Laos

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We say Sin Choi (Good Morning)Vietnam for the last time and fly from Hanoi to Laung Prabang, we fly with Laos Airlines, when Sal sees the plane she is slightly concerned to see such a small aircraft, even more worried when here eyes arrive on the propellers! A very reassuring Australian lady starts to say, don’t look so worried, all the stories you hear………… Stop right there says Sal, as I don’t know any stories and certainly don’t want to learn any at this point! Anyway, it is tiny, no hand baggage fits anywhere but it was a nice flight. Arrive about 8pm into Luang Prabang International Airport which is little more than a large hut, with many officials. We have to get our visa here and it is a bit of a long drawn out process when a whole plane load of people have to go through the same procedure. We are met by our new tour guide, great difficulty understanding him and no idea what his name was but off we go with our luggage in a separate truck.


Some of the group are staying in posher hotels and so they are decanted into open air buses that they call large tuc tucs and set off, and we get taken to ours which is a lovely hotel and owned by the only member of the royal family of Laos who was not killed in the uprising of 1975, however, malaria is still here and there are loads of pools of water everywhere, all filled with lotus and look beautiful, but the water is not moving much so it is on with the midge stuff and sleeping under nets which was fun!

Next day we set off to the Mekong again and take a 2 hour trip to the Buddha caves, which are caves filled with hundreds of statues of Buddha of all different sizes, bit of a bun fight getting in and out as limited space and lots of tourists. Sail back to Ban Xang Khong, known as the whisky village where they make all sorts of rice whisky, mostly bottled with snakes and scorpions inside, samples are available.

We then head back to town and as it is a world heritage site, the bus isn’t allowed in, so we are put in the funny little open air buses and taken around. First stop is lunch, which was a typical Laos spread and fantastic, all thoughts of that revolting chicken at the beginning of the holiday are gone and the food has been fantastic since. There were dishes of fish, meat, noodles, rice, vegetables and all really tasty. As usual there is an enormous selection of fresh tropical fruit as well and of course beer, everyone on the tour is enjoying the local beer wherever we go.

Everyone is surprised at how nice Luang Prabang is, it all seems quite affluent, smart buildings, nice choice of restaurants and the people are so friendly, everyone says Sabadi, whilst holding their hands together and bowing, it means good morning, good afternoon, good night - anything! Many have a smattering of English and want to practice on us, tourism is very new here so we are still a bit of a novelty! They all want to sell you something but not pushy at all, just very pleasant. The only other words we have learnt sounds like cop chai lie lie which means thank you very much and they love it if you say it!

Wat Viaoun is a 16th century temple with its calling for rain buddhas, all the temples are beautiful and each claims something, the oldest, largest, has the oldest, largest, tallest, fattest etc. Buddha! Over the next few days, we vist various temples and though each has some feature we can remember, they all blend into one and we can’t remember which is which! They are all decorated very lavishly and sparkle in the sunshine. We think it is a lovely religion as it seems to be anything you want it to be. All over the place are little shrines, in peoples gardens, in shops and restaurants, and it is fascinating to see what offering has been made, one had a can of coke and a packet of crisps whereas another had a cup of tea and 2 biscuits! Just when everyone is really tired, still full up from lunch and completely over heated in the 35 degrees, our guide takes us to the temple with the best view which is a 300+ step climb, Sal and some of the girlies opt for a beer instead!

Our second day in Luang Prabang starts with a lovely breakfast on the veranda and then a visit to the old royal residence which is now the royal residence museum and the main room is rich red covered with little scenes made from colour glass and looks very exotic, the rest of the interior is quite plain. Vietnam’s royal family live in excile near Paris, Laos’s were nearly all murdered in 1975. 32km to the west of the town is the Kuangsi waterfalls which is made up of one tall fall and many limestone pools where you can swim, very pretty. There is also a bear rescue centre. On the way, we visit a village which is part of a tourism project, the whole place is very poor and they live in traditional wood and reed houses but each woman seemed to have 3 or 4 very young children and most were pregnant again. They were all selling stuff from stalls but most of it was the same and very little was made locally, we bought something just for the sake of it.

