A Brief Encounter With Laos

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As Emilie was only on a three week holiday, we needed to race around Thailand, Cambodia and Laos so we weren’t able to spend too much time in any one place. With a little help from our guide books and stories we’d heard from friends we’d narrowed down the places we wanted to see in Laos to Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang. As it turned out we weren’t able to get out of Vientiane the day we arrived so we spent the first night there.....

We woke up on the train that morning in Nong Khai and watched the rice paddies and fields drift by. Arriving at the train station, we were greeted by a troupe of motorcycle rickshaws. Being the first time we’d seen this style we were a little dubious. Literally, a small trailer with seats is attached to the back of a motorbike using a solid metal tow bar. It doesn’t feel very steady and taking corners is best done closing the eyes and thinking of a happy place. Luckily the trip to Thai immigration was short, about three minutes, so we didn’t endure for long. Perhaps without the overloading of three large bags and three people we would have felt more secure. On arrival we queued up to get our departure cards and passports stamped before herding on to a bus to Laos immigration. Not feeling like queuing up again right away we hit a restaurant and admired the variety of cuisine including Duck Chin and Chicken Knee Bone but settled for rice sans animal parts. There was a mighty fine selection of duty free shops here and we found one of the types of wine we buy at home, Torres Spanish wine with the little bulls attached, for cheaper than we buy it for at home! The process for visa application was straightforward but the overtime charge because it was a weekend was a bit cheeky. After we’d got our passports stamped and walked around the desk titled arrival tax or the like (what do they think a visa is?) we hopped on a local bus to the city of Vientiane approx 20km away. On this short journey we noticed yet again that the Lonely Planet is not to be taken too seriously. According to them there is only one ATM in Laos, in Vientiane, but this was clearly not true as there were ATM boxes (set up like phone boxes, singularly by the side of the road) all over the place. Obviously books can’t always be up to date but these ATMs did not spring up in the last few months and our book is the most recent edition. So we arrived at the bus station but the last public bus had already gone. Consulting our maps we navigated in to the centre of this very sleepy capital city which was easily done as all streets have signs on them and are big and wide in the true French fashion. They are still called Rue and Boulevard and colonial style buildings line the streets. It was like we’d arrived back in Europe. The travel agent we stopped at informed us we’d just missed the last tourist bus to Vang Vieng so admitting defeat we booked tickets on the bus the following morning and checked in to a hotel nearby. That night we tried the Discovery menu at the restaurant Khop Chai Deu on the main street which included; Khao Niau - sticky rice, Lab - minced meat of choice with herbs, Thom Yam Pa - sour chilli + lemongrass soup with fish, Tam Mak Hung - spicy green papaya salad and finally, Kanom Na Nuan for dessert which consisted of a rice pudding like dish topped with coconut and infiltrated by sweet corn! An interesting combination but strangely delicious. We passed on the fried locust option. Pool was played for awhile then, realising we had missed our curfew, we ran back to our guesthouse in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm getting soaked along the way.

Waking up the next morning proved to be tricky so we missed our bus and checkout. Fearing the worst (i.e. paying for bus again and for a night’s accommodation we wouldn’t use), we packed in a hurry and headed down to reception. Here was our first real experience of the Laos hospitality. We read before arriving that in Laos people consider having a guest as an honour and we really did feel that for the first time in awhile we weren’t being milked for cash. The girl was so sweet and never mentioned late check out. She called the bus company and arranged for them to put us on the afternoon bus for no extra charge and directed us to a cafe close by where we could get breakfast to go. When the bus arrived she ran over to tell us that they were there and made them wait for us. When we did arrive at the bus we still had to sit around for half an hour while they rounded up the rest of the passengers so we had plenty of time to scoff our baguettes comfortably. Wohoo! Air conditioning on the bus was pretty non-existent so we melted the whole way there. At the halfway stop we had to pay for the toilet at the restaurant which was an alien concept at the time but we have seen it at a few places since. We checked in the SaySong Guesthouse (doubles $5, singles with double bed $3) and admired the sun sinking behind the karst mountains across the lake from the large balcony at the end of our floor.

