SABAIDI LAOS

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What a country! It will be hard for me to put words to describe this experience. It has been such an enrichment on so many levels… I did not travel much but I had the genuine experience with amazing people from there. I felt like I was travelling back in the past when everything was simpler and people were genuinely nice.
Huay Xai
I crossed the Mekong and arrived in Laos with Monica, my Italian travelling buddy that I had met a few days before and 2 other guys. We arrived too late to travel further in Laos so we had to stay at the border for a night. That s when I met my only enemy of this trip (so far), one drunk English guy we crossed the border with wished my death as Monica had decided to share the room with me and not with him. Such a possessive weirdo!! I could have felt frightened but it made me laugh instead… After this brief episode, we left in the morning and took a 2 days boat trip on the Mekong to reach Luang Prapang, the old capital of Laos.
Mekong boat trip
The boat had nothing fancy at all, it was over-filled with tourists and with the most uncomfortable seats ever, just a wooden bench with very thin cushions. But we were doing it for the experience and of course the landscape, so peaceful and stunning. After 8 hours the first day, we arrived in Pak Beng where we stopped for the night. After 8pm, there was no electricity in the village anymore. After dinner we walked around and stopped at the gathering of young locals who were drinking and singing with their gyutar, it was a nice atmosphere, that s where I tried for the first time the local whisky Lao Lao, which killed later during the trip. Everything was sweet until they started to show us porn on their mobile phone, and that s when we decided it was time for us to go. The following day on the boat was as stunning as the first one, we crossed many villages where hundreds of kids smiled and waved at us, it was very moving. On the boat, we met 2 Italians, Pino&Pino who were on holidays.
Luang Prabang
When we got in Luang Prabang, we first got a bit ripped off by the tuk tuk driver who mad a big detour to drop us 10m away from where he took us, instead of telling us it was walk-able. We somehow convinced the 2 italians to be in a travelling mode (rather than holidays) and we ended sharing a room with them when they had decided, as proper italian that men should not share the same bed! Apparently we can make people change their mind…We had fun with them, we went to night market, visited the city, went to a beautiful waterfall nearby the town, we were the last one to leave so we had the whole place for ourselves. On the way back, they were singing Italian songs in the tuk tuk very loud. Being surrounded with 3 Italians I probably improve my Italian…. The night before they left, it was Chinese New Year and as I was walking alone in the town, I heard some locals partying. As I was approaching the place, before I realised, I was invited for drinks and food with them, they were singing and made me sing in French too. Later on, my 3 Italians friends joined me and we partied the whole night all together with locals. Other curious from the street had been invited too later on. There we met Alex, a local Lao guy who spoke good English. I explained to him that I wanted to find the real Laos and was willing to stay in villages but not with a tour as we wanted to help the community by any means. I was so lucky that day because he offered us to show his village and the following morning Monica and I were in the bus in direction to Ban Fay.
Baan Fay
Definitely off the beaten track, almost off the map, Ban Fay is a village in Laos where I left my heart. A few hours North of Luang Prabang, on a river bank, this remote village is full of kids more adorable than I had rarely seen. We arrived in the afternoon with Alex. We were pretty shocked how basic but also how beautiful this place was. We were introduced to Alex family, his house was one the best as it was made of concrete but the inside had nothing, just a tv and mats on the floor. Their was only a kitechen, a main room, that served of our bed room in the night time and living room in the daytime and a shower room (pretty uncommon for most houses where they usually shower outside or in the river). We were served water to drink, it was brown, we were not really sure about drinking it but at the end of the day we had put ourselves in this situation so if we started to act in a ‘posh’ way rather than doing like locals we would not survive long there. So we drank it, we were served dinner on the floor, the table was a tray of ratin, we ate with chop sticks. Each meal is made of different dishes most of all spicy, not always easy to recognise what you are eating but there is sticky rice at every meal, always a safe option… After lunch I walked around the village, that was when I first met the kids… Most of them had never seen any falang (tourist) and unfortunately in Laos, they are told that falang willl come for them if there are naughty so no wonder why some of them cried when they so us arriving! As I was relaxing along the river, some curious kids came to me and before I realised I was surrounded with 20 of them and we were teaching how to count to each other, they were teaching me Laos and I was teaching them English. Monica is a photographer so this place was