Laos P D R

---

Sabai dii (Hello in Laotian) from the People’s Democratic Republic of Lao. The P D R is also referred to locally as “Please don’t rush” to sum up the laid back attitude of the Lao people (more of this later).

The bus from Hanoi to the border with Laos leaves early in the morning (5.30am). We get there in 7 hours travelling initially through flat terrain but then, as we get nearer to Laos, through beautiful mountainous countryside with a river running through, that reminds us of Nepal. At the Vietnam border we have to pay $1 each for our stamp for the privilege of exiting Vietnam, and at the Cau Treo crossing point it‘s $35 each for our Visas + $1 for “service”. After a quick lunch stop (we have fruit we bought in the market in Hanoi) we board another bus to Pak Xan, our overnight stop on the way to Vientiane.

Lao (as it’s spelt by the locals - it was the French that added the silent ‘s’) is the most beautiful country - certainly our favourite in Indochina. It has stunning mountains, enchanting hill villages, incredible variety in vegetation and rivers with crystal clear emerald green water reflecting the vegetation, friendly, gentle people and the most amazing food - despite what the LP books say. People here don’t seem to wear the conical hat that is almost a symbol of Vietnam, so the feel is quite different early on. And women wear the traditional silk sarong (sinh) with beautiful silk embroidery edging - different designs in different areas. Unfortunately, it’s also very poor and some of the communities we pass through are clearly dependent on subsistence farming. Families keep black pigs, goats, chickens and cattle and the main crops we see are corn, pumpkin, beans and rice. There’s a lot of fresh fruit on sale too (including small oranges though we never see any orange groves) - apart from the usual suspects in this part of the world we have acquired a taste for the Jali pear. Houses are mainly wood or woven bamboo, built on stilts and some look as if they’re about to collapse. Mind you - there are some with massive satellite dishes outside too! In the towns though, things look more affluent, with well constructed houses made of brick at ground floor with wooden upper floors. There isn’t the same proliferation of motorbikes as in Vietnam, though we see lots of fancy 4x4 Hilux style trucks. For many though the main form of transport is the tractor engine drawn cart, bicycle or legs! We soon discover why the Hilux is so popular; the roads are in some parts abominable thanks largely to the number of landslides they have due to the rains & some poor maintenance! Craters threaten to take off the underside of our bus regularly.

We arrive at Pak Xan at 9.30 pm. It’s been a long day. The town is pretty non descript & we stay at the creatively named Pak Xan Hotel which is basic and about the worst place we have stayed in so far. It is by the river we discover when we get up for breakfast and are served at the riverside restaurant. We also discover that the place has a poor black bear in a cage in the garden - what it’s doing there is anybody’s guess. It is in good nick but C who does a close inspection says it has sad eyes. Soon it’s all aboard the bus & off to Vientiane.

Vientiane

Vientiane (V from now on) is the capital of Laos. The journey from Pak Xan is through some beautiful countryside & we travel up and down & through the mountain range which is the border between the two countries, passing clusters of villages of local tribe people - the Pao tribe - who live life as farmers & have their own customs & dress which is quite colourful. They look quite different & the children are very beautiful - their origins go back to the tribes from Tibet. The weather is much cooler & the humidity has gone which is great.

We arrive at mid day & check in to the Mali Namphu Guesthouse which is in the middle of the city near all the action & main sights. It’s a great room with air con, not that we need it as we are now coming up to winter in Laos. We get 2 small bottles of water - always needed - but no internet/Wi Fi (which seems to be the thing in Laos unlike Vietnam). The Guesthouse has a lovely courtyard filled with tropical plants, banana & coconut trees & a few small tables & benches made of concrete but covered in decorative tiles - common here we discover.