Vang Vieng would be a sleepy village by a river surrounded by stunning mountains were it not for its reputation as one of the highlights of South East Asia. It’s a traveller’s legend and we arrived with high expectations and were not disappointed. By night it seems quiet and sedate with not much going on then everything that had life shuts down at 10pm. There are streets lined with restaurants and bars, many choosing a theme for example there a few places that show Friends episodes back to back, others show Family Guy, a few places show movies. Most bars have free pool tables and play western music. It definitely caters to backpackers although we were there in August which is off season because of the monsoon so most of these places were only half full, if that. Pancake stalls appear on the road side at night and we tasted banana and nutella as well as peanut pancakes, yummy. By day though Vang Vieng becomes the most action packed place in Laos.

On our first day we went on a trekking, caving and kayaking adventure. The morning started off by getting a pick-up truck to our trekking launch point. A crew of young Laos trainee guides were on board on their way further up the river to be trained to guide on kayak trips and they were eager to practice their English on us. We walked for a few minutes to the river and took motorised long tail boats across to a Buddhist cave complete with big and little statues. Our guide Hoi told us the story of the most beautiful monk ever who couldn’t leave the monastery for fear of being swarmed by admiring ladies so he resorted to turning himself into a fat ugly monk. There were other stories but this one stood out the most. This cave was embedded in to one of the Karst hills and the whole outside was covered in trees and bushes. We trekked across rice paddies to the second cave which was our favourite. It had another Buddhist statue at the front but then we turned on our torches and ventured in to the blackness for 2km of proper caving, wading through water up to our chest in places, ducking underneath stalactites and shimmying through narrow gaps. We all took a spill at some stage but no one was hurt and it was loads of fun. After we managed to find our way out again Hoi made our lunch on a bbq in a clearing between caves two and three. We had beef and vegetable kebabs, mixed fried rice wrapped in banana leaves and bananas. Feeling powerful again we attacked cave number three but this turned out to be very slippery and difficult to get in to and the least interesting inside so we didn’t hang around long. More trekking through fields and villages ensued till we hit the last cave which is accessible by rubber tubes. We attached headlights and sat the batteries in our laps and climbed in to the tubes using the guide line to pull us to the entrance. It didn’t seem possible to get in at first but we wedged ourselves through and pulled ourselves right to the end then let go of the rope and drift back to the entrance. It was so much fun.

The last part of the day was the kayaking. Our truck picked us up loaded with the kayaks and brought us down to the river where we finally got to see what the big fuss was all about. We got dropped off at the same point as the tubers and paddled past them down the river. Every few hundred meters on either side of the river are bars pumping out music with high swings over the water or zip wires. There were loads of people in their tubes just drifting along in groups and having fun. Hoi had been telling us about all the tricks he could do on the swing so when we got to the highest one, we pulled in for Ade and Hoi to have a go. Em and Ash thought it best to build up to it, in other words put it off till tomorrow. We could hardly wait for our turn at tubing the next day. The kayaking was fun too but seemed like so much work compared to this other option!

Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side and after two days of glorious sunshine the monsoon kicked in again and lashed for about12 hours straight! Luckily, it did stop in the afternoon so we got one run down the river in the tubes although the river was higher and much faster than the day before. As it wasn’t great weather, there were not nearly as many people on the river or in the bars but it was still really good fun. Ade tried to perfect his moves on the high swing and had a safety ring thrown out to catch him as the river was so fast. Em and Ash did manage to build up the courage to jump of the last swing as it was turning in to dusk and we all floated back to the island off the main street in the dark! A little scary towards the end but we’ll definitely be hitting Vang Vieng again hopefully sooner rather than later.

Our time ran out at this point so we took a bus to Vientiane the next afternoon and then a night bus to Pakse to catch an early morning flight to Siem Reap in Cambodia. The overnight bus was air conditioned and comfortable, the seats went pretty far back and there was a toilet on board so we couldn’t complain. We also got mixed fried rice for dinner, water and refreshing towels. We arrived in time for a beautiful sunrise and were the first people at the airport; they had to turn on the lights for us. It was a small building but eerie all the same to be alone in it. We would love to have seen Luang Prabang and the 4000 islands but it was not to be this time around. We left Laos in great form and looking forward to returning one day.

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Photos

Vientiane Street
All very Parisian

Thom Yam Pa Soup
1 serving = enough to feed several thousand

Cave Number 1
From a far

Bridge Over River Nam Song
view from hotel balcony

Nam Song Views
view also from hotel balcony