a very good opportunity to practice and you would not believe how kids love posing! So we spent most of the time in the village taking pictures and teaching English. Kids were following us everywhere, they would wait at the doorstep or at the windows in the morning for us to wake up. If we were in a different place, they would wait the whole day for us to get back so they could have an English lesson, even though it was school holidays. We did not expect to teach them but it happened so easily. We were teaching anywhere, outside, on the riverbank, under a tree, or in Alex house when it was dark. We had brought books and pens for them and they enjoyed it so much, it give such a nice feeling to see them so happy. It was also interesting to see how man gather in one place and women on a different place, no real mix. In the evening, when kids were sleeping, we were invited by men to drink shots of artisanal Lao Lao, their homemade strong rice whisky. We visited villages around too, had relaxing time in rice fields, went to the monthly market where kids again where afraid of us. We were living their life, eating their food, showering like them in the river, which was quite an experience to shower with a sarong. There were so many rules to respect according to the culture and it was very interesting for us to learn, even though we miss to follow them sometimes (not on purpose though). Where a woman bath in the river, the way you sit while you eat, where you lie your towel and so many other things were completely unknow by us at first but we learned…We saw a life that we had never encountered before, based on basic needs. It really changed the way I see life… After a week, it was heart breaking to leave but Alex had to go back to work. It made us so sad that we have decided that we want to do something for those kids. there is obviously a lack of knowledge and we want to help by building a library for them to learn about the external world in a different way than just through TV.
Vang Vien
We spent a night at Alex’s place (a room of 5m sq where 4 of us, with Alex’s brother, slept on the floor) in Luang Prabang before heading the following morning to Vang Vien, less than 240km away but 6 hours bus journey! The landscape was absolutely fantastic. The road was pretty windy but I really loved it. When we got there, it took us a while to find cheap accommodation so we finally agreed to stay in a tent on the river bank. We were quite shocked about Vang Vien, it is very touristic but for backpackers who wants to be fucked up all the time. So it was not really my cup of tea… Coming from a village where we experienced the real Laos, it was quite difficult to appreciate any aspect of such a town full of foreigners. If they were not watching Family guy or Friends on TV in a bar, they were ‘tubing’. It is the cool thing to do there. You get an inflatable wheel and you get yourself floating along the river while you stopped many times at floating bars to get more drunk and listening to the loud music. We rented a motorbike and went along the river to have a look, even though it was tempting we did not do it because it just felt so so wrong in the context of Laos. This is the kind of tourism that I hate as it does not respect the culture there and even erase it for the sake of money/fun!! We even met a little girl there, I was starting to talk to her and as soon as I mentioned that I was interested to go and check out her village she asked me for money! Such a shame that it is already becoming like that… With the motorbike that we had rented, we visited around, went to more basic villages, went to the country side to explore the scenery and it was really stunning. There, it is the place for caving, we tried to do one ourselves but instead of a proper big and nice cave, we ended up in a very small one full of spiders, we just got mislead there…
Luang Prabang
After a few days spent there, we went back to Luang Prabang where Alex was waiting for us to go to one of his friend’s village in the Phongsali province, the furthest North of Laos. We spent a night in Luang Prabang, not at Alex’s place this time because his brother had guests but we stayed in the ‘back’ of the shop it works in. His boss had invited us to stay but it was not very set up for sleeping, full of dust, it looked like something between a warehouse and a grange. Monica and I looked at each other and we laughed when we saw it, we thought “And what’s next?” The condition of the places we were staying were getting worse and worse but it did not matter as people were offering it to us with their heart. So we set up a bedroom for ourselves and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, Monica woke me up half crying as their was a very sick cat screaming in the room and she was scared it he would jump on us. When we think about it now, we laugh but at that time, in the context, things were very different…
Phongsali Province
