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Published: April 15th 2008
Ok, so I last left you after our trek through the jungles of Northern Thailand. Here we are in Vientiane (The Loa capital), a couple of weeks later, finding ourselves right square in the middle of the Lao New Year celebration. It has been an incredible couple of weeks in Laos- 2 harrowing bus rides, a brush with French colonialism in Luang Prabang, doing backflips with Buddhist monks at a local waterfall, a couple of surreal days “tubing” in Vang Vieng, a wander through a massive cave, and now 3 days trying to avoid getting unnecessarily soaked during the Water Festival that is the Lao New Year tradition. An unbelievable experience, for sure… We’ve got a few hours before catching our flight to Hanoi in Northern Vietnam this afternoon, so I thought I would try to get a few pics up, along with a brief description of what we’ve been up to…
We left Chaing Mai in Thailand on a minibus bound for the Thai-Laos border, keeping our fingers crossed that we would arrive in time to still get a cross the border that afternoon w/o having to waste another night in transit. We were lucky, as we arrived
at about 430pm, and the border crossing closed at 5. We hurried down to the ferry, caught the little skiff across the river, and wrangled our bags up to the make-shift immigration office to get our Laos Tourist Visas. HOT- all I remember is SWETLERING heat, still air, and the sweat. Rivers of sweat cascading down my forehead as I tried to clear the stinging from my eyes long enough to fill out the immigration form. Strangely, it didn’t really bother me that much at that point in time- I was just glad to be across the border and in LAOS! Ridiculous- I STILL don’t believe Im in Laos, and Ive been here for 2 WEEKS!! Anyway, we got our visas, picked up our bags, and wandered up the street into “town” in search of a place to crash.
We were lucky, as a pretty nice place was just on the corner, so we popped in, had a look at the room, and were thankful to be able to drop our stuff, have a shower, and lay in the fan-cooled air for a bit. Not much time to laze around though- we still had to organize our transport from
Hauy Xai (Border crossing town) to Luang Prabang (Our first destination in Laos) for the next morning, and we had a sneaky suspicion that things weren’t going to be open that late in Huay Xai. We had 3 options: The slow boat (Two days, one night in the river, stopping off at a village along the way), the fast boat (A harrowing 6 hour ride on what is literally a canoe with a massive outboard engine attached), and the local bus. We had heard horror stories about the fast boat (Boats disintegrating in the middle of the river, boats flipping because they hit debris, etc. Not good things…), weren’t too keen on taking the slow boat (It was HOT, and the thought of sitting in the stifling heat for 2 days shoulder to shoulder with other travelers was not pleasant. Plus, we were behind on our “itinerary” by a few days due to our time spent in Kanchanaburi, and we wanted to try to make up a day or two). It really came down to picking the lesser of 3 evils. We ended up going with the bus- supposedly a 14 hour overnight trip to Luang Prabang. No big deal,
we thought. We had taken the overnight bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, and it wasn’t all too bad- this would be about the same, right? WRONG. We quickly realized that we were in for an experience, and one that wasn’t likely to be very pleasant.
It started out ok- not too full, we could spread out, open the windows, a nice breeze blowing through, but we were soon to find out that the driver was not against randomly stopping at these small villages on the side of the road along the way- sometimes for hours at a time. Every stop, more villagers would get on, bringing their huge bags of who knows what, baskets, etc. with them. It wasnt too long and the bus was full, with huge bags and piles of baskets clogging the aisle. Ugh- even now I can remember how cramped it was. Then, after the bus was full, we had yet ANOTHER stop- something was going on with the Laos police and some of the villagers that were on the bus- we never got a full story, and obviously had no idea what was going on, but after being stopped at this TINY village
for almost 2 hours, we were all hurried back onto the bus and back on the road. We eventually pulled into Luang Prabang around 5 am, were lucky to find a guesthouse with rooms available on our first try, and proceeded to PASS OUT for the next 7 or 8 hours. What a nightmare…
Luang Prabang made up for it. What an amazing little French colonial town, right in the middle of Laos! It is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site, or something like that. Right on the shores of the Mekong River, packed with little cafes selling fresh baguettes and croissants, heaps to do as far as trekking, river cruises, day trips to waterfalls, etc. A MASSIVE Night Market with so many locally-produced good it was unfathomable who made it all… Fede and I spent our first day there on a cruise up the Mekong to some caves that had long been used as Buddhist Temples. Not much worth seeing at the caves, but the cruise on the Mekong was cool. Little villages spattered along the shores, water buffalo and cows wading in the shallows, little kids playing and splashing around, women from the villages collecting water
and doing their laundry- life in Laos, slowly floating by. That night we went to this place called HiveBar- a cool little place owned by a Canadian expat who has successfully transported a proper lounge-type atmosphere from the western world and plopped it right down in the middle of Laos. Good on him! We hung out there for awhile, and then were invited to head to the local bowling alley by some Australians we had met along the way. Why not? We were expecting it to be a dimly lit dirt lane in some back alley somewhere, but were pleasantly surprised by the modern building we pulled up to in out tuk-tuk. A/C, 8 real lanes, automatic ball return, and COMPUTERIZED SCORING!!! Unbelievable! We played a couple of games (I won both, I must add…), and then called it a night. Who knows if that place ever closes- it was getting pretty crazy when we headed out. Good times, all around.
We headed out to a local national park and a massive waterfall the next day, ran into some Buddhist monks that taught us how to do backflips into this massive pool at the very top of the waterfall.
