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Published: September 2nd 2006
Me Monkey
This was a pet owned by one of the guesthouses. A couple of kids were walking it on a lead down the street. Great fun to play with.We arrived in Luang Prabang and the first thing that struck me was how continental it felt. The main reason for this is the French colonial architecture. As a city it oozes character. It almost feels like you are in a time warp as you can imagine the former capital looking exactly the same now as it did 50 years ago. Luang Prabang as a city is on the World Heritage list which has helped it maintain its sleepy charm. We checked into a reasonably new and very clean guesthouse located in the Historic Temple area of the city. There are a total of 66 historic temples around the city so if temples are your thing, you’d love it.
Decided to book a trip to see Kouangsi Waterfall which is located around an hour outside the city. You reach the waterfall along a small path through the forest. After a while you arrive at a bear enclosure containing around 12 of the animals. These guys were the most hilarious animals I had seen for a long time. There is a stall next to the enclosure selling bunches of bananas for you to feed to the bears. When we approached the
fence, the bears reared up on their hind legs waiting for the food to be thrown over. They had a long mane of hair around their heads that looked like a cross between an excellently sculpted mullet and an enormous set of bugger grips! The best part was that when they stood they held their front legs up, bent at the elbow and let their wrists hang loose. They looked so camp it was hilarious!
We continued along the path to another enclosure, this time containing a tiger. The tiger had been saved from poachers and had lived there ever since. We were really lucky in that it was right up next to the fence lounging by a tree. We were all enjoying watching it relax, then a group of Germans turned up and started throwing things over the fence at it in order to get it to move. Crazy bastards! The fence really wasn’t too sturdy so we decided to make a sharp exit!
We arrived at what we thought was the actual waterfall. It was a beautifully clear blue pool where you were able to swim. I fully intended to do so, however decided to take
a few pictures of the waterfall first. I wandered off along a path and a network of waterfalls over really interesting rock formations continued on for miles. I followed the path, taking pictures as I went, turned a corner and saw the main falls. It was enormous, water cascading down the cliff resulting in a deafening roar as it crashed over the rocks below. There was a path leading up the side of the mountain that led all the way to the top of the waterfall, stopping half way at a ledge offering great views of the pool below. We continued all the way up, the path slowly deteriorating to mud as we went. We arrived at the top and began to cross the river with the intention of descending the other side, however as we got half way across there was a head splitting crack of thunder. Considering we were currently at the top of one of the highest mountains in the area, we decided that it would probably be a good idea to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible! It wasn’t long before the rain turned into a full on monsoon downpour, transforming the
difficult climb up into a slippery mudslide going down. Made it to the bottom with a few scares, but no major incident and arrived back at the van looking like drowned rats!
Woke up the next day with the intention of visiting a temple called Wat Thammothayalan that is located at the top of a hill called Phu Si. Unfortunately it started raining, therefore we decided to have a beer and wait around for the weather to clear up. As you can imagine one beer turned into a few beers and we were soon well on our way. We ran into a girl that claimed she knew us from Vang Vieng (our time there was all a bit of a blur and we are yet to remember ever speaking to her, let alone seeing her!) who introduced us to the food market. I love this place! You walk down a tiny alleyway lined either side with stalls all selling weird and wonderful types of food. After around 20 metres you arrive at a buffet stall. Here you can pile as much rice, noodles, spring rolls and vegetables onto your plate as possible, all for 5000kip, which works out at
50 US cents. If you fancy it you can also get a skewer of the best barbecue chicken breast I have eaten for 8000kip. This is definitely the cheapest and probably the most healthy I have eaten for 4 months! Needless to say this was where we ate for the duration of our stay!
In Laos there is a national curfew of 12 midnight, therefore the nightlife in Luang Prabang was not amazing. There are a total of three main bars. ‘Lao Lao Gardens’, ‘The Hive Bar’, and ‘The Vietnam Bar’. This was the usual crawl whenever we went out for drinks. Vietnam Bar was the only one that stayed open later than 12, then we would finish the night off drinking by the river. We drank the night away and celebrated my birthday at midnight with yet more drinks! The Vietnam bar is a strange place. It is basically more like a shed, they lock the door behind you when you arrive and you sit on plastic furniture being entertained by Boney-M music videos. Quite surreal! The owner pays off the police in order to continue selling booze, however towards the end of our stay the bar wasn’t
open and we heard that she had been arrested!
My actual birthday was mostly spent in bed due to the late previous night. When I eventually crawled out of my pit we got some food from the market and started the celebrations. Due to our excessive Beer Lao consumption the previous night we were all feeling quite subdued. We made our way to the Lao Lao Gardens, claimed our free shots of Lao Lao (which of course, being my birthday I had to drink all 4 of) and began to liven up a bit. There isn’t really too much to report from my birthday evening - just another drunken night of madness. The pictures tell the story.
The following day I decided that after nearly a month’s growth, the beard had got out of control! There were a number of people back home to whom I had made a promise that I would grow one, so I have included pictures of it in all its glory! I also had a bit of fun with it at the same time (see below).
After hearing lots of very good recommendations from various people that we have met throughout Laos,
we all decided that we wanted to do ‘The Gibbon Experience’. Basically it is set in a national park north of Houay Xai on the Burmese border. You spend your time there living in tree houses 40m above ground, trekking through the jungle looking for gibbons and traveling in between tree houses on a network of zip lines. I will write all about it in my next blog. The earliest date that we could reserve was the 27th August, meaning that we had to kill a few days in Luang Prabang before traveling up to Houay Xai.
