Laos

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If Thailand is beautiful, Laos is stunning: craggy limestone cliffs draped in virgin jungle cover nearly every corner of the country, the landscape carved by big brown rivers that spill over the jungle like a chocolate milk on green carpet. Everyone smiles in Laos. Entire villages (including dogs, pigs, and chickens) gather on the river banks, waving wildly and yelling ''Sa-ba-dee'' (hello) at tourists as they drift by on river boats and children are quick to make friends with anyone. Sweet and subtle, laidback and limegreen, this country is a traveller's haven. With its intoxicating beauty and relaxing pace of life, it's hard not to fall hopelessly in love with Laos' grace and charm, and even harder to say goodbye when it comes time to leave.

Laos is one of the poorest in the world. Landlocked and sparcely populated, there are few roads and very little infrastructure - only 1/10 of the population lives anywhere near a road, and the country is primarily navigable by river. It is also the most heavily bombed nation on earth, with an average of one bomb for every person dropped every eight minutes for nine years during the 1960s and 70s. Over the last 150 years, the French, Japanese, Americans, and communists have all had their turn at running the show, each leaving behind a tragic legacy. Between the 1950 and 1970s, the American government, concerned that this politically un-influential nation would fall victim to the ''communist empire," retaliated by bombing the shit out of the country, dropping more bombs on Laos' than in all of WWII. In the end, their efforts were futile, as the communists took control of the government in 1975. With their rise to power, over two-thirds of the nation's intellectuals fled the nation, leaving behind an uneducated population with very few professionals. As a result, the literacy rate remains abysmally low to this day, with one-third of the population over 15 still unable to read. Amazingly, in spite of all this hardship and tragedy, the people of Laos are incredibly kind, generous, and unassuming. They rarely haggle tourists (by contrast, you have to track them down if you want to buy something and if you give them too much change they will hand you the money back) and I was never treated badly for being an American.

Our journey to Laos begins on a long wooden river boat painted crayola blue. It takes two days of floating along the murky Mekong to arrive at the colonial city of Luang Prabang, plenty of time to get acquainted with the county's landscape and culture. The boat ride is painfully slow, and jammed packed with people from all corners of the world. With nothing but time to kill, we find ourselves bonding over big bottles of Beer Lao and harrowing travel tales. Travelling has a great way of bringing people of all walks of life together - within a few hours, a German engineer is chatting with an American college student like they've known each other for years. An Uruguayn therapist befriends a Belgian bartender. A Laotian merchant practices broken English with an older Australian couple. It is a drizzly day, shrouding the green hills that line the banks in clouds and making the rugged landcape seem even more mysterious.

After eight hours of travel, the boat parks for the evening in the little town of Pakeng, which seems to subsist entirely on the profits it makes from the river boat tourists. There is only one dirt road in the town, lined with guesthouses and restaurants, and there is no electricity. As soon as the sun sets, everybody scurries to light their stores with candles. (batteries seem to be in no short supply however, and we are awaken the next morning by the theme song from the Titanic, Celine Dion blasted at full volume through our window at 6am). Another economic staple for the town are drug sales. This comes as no surprise, as they say that in Northern Laos, the opium addiction rate is double the literacy rate.
Everyone in the town seems to be either a dealer or dealer's close relative. At dinner, some of the folks from the boat decide to support the local economy and pay a dealer to bring them some opium. The trouble is, no one has any clue what opium actually looks like, so when the guy comes back with a bag of "opium," it takes a few minutes to figure out that the "opium" is actually just a bag of crappy pot, by which time the dealer has somehow managed to slip out the back door, money in hand. To appease us, our waiter (for a small price of course) offers to track down some real opium, though it takes him most of the evening to find it and to prepare the "tea," which is actually just boiled water which is used as a chaser. The opium comes in a sticky paste, which our drug dealer/waiter rolls into little balls for nibbling. In the end, nothing dramatic happens, just people feeling a bit high, but it is an interesting experience none the less.

We arrive in the UNESCO World Heritage preserved city of Luang Prabang in the late afternoon. The town is small, but fantastically beautiful and full of character. The main part of the city (the French quarter) sits on a peninsula, framed on either side by the Mekong and Nam Ou rivers, with fertile gardens planted right into the silted soils along the banks. The city itself is a fabulous fusion of East and West, the brick-lined streets lined with elegant colonial buildings and ornate temples. Luang Prabang is such an enchanting place that most people intend to stay for a couple of days, but end up settling in for a week, ourselves included. I make the most of my time in this relaxing city - exploring the historic temples and palace museum; catching up on e-mail; going to the herbal sauna; watching movies at the French bookstore; eating fresh baguettes and fruit shakes along the river banks; and admiring the amazing Laotian textiles at the at the night market. Ironically, kids in saggy sweat pants and dirty t-shirts wth American logos sell the most amazing silk scarves and skirts, as well as hand-sewn duvet covers, pillow shams, and aprons.

