Sabaidii Laos!

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Well, I'm out of Vietnam now. It took a cramped bus journey, a spectacular but extremely painful motorbike ride over the mountains, a breakdown on said motorbike and frantically pouring water over the red hot exhaust pipe, serial overcharging ("Oh, but your bag is so large! We simply must almost double your ticket price!" Balls, frankly, but that's the sort of stuff you have to put up with.), running out of Dong (In fact I was 1500 short and had to make it up with a dollar), sleeping on the floor of a stilt house, taking a relaxing stroll through the rice paddies and all the other stuff associated with getting out of Vietnam. At the end of it the Vietnamese border guards signed me out, had a poke around in my bag and then I strolled over the border and out of their country.

Once I'd gone a few hundred metres up the road and past an extremely battered, rusty sign welcoming me to Houaphan Province, Laos. The difference was noticeable straight away. The signs all required translation into anything vaguely understandable to foreigners (Vietnamese use roman script, Lao don't), the brick and corrugated iron town on one side became a few bamboo huts on the other and while the Vietnamese guards were efficient and official, the English speaking Lao guard charged me a $1 'entrance fee', didn't even glance at my luggage and then sat down and ate soup with me while I waited for the truck to Sam Neua to depart. It turned out I was lucky: Saturday is market day on the Vietnamese side of town so trucks to surrounding villages are frequent. I was planning to stop over in the town of Vieng Xai, between Sam Neua and the border but changed my mind and went straight to Sam Neua and then come back to Vieng Xai later. The truck also cost exactly what the border guard said he would pay for it, which was refreshing after Vietnam.

Sam Neua is a real one horse town and capital of mountainous Houaphan province near the Vietnamese border. I turned right and checked into a truly dodgy $2 guesthouse (in Vietnam such a place would probably cost at least double that) thinking that this was probably about the standard in Laos. It wasn't: there were far better places for the same price, but never mind. I then walked about a bit, sampling the atmosphere and ended up having a couple of bottles of Beer Lao (the world's finest beverage? Possibly!) with a Lao irrigation engineer keen to practice his English and an Irish bloke looking to go into Vietnam. I wished him luck but couldn't help.

The next day I backtracked to Vieng Xai on another fairly priced pickup and, on the way to find a guesthouse, got shown somewhere to stay and invited to lunch by Phet, an incredibly hospitable teacher training student working at his brother's furniture workshop in Vieng Xai, and then spending the most of the rest of the day sitting in his house listening to cheesy music, watching Thai television and interacting with any family and coworkers which happened to be hanging around or sampling more beer Lao at a small lakeside restaurant.

Of course, I had to go to sleep sometime, and after I'd done that (at my guesthouse) I went to the caves that the town are famous for. The caves near Vieng Xai were the headquarters of the communist Pathet Lao before they took over the country and considered moving the capital here once they had (I'd have liked to see this happen: Vieng Xai is probably the world's least likely capital city). These were actually pretty interesting, due to an enlightening guide which I was forced to hire. Highlights: the "Russian Oxygen Machine" used in case of chemical attacks, the massive arena like cave used for weddings and the large and rather telling array of gifts given by other communist governments, namely a portrait of Che Guevara, a bust of Lenin, and a vase from the Vietnamese.

I then missed the last bus to go home and stayed in Vieng Xai another night. I didn't mind, because it's a pretty nice place. However, first thing in the morning I went back to Sam Neua, checked into a better yet similarly priced guesthouse and kind of wandered around for a bit. I also sampled the Lao national dish, Laap and sticky rice. THis is a spice minced beef, mint and onion salad. It's quite tasty.

I'd been in the real backwaters of Laos for too long so I made moves to get to slightly less isolated areas, namely Phonsavan, which is still in the back end of nowhere but far less remote than Sam Neua. It also had more foreigners around, most of whom had come as tourists to see the Plain of Jars or work for NGOs as the area around Phonsavan is one of the poorest and most heavily mined areas in one of the poorest and most heavily mined nations in the world. Phonsavan is basically one street but is still larger and more significant that Sam Neua (where people talked about it with an element of awe) and has things like pizza restaurants and Tuk-Tuks (this is actually the first time I'd encountered one of these overpriced overpolluting chariots, they don't exist in Vietnam) which were completely useless apart from taking you to the new bus station outside of town, which I suspect was only built to give the tuk-tuk drivers some business.

I went to the jars and was mostly underwhelmed, although I liked the walk and spooky feeling of remote Site 3. The Plain Of Jars consists of large stone and concrete jars scattered across the hills and originally used for a purpose that nobody knows, though the prevailing theory seems to be burial due to human figures found carved on some jars. Phonsavan holds few other attractions so I got the bus out west to Luang Prabang first thing the next morning.

And here I am now! Luang Prabang is a wonderfully charming French colonial/Lao royal city and I've been spending most of my time here just sitting in cafes and chilling out. I could see myself spending too much time here!

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