In the morning we met Shai, Alex friend who is a novice (young monk). He was taking us to his village in the north, I had not realised that we would be travelling with a novice so we had to watch our behaviour even more as relationship between monks and women are even more ’regulated’, we can not touch them for instance. We missed the first bus to Udumxai, so we had to wait a few hours at the bus station. It was a 6 hours bus journey to get there, on the way, we’ve asked the bus driver to stop at Baan Fay so we could see the kids briefly, but they were not there so we were disappointed. We arrive in Udumxai very late and could not carry on to Shai’s village the same day so we stayed at a guest house close to the bus station and left for the village very early the following day. In Vang Vien we had met an ausie guy who had decided to follow us, he got sick in Luang Prabang, we thought he would stay there but in the morning he decided to come to the north with us. We were not too sure about him and his intention, we did not want anyone to take advantage of the situation and go there only because it was free. When we realised that we were not thinking in the same way about it all, just before getting the bus to the village, we had to say something, it was not really well received, but it was the best decision for all of us, even though it was hard to split. There are different sorts of travellers and we don’t always connect in the same way with everyone. I was happy that I had met Monica because even though we are different on many aspect, we have the same ideas on the way we want to travel and what it means to us, we do complete ourselves pretty well. We arrived in the village in the morning. Shai and Alex were staying with Alex’s mum while Monica and I were staying at Shai’s godmother who was the chief of the village. It was wooden houses on pilotis with a main room as a living area with nothing in it, it serves as bedroom for us in the night time, there was a kitchen and a separate bedroom for the family (3 kids, father, mother and grandfather). The bathroom was communal, outside. The village was also on a river bank. We had lunch at Shai’s mother then we went teaching in the school in the afternoon. Everyone in the village were so nice, as we were having lunch, they all come to visit us. In the night time, we were ‘attacked’ by the young girls of the village with Lao Lao. Pong, the youngest daughter in our family, she was 22 served herself shots of Lao Lao and we had to follow as long as we could take it. There was a line of girls from the village facing us 3 (Monica, Alex and I). We did not feel drunk at all, even though it was pretty strong but it the morning, it just killed me! No hungover or headache, worse than that, it had killed my immune system and I had no energy left. I caught a flu, stomachache, everything! I stayed in bed without eating for 2 days, walking was too much effort! I felt so bad to be there and be so useless. But everyone was understanding and nice to me, Monica felt awful as well but not as bad as me. I was in this very remote village, feeling horrible and the only thing I could dream of was a nice and clean bed with nice western food and my mummy!!! I could not get any of those so I just had to get over it and I survived!! They called me ‘mao lao’ for a while, which means drunk but I know it was much worse than that! When I felt better, there was a special ceremony in the village for us as we were guest. It is called the ‘bacci’ ceremony. At 6am, everyone gathers in a house, there are offerings, they ‘prey’ for us. They believed in spirits, there are 32 spirits guarding each part of our body. Most of the time they stay around us but sometimes they go and when you travel that s where there is more risk that the spirit go, therefore this ceremony is to make sure the spirits stay with us and guard us. Each person from the village tight a string around our wrist and wished us good luck and protection. I have to admit it was a very moving moment, then of course we had to drink a shot of Lao Lao to conclude it all! At 6 am!!! They are mad!! On the Sunday, a picnic was organised for us. We, the guest of the village paid for all the drinks while men went fishing cat-fish for us. Cat fishes are very special in South East Asia, to start with it is delicious, but you can not fish it all the time as it is protected so only for special occasion you can do. And the picnic for us was a special occasion, so we went to see the men fishing in the river, then later the women arrive with the rest of the picnic and started cooking. They prepared an area along the river for us to dine and dance, as they had carried the whole equipment for music. We had amazing food, soon with the sun and the alcohol (Lao Lao and Beer Lao), most of them were drunk and that s when we started dancing. I was still recovering from my last Lao Lao experience so I was probably the only sober, together with the kids… We had an amazing time in this village, during the week we taught English, we had brought them pens and books as well and they loved it too. I hand-made a game of bingo to teach them English numbers while playing. No so easy when you have nothing, even not paper and it was not as straight forward to produce random numbers on 50 card… I felt like I was back at work… They absolutely loved it! We started playing in English but as soon as I was not there it was in Lao. At the end of this experience I could have simple conversation in Lao. I knew how to count and many words which helped me in many situations… When we were not at school we were spending time with the kids, I played badminton with them, we took loads of pictures, kids took us on their raft, we were always busy! We did have an amazing time in this place, and no word will ever be able to properly describe what happened there.