The town is a mish mash of old, new and 70’s era buildings interspersed with white Wats (temples) and running alongside is the Mekong river with Thailand on the other side. We’ve read that V isn’t much to write home about but we really enjoy it and we would have loved to stay longer; it has an easy, kick back vibe (though we don’t see the local prostitutes and ladyboys much on view by the riverside bars that others in the group report back on - part of the seedy side of life in SE Asia in general). It is packed with foreigners though (falangs as they refer to tourists) - many of whom have settled here. Many are French which is reflected in the number of French cafés, restaurants & expensive grocery stores which stock expensive red wines, and also in some of the house prices - $150 - $300,000 for a pad, albeit sumptuous.

We decide to check out the local eateries for lunch & try the regional specialities - Laap (they seem to spell it in various ways) - ground meat or fish mixed with herbs and spices and lemon served raw or cooked, noodle soup or Foe as they call it (both good) - all washed down with the national beverage - Beerlao (Carlsberg brew really).

We are struck by how quiet & devoid of people this capital city is. There are definitely more cars than bikes here & the streets are coloured by the local Tuk Tuks which are different to other SE Asian countries. We realise that the reason for such a low level of people is the fact that the country as a whole has only 6.2 m inhabitants, 85% of whom live & work in rural areas.

We hire bikes for the day for 8,000 kip each (there are 8,500 kip to a US $). This helps us tour the area with ease. We start 4 km from town with the main attraction, Pha That Luang, a big temple painted in gold & the national symbol of Laos. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t here a few days before as it was the biggest festival of the year here - we see plenty of evidence of the excesses in the rubbish being cleared up. Heading back into town we check out the local “Arc de Triomphe”, Patuxai or Victory Gate. It was built in 1962 but still isn’t finished due to lack of money.

Then it’s off to visit some of the Wats in town starting with Wat Si Saket which is beautiful and the oldest in Vientiane. It’s surrounded by cloisters containing 1,000’s of Buddha images and is shaded by coconut and banana trees. We also visit Wat Si Muang which contains a sacred stone pillar believed to be inhabited by the spirit of Ventiane.

Unfortunately we don’t have time to go to the Buddha Park (Xieng Khu Ang) which is some 29km from V which has a reclining Buddha made of concrete, which is famous all over Laos. Suggestion for GAP, the trip could actually do with another ½ day at least in V & less time in Vang Vieng.

In the evening we visit the night food market but it’s really only geared up for take away which is a shame as the food looks fab. So instead we visit a fancy looking place in town, Khop Chai Deu, and have more laap, this time with sticky rice - a Laos speciality - not bad, though M‘s squid noodles are largely devoid of squid as far as we can tell!

Vang Vieng

We arrive in Vang Vieng (VV) after a 4 hour trip through fairly ordinary countryside which changes dramatically as we get close to VV - beautiful countryside, very similar to Guilin in China, with limestone Karsts all over. VV is a hugely touristy little village with a lovely river running through it, which is clear & shallow. The main attraction is for folks to go tubing down it - yes sitting in a truck tyre floating with the speed of the river for about 2 hours down stream. We opt out as the wait is about 2 hours for our group. It’s also a place to go caving, kayaking or - if the feeling takes you - just to sit in bars and watch re-runs of Friends! Nearly every bar shows them; Sarah and Louise would love it!

We’re staying at the Thavonsouk resort bungalows by the river which has great shack style rooms. As it’s our anniversary we decide to splurge a bit and end up at the Sanaxay restaurant which has a great BBQ going. So we settle for BBQ whole river Fish (awesome), chicken & Papaya salad and sticky rice. And of course cold Beerlao.

We see quite a lot of material promoting sustainable development in Lao - tourism, economic, educational and agricultural ventures. (If we’d been travelling independently in Indochina, we could definitely have done some voluntary work here). Our favourite in VV is the Organic Farm Café (all produce comes from the organic farm 3kms away) which makes the best mulberry shakes. C has to have 2!

