Ready, Steady.....Relax

A 100% guaranteed way to eradicate stress and re-vitalise; go to Laos. Doctors should forgo prescribing medicine and give out Laos visas instead. If you've just been in neighbouring Vietnam you will find Laos is the perfect tonic of peace and tranquility to your hawker headache. Everything slows down and nothing seems to matter. Life revolves around simple pleasures; a breeze as you swing in a hammock, a sunset Beer Lao, a meal down by the mighty Mekong.....and yes please, I would like a job for the Lao Tourist Board.

We crossed at the Lao Bao border and continued on to Savannakhet, a Mekong town of dusty red roads devoid of traffic. The pavements were utterly redundant being overgrown with weeds through lack of use. We spent the first five minutes bush walking on the pavement before realising that it would be near impossible to have a traffic accident. I think you run more risk of getting run down by a cow in Laos than getting hit by a car.

Savannakhet has no real sights and would probably be a fairly boring place if you had travelled through Laos to get there but to us it was perfect. To join the smiley locals down by the Mekong for a Beer Lao was far more enjoyable than any sightseeing could have been. We bought BBQ sticks of chicken, beef and pork to go with the best beer in South-East Asia. The Mekong is lined by these tiny one-woman operations with a cool box full of beer and a small grill sizzling with meat. We relaxed and looked across to the comparatively bright lights of Thailand. The hardest thing about it was dragging ourselves away and back to our traditional wooden guesthouse. Paying was confused by my half-remembered Thai (Thai and Lao are very similar) and the fact that it was almost free. We spent the next day visiting the local Wats and were delighted by the familiar (and missed) South-East Asian Buddhist style, with their bold, dazzling Wats and compliment of saffron robed monks waving to you out of classroom windows. That night we sought out food in our favourite spot down by the Mekong and had a bubbling pot of make-it-yourself noodle and seafood soup, enjoying it so much we tried to justify having another day in Savannakhet just so we could have another night of rustic Mekong dining.

We tore ourselves away knowing that better was to come and took a range of vehicles down to Pakse (the hub of Southern Laos) and on to Champasak. We spent the majority of the trip crammed into the back of a people / rice laden Songthaew (pick-up truck with two benches) with our knees up around our shoulders. This was luxury in comparison to other passengers who gave up their seats on the bench for us and sat on the floor, sleepy children and babies on their laps. Our dusty backpacks and the obligatory chickens rode on the roof. To reach Champasak you have to cross the Mekong, this is achieved on a boat which has been created by someone with an overactive imagination and a highly developed sense of humour. It is actually three boats with a wooden platform on top holding them together, the cargo consists mainly of Songthaews and motorbikes with every available space utilised. Our Songthaew driver was particularly eager not to waste any precious inches and almost reversed us into the Mekong (several times). I was smiling around at the other passengers in a 'isn't this fun' kind of way until I noticed all the locals were looking utterly horrified. That soon wiped the smile of my face and rendered me equally horrified. Being a foreigner is like being a child; having to take your cues from the locals (adults) as to what is a bit of a laugh and what is downright madness.

We were welcomed into Champasak in Lao, English and French by the owner of a local guesthouse who found everything unspeakably funny (literally every sentence and at times every word was surrounded by a bubble of infectious laughter). His warmth and good humour won us over and we stayed for the bargain price of 30,000 kip ($3). We lounged Mekong-side in hammocks with the only challenge provided by the over-sized spider in our room (I would have taken a picture but didn't want to risk having the camera snatched). We went to battle armed with flip-flop clad hands, a healthy dosing of DEET and a torrent of verbal abuse (sorry to any spider lovers but it was a BEAST, it was him or us).

