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Published: August 16th 2007
LP Airport
So the airport security was kind of outside, you walk in the metal detector which is also the front door, guy sitting outside checks your ticket first. Pictures should be working now!
Hello again! Let me know if the entry is cut short as it was doing funny things yesterday but seems to all be here now.
Luang Probang, Northern Laos this seems like ages ago, but i was in laos for about a week. We finally got to Luang Probang (LP) in northern laos (see last post for that drama) and this is where we were all supposed to part ways after 2 days here, more or less. my "plan," constantly evolving, was to head south to the capital of laos, vientianne, and get my visa for burma there and then head overland to burma via northern thailand. i would be leaving everyone else in LP to go to their various locations including - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southern Thailand, Northern Thailand, and Rome. LP is definitely a cute little down, although I wasn't overwhelmed with Laos overall...only LP i found FINALLY peaceful!! it's a fairly quiet little town and really only exposed to tourism in the past 5 years or so, so relatively undeveloped in terms of tourism and a complete 360 from the craziness of vietnam. no aggressive vendors, and just monks walking
Fruit
I love both the mango-stein, center, and the lychee type fruit, right. around everywhere. not even an ATM up there! We found a decent hotel to stay in, though not on the main strip, and were also joined by another classmate, Matt, whom i really like and met once prior in NYC, who has been doing some semi-volunteer work in northern vietnam for a few weeks. He fit in quite well with the group, especially the "NY crowd" who always seem to be the last ones awake!!
There are tons of outdoor activities around LP and we organized a day of mountain biking / kayaking with this totally weird / zen-ish canadian guy. he decided to just pick up and move to LP something like 10 yrs ago after visiting it and liking it - now married to a local woman with kids...he was really strange but i liked the fact that he was super eco-conscious and really big about not doign the "tourism" thing - but visiting real villages, real ppl, and not even offering tours to the main tourist spots.
it definitely felt just a tad remote up here. the first night we lost power TWICE! hui and justina were making fun of Tom and I for our
jaime and hui with raw meat!
and the legendary beer lao which is great. headlamps, until the power went out and they were BEGGING us for one for their room (tom and i were rooming together). Also great food - the first night we went to a bbq place, and everywhere they serve the delicious lao beer (region wide reputation!) and STICKY rice! i LOVE sticky rice, especially the desserts they make with it!!!
Mountain biking and kayaking were great the next day, we went only about 15km or so on unpaved roads (we all had sore bottoms) through stunning green hills and quiet villages. Not everyone was a fan of the biking though! we stopped for lunch at a little waterfall, then kayaked the rest of the afternoon. we all thought it would be no problem downstream, but we ended up having to paddle the entire time, though we did get to go through some fun "rapids" - nothing above Class I though, thankfully, because I have no desire to go white water kayaking. Falling out in white water while rafting is enough for me!! After the day was over, pretty much everyone got Laos massages for about $3.50 / hour across the street from our hotel.
The next day we
BBQ!
Like the korean bbq style back home. started to see some people off, with a smaller group i explored a bit more of the town and we climbed up to a wat for an amazing views. Hui, Brian, and Tom, went to book a plane ticket to Bangkok only to find out it was sold out for days, so they suddenly decided to come to Vientiane with me, and Matt also decided to come along! Very unexpected. So we took a night bus to Vang Viene, which is about halfway between and where I was intending to stop along the way. My first night bus in Asia! wow, what a windy, windy, road, in fact I migth have been able to get a full night's sleep were it not for the fact that i literally had to brace myself around each turn! The views in the moonlight over the mountains were beautiful though. some of my friends got a kick out of the fact that they handed out the bags for vomiting at the beginning of the trip.
An economy built on tubing, Middle Laos At 2am the bus pulled over in the middle of the road, or rather at this funny little town in
middle Laos. I was shocked when noone really got off the bus but us and here we were on this totally deserted road and it was raining. i seriously thought, can this be right? The 5 of us remaining were making jokes about what it would have been like if some of the higher maintenance ppl on our trip were still with us!! there were two tuk-tuk drivers, so we hoped into one. we had actually made a reservation at a guest house since we were getting there so late. once we arrived noone was awake so we were pounding on the doors, and tom finally had to start knocking on everyone's door till we foudn an employee. it was kind of creepy. it was a semi-ghetto place where hui saw bugs and insisted on spraying our sheets with deet. but i guess there's not much choice at 2am.
