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Published: December 6th 2006
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So I hopped on a bus from Vang Vieng with my head heavy having to leave one of my favourite places so far but now also considebly lighter and more sunburnt from my new haircut. The journey was one of the most spectacular I've ever been on, the bus winding up twisty roads for ever, when you seemed to be at the top it just keep climbing. The scenery around was incredible, large rounded lush green hills for as far as the eye could see, only interupted by the occasional puff of smoke where a local village was burning off a field. In fact the scenery was so spectacular it almost distracted you from the shear drop off the side of the road but we arrived in Luang Prabang unscathed after our amazing journey.
Luang Prabang is an odd place, with plenty of weathy tourists milling around and seemingly developed compared to the countryside and villages we had been passing for the previous six hours on the way here. It reminded me of Hoi An (Vietnam), which is also UNESCO World Heritage listed and Siem Reap (Cambodia) where beautiful old buildings line the street but whose fronts have been transformed
into smart restaurants and modern bars, not that that is at all unwelcome but I've got to say I didn't expect it in Laos. Still it's a comfortable place to spend a few days and the markets of both handicrafts and food are amazing. The only problem was our choice of guesthouse, which although really nice was right next to a Wat and other very noisy neighbours. Now I always thought buddist monks where peaceful people but someone obviously forgot to tell these ones. Every morning at 4am they would start to bang a big drum, after which singing would start, then maybe some bells gonging. I'm all for people expressing their religion how they please but loudly at four in the morning! Then the neighbours would begin, one of whom would start hacking up his lungs for about an hour straight and start a machine that we couldn't work out but sounded very much like someone cleaning rocks in a washing machine!
There's also a really tall beautiful waterfall about 30kms away which falls down into pools and plenty of smaller waterfalls below in which you can swim. The minivan journey there was a complete disaster though. First
Trekking
This boy who couldn't have been older than about 11 was carrying this huge bag of rice. The look on his face says it all, so tired. it didn't leave town until 40 minutes later as the driver seemed to have no idea where the guesthouses were. Then as we were speeding along the dirt roads to make up time we got a punture, one which the driver repaired in record time, then just as we were nearing the waterfall they were felling huge trunks of bamboo onto the road, we just managed to stop before the van was hit by one. We got there in the end though. The following day we took a boat up the river to visit a cave full of old buddha statues which is set into the cliff above the river. On the way back we went to a couple of villages to see them making paper and also Lao Lao, the local spirit made from rice which they distill in large quantities in old oil barrels.
We had been planning to head up north to go trekking in more remote Loas but after repeated attempts from different travel agents to try and find out when and where the bus left and getting about five different answers we decided it wasn't worth the trouble and booked ourselves on a trek
Khmu children
Think the plastic bag toy is unsafe, she'd just been sucking on a lighter out of Luang Prabang. We set off the next day on mountain bikes, just Sophie, myself and the guide, called La (Dipsie and Po couldn't make it). For the next three hours we hammered along dirt roads, up and down hills on knackered old bikes that threatened to fall apart at any moment so we were both quite relieved to arrive at the resort about 15kms away, pretty good fun all the same. We had a few hours spare before we set off again to catch our breath though in the stunning surroundings of the camp where the company is based. From there we hopped on a short boat ride up the river from where we began trekking. We walked for only about an hour and a half in really strong sun through the bush with the most incredible scenery all around us before we arrived at the village we were to spend the night. The village was of the Khmu people, one of the biggest tribes in Loas. It was fairly obvious that this was a pretty rich village as they had a generator, one TV, lots of little tractors as well as a small shop for us falangs.
Suprisingly, even though they see falangs everyday they would still sit and stare sometimes and when a digital camara came out the children would fight to have their pictures taken so they could see themselves on the screen. That night we ate lots of food and drank lots of Lao Lao of course to the point where our guide, who was only 20 and a month into his job had to go to bed because he was so drunk. Fortunately the next morning he managed to get up on time, which was hardly suprising as we'd all been awake since about 4.30am when the biggest cacophony of noise you've ever heard started. There were what sounded like dozens of cockrels crowing, tractors starting, people singing and talking, radios playing, babies crying and other mayhem. We set off tired and a little hungover towards the elephant camp for the next part of our trip. We met the elephants, fed them some bananas before getting on the back of ours, a female called Smerham. We set off into the jungle, sitting on a chair on the back with the mahout sitting around her neck. She wasn't moving so fast and the mahout
slid off leaving us on the elephant on our own. He then bent down to pick up small stones behind the elephant, something which Smerham didn't seem to like much as she kept looking behind herself as she walked and would snort. Then the reason became apparent as he pulled out a catapult. This was evidently how you make a lazy elephant move faster. Occasionally he would pull the catapult back and deliver a fast moving stone onto the back of her legs and she would speed up, something Sophie and I din't like much, aware as we were that we were completely at her mercy if she wanted to bolt with us on her back. The commands and the catapult was how he kept her moving and the mere sight of it after that was enough to make her snort more (she was constantly looking behind at him as he walked behind) and move faster again as she kept slowing down. At first we thought this to be cruel but realised that their skin is so thick it wouldn't hurt her but we'd obviously just been given a lazy elephant. After our ride we relaxed in a beautiful waterfall
with lots of pools for swimming where we had lunch before getting a (very overloaded and wobbly) longboat back to the camp before getting a tuk tuk back to town.
Today we've just visited a couple of temples and booked our slow boat down to the Thai border which takes a couple of days, which may be a bit uncomfortable but should be fun all the same. It's a real shame to leave Loas so early because the scenery is so beautiful here and the people so friendly. I know I've said that before about Cambodia but it's even more so the case here.
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