The attraction in Champasak is Wat Phu, an Angkorian temple on the side of a mountain. We rented bicycles and cycled there accompanied by the cry of 'Sabaai Dii' from small children at roadside huts. In the 30 minute bike ride we saw more animals than people and almost no vehicles. Wat Phu is one of Laos's most touristy sights (probably second to Luang Prabang) but it was almost devoid of people. It's certainly no Angkor but its semi-ruined appearance and beautiful setting with a lake, a mountain and surrounding paddy fields makes it worth the effort.

We headed off to 4000 islands sitting on the gearbox of an improbably full bus. The aisle was taken up by plastic stools and locals handling the discomfort in typically Lao style (big smiles and twinkly eyes). We eyed the plastic stools with jealousy whilst we were cooked by the gearbox which was like sitting on a hotplate when you're already inside an oven. Unfortunately the bus wasn't actually going where we wanted to go and we ended up on an island about a one and a half hours boat ride from our intended destination. Baw pen ngan (no worries), we thought but a fellow traveller didn't seem to take the bad news quite so well. He started wailing at the ticket-seller banshee-style. Showing such strong emotion is frowned upon in a Buddhist country like Laos where interaction is based around maintaining face not losing it. But then letting someone buy a ticket to the wrong destination is internationally frowned upon and the guy ended up getting a partial refund (as did we). It was all excellent entertainment for the passengers on the bus who were hanging out of the window to watch the show but we were eager to distance ourselves from a hot-tempered fellow traveller and got our bags off the bus and disappeared as quickly as possible. Unfortunately there was only one place to go and we found ourselves trying to negotiate a boat to the right island with the banshee still blood-boiling angry ranting at a boat driver 'You lie! You lie! Everyone lie, Laos is bad country'. Heart-pounding I told him what I thought of his narrow-minded insults but he probably didn't even hear for the blood roaring in his ears. He claimed defiantly that he was going to leave the country as soon as possible due to it being full of liars but soon gave up when it transpired that there were no buses back to Pakse that day so he would have to spend a night.

His mood soon lightened on the boat (a fishing boat with a propeller that looked more suited to frothing cappuccino than navigating the swirling currents of the wet-season Mekong) we stayed close to the safety of land where local children were playing in the water, calling 'Sabaai-Dii' and waving until we were out of sight. We passed island after island with nothing visible but the occasional hut through the dense foliage. Finally we arrived on Don Det and I prepared myself for the inevitable changes that would have occurred in the six years since my first visit. The first ten minutes didn't go well as I discovered the arrival of internet and scores of guesthouses and tour operators. As we walked the narrow dirt path of the island all the depressing signs of a backpacker ghetto gave way to islanders hut's set over the river or on the boundaries of rice paddies. We carried on walking south until we felt like we were on the same island I visited six years ago with simple huts, no electricity and not a computer in sight. From a travellers point of view progress is delightfully slow in Laos. We found ourselves a cheap hut on the river, furnished with a bed, a mosquito net and a couple of hammocks for 15,000kip (just under a pound!).

We planned for a few nights and ended up spending six. A far bigger indicator as to the charms of Don Det was that the banshee from the bus was also still on the island six days later with a beatific smile on his face whenever we saw him. The temperament of the locals was infectious and we met some amazing people both local and foreign and spent our days swinging in hammocks that were more like gigantic slings with the only downside being I kept falling asleep in mine. We woke early each morning to the sound of cockerels and made the transition from bed to hammock with ease, eventually working up to getting some home-style cooking in a local restaurant (hut with food) or rolling into the Mekong for a swim. Everyone we met was glowing from the hammock therapy and we ended up moving to a sociable group of huts owned by an especially friendly woman with two young kids who spent most of their time naked and learning their limits in the 'baw pen ngan' island-style; the 2 year old crawled around on an open balcony with a six foot drop whilst the 5 year old ran around naked from the waist down with a knife in his tiny hand. We hung out with our neighbours, especially Chris and Kate (was great to meet you both!), chatting from respective hammocks, playing cards and swimming in the calmer water by the huts.