The next day, we woke up in this dinky little town and sorted a plan for going tubing - which is what one does in vang viene. the idea is that you get into these inner tubes in the river, and float down with the current, stopping at various "bars"
Temple Opening
In the village they were holding a little party for the opening of this new temple. to drink cheap beer and jump or swing off bamboo contraptions from extremely high heights that probably aren't safe whatsoever. because you are floating with the current, they stick these bamboo poles out in the
water which you grab on to and they'll pull you over
to their bar/jumping spot. Contrary to the way things
might work in the US, there was actually a direct
relationship between how much alcohol you drank and
how many times you could jump off these really high,
not so safe bamboo poles / swings. basically if you
drank/bought enough beer you could just go unlimited
off the swings.
This was not a cultural experience whatsoever, but it
was a kind of "tourism" that i enjoy - which is more
backpacker tourism and tourism in its infancy, and
more real I feel. All the set-ups along the river
were totally local and i love seeing the local
entrepreneurism. Like one place we stopped, matt's
flip flop broke and the guy there just sewed it up
with some tree branches or something. And, when hui
jumped off a swing once and totally/accidentally
flashed everybody, you'd think it was the funniest
thing the local woman there
had ever seen!
so, hence this entire economy built around tubing.
anyways, either way we had an incredibly FUN day!
Also, we were basically moving along the river with this really
lovely canadian couple, who had just been to burma and
i was spending a lot of time talkign to them about it.
at this point tom had been thinking about joining me
in burma. but hui and brian, who were also there and
listening also started to get
interested.....(foreshadowing)
Worst place to kill 3 days? after tubing we were all exhausted and travled down to
the capital, arriving quite late. hui, brian, tom had
an early am flight to bangkok and matt had an
afternoon flight (well, after he switched it because
he booked it for the wrong day!) and i was goign to
see about the burma visa, which is slow to get because
they actually check your background. After the others
left me i headed to the embassy, which is really just
someone's house and has actually ZERO burmese
employees (as i later find out they're barely allowed
to leave the country!) all laotian. they said 3 days,
so i left it there.
New budha
Man works on new budha statue while village children look on. my tuk-tuk driver was waiting for
me outside the embassy as it was a ways from downtown
and unfortunately he couldn't get the darn thing to
start so i had to push the tuk-tuk from behind, get a
running start, and leap into the back! of course. i
was sad to see everyone go, but it was good to have
some down time from our rush-rush-rush. unfortunately
vietiane is NOT a good place to waste 3 days, but that
might have been for the better because i had a bunch
of work to do for school, like updating my resume,
etc, so i took care of that while i was waiting for my
visas, and also visited french cafes which are all
over the capital and ate some western food, and even
tooke in a bit of HBO at night (whatever was on).
in my down time, I did a little research on burma and
realized i coudl't really travel overland from
northern thailand because basically all flights go
through bangkok except one flight a week from northern
thailand, and then once i crossed the burmese border
i'd have to get a flight anyways since foreigners
aren't allowed to
Hand game
we used to play this same game as kids, i forget the name though.... travel overland there (more on this
later.) Meanwhile, SUPRISE, Brian, Tom AND Hui, all
decided that going to burma for a week was better then
spending their last week in thailand and put in a rush
on their visas at the bangkok embassy. since i was
traveling with them, that means flying everywhere! so
they went to a travel agency in bangkok and sorted ALL
the flights, which was really nice of them, and i was
online with brian (he has a blackberry) coordinating
everything from laos for about an hour, and he booked all my flights for me as
well. So, bit of a change of plans I guess, but for
the better. Since I planned to fly with them, i
booked a flight to Bangkok for the night i got my visa
back, and it looks like I have travel companions for
1/2 of my burma trip!
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justin
non-member comment
The photos aren't showing up for some reason. Glad you liked Vang Viang - I thought the tubing was a lot of fun, and the caves were pretty interesting too. I look forward to hearing about Burma.