24 February 2008 - LAOS

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We flew to Laos from Siem Reap, an expensive exercise, but if we had our time again we would have entered Cambodia and Laos via Vietnam, much cheaper option.

We absolutely love Laos, it’s a fantastic place! The land is green and mountainous; the people are chilled; the streets are clean; street vendors workplaces are so clean it just seems so natural to buy street food; the roads are quiet; and they have a curfew - be inside by midnight or else!

Luang Prabang

If we thought Cambodia was tourist savvy then Laung Prabrang is tourist boutique. This place is beautiful, it’s hilly and green, and the architecture is a mix of colonial buildings and golden Buddhist temples. Young monks walk amongst the tourists and brighten the view with their orange attire. It is spotlessly clean, brick paved footpaths, tar sealed roads, golden temples, shops with wooden shutters, restaurants with fairy lights, candles, white table cloths and roses in vases. Its quiet, they don’t toot, there is not much traffic, the people are just lovely. Outside restaurants line the Mekong River bank and you can watch the long wooden boats moving up and down the river, or the local children in a tyre tube floating past, or the farmers working their crops which line the river bank on the other side.

At night the traffic disappears and the streets turn into a market. They come into town everyday at 3.30 pm, they arrive on trucks, tuk tuks, vans or motorbikes with trailers carrying their large plastic colourful stripped bags, a red canvas roof and poles. They lay everything out every single day, street after street, stall after stall, silk shawl after silk shawl, all selling the same stuff. The restaurants turn on their fairy lights and put on their fancy table clothes, it looks all very classy. The ambience is just enough pressure to order champagne.

But then, once again, its all for the tourists, you venture a mile out of town and the colonial houses turn into wooden or flax huts, with lean-to for an outside kitchen, wells for water, chickens running around or restrained under flax cages, wood piles neatly stacked and bare bottomed children running around. The local shops are stalls and the pavements disappear. They say they exist on very little money, a $1 per day, and they tell us “look around, you don’t see many old people”, if you get sick you die, if you get injured call an ambulance from Thailand!


Sights

There are heaps and heaps of Golden Buddhist Temples, they call Wats, all within walking distance, everywhere are golden Buddha statues. So we walked around a few of them and also visited the Palace Museum which was interesting and right in the middle of town. They sell you some of those orange holy flowers that are in every Asian country we have visited by the millions, but we have never seen them growing anywhere. Plus these miniature flax bird cages, like 4 inches high with 2 little tiny birds in them, alive! You purchase them and set them free at the temple, they say they fly straight back to the owners to be put back in the cages.

Organized tours to the Si Kaung waterfall, picnic lunch, elephant ride and a village visit would have cost us NZ$110. We hired a tuk tuk all to ourselves for NZ$22 and went to the waterfall and the village. The waterfall is very picturesque, with aqua coloured water. We even got to go for a swim in it, but it was very cold. Next to the waterfall is a tiger and bear rescue centre which we could wander around. The village visit was just a shopping tour, you got to walk through the village but every 2 feet they were selling stuff.

There is heaps to do here, you can do elephant riding, bamboo rafting, tubing, trekking and cycling.

Accommodation

The first 2 nights we stayed at Villa Laodeum which we had booked over the internet. More pricey than we would have liked but US$35 seems to be the going rate here for a small compact but nicely decorated rooms. The rooms are clean and well equipped with TV and fridge but you cannot swing a cat in them, just too small for any length of time. So we looked at a few rooms and found them all to be the same, clean, nice décor but US$35.00. We did find one for US$15 which was adequate, without luxuries like a TV and fridge though but we had been spoilt in Cambodia and got a bit picky so we kept looking.

Villa Laodeum

Luang Prabang Bakery Guesthouse - There is this lovely Bakery Restaurant on the main road, nice white table cloths, roses in white vases on the tables, great looking cakes, fairy lights at night, very classy looking. It had a few rooms above with a deck which looked out at the activity along the main road. So being the same price US$35 we moved in. The first room we had at the back, had a king bed and this amazingly big bath (room 4). The next 2 nights we moved to the front and enjoyed the deck with table, chairs and rocking chair, and a bigger room (room 3). Although we did spy room 2 and it was tiny. So a much better deal than Villa Laosdeum or others we looked at for same price as you got a deck with a view. The included breakfast was a good deal as well, much more than your basic egg and French stick. Email is [e-mail]

Vang Vieng

We caught the VIP bus to Vang Vieng specifically to do some tubing down the river, you know, float down a river in a tractor tyre tube. They say not much there but lots of adventure stuff to do, so we thought we would break the bus trip to Vientiane, and stop for 2 days.

The bus looked a bit too top heavy for my liking, and that morning there had been a tragic tourist bus accident in some country, TV station was not in English, we just looked at the pictures. Plus they said lots of windy roads (that’s not windy as in weather but winedee as in curly roads). Well that was a bloody understatement, Christ almighty, it was quite frightening! (that’s just the female opinion though Carl had total faith in the driver). It was 5 hours of non stop up and down and around windy hilly roads, well actually mountains even! The roads were narrow, around the sides of cliffs, at some stages up as high as 2500 metres, at one stage driving through the bloody clouds. The most amazing thing were the villages built on the side of the road, bamboo shacks, being held up by thin stilts set into loose dry dirt down the edge of the hills. I would have thought in the monsoon they would have washed away, or if someone stepped in it would slip down the side of the mountain. Some villages had mud steps way down to the bottom of the mountain to a creek to source their water. World Vision sprawled over water tanks and had an office near the top. But they must have had power as every second hut or shack had a satellite dish.

