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May 10th 2011

Published: May 10th 2011

But I'll try to throw in a quick update

Luang Prabang

We spent a few days in Luang Prabang. A very charming town, with nice people and good food. Relaxing evening markets and a beautiful environment.

The best moment for us (surely for me) is when we crossed the Mekong to get away from everyone else. There's a waterfall you can go see near Luang Prabang, practically all tours, organisers, guides, ... will take you there. However, there's also another waterfall, which is actually closer, on the other side of the Mekong.

So we got ourselves a 2 euro (for both) boat ride across the river from a local and got off at Ban Xiem (if I remember correctly). Just a short ride, 5 minutes on the water, give or take a minute. But what a difference. Other than the two of us, there was no tourist in sight. This is much more my style. I hadn't seen anything yet, walked for about 2 meters and I already felt better than in Luang Prabang itself (mind you, LP is very nice!). We saw an indication of some information office nearby, but found only an (abandoned?) little school. The temperatures were high enough for us to soon sit down at an improvised bar/take-out shack and drink fresh coconut water. We chose our coconuts and a local kindly chopped them open for us and provided us with straws. 8000 kip if I'm not mistaken, that's about 0,50 euros. We enjoyed our drink and decided to move on.We abandoned1 coconut (these thingscarry quite a lot of water) and took the other one to go. Soon after the usual happened : some wind, very slight temperature drop and a drip left and right, along with some rumbling in the sky. It was timeto put our electronics into plastic bags. We tried to get onto a truck that transported some wood, but the driver explained to us, with the use of gestures, that he would go in a different direction than where we were going.

... but where were we going?

We asked ourselves that question as we passed a few forks in the road, and decided to keep away from the roads that seemed to lead to small villages. Actually, to me it didn't matter where the road was going. I was loving the calm and beauty of the environment. We passed a house here and there until there was only road left.

And then it started to rain

Raining here means pouring. And to know it's not even rainy season yet! We looked for a place where we could get some shelter, and the best I could come up with is a house I saw a bit off the road, through somefields, a minute of running back. So we went there and a woman there offered us some chairs under the roof. We could wait here until the rain was over. It couldn't possibly get more local than this. And then something strange happened. While looking around at the animals and huts we heard some loud ... goa music. It was more of a mix between goa and techno. But whatever it was, it realy did not fit the picture!

Soon the rain stopped and we could be on our way. I tried to ask the woman who offered us the chairs if we were actually going into the direction of the waterfall. She called out for some people as we clearly made little sense to her. I guess my drawing skills didn't impress her. A few young men came, who collectively spoke about 12 words of English, including "hello", "bye", "ye", "no" and "my name". But my drawing did seem to have effect as they indicated that we were headed in the right direction. So Hoe and I gave them our best "khawp tjai lai lai" (thank you very much in Laotian) and made our slippery way back through the fields to what was the main, and only road.

But they were wrong

Or my drawing was. Whatever the source of the error was, we were not going towards any waterfall. But we would find that out later. First, we had to make our way through the very slippery and at some points deep mud. The road I've been speaking of is of course a dirt road. The sand is a deep brown/redish colour and when wet, gets very very very sticky. A little bit like quicksand. Getting your foot in the mud is easy, getting it out is another story. Ask my Oakley slippers who were victorious through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, but lost the battle in Laos. Yes, my ultra favourite pair of slippers gave up and resulted in me having to walk barefoot on what was an already slippery road.

So of course, I had to fall. Hoe could not do anything else but find this hilarious and laugh out loud. And right she was, haha. The situation just had slapstick written all over it and I can't blame her, as I joined her in the laughter. The fact that during my fall I threw the broken slippers that I had into the wilderness of growth on the side of the road made it all the funnier. Luckely, soon after another wood transportation truck passed by and our gesturing to ask if we could hitch a ride were succesful. Hoe got to ride in the front while me and my dirty feet got to sit in the back with Thun and Khus. I can't tell you what happened in the front, but Thun, Khus and I had a great time, trying to talk. I'm sure we managed to get 3 or 4 idea's accross, including what our names were, haha. More drawings followed and I was informed that we were still going in the direction of the waterfall. Soon we arrived in I guess what can be called a village. We were given the opportunity to wash our feet there, right accross the local pottery. The local pottery was a completely open area with a roof over it, which you could see from all sides. However that didn't stop the owners from making "tickets" to visit it. As they were so kind, we both bought ourselves a ticket to go see what we had already seen.

The waterfall I tell you!!

The truck we hitched a ride on and that dropped us off at the village had moved on, except for Thun who got off with us. He offered to get us back to Luang Prabang over the river. We tried, often and with the help of names, drawings on paper, in the sand and use of proper Oxford English to get our point accross that we wanted to go to the waterfall first, and after that back to Luang Prabang. They did not seem to understand very well.

And after a while, we figured out why. As I mentioned before, we were not going in the direction of the waterfall at all, haha. As it turns out, we had been walking away from it the whole time. Taking us back to Luang Prabang and going to the waterfall meant going in the exact same direction, just on different sides of the Mekong. So we managed to get a deal with Thun. He would take us to the waterfall with his boat, and then he would come back. We would make our way to LP ourselves. So we set off!

"I would love to swim in this river"

Hoe and I got into the little boat. The engine was provided with fuel and Thun skilfully navigated the boat away from shore and we were off. We still hadn't seen a single foreigner except ourselves, and this boat ride could not get more authentic. No 20 seats crammed on a boat, nothing. Just a small boat. We looked at the Mekong river, put our feet and hands in the water as we glided over it. The water felt so good and refreshing under the warm sun. I mentioned to Hoe that I would love to swim there. I have no idea if Thun heard me or not, I don't think so, but soon after we arrived at a small "beach" and he asked us if we wanted to take a swim. Hell yeah! Of course we did not have any swimming gear with us. Hoe decided not to swim, and I stripped down to my boxers. The water was great, I had fun and I guess Thun did too. I know for sure he beat me in a mini swimming contest, which Hoe kindly captured on camera ;P

Some time later, as we were in the boat again, we realized that Thun would actually just drop us off where we had started. So we told him he could drop us off at the other side of the Mekong, the LP side. And so he did. We paid him the 50.000 kip we had agreed on for the boat ride (which is about 4 euros) and gave him an extra 20.000, just because he was kind and for the added swim. We were tired, dirty and hadn't seen that waterfall we were looking for. But we sure did have fun!

The turning point

There can't be good if there is no bad. And this story too has a twist. After we got back to our guesthous, dropped off our stuff and had a shower I dropped down on the bad. I still felt a little tired and I figured it was because of the draining day. But soon I found out ... wrong again.

Yes this I will not describe in detail, I'll keep it rather short even. But what followed were more than 13 hours of no sleep, no food, no drinking (half a tea spoon of water came right back out again), vomiting and diarrhea. Not what I call my best day here. And through it all my wonderful girlfriend was there to help me in every little way. I said thank you a thousand timesso far, but there is no reason I can think of to not say it again here : thank you baby, I love you!

And the rest ...

I will try to describe later, as I'm out of time. What followedwas more walking around, evening markets, eating, enjoying ourselves, buying gifts, laughing and buying 2 Buddha heads which I wanted to send home and deserves a story, if not a book and a movie, in itself. But again, I'll try to tell you more about that later. Mom, dad, if you receive a package from Laos in the next week, please send me an email or reply to this entry!

For now, from Vientiane and after a dinner in Laos with my Vietnamese girlfriend in a Japanese restaurant in a French collonial era part of town : goodbye!