Lazy Laos

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This is the perfect place to visit if you wanna take time off life. Not alot happens here and the locals can be found just lounging around horizontal on the roadsides. Sounds ok but two weeks was more than enough.


The 22 hours bus journey from Vietnam was interesting though and also shot off the scale of 'head-doing-ness'. After overloading the bus with anything from rice sacks to live birds there was little room for us to squeeze in. Luckily for me i just slept on all the rucksacks at the back of the bus but Daz was not so lucky; his seat didn't even recline and sitting upright for nearly a day enough was enough.


One positive thing to come out of the journey was our new backpacker recruit. Fernando, a brazilian from Sao Paulo who was travelling alone so we kidnapped him for the following 14 days. Puka bloke who had only been speaking English since studying it in Oz a couple of months ago so we were helping him along with the phrases the official courses don't teach ya. So if your ever in Brazil and here a local saying 'you know brew' and a few foul swear words then that's our doing. Shockingly though there was questions about the English language that we couldn't even answer so back to infants school for us when we return me thinks!!


We also met a Tunisian fella Hakim, who we spent about three days with in Vientiane and like the bus ride.......enough was enough, nice enough bloke but a 40 years old teacher who knew everything and 'me me me me me me me me me me' it was time to cut ties.


Vientiane was strange, the capital city of Laos but nothing to do except eat and eat. Hakim and Fernando were planning on touring a Buddha Park which was located on the outskirts of the city so we decided to tag along not really excited about the adventure. Pleasently suprised was the outcome though. A long long time ago in a far off land some bloke who i can't remember the name of designated a field to display all types of Buddha statues that he had seen on his travels. Not created for tourists but as time moved on this is obviously what it has become. A whopping 3/4 of an hour spent there though and that was the backpacker bit of Vientiane over. After three days here we boarded a bus to Vang Vieng minus Hakim. He was due to travel to Malaysia so i promise we didn't just sneak out of the guesthouse at 5am.



Vang Vieng was labelled as the backpacker capital off Laos; it didn't dissapoint. Altogether we spent 9 days there and whittled away the days sunbathing by the pool, watching movies in the movie bars (great invention) and basically sleeping till midday.
There were a couple of activities of note though; as soon as you mention Laos on the travelling circuit the first thing spoken about is the 'Tubing'.
Hire a huge inner tube for $4, get in a tuk-tuk to the launching spot upstream about 6kms, then ride the gentle rapids down to Vang Vieng. May sound a bit boring but did i mention there are numerous bars and rope swings situated along the river!?! All ya do is if you approach a bar that has music pumping out of it , random people swinging from branches into the river and the bar owner shouting "FREE LAO LAO" (local whisky) then you give 'em a wave and they chuck you out either a bamboo pole or rope or just about anything that won't snap.

We hit the water about 11am and had aimed to be back by dark because suprise suprise we were told there's been a few deaths in recent time with pissed up tourists getting in trouble. With that in mind we had planned to be back in Vang Vieng by 6pm, it was all going to plan as we were surfing the last km when i saw our landing point in the distance "ok Daz, we need to get over to the left side of the river" the rapids were no way of adrenalin standard but more than enough to pull ya downstream. I was in front and as soon as the opening came clear i paddled like buggery to get to shore, result, made it, where's Daz?? As i look up he's hanging on to a tiny branch at the end of the clearing, if he let's go he'll be dragged down the river into no-mans land. We were both cracking up laughing which didn't aid the cause of him needing ever bit of strength he had to hold on and pull himself in " I CAN'T FRIGGING HOLD ON JESTY (giggle giggle)"......"AHH SH!T", we'd discussed the situation after hearing the stories of been getting in strife that no matter what happens we stick together, so there i am, standing on the shore ready to hit the shower to continue the days drinking as Daz slips out of view back into the rapids. I entered the water in a way that even 'The Hoff' would have been proud and back into me ring to get into the current. A couple of days previous to this we'd been sitting eating at our riverside bungalow as a lad cruised past on his tube and we were cracking up laughing cos half an hour later he passed again but this time in a boat going upstream, what an idiot we thought because we knew the landing point was further upstream than our accomodation. So here we are, two days later and we're the ones cruising past our accomodation with nowhere to get out and no resue boat in sight!!!!!
With night setting in fast and a couple more failed attempts of making it to shore we decided to cling on to a rockface on one side of the river discussing what the hell to do. As we continued to laugh about the situation a few local heads popped up over the rocks which were about three meters high. "GET IN" a bamboo pole later and we were pulled up to safety.
We loved it so much we were planning to do it again the following day but after spending a night on the town there was little chance of doing anything the next day other than watching Transformers in one of the movie bars.



The day before we were due to leave i left Daz and Fernando and hired a moped to visit a couple of surrounding villages. It's rainy season so the roads were certainly a challange as they were just a sludgy mess, no tarmac to report out here. I'd been going for about an hour after stopping at a lagoon for a bit of a cool down and was just coming to the end of a village when my ped lost all power and the enging stopped, "ahh crap" it only cost me $3 to hire the bike but the small print said that anything wrong and i was responsible for it. Tried a couple of times to restart which it did but still no power: by this time i'd attracted a bit of attention from a couple of children playing nearby, as they approached i smiled sweetly and said "NO WORK" hoping there Dad was a mechanic or something. The little girl which must have been no older than ten pointed to the seat. "Eh, i'm sure the seat ain't the problem" she took the keys out the ignition and inserted it in another slot towards the back of the ped which i didn't even know exsisted. The seat popped up to reveal the fuel tank to which she unscrewed the cap to reveal NO FUEL. So let me summarise, i'd run the bloody thing outa petrol and needed a ten year old to fault find the problem for me (glowing a shade of red right now). My only saviour was that it was a dodgy fuel gauge cos it showed a quater of a tank but still was an embarrasing situation to be in!! Only a small walk to get my Grolsch like bottle of fuel and i was on my way again.



