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Published: January 2nd 2008
So, the alarm went off at 5.30am on our last morning in Vietnam and I scrambled for the torch to check the bed - the little blighters feed in the last couple of hours before dawn so that is the best way to identify them. Couldn't see any but I appeared to have more bites and some of my old ones were now nastily blistered. In addition, a couple of bites on my arms were swelling rather alarmingly.
An accident ahead on the way to the airport was our first problem, with everything ground to a halt and us due to be at the airport in 10 minutes. However, this seemed to cause less chaos than at home and they just moved the vehicles into a single lane and let the rest of the traffic through so we were only about 20 minutes late and hardly anyone else seemed to be there yet. The airport is small but rather new and shiny compared with some we've been in. Not much in the way of facilities but comfortable enough and the flight to Luang Prabang (LP from now on) in Laos was short and sweet.
LP airport is tiny and
the only took time it took was for us to get our visas, all with no problem and we were soon in a minibus to the hotel, which is where things really started to go wrong. It was clear that the guy at reception was having trouble finding our booking and soon the manager appeared and said that he had not received our online booking from the agent and they had no rooms. We were fully aware of how busy LP was as we'd booked that hotel nearly a month before and they were only able to give us 2 nights then. All 20 hotels and guest houses and bookable online were full and we had contacted about 10 others by email before we found a room for the other nights we wanted to stay.
By this stage many of my bites were burning and the 2 on my left inner forearm had swollen so much that I had to take off my watch and they were causing me some pain. I was clearly not in the mood for this kind of problem! Still, we kept our cool while the manager went off to contact the agent to find
out what had happened. When he eventually returned he did seem to be very contrite as it seemed that he might have been at fault after all. However, they still did not have a room. He disappeared to try find us another room somewhere though we were concerned as we knew we had already tried many places in town a few weeks before and they were already booked. Phoning clearly produced nothing so then he disappeared on his motorbike to trawl round other places. He was back in a few minutes saying he'd found a place a few minutes away. The place he showed us would have been absolutely fine at any other time, but bearing in mind that we had decided to treat ourselves in LP, it was clearly nothing like the standard of the room we had booked with him and was only 1/3 the price so we told him it wasn't acceptable. This concerned him greatly and we went back to wait at the hotel while he went off again. To cut a long story short, we eventually ended up in a reasonable place which looked quite new although still only 2/3 the price of his room
and were quite happy but we still had a complication of getting the deposit back which we had paid to the booking agent - another day and another, probably rather boring story. Let's just say we got it back in the end.
So, once finally settled into the room (with all items as far away from the bed as possible and backpacks in the bath!) we had chance to think about what next. While there were many things we wanted to do, it was looking increasingly like these were not going to happen, and, in the end, our stay here has turned into pretty much an enforced holiday. I spent a couple of days in bug-induced misery only venturing out for meals. More worrying, my arm where it was bitten came up in two large blisters and the arm swelled from my hand to halfway down my forearm and hurt a lot. For a few hours one afternoon we agonized over whether I should take some general purpose antibiotics we had brought with us as we believed that there was little in the way of medical care in LP. Eventually we went to the hotel staff, who didn't speak
much English, but tried to help. When they could find no doctor at the pharmacy near by they called a tuk-tuk to take us to the Laos-Chinas Friendship Hospital. As you can imagine, I was a little concerned at what we might find there and told Hugh that, whatever happened, he should not let them put me on a drip. From various reading, it seems that this is the treatment of choice here for almost any ailment, as it is in China. The tuk-tuk driver clearly had other ideas and took us somewhere closer first - it looked like some kind of clinic but there was hardly anyone around and he obviously couldn't find a doctor. So he gave in and took us to the hospital out on the edge of town. This looked quite smart though underutilized rather than bustling the way hospitals at home are. He found a lady, a nurse we think, who looked at my arm and decided we needed a doctor and made a phone call. Next we knew we were back in the tuk-tuk heading back towards town and another pharmacy. The driver pointed us towards a door into the room behind the pharmacy
from where we could see into a little consulting room where a young doctor appeared to be taking a young man's blood pressure. He came straight out to us to have a look and, to our great relief and amazement, spoke perfect English. Deciding it wasn't life and death he asked us to wait for a few minutes while he finished with his other patient......of course!
The lovely doctor soon called us in and initially declared chicken pox when he looked at the various spots on my arms, though he was surprised that I wasn't vaccinated against it (do we have a vaccine?). However, I told him that I had definitely had chicken pox when I was a child and that I was pretty certain some of the bites were bed bugs (did I say that we actually caught one in Hanoi?) though some might be mozzies. He was still wavering towards a diagnosis of contact dermatitis and went through a whole book of dermatology pictures explaining that he was really a surgeon, not a dermatologist. In the end he said that the diagnosis was not important, he was happy that the swelling in my arm was just inflammation,
not an infection, but he was concerned about the possibility for infection, particularly due to the blisters. We had already had to burst one very large blister on my elbow (with sterile needle and antiseptic wipes.....so glad of that medical kit we've been lugging around!) and some of the others looked like they might go. He recommended not bursting the others if possible and said he could give us better antibiotics than we had. 10 minutes after arriving we were outside with a little plastic bag of coloured pills feeling rather relieved and all for $3 (he would not accept payment for the consultation).
