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Published: September 16th 2010
Mighty Mekong
our first time crossingEvery time we have asked someone who has traveled asia what their favourite country was, the 2 answers we invariably get are Iran and Laos. Iran is not part of the itinerary.. this time, but as for laos i can understand. Laos is truly unique with 80 percent of the population living in villages and capital, Vientiane having a population of mere 200 000. The villages are dotted evenly across the country and you are usually entering or existing a village if you drive for any distance. Even with that, most of the country seems to be rice paddies. The people smile wider than thais, cook better curry than indians, and you are never far from the national icon, Beerlao. Beerlao is the national lager and damn tasty for a commercial beer. You are often offered one before food and every roadside stand, of the thousands, sells beerlao. Did i mention that it is a communist country as well? Not that you'd know as in Kerala except for the hammer/sickle flags and posters everywhere. Though rural it is a capitalist as anywhere it seems except that the average Lao farmer though not rich seems to have quite a high standard of
life compared to other countries. There is stable electricity seemingly everywhere, the roads have been recently paved and even with the cows wandering everywhere it it pretty clean in general.
Our first stop was a region called 4000 islands where the tip of lao dips into nearby cambodia. The rains are frequent and the Mekong swells with abundance. The turbidity raises with silt rushing in from tributaries reaching all over indochina. The "mother of all rivers" herself swells to nearly 6km wide in the region and life for the locals revolves around the water. Our island, called Don Det, is quaint and mostly rice paddies tended by locals. The fringes of the island are all guesthouses, cabanas sitting over the Mekong, and smal restaurants serving tasty lao and homey western food. This is a place to loose as much time as you can and many folks we talked to had lost count of days and weeks. Nearby, a bridge to a larger island takes you to waterfalls, Wats (buddhist temples), and for whatever reason and small steam locomotive on a short rusted abandoned track. Between reading during rainstorms, adventures on bicycles, and tasty tasty lao food did we spend
our 5 days here. We did not lose any days but we ran out of money, something that happens a lot in lao and this island in particular. There just aren't many ATMS or banks in Lao and more than 3/4 of the atms so far ahve not worked or were out of money. Oh did i mention we are millionaires here too! The exchange rate is abouth 7500K - 1C$ so we are rolling in cash. Now all we need to do is manage to be able to get cash frequently enough and we should be set.
Broke (lol) and saying farewell to island paradise we set off for the village of ban ni han. This is the place to go to base yourself if you want to visit the largest underground cave outside of papua new guinnea. The 7.5 km of Nam (river) hinboun carved out the limestone monolithic Kong lor over centuries past. Its kind of like boating through the bat cave but you have no cool gadgets and are scared out of your socks. The caverns range from so low you have to duck to so high that you cannot see their roofs. At one
point you stop and get off on a rock "beach" to hike up into a cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites, young and old. One moment you feel gigantic the next, dwarfed... all to the background noise of dripping and rushing water. Having never been through a cave like this at all we were awe inspired and impressed constantly but from what folks say this is one of the more impressive river caves in the world. There is no light for most of the journey so all our cameras were mostly useless but i suppose that adds to the mystique of the place.
Currently we are in the capital Vientiane. It is sort of like being in new orleans in asia. French colonial is definitely one of my more favourite styles and there are cafes everywhere serving the best bread and baked goods in asia so far. Best of all for the first time in over half a year i had the pleasure... of consuming... A BAGEL!!! MY oh my we miss bagels and these were as fresh and delicious as they come. Vientiane itself is such a managable size with most things in walking distance and the most
services anywhere in Lao. (though really even if it were JUST bagels i would be happy) We need to spend 5 days or so here to wait for visas for cambodia and vietnam and i think there no better place. There is even a moern gym with pool and martial arts drop in classes and disco bowling! Campy, but you gotta take what you can get. As for now i think we will have to go and get more bagels.
Ciao friends... we wish you all the best
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Kenneth
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bagels
I'm now thinking of FNB @68 james and the mass of bagels we'd have left over for days...perhaps you've been dreaming of that along with sandwiches?!?