Massages, monks, the Mekong and Emergency surgery

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The group get back to Houay Xai and we all stay at the same guesthouse and go for dinner. For me its very spicy beef and basil leaves and a glass noodle salad with what looks like chopped liver on top although I think it may be blood jelly...nice! Then we go to a Karoake bar and The Essex spontaneously start jumping around to Steps – 5,6,7,8 whilst the German continegent look on slightly bemused.

I wake up with my first hangover in ages. Most people get the 2 day slowboat from Houay xai to Luang Prabang but i'm a little dubious – the boats are hard and uncomfortable (purchasing cushions is a must) and me on a boat for anything longer than an hour is a high risk strategy. It could be an amazing and serene experience or it could be confined hell -so we decide to get the sleeper bus over night to the city instead. Ben has been feeling ill all day with stomach cramps, fever, headache and dizziness. We assume its a fever but he doen'st want us to try and leave early so we head off for Luang Prabang on the bus in the evening. I go for a snack beforehand – fresh spring rolls and peanut sauce for about 30p!

“MY God you are always eating!” says Polly. Well my appetite and er digestive system shall we say! is definitely back to normal and i'd like to regain a few curves lost through illness and bootcamp – so that's a good thing too!

We get on the bus which leaves half an hour late (Lao time) and after half an hour it stops again for lots of men to rush off and pee at the side of the road.

“God their bladders are worse than yours” says Ben. He must be feeling better.

We arrive into Luang Prabang at around 6am in the morning just in time to see the monks in their saffron robes forming their daily morning procession through town to collect alms. Two keen travellers on the bus jump off – purchase some sticky rice bundles from a roadside seller and join the line of people on the road handing out the donations to the monks as they pass.

I don't join in or take photos. It has mixed comments in guidebooks. Apparently roadside vendors have seen a market to make money from tourists and been selling out of date food to them to give which has made the monks ill. Some tourists have also been disrespectful of the monks -reaching out and grabbing their robes and pushing cameras into their faces. So much so that at one point the monks wanted to stop coming down to collect the alms at which point they were told by the government that if they didn't do it then men would dress up in their saffron robes to collect alms instead of them as they were now a tourist attraction. . .

Whats interesting about the monks of Lao is how young and normal they seem, just like a pack of any teenage boys. Well ok maybe not a pack of teenage boys from Mosside or something – as they are sweet and quiet and respectful. But they joke andl augh around with each other and are curious about me – a Western woman. I am told not to look or touch the monks robes -but I catch them stealing a few glances at me every now and again.

I discover JoMa's bakery near the main street of gueshouses that does iced cinnamon buns and proper lattes. Then I visit pretty much all of the medical facilities that Luang Prabang has to offer in the hope to get some cream for scabies. I go to the hospital eventually and the Doctor in the dermatology department tells me she thinks its an allergy as no one else in my group has it. She is wrong – its definitely scabies – caught through infected bedding. A rash has appeared at all the warm moist spots on my body, nape, armpits, elbows and backs of knees. She gives me some cream for it anyway and some anti biotics for a cut I have on my arm where I grazed off the top of a mosquito bite on the zipline!

Lao massage is very popular here and very cheap. I go to the Laos red cross as it has a herbal steam room and 1 hour massage for 50,000kip - about 3 pounds 50! The massage is basic but relaxing - as with everything else in Laos its all very basic and not particularly clean. My towel looks stained and about fifty years old – i'm not sure about the mattress that i'm lying on or putting my face on for the massage and i'm given a sarong for the ladies only steam room (men have a separate room) that has definitely seen better days. There is a piece of lone communal pummice that sits outside that the women take turns to slough their skin off with. But its a great experience nonetheless. There are no other westerners here- just a packed steam filled room fresh with Laos herbs such as citronella and mint. The tiny little wooden room is full of Laos women from the very young to the very old with their hair wrapped up, in their sarongs and sometimes still their pearls. When the heat is too much you can relax outside with a cup of clear brown tea that smells like its been made with sticky rice. The woman chat to me, one helps me tie my sarong up so I don't have to keep adjusting it. When I leave its dark and pouring with rain. Apparently steam rooms are good to sweat or simmer out the scabies as they don't like extreme heat. I see myself waging war on the little colonies that have set up camp on my body.

Luang Prabang is set along the Mekong River. Its a small town and often cited as a favourite amongst travelllers I meet. You can easily see the main areas or explore a bit further afield on bikes.

Many of the buildings are pretty little French colonial villas with white washed walls, walnut coloured slatted shutters and fuschia pink blooms trailing their walls. There are bakeries and cafes serving muesli with real milk(!) and plenty of traditional Lao restaurants too, strung with lanterns and fairy lights that serve fresh juice and pancakes for breakfast and meals such as Laab (traditional dish of minced meat with green beans, chilli, lime and mint and lemon grass) Or Lam – a spicy stew with meat and eggplant and Mok Pa – minced fish or meat steamed in banana leaves with spices and chilli.

The next day I wake up and go and take breakfast on the banks of the cocoa brown Mekong River. There are children playing on its muddy banks, the faded wooden long boats moored up the bank, banana and palm trees fringe the shore. Its a civilised place to eat the “american” breakfast here – baguette, scrambled eggs and fruit. And then my chair goes through the rotten wood of the balony. Great! I don't realise at first and think its just that the chair has collapsed- but the owners gasp and tell me not to move and then I realise there is a big hole in the balcony that one chair leg has pushed through so I have to be helped out of it by two people. I think:

“blimey if the bootcamp, the sky ladder, the trekking or the zipline won't kill me it'll be this!”

I hear from Polly and Ben has taken a turn for the worse. He's finally agreed to go to the hospital and they've put him on two drips and pumped him full of drugs but he's still sick.

I've already told her I don't think the Doctors are very good as they couldn't diagnose me correctly....

Eventually after he starts complaining of a pain in his right side and the doctors shrug and say “we have no idea what is wrong with him.”

Polly googles his symptoms...

“Could it be appendicitis?” she asks?

“Oh yes!” they exclaim...”that's what it is we'll have to take it out.” Even though his sister has just diagnosed him via google they are adamant that this is what is wrong. Appendicitis is serious – a rupture can lead to death so he can't be moved. Unfortunatley the doctors don't seem to know this and want to airlift him to Bangkok but luckily they have travel insurance and Polly speaks to a doctor back home who says he must be operated on where he is. Then at 2am and even though time is of the essence – the hospital shuts for the night and everyone goes home! At 6am in the morning they come back and around 9 or 10ish the little Lao nurses try unsuccessfully to move him onto the operating bed. They can't manage his gangly 6ft 1 frame so tell his sister that she has to help...and then they operate.

The hospital is filthy with muddy floors, cockroaches and dogs wandering around. He is not given any food or drink from the hospital in 5 days apart from what Polly buys. As Laos patients are walking past his room they poke their head in to have a nose at the Falangs.

He is put in a blood stained gown for the operation...quite frankly - It is officially The Worst Hospital in the world!

In spite of all of this the operation is a success. He then spends the next few days recuperating.

Later Polly tells me that Ben had his balls pierced about a week before I met them in Thailand and the Doctor back home thinks the piercing has probalby got infected and travelled up to infect his appendix and this is the cause. I can only imagine how delighted his parents were to receive first the news that he was so sick he was having to have an operation in a Laos hospital....and then the cause of it!!!

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