Before setting off for the airport, we call into a traditional silk weaving place which had the silk worms etc and again, we had a explanation on the life cycle of the silk worm and how the silk is extracted. They had some beautiful stuff for sale and silk by the metre which was about $15 a metre which I think is very cheap. We also visited a place making paper which was very interesting, they were making the sort of handmade paper that sells at home for about £4 a sheet.

Back at Luang Prabang Airport, we put our stuff through security, go through immigration and then can go out of the airport to the restaurant!!! (which was closed!). The last aircraft was small, this next one was tiny! We liked Luang Prabang a lot, the people make all the difference and here they were lovely.

Our next destination is Vientienne which is the capital of Laos today. We are met by our next guide who is Joe and speaks good English and is one of the tiniest people we have ever seen! By the time we get here we are so tired that we can’t be bothered to eat so tuck into a load of Oreo biscuits - any weight lost previously has been rediscovered!!!

Our hotel is vast but we seem to be the only people here. The view from our window is the Mighty Mekong again, but on the other side of the river is Thailand. We set off with Joe on our city tour and he takes us to the market, which was fascinating as it was the food market. We started off gently with fruit and veg, all beautifully presented. Lots of stuff we didn’t recognise but Joe was doing his best to explain. There was also herbs and tons of tamarind which we had never seen before. We then move along to the fish section, most of which were still alive in big metal bowls with air being pumped into the water to keep them alive. The meat section was a bit more gruesome as their cuts of meat were different and some of the bits and pieces they were preparing, didn’t look appetising! The lady with the bicycle pump up the chickens bum was entertaining!

We moved on to the golden stupa, these can be various sizes but this was big and golden and where cremation ashes are placed. As with any temple, there are generally monks around, dressed in their orange robes, we asked one if we could have a photo which he was happy to do….. to look more authentic, he tucked away his ipod!!

Vientienne has its own Arc de Triomph, they call it the monster in concrete, the city is flat so gives a good view. Some free time for lunch and we have a great meal, many of the cafes do good basic noodle and rice food and it is very cheap, on this particular occasion, four of us in a nice restaurant had 4 substantial meals and 4 beers and the total bill was about £5. Another couple of temples are on the itinerary this afternoon, one is interesting as the monks are sitting on the floor teaching kids and adults various things which they really seemed to be enjoying and was good to watch.

Our hotel is organising a New Years Eve dinner tonight and tickets have been supplied. After the Christmas Eve fiasco, we are all there at 7pm as instructed and the rest of the place is completely empty! About 40 tables are set up on a huge terrace of the hotel, the temperature is still warm and all around the edges are cooking stations with chefs preparing, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Laos, Japanese food, an amazing array, but what interested our group was the free flowing beer all evening. Gradually more tables filled up and it all got going, by which time we had all had plenty to drink and were going to have a good time anyway! They had some pretty little girls doing traditional dances and they had a ‘lucky draw’ with prizes like a night in a hotel in Laos, or return tickets to Kuala Lumpa from Vientiane, none of which were going to be useful to us, however, we won a DVD player - just what we needed to add to our luggage. They had games too, the locals thought this was great fun, but somebody from our group entered each game and of course we made lots of noise, one of the younger lads won the sushi eating competition and won a food blender! It was all a bit silly and as we were awash with beer it seemed funny. It started to rain, so us Brits stayed put whilst everyone else ran for cover and we sung Rule Britannia!!

Then the dancing started…….. this was fascinating. They dance with their hands and it was beautiful to watch. Couples would get on the dance floor, the ladies on the outside but no eye contact, they moved quite slowly but their hands did all the talking. They loved it when we got up and joined in. We presumed that any public show of affection is frowned on in Laos so this is why they danced like this, it was lovely but we probably looked like twats! Later, a rock band came on and they all started dancing like westerners and Col ended up in the middle of a load of girls, strutting his stuff which they loved!

So we saw in the New Year, the bad news was that we had to leave the hotel at 4.30am to get to the airport….. funnily enough, nobody was looking too bright!

The flight was another Laos Airlines mini prop planes, we flew for 40 minutes and then stopped in Prakse, still in Laos and had to get off. We had to go through various officials before we were allowed back on the plane for another hour flight to Siam Reap in Cambodia. The good news was we got a sort of breakfast twice, one on each flight.

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