Laid back Laos

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If only I had more time to see all of Laos. Such a beautiful and relaxed country. Strange to think it is the most bombed nation on earth, the USA having dropped over two million tons of bombs between 1964-1973. Most of these failed to detonate leaving the countryside littered with what they call UXO- unexploded ordnance. All the guidebooks strongly recommend not straying off the trail into the jungle. But since I had a limited amount of time, I didn't make it to these dangerous areas. Instead I spent all of my 3 weeks in Northern Laos.

From Hanoi, Sven and I took an overnight bus from Hanoi to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We were told the bus would take 18 hours, but since bus travel in asia is always pretty sketchy, it was no surprise when we eventually rolled into Vientiane 23 hours later. It was a pretty interesting bus trip though, one I'll always remember. I kinda had a dreadful feeling when boarding the bus to find the whole back row piled high with diaper packages. I guess we were smuggling them across the boarder? And then sometime around 3am I awoke to stifling heat and the bus half empty. I get off the bus to find half the occupants sleeping on the sidewalk in the middle of some tiny town. I guess the bus driver decided to pull over and check into a hotel to get a few hours sleep, leaving the rest of us to just fend for ourselves. Sometime around 6:30am he decided to wake up and continue driving. We got to the boarder around 7:30 where we stamped out of Vietnam then walked 5 minutes down the road to get stamped into Laos. Immediately upon entering Laos I noticed it was much more jungly and laid back. As we drove down out of the mountains I noticed all the bamboo shelters along the side of the road, often with a few people spread out sleeping the heat away. As the day progressed, it got sooo hot. When we finally reached Vientiane it was almost unbearable and it was already well into the evening.

We spent just few days in Vientiane going to the night market for cheap eats, visiting the major attractions, and just relaxing in this sleeply little capital. I was amazed by the cheapness of fruit shakes: 5000 kip each (~9000 kip = $1 USD) and all the bakeries and baguette sandwiches available everywhere. The French still have a lasting impression here in Laos. One afternoon as we were walking around town we came across two foreign women in bright orange t-shirts putting up posters. It turns out they were preparing for a party to celebrate the Dutch Queens Birthday. Since Sven is Dutch and they'd be serving Dutch delicasies at the party, we had to go! So later that night we showed up and bought our orange t-shirts and joined in on the fun. It was strange to be surrounded by foreignors (mainly dutch) at a party listening to a live band eating dutch cheese and bitterballs while being in Southeast Asia. Definitely not how I imagined my travels in Asia!

From Vientiane we took a bus north to Vang Vieng, a common stop on the backpacker trail through SE Asia, well known for it's tubing down the Nam Song River. The small town is totally catered toward backpackers. Almost all the restaurants have low tables with cushions and rugs to enhance your TV watching. You kick off your shoes, lean back and relax while you watch episode after episode of Friends, The Simpsons, or Family Guy. Sometimes they will even play illegally copied movies that have hilarious subtitle translations which you end up reading instead of watching the movie.

Since everyone raves about tubing in Vang Vieng, we had to give it a try ourselves. We rented the tubes and caught the tuk-tuk to the jumping off point upriver. Of course since this is mainly a backpacker activity, it involves booze and lots of it. The tuk-tuk dropped us off at the first bar of many along this stretch of river. For the distance of about 600 meters there are approximately 8 bars. Each bar is a big bamboo platform either right along the river or slightly over the river. You had the option of either ziplining, swinging or watersliding into the river. Or you can also just jump off the platform into the water. The more beer you drank, the braver you got. To get from one bar to the other, you just hop onto your tube and float down to the next one. Most people never get past the last bar and are forced to take the tuk-tuk back into town to turn the tubes in on time. We really wanted to float all the way back to town, so we left the crazy drunkies behind and floated against the clock. We had to run the last bit of river and just barely got the tubes back in time to get our deposit back, but it was a lovely float down an empty river! Wait, did I mention we were furiously paddling the whole time and my arms were so sore the next day...

Despite Vang Vieng being such a small town, they have an incredibly large number of bars. Must be the backpacker influence. There's a small island in the river just off the main street that hosts the majority of the bars. One afternoon we crossed the bamboo bridge onto the island and spent a few hours in a riverside bungalow chilling in hammocks. We even had to wake up the sleeping owner to get a beer. Laos is so laid back! While exploring the little island we also came across a sign for Mojito buckets at the Bamboo Bar for only 30,000 kip...less than $4! No wonder so many people get stuck in Vang Vieng. The combination of river activites, chilled out restaurants, cheap drinks and the all around laid back atmostphere of Laos just sucks people in. In fact, the four days we were there went by in a blink. It was time to move on, otherwise I might still be in Vang Vieng, sipping mojitos from a bamboo bucket while laying on a hammock down near the river....


This'll help you picture what I'm describing.....

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Comments

[-nicole]

Queen's Day around the globe!
Hola chica! It sounds like you are having an incredible time! The tubing sounds like such a blast. I can't believe how much you have seen and done since I last saw you! So you are actually returning to Washington state in the nearer future? If you are around b'ham I would love to catch up and hear some of your fantastic stories! I also love that you celebrate queen's day - it appears the Dutch have a large influence across the globe, we also had a huge party (full of orange shirts) in Peru! I hope you enjoy the rest of your time abroad! Ciao, -nicole