After two days in Luang Prabang, six of us of us (since our boat bonding experience, our travelling group has now expanded to ten people) decide to hire a boat and take a day trip to visit the famous Pak Ou cave, a deep limestone cavern filled with buddhas of all shapes and sizes. Laotians from all walks of life make the pilgrimage here to add their own buddha to the cave and to pray for loved ones. The cave is quite beautiful - buddhas tucked into all corners, with the calming scent of candle smoke and incense wafting about. The cave's entrance overlooks the murky Mekong and the striking karst cliffs that line its banks. On our way back to town, our baot pulls over for lunch in a small village filled with bamboo huts and giggling children. Here, we also visit a small textile factory where we watch Laotian woman weaving silk into elegant cloth.

After five days in Luang Prabang, we decide to head north to explore the remote villages on the Nam Ou river. The easiest way to get there is by bus so we buy tickets and show up at the bus station the next morning. The "bus" for our four-hour journey is actually a pick-up truck with two bench seats nailed to the truck bed. I'm on half a butt-cheek by the time they finish cramming in the passengers, baggage, and big bags of rice, but at least I'm not one of the sorry folks that has to sit in a plastic chair squeezed in the aisle between the benches! The road is surprisingly good for Laos, and our chofer drives like a crazed maniac (even hits a puppy!) and gets us to the village of Nong Khiaw in a record three and a half hours! From Nong Khiaw, we take a one-hour boat rice up the Nam Ou river to the little village of Muang Ngoi Neua where we plan to stay for the next few days. For 50 cents per night, we stay in a thatched bungalow with a fabulous view of the Nam Our river below. Staying in the bungalows is little like being adopted by a Laotian family- the adorable owner and her daughters live and eat with us, and "mama" (as the owner jokingly refers to herself) cooks us delicious meals over the open fire and brings us green tea before bed. The entire town of Muang Ngoi Neau is welcoming and I feel quite at home. The village has only one road, lined with shops and a few guesthouses, and there is no electricity. There are no cars or motorbikes or even bicycles, so everyone walks to school and to the surrounding villages. As a result, the main street is full of life and the street put to good use - kids play foot volley, people chat over big bowls of soup, and piles of rice are laid out to dry on tarps in the sweltering sun.

We do a lot of lounging around on Mama's hammocks, but also spend time exploring the surrounding villages, waterfalls, and caves. One day, we hire a little wooded boat and travel to a nearby village where we cool off in a big waterfall with moss-covered boulders. Along the way, we are greeted by friendly little kids who wave furiously from the banks as they swim and splash about in the river water. Another day, Julie and I venture to a remote H'mong village, wandering through the rain forest and rice paddies to get there. The rainy season has just passed, so we waddle through big piles of dark mud, sticky like pudding. When we arrive at the village, we are greeted warmly and directed to a "restaurant," which is actually just a table with a great view of village life. A man brings us a menu neatly written in English. We try to order from the choices listed, but finally realize that the only thing he has to offer is fried rice with egg. Good enough, we say, though it's a bit disheartening that in a place of endless fields of rice, there are so few vegetables grown. The village is typical of Laos - teaming with life of all kinds: kids, dogs, cats, pigs, goats, chickens, and bugs of every size and shape imaginable, many of them coveted delicacies!

After lunch, Julie and I make our way back to Muang Ngoi Neua. It is blazing hot out and we are sweating like pigs, so we decide to go for a quick swim in the river. I strip down to my bikini and Julie down to underwear (there is no one around and we plan to be quick). I lay face first in the stream bed, relishing the refreshment. We spot some men downstream, so Julie decides to get out of the water and change back into her clothes. Just as she is drying off, a H'mong woman and her two daughters decide to cross the stream. They look at us with curiousity and amusement. But instead of continuing on down the path, they stand on the banks watching us change. In fact, they stand about two feet behind Julie and watch her as she changes, laughing to themselves. I stay in the water for as long as possible, hoping they'll get bored and move on. When that doesn't happen, I get out of the water and change back in to my clothes faster than I ever have before - I don't even bother to dry off! The women move right behind me, giggling quietly to themselves. Once our "show" is over, the women promptly head back down the trail to their village! I guess they'd never seen tall white people before! And I suppose that in some ways, this experience gave us a taste of our own medicine, as we are always snapping photos away of people and places foreign to us.

