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Chiang Khan
Weary travellers reach the bank of the Mekong River, after two days spent getting there and wonder where a hotel is. Floating along the Mekong river from Chiang Khan to Nhong Khai ... crossing mountains in Northern Laos between Vang Vien and the Plain of Jars ... crossing the Mekong in the deep South of Laos to vist Wat Pho Champasak.
I met up with Graham and Anthony in Bangkok airport in June 2006, and we flew on to Undon Thani in NE Thailand. We spent the next afternoon getting as far upstream the Mekong as we logically could by local bus and landed in a sweet little old-fashioned riverside town, Chiang Khan. We spent a whole day floating down the Mekong River to Nhong Khai, from where a couple of days later, we successfully negotiated the bus across the Australian-built Friendship Bridge, into Laos. Not a happy crossing for me; I held up everyone for an hour between immigration and customs while I dealt with one of my recurring stomach upsets!
Anyway, taxi to lovely guesthouse, where we got a family sort of suite for three. French breakfasts on the terrace and a nice relaxing garden with pool around the old house. We saw a lots of wats and museums, ate a lot of good food - the
Chiang Khan
What they saw. best French dinner one night, and the best Chinese/Thai vegetarian lunch the next day. Before long Graham and Anthony hopped in a tuk-tuk and went off to the airport, back to Hong Kong.
I had three weeks more. First I travelled to Northern Laos for a day and a half by local bus, and after that experience I was rather relieved to fly back to Vientiane in just 40 minutes. The local bus was really a delight, except when it went round and round, up and down, up and down, up and down … and my fellow passengers started lobbing plastic bags of vomit and urine out of the windows. Strangely the Hmong student sitting beside me had just started asking me for money. I dealt with this by feigning incomprehension and sleepiness. While I was "sleeping" he got sick. I think he thought I had special powers because at the end of the journey all he could do was apologise!
Ali had told me about the opium dens in VangVieng, but I didn't visit any. The whole centre of town area is given over to the youth tourist industry, and can be avoided; but the areas around
Chiang Khan
They forgot about hotels and watched ... it are a delight, and it is good to see home improvements going on: presumably indirectly by courtesy of the visitors. I hired a bicycle ($1.00 for the day) and set off over the river to explore Lao and Hmong villages buried in the limestone hills. The gravel roads were very good. I had to ford some rivers, but others had narrow, rickety, roofed bridges. At one crossing I met a group of Thai businessmen, looking for opportunities to sell their low-cost brick-making technology. We chatted, and then I pedalled on. I ended the day in an out-of-town Lao beer garden, talking with the owner and his girlfriend. I couldn't avoid the conclusion that he'd come back from 20 years in Canada in order to set up as an opium baron.
Phonsavan, at the end of my bus journey, has two claims to fame. Around it is the Plain of Jars, covered in huge megalithic pots, which are quite worth a visit. The other, which I wasn't emotionally prepared for, was that the Plain of Jars was the target of America's "Secret War" thirty years ago. There are bomb craters everywhere. Cluster bomb casings and parts are put to
Chiang Khan
... the sun set over the Mekong. a variety of uses - such as raised planters (to stop the animals eating the veggies), stilts of houses, fence posts, fire fenders. But worse! Everywhere there are unexploded "bomblets." Going to visit the Jars, cleared paths are clearly marked (funding from NZAid), but the local people just have to manage as best they can. There are already two generations who have grown up unaware that land can be safe to walk on, or plant veggies in.
I got to visit a dirt-poor hillside Hmong village, and also a Lao farmhouse. The Laos had a slightly better standard of living, eg they had pine floorboards rather than no floor. Nether places had chimneys. The fire was in the middle of the floor on the mud or a stone, with bits of old ordnance to prop up the pots. The Lao family showed us their vegetable fields. It all looked really fertile and thriving, but we saw four unexploded bomblets which have recently been exposed by the rain. They can't do anything other than dig carefully, keep on warning the children, and wait for the government agency to come and deal with them. They know there are many, many more
Chiang Khan
They found a wooden hotel on the edge of the river. under the surface.
I flew back to Vientianne and after a couple more days in this laid-back capital city took the overnight luxury bus to Pakse, in the deep south. The Mekong is wider there and there is coffee and tea growning on the plateau. The final expedition of my trip was to the famous Wat Phu Champasak. The oldest parts dates to the 6th century CE, and it was built in connection with Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was originally a Hindu temple and there is still lots of evidence of this in the stone carvings. Later it became a Buddhist place of worship; the lingam was replaced by statues of the Buddha meditating. It is at the foot of a scared and very phallic-looking mountain. It was an incredibly peaceful spot in the forest. This is what centuries of devotees visiting and worshipping does to a place.
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Alison Packham
non-member comment
More people shots please!
It's lovely to see Graham holidaying with you. Please upload more people shots!