It was amazing- so much fun! Back to town that afternoon, a chicken baguette from a street vendor for $15,000 kip (Roughly $1.75US, and exceptionally delicious!), a $5000 kip plate of fried noodles from another vendor, and we were set to explore the Night Market. So many odd trinkets, scarves, chess boards, bracelets, paintings, t-shirts, boxes, lanterns- the list goes on and on. I wanted to buy SO MUCH, but since my backpack is already HUGE, controlled myself and stuck to a t-shirt. Otherwise, I might have to buy another bag…
The next day we were on the minibus to Vang Vieng, another town further south into Laos. Little did we know that our driver for the day was Mario Andretti- he mustve been on vacation in Laos as well. Im not exaggerating when I say that this guy had the tires SCREAMING around every curve in the road (And it was a VERY curvy road through the mountains of Northern Laos). I honestly thought he was going to flip the van a couple of times- I still don’t know how he didn’t. With all of our luggage piled on to, it had to be top heavy, but somehow
it remained upright throughout the trip, and we arrived in Vang Vieng “safely”, some minus their lunch.
Vang Veing is incredible as well- its this small little town that has seemingly sprung up due to the tubing phenomenon that exists there. Everyone traveling through Northern Laos goes to Vang Vieng to go “tubing”- really, it’s a float trip down a slow-moving stream, with bamboo bars along the sides of the stream that have volleyball courts, massive rope swings and zip lines, stream-side bungalows, food, ping-pong tables, buckets of mud, and as much free Lao Lao (Laos rice whisky) as you can handle. In a ward: Insane. You are just floating down the river at first, and then all of a sudden, you hear this loud techno music, and bamboo poles attached to ropes are landing beside you, the guy hurling them your way trying to coax you into grabbing on so he can tow you into his bar. You grab on, he pulls you in and helps you off your tube, and then theres a smiling woman there with a bottle of clear liquid, a shot glass, and a huge smile… “LAO LAO!!” she yells, as she pours you
a shot before you even have the chance to say no. Its then that you realize what kind of day you are in for- again, INSANE. People are flying through the air off of huge rope swings, trapezes, and zip lines. Random dance parties are breaking out on the various levels of the bamboo bars. We got a good game of volleyball going, only to have it interrupted by a few that had obviously had there fair share of Lao Lao and then some. When you got bored, it was just a shared glance and a nod- “On to the next one?” “Yeah mate- lets make a move.” And that was that, back down to the streamside, back in the tube (Drink in hand, more often than not), and it was back out onto the water to float down to the next place. It was all so surreal, being in the middle of Laos, and such craziness going on. It kind of felt like Spring Break- like we shouldve been in Mexico or something. Crazy… Good fun though, as long as you didn’t get too out of control- we definitely saw some people get hurt doing some of the swings,
Rolling a few frames...
At the Luang Prabang Bowling Alleyetc. Its really not safe at all, I don’t care what the locals say. We survived, and made some new friends along the way as well. We all met up at this outdoor place called Smile Bar later that night- again, a crazy scene. Bonfires, bungalows, Beerlao flowing, huge bucket drinks- honestly, I felt a little too, um, responsible, maybe, to be there? It was all just a little over-the-top. Everything in Laos closes at midnight (Probably a good thing, given the circumstances), so we grabbed a sandwich on the street and called it a night.
The next day we hired scooters with some of our friends and went out to explore some caves and swimming holes. The cave we ended up at was HUGE- much larger than what I expected it to be. It was immense- luckily we had some torches along, or who knows how we would’ve ever gotten out. Afterwards we hit up the swimming hole, and then headed back into town to while away the afternoon.
It was off to Vientiane, the Laos capital the next day. We actually had a pleasant bus ride- nothing too excessive. Into Vientiane, only to learn that basically
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Who knew Argentineans were such good bowlers?? the entire city has been shut down for the past several days for the Lao New Year celebration. It started in Thursday, and continues through today (Tuesday). These guys really know how to celebrate- its one massive water fight in the streets during the day, and then everyone out partying and dancing at night. Too much fun! During the day, groups travel around together in pick-up trucks, armed with buckets, water balloons, water guns, sponges, and huge trash cans full of water in the beds. They literally just roll up and down the 2 or three main streets in town, soaking everyone on the sidewalks. In turn, there are hoards on every corner with their own weapons- water hoses, buckets, their own water balloons- waiting for the trucks to come by. Then there are the people on their motor scooters, incapable of defending themselves, getting doused at every turn, and laughing and loving every minute of it. It really is a sight. Fede and I got involved in it all yesterday- we fashioned some water guns out of empty water bottles, grabbed a few buckets, and headed out into the streets, daring people to get us wet. Needless to say,
we were soaked within minutes, and the insanity continued from there. Everyone has a huge smile on their face, whether theyre Lao or traveling, everyone is shouting HAPPY NEW YEAR all of the time, there are no teams or sides- everyone just wants to throw water on someone else. I can hear the children laughing and screaming as the trucks roll by outside the internet café right now- that’s literally been the biggest fear of the past few days- that we would get soaked while in transit to the internet café with our cameras, iPods, passports, etc. We have been very covert trying to get back and forth. Getting to the airport this afternoon is going to be an adventure for sure…
And on that note, I need to wrap things up. Its off to Vietnam this afternoon- a few days in Hanoi, Sapa, and Halong Bay before heading south toward Saigon. Sad to leave Laos behind, but the Expedition must continue!
Speaking of the Expedition- In case you haven’t heard- Cory has booked his flights and is coming back to rejoin the expedition at the beginning of May! Fede and I are planning on meeting him
A Buddhist Shower...
At the waterfall outside of Luang Prabang... in Bangkok around May 15th before heading towards the islands of Southern Thailand. All is well with his brother, his house is SOLD, and its time to for the co-captain to return! Its going to be AMAZING!!!
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kyle
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Finally! You're my Hero.
He travels halfway across the world to have a mudfight with girls in bikinis.