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Published: February 3rd 2006
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Mekong river
Just before the end of the first day on the river, near Pakbeng While planning this trip I considered Laos more or less as a way to get from Thailand to Vietnam, but I have come to like this country a lot in the last 2 weeks. Laos is a People's Republic or a socialist republic (just like China). It still uses the communist rhetoric and symbols but has in practice adapted to free market economy. The country ended its socialist revolution in 1975 (shortly after the end of the Vietnam War). It also suffered from heavy US bombing during the war. The results of which are still felt today in the form of unexploded bombs spread all over the north eastern part of the country, still causing a lot of accidents.
It's also the country of the early birds, everything closes at 11.30 pm but as of 6 am the whole country (minus most tourists) is up and running.
Mekong river 'cruise'
'Go with the flow'. That's what someone suggested I should do, and I did.
After crossing the river / border into Laos I took a slow boat to Luang Prabang. This trip down the Mekong River would take 2 days with an overnight stop halfway in Pakbeng. Guidebooks warned
The boat
Boat on the first day. Not the most comfortable but at least it was stable. that this trip is a delight for some and horror to others. For me it was both.
The boats are basically cargo boats where some wooden benches have been installed. The boat is almost always overbooked.
The first day was nice. The boat was crammed with people, it left 1.5 hrs too late and the benches are hard to sit on for 6 hours but the scenery was nice, and the whole thing went smooth. I past the time reading, looking around and talking to the people on the boat.
For the overnight stop, we stayed in a crappy guesthouse next to the river. Just before we went to sleep our neighbour warned us that she saw a mouse run into our room. I couldn't be bothered and fell asleep shortly afterwards. My roommate however heard mice run around all night.
I was ready to spend another 'relaxing' day (8 hrs) on the boat. The boats were split up and we chose the wrong boat. It left later because we had to wait for some characters (Europeans) who decided that 9.30 was too early to leave after their party night. Before we left it was clear that
Uxo
Being creative with unexploded US bombs the boat was overloaded. The whole thing leaned too much to one side. After a few hundred meters on the water we noticed that the boat was all but stable. As soon as more than 2 people got up, the boat threatened to capsize. The crew kept asking/begging people to sit down...but they also kept selling beer...and it sold well. After a couple of beers our party crowd seemed not to be worried anymore about the boat capsizing and were laughing at the poor crew who was begging them to sit down. When I saw that the captain sent his little son to front with him (be with daddy when this boat goes down) I got really worried. Anyway after 8 terrible hours and 3 or more 'near capsizes' we reached Luang Prabang safely.
Luang Prabang
After the stress on the boat, I needed some time to relax and Luang Prabang is a nice place for that. This little town used to be the royal capital but after the revolution, royalty was abolished and the royal family was sent to 're-education camps', never to be seen or heard of again... it still is a big mystery what exactly
Monks
A colourful gathering happened. I went to see the royal palace and they haven't figured out yet how they have to present this to the tourists. I saw one tour guide who seriously considering running away when the people started asking difficult questions ... funny.
Anyway it's a beautiful place, surrounded by mountains, beside the Mekong River with some nice temples. So I spent some days there checking out the place. I heard that our Foreign Affairs Minister was there at the same time as me but I mist him.
We also went to see some waterfalls in the region. Pretty impressive and there was some good swimming and cliff diving there.
My travels had been pretty fast so far and it decided to take back some speed and spent some time reading by the river also.
But soon I felt the urge to go on again and so I went on to another town, Vang Vieng. The bus ride over there was very nice. We drove through the clouds and the views above the clouds were amazing. However the trip is not such a delight when you have a tendency to suffer from motion sickness (as yours truly has). So
the last two hours I was concentrating very hard on the road to keep my breakfast in. BTW this bus ride is known by the locals as the 'puke bus'...
Vang Vieng is even more laid back than Luang Prabang. The favourite past time of a lot of people is either watching their favourite sit com from back home or go 'tubing' ( drifting down the river on an inner tube). It's funny to see how people travel to the other side of the world to go to a bar where they can lay in a sofa and watch all the episodes of 'Friends'.
The main street was full of bars with some TV screens, showing either 'Friends' (I walked through the street and heard the intro music 3 times in 15 minutes), movies or sports.
I decided to have an active and lazy day in the place. On my first morning I went running around 7 am and bumped into guys outside the bars who were greeting the sunrise with their Beer Lao bottles. I was wondering if that was the last of the night or the first of the morning. I guess that after seeing a
LP Falls
One of the lower and smaller falls of the Kuang Si Falls. crazy tourist jogging in a pair of Thai box shorts at that time of the day they decided it was time to go to sleep. After that I rented a bike and went looking for some caves to explore and some places to swim. I got home late in the afternoon totally exhausted.
So I spent my second morning sitting by the river planning my further travels. In the afternoon I decided to give the tubing a try. I wasn't as relaxed as I imagined. As it's dry season the river went so slowly that there needed to be paddled a lot. Along the river there were all these bars where you could get out of the water for drinks and snacks. We got out at a place where they had a huge (6 m above the river) swing from which you could jump into the river. Good fun.
Vientiane
Two days in Vang Vieng was enough and I wanted to get to Vietnam, so I left for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. There's not really that much going on there but it's a gateway to the neighbouring countries, so I would just visit the town for
LP Falls 2
Great for my first swimming of the trip. 1-2 days and get on to Vietnam. That was without thinking about the Chinese/ Vietnamese Tet New Year. There were no busses for 1 week and after that everything was booked for another week. Great! I'm stuck in the least interesting town around and my visa is running out. I decided to sacrifice my budget and book a plane to Hanoi. Even for those I had to wait 3 days. I took the opportunity to arrange some of my future visas and read a lot. I hope to get on a plane tonight (Friday 02/02) but even that's not sure yet as there seems to be an overbooking problem...
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Ken Decreus
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Onzekere bootmomenten
Zoals de Queens Of The Stone Age het in "Go with the flow" zeggen: "I want a new mistake, loose is more than hesitate." Ik denk dat je deze woorden na de onzekere bootmomenten beter als iemand anders kan begrijpen :-) Vandaag mooie trainingsmomenten beleefd in Andy zijn nieuwe club (in De Pinte), en we hebben je er gemist!