So days here have just passed with things gradually improving and me getting out more and more. And in that time we've come to realise just what a lovely place we are in and it has lifted our slightly travel-jaded spirits quite a lot. The town itself sits on a small peninsula between 2 rivers, the (Mighty) Mekong and the much smaller Nam Khan, surrounded by rolling green hills. It is small and beautiful (a world heritage site), full of French style wooden buildings and numerous gilded wats (Buddhist monasteries). It is also remarkably quiet
considering the number of visitors and a huge relief after Hanoi where just walking out of the door was hard work. Buddhism is clearly much more important here than in Vietnam and that seems to be reflected in a serenity that we have not really found elsewhere in S E Asia. The country has developed its tourist industry in a different way too, focusing on its natural wonders in a big way with a view to ensuring that all local communities benefit - for me a much more comfortable way to see a country. A large part of this is, of course, because the country has only a very small population (around 6.5m) in an area the size of the UK compared with Vietnam which is well over 80m. The problems of development are clearly very different in such countries. However, there really does seem to be a fundamental difference in the people too. Here there is very little hassle to buy things, go on trips, get your washing done.....and you can wander about the streets without having to watch for the next motorbike (on road or pavement!) as they will usually stop to let you pass. In addition it's
almost perfect weather - cool and a little misty first thing but the sun has come out eventually each day though not too hot.
So, we find ourself in a little corner of paradise - not such a bad place to recuperate. We've spent lazy days wandering from wat to cafe (they still retain some of their French influence), along riversides and town streets. Orange-clad monks shaded by dark umbrellas meander by and, despite the tourists, many people continue with their ordinary lives largely unaffected although clearly tourism brings a lot of money into the town. There's been large celebrations for the last couple of days just down the street from our guest house with drumming and other musical instruments being played, mass catering going on and the road closed to vehicles which appeared to be about new monks joining monasteries. There was a collection of what looked like 'new monk starter kits' outside one house consisting of a bed (quite short, certainly by Hugh's standards!) and bedding, a fan, cooking and eating utensils, an umbrella and an alms basket. The monks here process through the streets at dawn every morning in order to collect alms (usually sticky rice)
from the town people and we hope to finally get up tomorrow morning to watch this.
The only down side to all this has been that there are many things that we would like to have done while we were here and have not been able to and we're now wishing we had much more time in Laos. Of course you can't always know these things until you arrive somewhere. Hugh did abandon me on my sick bed (I'm such a martyr when I'm ill!) yesterday to go on another bike ride which he will tell you about:
I've had a steady progression in the quality of bike for my rides. In Hoi An I had a single speed basic bike with brakes that didn't really work, in Hanoi it was still single speed but this time had front suspension and brakes that worked (very useful for avoiding snakes) and now in Luang Prabang I rode a 24 speed mountain bike and this time I even had a helmet (strangely they have helmets for riding mountain bikes, but don't think they need them for motor bikes!). I used a fair proportion of the 24 gears, and made extensive
use of the lowest gear climbing 2 big hills on the ride back to town. This ride was more of a direct ride out to a waterfall where I saw some elephants and then back to town via a different route. I did get to learn a lot from my guide Li during rest breaks. Li is from the White Hmong ethnic group and is one of 12 children!
Back to Sarah:
We have also managed to climb the small hill in the middle of town to watch sunset (not a solitary experience but lovely all the same) and visited the Royal Palace which is now a museum - their royalty were much less ostentatious and had more taste than ours (though I guess that's not hard!). And of course we had New Year which was relatively quiet although we did manage to stay up till midnight. It's not traditionally celebrated here but I think tourists have brought it in and there were a couple of big parties, one with fireworks which were worth staying up for.
I am still paranoid that we might not have completely got rid of the bugs but 4.30am alarm calls have
not resulted in us finding anything and, while I keep finding things that could be new bites, I am generally an itchy person and most of them have not got any worse and seem to disappear in a few hours. We have our fingers and toes crossed that we have solved that problem and were relieved to hear from Sarah that she has had them while travelling in the past and clearly got rid of them. (By the way, to dispel any misunderstandings, bed bugs do not reflect on a place being dirty or untidy, they have been found in some of the fanciest hotels in the world and are largely coming back into the developed world since we stopped using DDT!)
We have just one more full day left in LP and we intend to use it well......but more of that next time. I hope you all had spectacular new year celebrations but, more importantly, that 2008 brings you much happiness. We intend to make sure it does for us!
Lots of love
S + H xx
P.S. We're not planning a side trip to the UAE to check on the new Waitrose....
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jonathan
non-member comment
Why Not?
I would... J x