Luang Nam Tha
When we left the village we went back east of Lao, not far from the Thai border, as I wanted to go eco-trekking in the national park. When we got in town we just wanted to feel clean as we had been pushing it pretty hard for the last few weeks. So we had a girly time looking after ourselves J. The following day, we joined a tour for a 3 days trek and we stayed in homestay in villages. We had not met westerners for quite a while so it was very nice to meet those interesting people on the tour with us: an Australian couple, a german couple and Sarah, an English girl. We went through hill tribe villages and we got to see a different culture again, it was fascinating to see them as it was not too disturbed by tourism (yet). When we got back, we spent the day doing absolutely nothing. We stayed in the room the whole day watching movies. We deserved such a day, what a treat in a clean room!! Luckily we had had this time off because the journey that we had to go to the western side of the country was quite an experience.
From Luang Nam Tha to Vieng Xai
If you travel in Lao, forget about anything with even a tiny bit of comfort, especially not transport. But even when you are ready for it you can always get surprised. Information is not a good quality for them either, after the mixed information that we had concerning how to get to the Vietnamese border, we decided not to take the closest one as it was not open to tourists (even though we found out later that it was). We first took a local bus back to Udumxai. There, we found out that what we had been told was wrong we had to take another bus which would leave us at a junction where we could catch another bus an hour later. Of course it was not the truth… When we got to the junction, after already 8 hours travel, there was absolutely nothing apart from a restaurant and a few local shops, we waited a few hours before starting to get worried as it was getting darker. None knew if/when the bus was coming. Around midnight, we were still waiting and a bus turned left, for the first time, but did not stop. We run after it and it stopped further away. They let us come in but what a mess! I had never seen anything like that, it was so packed I thought it would explode but it was our only chance to go where we wanted to go so we jumped in and found a tiny space standing behind the door. It was late, I thought It would be a night bus where I would be able to sleep but instead of that I got a local bus absolutely packet with rice bags and people sitting on the top of each other. First I got a tiny standing spot behind the door but then the driver was really kind and moved some people so I could sit on rice bags in the front. Let me tell you that my arse could feel it after a few hours. The journey was 16 hours long! Fortunately after a few hours a seat became available and It was not as bad but still, it was impossible to sleep. When the sun rose, we could see the beautiful landscape, very remote places but so was the road, very bumpy and windy. After 24 hours since we left Luang Nam Tha we arrived in Sam Neua. We decided to stay a night there as we needed some rest. We took a room and slept the whole afternoon, it was so so hot. There was not much to do there anyway. The following morning we travelled to Vieng Xai, it is one of the last town before the border with Vietnam, very remote place, but surrounded with stunning landscape. I wanted to rent a motorbike to visit around but as there was no automotic, Monica refused that I drove a manual, as she was scared so we ended up walking around town. We went to the market , I am fascinated by those and thisone was very authentic. On the way back, we walked passed a a school and there was a party orgenised by the teachers and training teachers, we got invited to drink Lao Lao and beer but they also taught us how to dance their dance, quite funny for us westerners to watch them moving only their hand and they call that dancing! Everyone was so kind to us. At the end, one of the guy invited us back in his house where he stays with his grand parents, we had very interesting exchanges, we were offered tea and bananas this time. For many of them it was the first time they spoke to foreigners so it was interesting for both side. In the evening, we went for dinner with a swiss couple and a Canadian guy we met in the guest house, there were not that many foreigners around. It was a town for caving, we did not do it but mainly foreigners come here to cross the border, it is so far from anything else. In the morning we went bacck to school, which was filled with kids this time. It gave us more opportunity to take pictures but also to get references of books. Indeed, this whole experience in Laos has raised something inside us. We want to help, we want to bring more knowledge to those kids, through books. Our project would be to build a library for the villages we have visited. In order to raise money for that we re planning to set up a photo exhibition in Europe when we will be back. This is a project that has a great importance for me and it will help me to carry on my trip in a way while being back… A lot of work is involved but it is worth it!
On the 19th of February, my visa for Lao expired so we took a sangtwaen to the border with Vietnam. It was early in the morning, Dave the Canadian guy had already starting stressing us with his patronising way of telling us what to do. He could not stop talking, so before arriving in Vietnam we already had enough of him. We crossed the border a bit tensed, sad to leave beautiful Lao and apprehensive to discover Vietnam after all the bad things travellers had said about this country. But luckily we discovered an amazing country…

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