Anyway thankfully we finally arrived at Vang Vieng without rolling down the cliff, and WOW what a backpackers dream, this place is unique. We loved it so much we stayed 4 days.

It is a small town but the great thing is the guest houses are mixed in with the locals housing as well, with just a couple of streets completely dedicated to restaurants. These are open air restaurants, with raised cushioned platforms that you climb up and sit or lie down on the pillows and watch Friend’s episodes which they play over and over again, and have been for at least 6 years - bit like TVNZ. So you can be watching an episode in one restaurant and next door they are playing a different episode. Most restaurants have the same menus as well, but at night the streets are lined with mobile pancake carts where they cook you a pastry pancake filled with banana and chocolate for dessert on the way home.

A river runs along one side of the town, backed by mountains, a clean river where they have lined it with bars, bungalows and tents. The bars are fantastic; they have wooden platforms, sitting along the rivers edge, some just a few inches over the edge of the water, decked out with mats, and pillows and hammocks. You can sit and have a drink watching the sunset, the boats, and people finishing their 4km tube ride. Once again drinks are weak for $3 but you can get a cheap red wine for a couple of bucks, plus the Laos beer is really nice and only $1.50 a large bottle. Down by the river they hand you 2 menus, one for drinks and one for “happy stuff” like a joint is US$2! It is illegal here though.

The shops catered to the young back packers and only really sold western style summer clothing, and were more expensive than anywhere else we had been. Internet 3 times the price here, like NZ$2.50 per hour. The only issue we had is we ended up eating at the same few restaurants, as the others had all the same unappealing menu and food choices. But whose complaining, the food at Xayoh Café (don’t confuse with Xayoh Restaurant) was fantastic, you could get a roast meal for NZ$5.

Stuff to Do

There is a heap to do here and the place was full of young people, there is caving, rafting, rock climbing, trekking, kayaking, cycling, swimming holes and tubing. We hired bikes and roamed around the nearby villages and also went inside a cave. But it was the tubing we went for, you get dropped off up the river and hop inside a tube and float down the river for about 4km. For the first 1km the river is lined with bars, all competing against each other, yelling at you to stop at their bar, and if you wave back at them they will come out with a long stick with a bottle attached and you grab the bottle and they pull you in. We picked the coldest day so some had fires going, gave you a shot of Lao vodka, and you would sit around the fire drinking beer. They had swings at the bars out over the water holes, with loud music blearing, it was amazing. Unfortunately after our first stop we realized my tube was leaking, but we made it back, it took like 4 hours and we only stopped once! You finish at the rivers edge right in town, but very few make it to the end, spending so much time in the bars on the way, they end up having to be picked up by tuk tuk half way. The water was pretty mild and it would have been better if the river was a bit higher with a bit more of a torrent, but great fun.

Accommodation

Villa Malany - not having booked anything, the first room we looked at we took as it was so bloody cheap - NZ$13 per night. OK room had grubby walls and tiles, but the room and bathroom were so huge that you did not need to touch the sides. We could not resist the price. We looked around over the next few days and found other really nice options, like NZ$20 for a river view and really nice room or NZ$40 for nice hotel with pool and river view, but availability was an issue and it was great to save a bit of money on accommodation for a change. Phone [phone]

Vientiane

The bus ride from Vang Vieng to Vientiane was nothing like the journey from Laung Prabang, much of the ride over small hills or straight roads. We had been told by some that Vientiane was the place to do the shopping, you could get everything available in Laos and a lot cheaper as it is not so touristy. People did not just say, good shopping, they said things like WOW, Oh My God, like I was so excited and could not wait to get here. So we refrained from buying anything in Luang Prabang and waited for Vientiane. We looked at the map and worked out where the Post Office was to send all the shopping home.

How bloody disappointing. The shops were more for locals with shops after shops selling the sarong skirts the females wore. There was much more I would have brought in Luang Prabang.

Anyway, moving on, Vientiane is a nice city, the usual French legacies of colonial building architecture, wide roads and baguettes. There are lots of Wats as in Luang Prabang, golden Asian architecture bhuddist temples, monks draped in their orange garb. The Mekong lines one side of the city with a few restaurants at the edge, but it is so dried up at the moment its like a mile out to the water from the rivers edge. We are staying here for 4 days, not much to do, a few markets to browse, a swimming pool to sunbathe around, and lots of walking and menus to review.

Accommodation

Villa Manoly - this is a lovely quiet place, nice garden setting, huge rooms, ok clean, deck, swimming pool, but for us too far out from town. It’s really quite rustic, all you can hear are the birds, some love it, I think its a bit messy but if someone brought the gardener a weed eater it the garden and they brought some nice loungers for around the pool, it could look fabulous. We like to pop out to get a coffee or use internet, here it was 15 minute walk to town, so had to organize visits. So we stayed 2 days, it was NZ$37 a night. A lot of UN people stay here, and it is a lovely option if you don’t mind being that far out. [e-mail].


Lane Xang Hotel - we moved to this hotel as it was next to town and had a swimming pool for only another $6.50 and had a swimming pool, plus you got free breakfast. This would have been “the” hotel in its time, offers the nice services, like porter to carry luggage, good large rooms, a bit tired but the location is great. Has everything like massage rooms, sauna, gym, internet shop, etc.

Lane Xang Hotel

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Photos

The basics of life
Roof, 4 walls and 100 TV stations!

Luang Prabang main street
Our view from bakery guest house

Main Street
Our view from bakery guest house

Little birds in cages
You purchase and let out at a Wat

Kitchen
The back of the kitchen at the restaurant along the waterfront we ate at - yes only once!