Laos

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12th - 20th November

Luang Prabang

We landed in the car park sized airport of Luang Prabang in our little twin prop into a dusky evening. We obtained our visas with ease at the attached room which sufficed as an airport in this small town which happens to be the second most important ‘city’ in Laos. We were then met by Psan, our guide, and driven to our hotel and there our weeks holiday began.

Mum and Dad were waiting in the hotel lobby and we were soon settled and drinking decent wine and eating dinner and attempting to catch up on the past year. The following morning, after experiencing the wonders (for budget travellers like us) of a buffet breakfast, we met Psan and discussed the plans for the following days. We then had the day to ourselves and spent it taking pleasant walks around the town. We wandered around the market and bought mum some harem pants like mine from Ubud for about half the price before eating a delicious lunch on the Mekong river. A siesta later we returned to Luang Prabang’s only substantial road and found it transformed into a lively, colourful night market. It was very touristy but at the same time relaxed and unpressured and some of the goods were quite different from those we had seen previously though of course there was also the smattering of goods made in China passed off as indigenous handy craft. We returned to the same restaurant for dinner given we were so impressed by it, and predictably had another amazing meal.

The following day we met Psan at the ungodly hour of 06.00 to give alms to the monks. It all seemed a bit of a farce to be honest, hundreds of tourists wearing rented sashes either kneeling (the women) or standing (the men) with wicker baskets of sticky rice which they, or rather we, attempted to roll into balls and drop into the monks’ bowls as they passed. Of course this is an important aspect of local life here and it was interesting to experience firsthand how it is done, but I couldn’t help feeling that perhaps the tourist trade ‘cashing in’, as it were, on this aspect of Buddhism was in some way making a mockery of its essential raison d’etre. Having said that we did all enjoy it, despite our yawnings, and were soon carted off to the morning market where we were introduced to some of the local food stuffs like rat, dried fish and bamboo worms. Next we were taken on a walking tour of the city and were shown four different temples.

The afternoon was spent recovering. We relaxed, slept and emailed and at around 4pm met in town at a cafe where Mum and James ate terrible ice cream before tackling the steep climb to the temple on a hill overlooking Luang Prabang where, we were soon to discover, all Luang Prabang tourists spend their sunsets. The temple and the sunset were unremarkable but the views of Luang Prabang were spectacular as we beheld this tiny city surrounded by lush forest we really got a sense of how undeveloped and untouched most of this little landlocked country was.
The following day we had a more reasonable start of 8am when we met our new guide Cao, apparently there had been a mix up and Psan had to take a different group of tourists from then on. We were all slightly relieved as, sweet as he was, none of us could understand a word Psan said and Cao’s English was much better although he used the word usually far too regularly and in entirely the wrong context which initially led to a good deal of confusion and later sent us off into uncontrollable and embarrassing hysterics when Cao was trying to explain something to us. We took the minibus, which we discovered was at our beck and call for the entire week, to the river and from there a slow boat down the Mekong to some caves which we explored by torchlight. We stopped in a local village on the way where we tried some rice whisky and were shown how it was made. The first (the lower cave), was covered in statuettes of the Buddha which locals bring on holy days to bring them luck and long life. There was a good deal of damage to some of the older statues which was apparently done by the Chinese bandits. The upper cave had beautiful views over the river and yet more statuettes. We had lunch by the river before taking the boat back to Luang Prabang for a quick turnaround before heading off for our afternoon trek.

The trek and home

stay

Our mini bus took us took us to a little village where we had a surprisingly difficult two hour trek to a very basic Hmong village. The Lao Hmong have the same ethnic origins as the Vietnamese Hmong that we met on our previous trek although this village in Laos was considerably poorer and more basic than the ones we saw. There was one shower, a generator which provided power in the evening and one television for the entire village. Children ran around naked playing with bottles stuck on the end of sticks, some with wheels, some without, impersonating cars. Everyone seemed very happy with the exception of the audibly dying man in the house where we stayed. We spent the early evening wandering around the village, watching the local boys play tákrâw (foot volley ball played with a rattan ball), visiting the school and exchanging the odd sá wát dii (hello). Dinner was a simple affair, noodles with egg and bamboo shoots with curried rat on the side for anyone who wanted a little meat to accompany the vegetarian fare. James and I were in bed by 7pm and Mum and Dad not long after.

The following morning, after mum had distributed our used plastic bottles to the kids we made a short easy trek to a beautiful waterfall in which we all delightedly washed and swam. From there a boat took us up the river where our bus was waiting for us and we returned to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang x 2

Our bus soon picked us up again and took us to another waterfall which was far more dramatic, but thus far more busy with tourists. There was a great rope swing which James and I tried out and we then sat in the sun for a while watching the young, the old and the stupid making hilarious jumps off both the swing and the waterfall. That night we went out for a lovely meal and said farewell to Luang Prabang and its infamous night market.

