Laos

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I dunno why, but we were underwhelmed with Laos from the start.

The places were all nice, the people were friendly enough and all of life's essentials were extremely affordable, so maybe it was just us.

It didn't help that we were joined on the flight in by an unidentified, but persistent and irritating microbe which couldn't decide if it wanted to be a flu-causing virus or a headcold bug, so alternated between the two.


Vientiane is a pocket sized capital city with a river (the Mekong – but of course), a museum and, lo, an international ATM.

The museum provided a sterling shelter from the rain and included a display on the Plain of Jars, including an actual 5ft earthenware jar.

Linda felt that this should be sufficient to save us the bother of actually having to visit the mysterious Neolithic site where hundreds of great big jars were spread across the landscape for reasons unknown.

Since the Americans had carpet-bombed the area during the Vietnam War, leaving only the odd field of jars standing, I had the sneaking feeling that she might be right. (Actually, Laos proclaimed its neutrality during the war, only to be roundly ignored by the participants. The North Vietnamese army established supply routes through the remote valleys and the Americans felt compelled to deploy unimaginable volumes of munitions in response, to the extent that little Laos is officially the Most Bombed Country in the History of The World (by population)).


Vientiane is the only capital I have been to where there are still mud roads in the city centre. This is not a problem as it is so quiet that more attention is required to dodge the puddles than the traffic.

We headed up to Vang Viang, looking for some recuperation.

Vang Viang is known as a 'traveler's hangout'. In this case that means that all the restaurants are equipped with multiple televisions showing continuous re-runs of Friends and The Simpsons.

The flower of European youth are laid out in rows below the screens with a Lao beer in one hand and a Marlboro light in the other.

Over the week we saw various fragments of Ross and Rachel's romance, though never in chronological order, and I was reminded of who shot Mr. Burns.

Anyway, Vang Viang is nicely situated on a river (not the Mekong) in a mountainous area and we had some nice walks. I also sat in an inner tube for a couple of hours as I drifted back to town from an upriver location.

Finally we felt fit enough to take the lengthy bus journey to Luang Prabang.

85% of Laos is mountainous and the engineers had clearly decided to build the road as near to the peaks as they dared.

Consequently it was a journey of severe switchbacks and stunning scenery.

In many of the villages along the way the road takes up all the available space, so local people have built their houses with the front planted on the ground and the rear projecting out over the precipice, supported by an assortment of wooden poles.

Water running down the mountainside shoots off the ledge where the road had been cut, to create an impromptu shower for the unabashed naked children and more demure adults.


We arrived in Luang Prabang, found a room, then a restaurant, then got suddenly, unexpectedly and completely stiffed by our re-emerging cold/flu companion.

I have to say that if you are going to be ill in foreign parts it would be hard to find somewhere more ideal than Luang Prabang to recover (unless you needed proper medical attention, of course).

The town is a delight.

Bounded by two merging rivers to form a mild peninsular, the land is occupied by a profusion of Buddhist temples and colonial era buildings that bestow the town with a rare kind of charm.

Modest levels of people and traffic belie the choice of cafes and adequacy of facilities.

It was from this area that the term 'Lotus Eaters' originated, referring to those French colonialists who got so involved with the local way of life that they dropped out of service and 'went native'. (Lotus plants, growing abundantly, have always formed an important part of the local diet).

It took 10 days before we felt well enough to move on but by that time our motivation to sample the rigours of Laotian public transport had somewhat waned, so we retired to the relative succour of the Thai borderlands.

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