James and Rich decided to go White Water Rafting to take up a day, however due to the Gibbon Experience eating up a large chunk of my budget I couldn’t really afford it. Myself and Deano went on a wander around the city. At the time there was a Buddhist festival taking place. On the first day there was a huge market that stretched almost entirely along the main street. The market as a whole was not really too different from any back at home, just stalls lining the street selling anything and everything. If you looked a bit closer however there
were some hilarious sights. As we were walking along I noticed a stall that was completely surrounded by locals, all struggling to get to the front. After taking a closer look, I saw that it was actually a pen containing around 15-20 ducks. All of the locals were holding small hoops and the aim of the game was to throw your hoop around the neck of the unsuspecting duck, if you did you won whichever unlucky bird it was! I could have watched it all day, it was crazy. One kid was successful and the guy in charge walked over, picked up the duck, wings flapping helplessly, handed it over and the kid ran off into the crowd with his prize! I dread to think what happened to the duck - ended up on his family’s dinner plate that evening I suspect! It was very interesting to see how the ducks reacted to the whole game. They seemed to have grown wise to the rules and were all huddled together with their heads almost touching, making it very difficult to successfully catch one.
After the market, the sun was shining, so I decided to pay that visit to the
top of Phu Si. The views from the top were really good. It is amazing how green Luang Prabang as a city is. There seemed to be more trees than buildings, which was a really refreshing change.
We rounded the afternoon off with a film at ‘Le Cinema’. This is a great place. Like a home away from home. You hire a room with a big screen TV, surround sound system, cushions, bean bags etc etc. In the reception area they have a selection of hundreds of DVDs that you can choose to watch. It is a really nice way to relax and the equipment is as good as you would get back home. This was quite a regular haunt for most of the evenings spent in Luang Prabang in order to save cash!
The second day of the festival was a Dragon Boat racing tournament. We braved the rain and wandered down to the bank of the Nam Khan river. The whole city was out in force. Even though it was raining practically all day, every one was out in their rain macs, or under umbrellas. This tournament is a yearly event and is really big in
Laos. We settled in a good spot on a platform jutting out over the river. A convenient bar opposite supplied the Beer Lao and we spent the day betting between each other, chatting and cheering with the locals. The boats are enormous, holding up to 50 people and almost look like giant centipedes, the oars resembling legs as they approach the start line. A lot of messing around ensuring that the boats were level preceded each race, however when they finally started the speed that they reached was incredible. As the races went by, so did the Beer Lao. We befriended a local who had a league table and we were relying on him to tell us how the tournament was unfolding. It turned out that he didn’t have much more of an idea than we did, as around half way through, he gave up on the league table and concentrated on his beer instead. After looking around it was quite obvious that none of the locals there had any idea what was going on, all they were interested in was having an excuse to drink copious amounts of alcohol! When it came to what we thought was the final
race, one of the boats capsized. They challenged their rivals to a re-match, which was not accepted, causing great confusion. A few more races passed, however it seemed as though the judges had gone home! By this time, our local friends were all too drunk to know, or care what was going on. Then at the height of this confusion a boat floated past cheering as the self-proclaimed champions!? It was a complete shambles and 100% Lao style! We eventually managed to establish that there was going to be a second day of racing. In all the years of the tournament taking place, it had never happened and we were there to witness it!
As we needed to be in Huay Xai for The Gibbon Experience, we booked up a slow boat for the following day and had an early night due to a 6am start. The slow boat journey is made up of two 8-hour stints, stopping at Pak Beng overnight. You can take a speedboat all the way in one 8-hour journey, however the boats are tiny offering zero legroom, and can be very dangerous. We heard that one of these boats flips almost weekly, often resulting
in fatalities, therefore opted for the safer choice. Due to the festival ending, the first leg of the journey was very packed and quite uncomfortable. The seat is literally a wooden bench, with a poor excuse for a cushion resulting in a seriously numb arse after 2 hours, let alone 8! The scenery along the river is beautiful making the discomfort almost bearable.
Stopped at Pak Beng, had a curry and an early night and caught the boat in the morning for the second leg of our trip. This was much nicer. There were a lot less people on the boat allowing us a double seat to ourselves. We just relaxed, had a couple of beers and admired the scenery. We watched the fast boats speed past every now and then, eight people shoehorned in, unable to move a muscle, all wearing massive crash helmets, completely soaked from the rain and spray and generally looking miserable. Slow boat was definitely a good choice!
Finally we arrived in Houay Xai, said our goodbyes to Deano who immediately crossed the Thai border to Chiang Mai (he decided against the Gibbon Experience), checked into a guesthouse and went to confirm our
booking at the office.
We walked over to the receptionist, all excited, gave our names to which the woman replied ‘Sorry, we have no reservations under that name’. We all just stood there in silence, jaws open, feeling crushed that we couldn’t experience something we had been looking forward to for 2 weeks, and angry that we had spent $25 extending our visas especially. We also all had 1.3 million Lao Kip in our pockets that we now had nothing to spend on and no way of changing back to dollars or Baht. It turned out that the confirmation email we sent back to them didn’t get through so, assuming we had changed our minds, they had given our places to somebody else. Our only option was to wait in the hope that somebody would not turn up freeing additional spaces.
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U. Andrew
non-member comment
Gibbons
Well???? Did you stay at the Gibbon place or not? Lots of love to you both. U. Andrewxxxxx