Next day we chill out & have a fabulous lunch of Foe opposite the Organic farm café & get our bottle refilled with cold water for 1,000 kip before our midday departure for Luang Prabang. Just beyond the village are 2 beautiful Wats that we have missed, damn; shows how lazy we were. After a short while we are driving through gorgeous mountains again with villages of Hmong tribal folk in their traditional outfits. Other than farming, they live on selling clothes - cotton & silk, plus various crafts & curios - all very colourful. We are struck by the beautiful colours of flowers growing wild by the road side near these Villages; purple, burgundy, reds, orange, white, yellow etc - a mix of beautiful poinsettias, hibiscus, types of sunflowers, bougainvillea and many that we don’t recognise. Unfortunately it’s too bumpy for decent photo’s for Mum to identify later. We watch the colourful sunset before we get to our destination.

Luang Prabang

We arrive at about 7pm after another long and winding drive & check into the Maniphone Guest House, which is about 2 km from the central area, then join the group for a Tuk Tuk ride into town & get out at the night market. This a colourful market selling stuff made by the Hmong tribes people; hand made paper lamps, silk pillowcases and wall hangings, and clothes along with the usual touristy nick nacks. The market runs along the main street in town and is surrounded by restaurants and café’s. There are also lots of places offering massage, which is big business in SE Asia. Normally it’s various forms of Thai massage, however in Luang Prabang we discover the concept of a Lao massage but don’t have time to try one - next time maybe.

We spend two days “Watting”! - visiting some of the 32 Wats that adorn this UNESCO Heritage city. The city is described as French colonial though we aren’t convinced as there is limited evidence of the French architectural past though the number of French cafes & bakeries belie this. Not that we’re complaining - we get some great cakes (mango, pineapple and carrot) for our picnics for the Mekong river trip to follow.

The city is on a peninsula bounded by the Mekong river on one side and the Nam Khan river on the other. And we meander through the streets tripping over Wats at almost every turn. The highlights though are:
Wisunalat which is the oldest continually operating Wat since 1513;
Xieng Thong Wat at the tip of the peninsula which is stunning with the tree of life mosaic on its exterior & a funeral chapel containing a gold dragon chariot and funeral urns. It also has various other buildings with glass mosaics depicting local customs, together with cultural & religious scenes. The various building are also coloured differently to make this Wat quite unique in style & content;
Pa Huak which has colourful and elaborate Murals inside which seem very Chinese in their influence;
Xieng Muan, which with funding by Norway, UNESCO & NZ has experts training the monks in woodwork, painting and Buddha casting to enable the monks to renovate & maintain the Wats in future. (These skills were lost under the communist regime that was established in 1975);
That Chomsi on the top of Phu Si hill from where the view of the city is lovely & the sunset quite spectacular. The Wat itself is nothing to write home about but on the way down there are 2 Buddha footprints - one a size 10 and the other in a cave about 100 times bigger - we are not sure of the history behind these but they pull in the visitors at 20,000 kip a throw.
We also pay a quick visit to the Royal Palace Museum. Here you can see artefacts left by the ousted royal family and the Pha Bang, the gold standing Buddha after which the town is named. As you can see the Buddha from outside and many of the artefacts are clearly visible through the open doors and windows, we decide to save our $4 entry fees! There is also a cultural show here on some evenings with dancing and elaborate costumes which some of the group go to and enjoy.

Like Myanmar, Monks abound here and M is in heaven as he snaps away - like a kid in a candy shop he can’t decide which pic to take at times. Monks do make very powerful images in photographs - and we have at least 500 to prove it!! Our last morning involves an early start (5-15am) to walk into town to see the monks receiving offerings/alms (rice and other foods) from locals and visitors. At one level it’s a sad sight with the genuine morning rounds for alms by monks being turned into a tourist circus by enterprising local selling tourists sticky rice to offer & a mat & small stool to sit on (this is because custom requires that the giver must be at a lower level than the monks). All this takes place despite advisory posters in the Wats requesting visitors not to buy rice off the street sellers but to get it from the market if they genuinely want to make an offering. Unfortunately the place the group has stopped is quite busy with tourists so we head back through some side streets and find more peaceful lines of monks doing their rounds (with only 2 falangs - us- in sight); one very popular young girl is giving out chocolate bars - C almost joins the queue!