Vang Vieng

The following day was a long day of driving. It is strange but being in a nice big mini bus with plenty of space only made us want more. Usually I am more than comfortable in a crowded local bus (or able to sleep at any rate) but when given a bit more room I couldn’t get comfortable at all. Poor Mum was suffering with terrible insomnia (a reaction from the malaria pills we later discovered) and luckily she managed a very short sleep.

Once we had settled in to our hotel in Vang Vieng, Cao took Mum, Dad and I out for a walk on the other side of the river. James was still suffering from a cold and decided to sit it out. The walk was surprisingly beautiful. On the other side of the river from touristy Vang Vieng is a quiet village much like those on Ometepe. Families were tilling their land, walking their buffalo or standing around chatting. The roads were dirt and rugged and all seemed pleasantly unaffected by the tourist boom that tubing had brought to Vang Vieng. On the other side of the river where we later had dinner, however, hoards of gap year students were out on the piss, restaurants and bars’ sound systems were competing for customers and everything about it reminded me of Thailand’s young tourist scene.

The next day it poured with rain and thus our tubing plans were sunk. Cao took us to see some very impressive caves in the morning which reminded us a lot of the ones in Halong Bay. We spent the rest of the day in our hotel reading, writing, and generally hiding from the rain. That evening, at sunset, we took two long boats up the river and watched cold miserable tubers sculling their way down the river. We had an unremarkable dinner and, for some bizarre reason, decided to attempt to go tubing the next morning before heading to Vientiane.

And so we did. It was possibly the coldest hour and a half of my life. There were upsides, it was a lot of fun when we hit rapids and went spinning down them but they largely lasted all of 10 seconds and were very few and far between. We sang songs, had races and generally tried to keep spirits up. It was a good twenty minutes after reaching the shore that my teeth stopped chattering. After warming ourselves with hot showers and cups of tea we met Cao and our bus and set off to Vientiane.

Vientiane

On arrival in Vientiane we went for a drink on the Mekong Promenade, a stretch of road looking out over an ugly plain of mud which is being dug up for some purpose or other, behind which is the murky Mekong and behind that, Thailand. We sat on cushions on the floor enjoying the ‘river works’ for a while before getting a tuk tuk back to the hotel. That night we decided to go and eat at ‘Sticky Fingers.’ It was a hilarious night in which Dad attempted to buy T-shirts for Big Max (his best mate and my godfather whose company owns a large part of Sticky Fingers in Kensington). The owner, who had named the restaurant after the Rolling Stones Kensington version, was so embarrassed that she was found out that she gave him all the free T-shirts he wanted.

Our last full day in Laos was spent on a ‘city tour’. None of us particularly enjoyed the city itself, being much more of a city that Luang Prabang, but it was pleasantly devoid of blaring horns and hassle. We went to see several temples in the morning and climbed the national monument to get a view of the city. Hilariously, the English translation on the plaque at the bottom of the nations pride monument calls it a ‘monster of concrete’. We returned to the Mekong Promenade for lunch and then James and I spent the next few hours trying to find out about busses etc into Thailand.

Cao and Mr ‘O’, the bus driver, then picked us up and took us to the long awaited cooking class. The class turned out to be in a local restaurant where the ladies allowed us to take over their kitchen and, between them and Cao, we were all shown how to make some dishes. Mum started by making a chicken soup, then James made Laap, Dad begged to be shown how to make chicken fried rice (since that is pretty much all he ate) and I made a salad with egg yolk dressing and a spicy papaya salad. It was all very amusing, especially when beer was brought into the equation and the food was surprisingly good.

That evening we celebrated our last night together at a nice French restaurant where we ate delicious pizzas accompanied by a very nice red wine followed by Cointreau crepes. Heaven. We then congregated in Mum and Dad’s room to play dominoes.

The following morning Mum and Dad accompanied us to the bus station where James and I bought bus tickets to Nong Khai, a town just over the border in Thailand. We then returned to the hotel where we bid Mum and Dad farewell as they went to the airport to fly to Krabi in the South of Thailand and we made our way to the bus stop for our bus to Nong Khai.

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Photos

Family reunited
ahhh

Giving alms
(this was before dad got worried about the thinner little ones and only gave his rice to them)

Millions of monks
recieving alms

Luang Prabang temple
a pretty sparkly sacred tree

Speed boat to Thailand
check the crash helmets!

Comments

[Auntie Sue]

Your stories get better and better, and it's such fun to see the pictures and hear the story from the other side from Caroline and Simon. We're sorry you won't be here for Xmas but it won't be long until we see you again will it? And you will be here for the wedding on June 19th I hope! (if I don't change my mind). love Sue.