Next destination was Luang Probang and was litsted as a world heritage site due to it's French historical look. Not a lot to report here other than a couple of nights spent in bars watching the footy. Other highlights include......................................................Nothing!!



Ok, Laos coming to a close and time to plan the journey back into Thailand to Chang Mai which is where i'm writing this now. There were two main options on how to get here a) fly for an hour or b) spend three days on the Mekong river by slowboat and then a bus form the Thai border.
We'd heard nothing but bad reports about the slowboat but in our guidebook it was listed as one of the highlights. With a lengthy discussion about which one we were guna do we came to different conclusions. Daz flew and i got the slowboat, that's the advantage of travelling with ya best mate rather than ur missus. A huge man-hug and it was "i'll see you in three days in Chang Mai".
Why didn't i listen to Daz's views and everbody else who had already experienced. Possibly the most uncomfortable way to travel ever and boredom was just too much too handle. 11 hours a day on the boat chugging up the Mekong towards Thailand with the only chance to get out and stretch my never ending legs was when we settled at a village for the night.
We arrived at the border about 630pm and of course the border had been closed an hour so i had to spend one more night in Laos; this turned out to be one of my best experiences here.

I was greeted by a local man explaining to me that he had a bed for me to sleep in and could get me to Cahng Mai in the morning. Knackered and ratty that sounded perfect, i jumped on the back of his ped (with fuel) and arrived at his guesthouse. On the journey he kept saying "you hungry, you wanna drink" i presumed this place had a restaurant attached that served beverages aswell. As soon as i dumped my bag in my room he was knocking on my door "Come on we have to go now" "Go? Go where?" " Come on, we have to go" ahh, i thought we must have to book the bus to Chang Mai now before the office shut or something....................Wrong.
We pulled up at his mates house where there were three locals sitting who couldn't speak hardly a word of English, they pulled up a stool for me and the women of the household brought out chopsticks, a bowl each and most importantly a bottle of Lao Lao whiskey. I didn't have a clue what was going on and why i was here but i've learnt in Asia to go with the flow no matter what happens.
The way to social drink in Laos is no matter how many people there is only one glass, the head of the table is in charge of distributing the Alcohol so we took it in turns to do shots. The older man didn't drink so between four of us we polished off 1.5 litres of whisky in about an hour. Certainly made me forget about the head-doing boat journey i'd just endured.
The food wasn't such a plus point though, two dishes and a salad bowl which consisted of Mekong washed watercress, if anyone has seen the colour of the Mekong you know why this wasn't so appetising.
The salad was the least of my problems though, one dish was cooked chunks of Goat which had more fat than Big Buddha himself and the other was UNCOOKED goat swimming in a bowl of blood which i think was Ducks blood with a few chilli's and spices added to it.
Fair enough, i was so hungry i handled the cooked Goat but after one mouthful of the blood out of politeness it made me stomach turn. My get-out-of-jail card though was the fact that it blew my head off with the amount of chilli in it, i mouthed the fact it was too hot for me but the fact my eyes were watering sort of gave it away.
So with me thinking i made a wise move i sat back to chew some fat and wrestle with the watercress; ten minutes later a lady returns to the table with another bowl of the chilli infested blood. Huge smiles around the table as they say "for you, for you" CRAP, she'd made a less spicy one just for me!!!! A deep breath and one more spoonfull out of gratitude and i hoped everyone was too pissed to realise i wouldn't be going near that bowl again. The night grew old with rounds of local beer and i hit the sack spinning about midnight.



A struggle to get up in the morning and i felt sick all day when i thought about what i'd eaten the night before. Five hours on the Bus and it was back to business with Mr Sheridan .................................

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Photos

Buddha Park
"BRING IT ON"

Buddha Park
Daz Hakim and Fernando keeping the chain going

Tubing
"err, Daz where's ya hand going mate??
No we didn't take a camera but stole this off facebook.

Me and me Ped
Que Chris Rea "THIS IS THE ROAD TO HELL" (or run out of petrol actually)

The Slowboat
Check out the first class seating and just how bored everyone is!!

Tubing
That is actually me and some random Danish guy on one of the swings.

Luang Probang
The place is so exciting the only photo i have is in our room after the bars shut. Fernando's on me right arm......legend.

Comments

[Sidsel]

OMG I can't believe you had to eat that disgusting food...! I really don't know what I would've done with myself in such a situation, coz I really can't eat food like that, none of it! And it's so hard to be polite and just swallow (think straight here, please!) :P The tubing sounds awesome, just don't like the idea that you don't really know when you'll be able to get off the river again... The looong trips you've had sound aweful, but the rest sounds pretty cool!! Hope you're enjoying Chiang Mai, and don't forget... The night market! ;) xxx