We are struck by the number of early morning joggers (not quite as many as in Myanmar or Vietnam where many more people come out to the parks for Tai Chi & Badminton on courts marked out for them on the bricked areas. They even play in the evening in the fading light!!).

We eat a lot at the Vane Chalearn Shack attached to the Guest House of the same name having fantastic fish and noodle soups which are a local speciality. The Lao salad is fantastic as is the noodle salad with spicy sauce & roasted peanuts. We did try the ubiquitous fried seaweed which was ok, however our fish Laap was a bit of a disappointment one evening. However, sitting by the Mekong eating lovely and cheap local cuisine & drinking beerlaos, it didn’t detract from our frequent visits here. We also try the night food market and buy a BBQed sticky rice stick coated with chillie sauce to burn your lips to oblivion and later some freshly BBQed Mekong river fish (with lemon grass inside). It’s meaty, moist and beautifully flavoured and easy to fillet (a bonus when eating without the niceties of cutlery in your hotel room!). The market here has a host of different offerings, a buffet offering a mixed bag of stuff for only 5,000 kip, roasted pig with the head & the innards a speciality, chicken, kebabs etc. What is noticeable both here & in Vietnam is how many folk come to the food market for “take out” largely in plastic bags including the dressings/sauces. Clearly home cooking isn’t the done thing which might explain the thousands of eating places from a small stool on the street to fancy restaurants. This goes to prove if proof were needed that street food is so much better & a lot more fun apart from being a lot cheaper. It’s the real Mc Coy & during his tour we haven’t been as adventurous (other than in Thailand) - shame on us. Perhaps it was the unknown exotic variety of stuff in Vietnam - with no menus in English & language a problem? A poor excuse anyway! Unfortunately did not have time to try the local hotpot or tabletop BBQ - where earthen ware charcoal fires are stuck into the middle of the table and the ingredients are provided in various bowls. The cooking pot is fixed on top - and it’s away you go with chopsticks. The bowl has a rim which holds spicy soup that the vegetables/noodles etc are cooked in while one BBQs the meat on the perforated central dome. We are also surprised at how many Indian restaurants there are in Laos, many named Nazim’s in Vientiane, Van Vieng & Luang Prabang - either a common name or he‘s a wealthy guy!!!

Mekong River Trip

Our final two days in Laos are spent travelling upriver to Huay Xai, the border with Thailand, on a river boat. The river cuts through lovely green tropical vegetation though with very few villages on the riverside; the land is too steep for cultivation. A few fishermen lay their nets and the odd “speedboat” goes by with clients wearing crash helmets - for the noise of their motors we decide rather than risk of head injury. The river is muddy, murky & powerful with strong currents. We are accompanied by a host of beautiful coloured butterflies for the most of our trip. Butterflies in amazing colours are a feature of the Laos nation wherever we have travelled.

M sees 2 elephants being ridden on the river bank, thanks to Emily who shouts out but C is so engrossed in updating the blog she misses out. It is however, reassuring for M that he isn’t the only one she doesn’t listen to!!! M is also grateful to Sarah for lending us her book by Dorian Amos “The Good Life” which is a fantastic read about a young English couple who up sticks from beautiful Polperro in Cornwall & start a new life in the Yukon (Canada for those who’s geography isn’t up to speed). He amazingly finishes it in a day & a half - must be a record for him!!

