Laos

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Laos

This will be the last country we will visit on this tour. 6 weeks have flown by pretty quickly!

To say hello here, one says Sabaidee. The currency is the “Kip”. Approx 8450 Kip per U.S. dollar.
Laos, was formerly known as the country of one million elephants. It has become the Lao people’s Democratic Republic in 1975. The country that has been opened to tourism for only the last 10 years, but the people of Laos are very welcoming. The wildlife is apparently diverse, but they do not promote safaris that we know of. Their main source of revenue is farming. They own a large hydroelectric dam which in theory could produce 50 times more than current output. Only 10% of the country’s roads are paved. 20 years ago, . The tourism industry is in its infancy. The population is estimated at 6.7 Million, quite a bit less than its neighbors Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia and of course China. In fact, it is the least populated country in South East Asia. But, it is a poor country. We don’t see many fancy cars here. The Mekong river meanders through the country for over 1800 km, sometimes within the country, at other times defining the borders with its neighbors. The Mekong is un-navigable just North of Vientianne, because of a waterfall measuring over 20 m. Below is Cambodia. The language spoken in Laos is very similar to Thai! Life expectancy here is 62 years for men, and 66 yrs for woman. The rainy season lasts from late May till early October. Leaves fall off the leaf trees in Feb / March, bud in late March and begin the new green cycle in April.

The country has 4 main ethnolinguistic groups, and approx 100 sub ethnic groups. The tribes are generally distributed by geography, lowlands people, mountain slopes, and summit people (the Hmong). There are 16 provinces, and 65% of the population is of Lao Loum, originating a long time ago in Tibet. During the Viet Nam war, Richard Nixon ordered that Laos be bombed heavily. It cause much destruction and loss of life at the time. Laosians don’t talk about it.

Luang Prabang
This was our fist stop. The flights here were a little complicated. We first flew from Siem Reap to Pakse where we obtained our visa, and cleared immigration, we then re-boarded the plane and flew on to Vientianne, the capital. I’ll talk about Ventianne a little later. From there we waited too long , experienced a few delays before flying off to Luang Prabang. The airport at Lunag Prabang is very small, and the immigration officials pretty flexible. As we were waiting for our bags, a fellow waiting in the “international departures lounge decided he wanted several beer for his upcoming flight to Hanoi. He left the lounge after completing his departure formalities with immigration, went back out into the domestic terminal, bought 4 beers, ran back into the Intl departures lounge, and onto the runway to catch his Air Lao flight.

You guessed it, they don’t serve beer on the plane! The latter used to be the capital city over 600 years ago. Today it is a thriving metropolis of 30,000! It is a popular tourist destination. English is not widely spoken, but one can get by. The fishing industry is strong, with a great deal of the production coming from acquaculture. Farmed fish fetches about $2/kg whereas Mekong wild fish fetches $10/kg.

There are a host of Buddhist temples here. They practice Theravada Buddhism, also know as the teaching of the elders, as in Thailand. A young Buddhist novice can join the congregation at the age of 10, where he receives the basis of his education. At 18, the novice can be ordained a monk. Buddhists are a very flexible and tolerant people. Once you become a monk, you must be celibate, but you could have been married before, or leave the monkhood and get married after. The small vehicle Buddhism as is practiced here, is based upon 4 important elements of learning: birth, illness, old age and death. They are heavy believers in Kharma.

We visited several temples, the National Museum (a former royal Palace), and took a cruise on the Mekong river upstream to the famous Pak Ou caves. It takes 1 ½ hours to sail up to the caves against the current, and well under one hour to return. The lower cave is said to contain thousands of small statues of Buddha, and the upper cave hundreds. This site is considered somewhat of a shrine. Just 20 min outside of the town lies the Outdoor adventure elephant park. One can attend a 3 day elephant rider course, or just go for a leisurely ride. Sitting just behind the elephant’s head as you see in the movies is a tough job. You need short bowed legs to sit comfortably. Steering the elephant is done with voice command, leg pressure and soft jabs with one’s hand at the back of the elephant’s head. When the elephant doesn’t want to listen, out comes a little metal instrument that looks like a sharp crow bar, and the elephant’s ear is gently pried. The stubbornness doesn’t last long with that thing. This elephant camp also includes rooms for $45 a night. Neat experience, a little like staying in small African lodges. 45 minutes from Luang Prabang, one can see the Kuang Si waterfalls. They are quite interesting because the limestone sedimentation in the water make it a turquoise color, a little like Lake Louise in Western Canada. The water cascades into many pools that tourists can frolic in.

Outside the city, many teak tree plantations can be seen. Teak grows at approx 1 cm to 1.5 cm in diameter per year. They harvest them when they reach 50 cm diameter plus. They have also begun planting rubber trees, but these require 10 years before they can begin any type of harvesting of rubber compound.

Vientianne, the capital
Vientianne has a population of approx 600,000. It feels like a sleepy little town, with few skyscrapers, and relatively light traffic. We stayed at the Dom Chan Palace hotel by the Mekong river. In front of the hotel, a blue Toyota track modified race car sat proudly, with advertizing for the hotel pasted on each door/fender. Asked where the owner raced his car, the staff were proud to say “the Sepang F 1 track in Malaysia”. Hmmm, sounds familiar!

There isn’t much to see in Vientianne. A few temples, the Patuxay monument better know as their Arch de Triomphe, government buildings, the Lao National Assembly building, and the famous That Luang Stupa. The latter was rebuilt in the 1930’s on the site of the original Stupa dating back to 1566. Close by, one can see a statue of King Setthathirat. In truth, there isn’t much to do here in Vientianne. One day is plenty.
We did not plan our visit to Laos very well. There are interesting National parks to enjoy here, with interesting wildlife.

Oh well, we hope these blogs didn’t bore you too much. Catch you next year!

Richard and Francine.

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