Up until this point in the trip, we've somehow managed to avoid the "let's get wasted" party crowd popular with the young backpackers, but for some unknown reason, they seem to all converge in Vang Vieng. We come to the city to explore the many limestone caves and to go inner tubing and kayaking down the Mekong. I dont think anything could have prepared me for Vang Vieng, the "spring break" destination of Laos. We arrive at the town in the heat fo the day and wander through its dirty streets in search of a guesthouse. Actually Vang Vieng isn't really a town at all, just a collection of dirty street and bamboo bars, nearly void of Laotian culture and language. Vang Vieng was originally the site of an airstrip used by the Americans during the Vietnam War. When Laos began opening up to tourism in the mid-1990s, a "town" developed, designed entirely to cater to the needs and want of the tourists who were flocking to the area to go tubing and caving. And V.V. is just that - the streets are lined with everything a traveller could ever want - travel agencies and internet cafes, discoteques and "happy" shakes (a smoothie with your choice of pot, opium, or mushrooms added for enhancement), apple crumble and veggie burgers. The most outrageous part of all this is that the main street is lined with "t.v. bars," which blare hollywood flics and episodes of "Friends" at full volume. Since the bars are all lined up on the same street, you can actually watch two different episodes of Friends at the same time! And though this seems outrageous, as I walk through the streets of town, not one of the bars is empty, and most are filled with people totally hypnotized by Ross and Rachel!

Our time in Vang Vieng isn't all bad though- we rent bikes and check out an awesome cave that would captivate even the most jaded of spelunkers and we go tubing down the Mekong at sunset and enjoy the beautiful green scenery along the way, turning a blind eye to the dozens of bars that line the river all the way back to town. The culmination of our trip is a 20km kayak trip down the Mekong, with a stop at two different caves. One of the caves houses a giant stone elephant and a large buddha, the other is small and filled with water. Our guides arm us with headlamps and inner tubes and we float into the cave, pulling ourselves into the bowels of the earth by a long rope bolted into the wall - it's just like we're on a ride in Disneyland with people screaming and splashing about, only much more natural and tons of fun! Adventure aside, most of the trip caters to party scene - we pull our kayaks over about every fifteen minutes to stop at the various streamside bars along the way, and buy alcohol sold by local kids. I swear the only English word in the kids' vocabulary is "Beer Lao." All the kayak tour groups meet up along the way, creating a huge bikini party scene - a couple of sorority girls from UC Davis and plenty of fresh grads from around the world chat about how much they totally LOVE it here!! The last bar we stop at has a zip-line and a giant swing to do flips off into the water. When we finally return to town after the tour, we decide to catch the earliest possible bus out of town!

We don't plan to spend any time in the capital city of Vientiane, especially since it has a repuation for being smoggy and dirty with very few cultural relics. But we have heard horror story after horror story about the gruling 28-hour bus ride into Vietnam, and decide to fork out the money to fly to Vietnam instead. To do this, we have to wait a day and a half for an available flight. At first we are disappointed to have to hang out in the dirty capital, but in the end, the experience turns out to be quite pleasant. Jen and I explore all the best that Vientiane has to offer - we try to infiltrate an upscale hotel weight room and pool, but are caught in the act (I think our grubby clothes gave us away, or our "oh-so-pleasant" stench that probably wafted over the hotel counter). Instead, we cool off in a heavily chlorinated pool around the corner, which is located right across the street from the inner city shooting range! We also explore local temples, take photos in front of the presidential palace, and get fruit shakes at the bustling street market. At night there is an awesome street carnival celebrating the end of the rainy season right below our hotel where we sample salted fish, pork wrapped in banana leaves, chicken hearts on skewers, sticky rice cooked in bamboo, and muslim roti served with chocolate sauce - yummy! The best part of our time in Vientiane is a trip to the herbal sauna and massage housed at a local temple - we get a luxurious steam that smells like lemon grass and a massage for only four dollars! The next day, now rested and well-fed, we catch a tuk tuk to the aiport to fly to Hanoi, saying goodbye to the country we have become so fond of.

After two weeks in Laos, I have become completely enamored with its good looks and subtle charm, and even more intrigued by its tormented history. Day and night, Laos haunts me, my dreams and thoughts. It gets under my skin like a stubborn splinter. I am fascinated by a nation where duality and disparity are so tangible - abject poverty juxtaposed with stunning natural beauty, like a pauper cloaked in emerald jewels. I wrestle with this disparity, and wish that I could unravel my country's legacy, and the oppression and suffering now so tightly woven into the fabric of Laos society. Now that commism and colonialism have come and gone, the people of Laos are left to re-invent their national identity, which will be challenging in such a remote nation made up of over 60 different ethnic groups. Tourism is increasing substantially each year, and I can only hope that the country can find a way to balance their economic needs without sacrificing their charismatic cultural identity.

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