightseeing in Vientiane, which also included spending a lot of time walking through crowds and looking at all the stalls and booths that had been put up. It was as if most of the town had been turned into a giant market place with people absolutely everywhere. I really wanted to film some of the racing, but it was unbearably hot and impossible to get down to the Mekong where the races took place. It was all a bit too much really - which is a terrible thing to say, when you probably only get one chance to experience something, but I really couldn't handle all the people and the heat and noise - so I didn't get to experience the festival fully, I'm afraid. I also didn't get the best impression of Vientiane. Maybe if I'd stayed a few more days and waited for all the mess left after the festival to be cleared away, and wandered the city in a more relaxed manner I would've had a better time there. But as it was, I just wanted to book my ticket to Hanoi and leave. So after Gerard went off to the airport to go back to work in Brisbane (life sucks for some...), I wandered the city a bit and worked on this (again way too long) travel blog, before I boarded the bus to Hanoi - a 24 hour journey, which I am definitely never doing again!

I sat next to a Lao man who spoke absolutely no English, but still wanted to talk to me all the time. He kept pointing at my nails and saying something, and then kissed my hand. I'd already read about the Lao 'Space Invaders' in the Lonely Planet, but still was not quite prepared for the lack of personal spacial awareness this man had. Granted he had a pair of crutches taking up some space, but he still sat so close, our bodies were touching all down our sides. And if I moved to get away from him, he would promptly take up the extra space I'd left. When his hands seemed to be a bit too busy near my thigh, I kindly pushed him away, though this did not stop him from leaning his elbows on my shoulders later on when he put his arms behind his head. Yes - this was a very long and very sleep deprived night :-)

The border crossing was a very confusing affair as well, with no-one speaking English and telling us what to do, almost no English signage, and queues in random places, that you apparently had to stand in. But we did manage to get a couple of stamps announcing our departure from Laos and entry into Vietnam high up in the mountain pass separating these two countries.

I've been here for almost 2 weeks now, and will tell you all about it in my next 'chapter' :-)

Lots of love,
Kristine

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Photos

Quite possibly our Captain
When it rains, it pours, and then you might as well strip when you're landing a boat - even if it is full of people staring...

Boat with plants
Some of them seemed to serve as houseboats