We stop overnight at Pak Beng essentially a one street village catering exclusively for stop over traffic both up & down the Mekong. After scrambling up the steep muddy bank side, we come to our intended hotel which is overbooked! So it’s off to a place down the road - The Dorvilasak Guesthouse. We find a little place across from us called Dokkoune Restaurant, enticed by discounted beer prices & stay to have a free taste of the local moonshine - Lao Lao, really good, with our fantastic fried noodles. Boy was the Lao Lao strong - one minute we’re having a perfectly good conversation and lots of laughter, the next we can hardly make it across the road before we crash out completely! Seems this may have been a blessing in disguise though as we were the only ones who slept through a commotion caused by other travellers late at night who probably had too may Beerlao but no Lao Lao!!!

We are up early for breakfast & the 2nd days trip to the border - after a cold shower & breakfast we set off at 7.30 am. We snack out on fruit & cakes we bought for the trip in LP as we were warned that the boat lunches were $5 per person (they actually turned out to be $6 each). The landscape of the journey changes as we move towards Thailand from mist covered mountains to low rolling hills, the weather is overcast for most of the day & then the sun comes out & it’s pretty hot & suddenly we notice bird life for the first time as the flow of the Mekong is much gentler. We get to the Laos Border crossing at 4.30 pm. Hop out of the boat onto a Tuk Tuk that struggled to start up the hill with 6 passengers and our rucksacks on board. After a short journey to the immigration point, we pay 5,000 Kip each as “overtime payment” so we could leave the country. We all hop into a very small & rickety “ferry boat” across the Mekong to the Thai immigration point at Chiang Khong. We enter with some anxiety as C discovers in the LP book just before we land that they changed the rules in 2006 so that one can’t have more than 2 entries into the country within 90 days - this is our 3rd entry in less than that time - but fingers crossed as we are in a group - they might not notice …….. Phew, thankfully they don’t & we are in. We hop on a sangtheaw and after a short journey literally come to a halt by sliding down hill to our hotel leaving burnt tire marks for about 30 feet behind. We end up in the Riverview Hotel in Chiang Khong for the night. The room is functional, but with fridge & a river view. We walk into the town which is pretty quiet, check our emails & find a local place to eat - so it’s Leo beer with fried noodles for M & C has her favourite Pad Thai - she is so predictable!!

Whilst we’ve been to some beautiful places on this trip - we are really looking forward to doing our own thing again - so we intend to jump off at Chiang Mai whilst the rest of the group will take a night train to Bangkok to finish the trip. On reflection there are a few reasons that this trip hasn’t quite lived up to our expectations based on the fabulous time we had travelling Africa, one was the eclectic nature of the group & many people jumped on and off at various points during the journey & secondly the tour leader was a big disappointment & could have made a real difference but either couldn‘t or was too lazy to make it happen for us! Anyway here’s to Northern Thailand where we’ll see you all next ……….stay tuned.

General observations on Laos

Laos in ancient times as a kingdom was called Lan Xang (the land of a Million Elephants) and was actually created as a nation by the French negotiating a deal with Thailand to give up it’s territory East of the Mekong river (it’s NE corner) & Laos came into being - which explains why there is common cultural, linguistic, financial (Laos accepts the Kip, Baht & Dollars as trading currency), tribal & religious connections between the two countries.

Laos also has the misfortune to have been the most bombed country on earth, without really being at war at all, courtesy of the US’s secret war against North Vietnamese troops who moved into eastern Laos. The Ho Chi Minh Trail went through their jungles & mountains & the US carpet bombed a whole swathe of the country to get at the Viet Cong with the Laotians being innocent victims in all this. Over 2 million tonnes of bombs were dropped between 1965 & 1973 (at some ridiculous cost & huge loss of life of many innocent people), of which 30% didn’t detonate leaving a horrendous legacy. Despite clearance efforts by the UN and NGO’s, at the current rate it will take 100 years to make the country safe.

As in other parts of SE Asia there are many projects for young kids and campaigns against child abuse, slavery & the child sex trade. Nearly every hotel we go in has warning posters and warnings that they will call the police if children are thought to be being abused.

---

Comments

[noy]

sabaidee luangparbabg