We went for a chicken party one night, held by a local guy. It was on the sunset side of the island so we wandered around visiting a few hut bars on the way. The party was dominated by a local farmer who didn't speak any English but sang Bob Marley songs with Lao lyrics in a Justin Timberlake style. Apparently he normally keeps himself to himself but that night he was center stage and loving it, chatting away with all his new farang (foreign) friends completely oblivious to the fact that the conversation was being conducted in two languages with neither party having the slightest clue what the other was saying.

We went on a fishing trip with Kate and Chris with Paul bringing in the catch of the day with a baby catfish who was released back to grow into something a little more edible. Despite the lack of fish catching it was fun to try especially because we had never done it before. There is something quite iconic about casting off from a rickety fishing boat in the Mekong. Luckily a fish had been bought from the market just in case and we had a BBQ on a local island, almost getting trapped there when a storm rolled in for the evening. We headed back in darkness when the rain had finally stopped. Paul helped bail out the boat as we were chased back to Don Det by threatening forks of lightening.

We managed to drag ourselves away from the idyllic islands to visit Tat Lo a small town based around a waterfall from which it gets its name. Tat Lo made the other places we visited in Laos look chaotic. The village is little more than a collection of huts. We reached our hut by weaving around the other villager's huts (there was no path), passed the grunting pigs, skittish goats and naked kids. Whenever we sat on our balcony we became part of the village life as people dropped by for a chat or to play with the funny looking farangs. Animals ruled the town with cows hanging out on the main road (dirt track) pigs stomping about down by the river or in the tangle of huts in the centre of the village, getting their bottoms stuck part way through the fences the goats mockingly jumped over. All the animals wandered into our guesthouse restaurant, wanting to know what was cooking and inadvertently flirting with death.

The owner of our guesthouse insisted we called her 'Mama,' after our experience with Mama Naxi in China we knew that Mama Paps would doubtless provide some extremely enthusiastic / aggressive mothering and she didn't disappoint. We were treated like naughty six year olds who weren't allowed to leave the table until we'd finished everything on our plates. We ate well and laughed a lot, with Mama speaking her mind about one thing or another whilst slapping an unordered (free) oversized plate of fruit down on the table (got to get our vitamins).

Along with our neighbours Jessi and Chloe (we met such fantastically friendly travellers in Laos:) we got into the rhythm of local life and spent our time swimming in waterfalls, washing our clothes in the Mekong, hanging out on our balcony and watching village life. We spent the vast majority of our time playing with the local kids (of which there were many) whole age ranges played together with big sisters carrying little brothers on hips and bigger boys encouraging the smaller ones to jump out of trees into the Mekong. The girls wore their beautifully embroidered sarongs and did some washing whilst the boys went naked and never tired of dive-bombing and egging each other on. At the end of a day of playing in the Mekong they'd come back to our balcony until they exhausted our limited adult energy and we retired to Mama Paps for a few Beer Laos and some mothering.

Time ran out and called us back into reluctant action as we began the too long journey to Bangkok. A Laos farm village to the urban jungle of Bangkok is still a shock even when you're expecting it. We waited in a monsoon downpour and got two motorbike taxis to take us to the main road. I struggled on with my backpack and clutched a collapsing umbrella the driver had thrust into my hand (I tried to get it over both of us but ended up being terribly English and just held it over him, hoping that our chances of skidding off the road would be diminished somewhat if he could actually see). We felt fairly positive that the journey would improve from there. It did and it didn't. We got across the border and to the train station as smoothly as a border crossing can go but the train to Bangkok messed things up by being full apart from the 3rd class hard-seat compartment (there is no such thing as 'full' in 3rd class). Perhaps as a reaction to being back in a more touristy 'easier' country we decided that an overnight, twelve hour journey on a hard bench would be just fine (how hard can it be to sleep when you're exhausted from a full day of travel?). The looks we received from the locals told us that we were horribly wrong and as always they were right.

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