Beauty and the beast

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Laos (March 29th - April 23rd 2009)

Bases:Udomxai, Luang Nam Tha, Nam Ha NPA, Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Vientiane

Main sights: Nam Ha NPA, tribal village cycling trip, Royal Palace Museum, Wat Xieng Thong, Wat Mai, Hat Muang Khoun sand stupas, Miss New Year Parade, tubing the Nam Song, Pha That Luang, Wat Si Saket, Patuxai, Lao National Museum

Top 3 experiences:

1) Waterfighting over Lao New Year
2) Jungle trekking in Nam Ha NPA
3) Living it up in Vientiane

Daily budget (travel, food and accommodation): USD $35 = 23 pounds

My rating: 9/10

Overview:

The people of Laos can count themselves lucky to live in such a beautiful country. They can count themselves lucky to live where awesome mountains give way to lush green mountains. And they can count themselves lucky to live in a country with 50%!n(MISSING)atural forest cover.

However, they can count themselves less lucky when it comes to the neighbours.

China, and to a lesser extent Vietnam, are emerging economic powerhouses with an insatiable appetite for resources. Both look on enviously at this small country with its massive potential and laid-back attitude. And they aren't content simply to look.

The story of Laos is the story of exploitation. That's not to say Laotians don't gain anything - they gain sealed roads to the borders and an influx of cash from rich immigrant workers. But they lose something as well - they lose vast tracts of forest, all their native species and perhaps also some of their national identity.

Parts of northern Laos today have more of a Chinese feel than Laotian. The Chinatown districts in Udomxai and Luang Nam Tha are every bit as large as their Laotian counterparts thanks to the widespread Chinese practice of using Chinese workers for Chinese projects overseas. And even when Laotians are hired, its often just to provide an extra stage of deniability when doing something illegal like logging, slash-and-burn farming or hunting endangered species.

And that's without even mentioning the impact Chinese-built dams in Yunnan province and northern Laos will have on the rest of the country.

All of this is a shame because Laos itself is a fantastic country. The people have a carefree live-for-the-present attitude that's a breath of fresh air after northern Vietnam. Money is less of a bone of contention too - many prices are fixed and haggling doesn't attract anywhere near as much animosity as across the border. And even in the most touristy of places, locals are every bit as friendly as the most unspoilt parts of Vietnam.

Of course, development is inevitable in any country, particularly one with such powerful neighbours. In many respects it's a real boost, slowly pulling community after community out of poverty. But in a country as beautiful and chilled out as Laos, you sometimes selfishly wish you could just freeze it in time...

Lao New Year:

Lao New Year in Luang Prabang draws together the biggest festival in Laos and its most picturesque town. It's the place to celebrate Songkan (the Water Festival), with bigger festivities than anywhere else in the country. It's also without doubt the most fun place I've ever been.

The reason is simple - Laotians know how to party.

In the UK, new year celebrations suffer from overplanning and overpricing. You have to book weeks, sometimes months in advance if you want to go anywhere decent on December 31st. Then you have to accept that whatever restaurant/bar/club you've chosen will undoubtedly have doubled prices (or worse) for the night and may also be charging you for the privilege of walking through the door. Given such conditions, it's no wonder so many people write off new year as an annual anticlimax.

Compare this with Lao New Year, where all the planning is taken care for you. Every day for over a week there's something organised and it's usually spectacular - from parades and parties on muddy islands in the Mekong (think Glastonbury without the bands) to beauty pageants and statue processions. No danger of overplanning then, and there's even less risk of overpricing. Everything is free!

But that's not even the best part. The organised events are entertaining but the moments that really stick in the memory are the spontaneous ones.

The premise is simple. Everybody (local and tourist alike) arms themselves to the teeth with supersoakers, water pistols, hoses, buckets and basically anything that can hold water (this is the Water Festival, after all). And the object of New Year is to cleanse each other by, you guessed it, chucking as much water as possible. It's a recipe for carnage.

You can't walk down a street without some kid soaking your t-shirt with a water pistol. Buy yourself a supersoaker and you can get revenge on said kid. Or turn your attention to the saffron-robed monks. Even uniformed policemen can't escape a good drenching.

Meanwhile, locals gather on the back of pickup trucks and motorbikes and parade round town for hours, looking for one of the water stations that spring up everywhere. These water stations basically consist of Laotians and tourists in someone's backyard, bunched around a hose, whose sole job it is to throw water on the passing vehicles.

Sometimes a waterlogged bike engine dies, but this is simply the cue for yet more water throwing. Sometimes the pickup passengers are defenceless and scream as they get soaked by yet another water station, or they dance deliriously to loud music. But sometimes they too are heavily armed with supersoakers or - worse - flour, Beerlao and engine grease. Now motor oil may not be strictly in the spirit of the Water Festival but, this being Laos, everyone is too busy having fun to care about such technicalities.

You could fill page after page with all the action surrounding Lao New Year. In fact, you'd be hard pushed to find anywhere in the world where more fun things happen in such a short space of time. Certainly not new year in Britain. Songkam is the spirit of Laos in its purest form - good natured, chilled out and above all great fun.

Nam Ha NPA:

If Lao New Year is the epitome of traditional Laos, Nam Ha NPA is a window into the problems of development. I've already mentioned the transformation taking place in northern Laos towns as a result of the Chinese influx. Perhaps this is partly to be expected in the march towards progress - Chinese immigrants are inevitable in the pursuit of Chinese yuan. What I hadn't expected was how blatant the fallout would be.

Visitors to Laos are promised an unspoilt country filled with unspoilt virgin jungle.

However, travelling in the northernmost parts of the country, this can be a little difficult to swallow. Why so? Well the parts tourists visit are those accessible by roads, roads that have all been recently rebuilt by the Chinese. The problem is that the Chinese aren't building these roads for the benefit of tourists, or Laotians for that matter. The roads are being built to ease the export of Laos' natural resources. What this means is that everywhere the tourists go, the Chinese have already been and left a trail of deforestation and crop plantations in their wake. Not quite the unspoilt jungle.

The best place to explore primary rainforest in Laos is the Nam Ha National Protected Area (NPA).

We actually arranged 2 nature treks in the NPA. The first was an eye-opener in that for much of the time we found ourselves walking through vast swathes of deforested land, land that had been cleared to make way for enormous Chinese-owned rubber plantations. Sadly, our 'guide' didn't have a clue why so much slash-and-burn is allowed in what is after all a government-protected rainforest.

Cue the second tour.

This time we had a full complement of experts in tow. Besides my ecologist girlfriend we had 2 reformed Laotian game hunters and an award-winning wildlife journalist. We took no chances with the route either, trekking through the jungle least affected by human contact, even to the extent of leaving the tourist trail behind and joining the hunter trails. Into the habitat of king cobras, Russell's vipers, barking deer, Asiatic black bears and even tigers.

Except we didn't see any of that. We say tiny crabs, a peacock, a possible tree squirrel and leeches (oh, so many leeches!). And we saw traces of wild boar, barking deer and maybe even a big cat. But hardly a spectacular haul by any means. Not as impressive a wildlife scrapbook as you can gather from any meat market in northern Laos, for example, where you can find muntjacs, slow loris, snakes, monitor lizards...

Part of the problem was apparently the timing of the trek - animals come out less at full moon because they can be spotted too easily. But there's absolutely no doubt that 50 years ago, before the Vietnam War and rampant government corruption and the surge in Chinese interest, there was a hell of a lot more wildlife around. Even 10 years ago there was much more, our ex-hunter guide admitted.

Laos suffers from silent-forest syndrome. Decades of over-hunting mean most wildlife has already been snapped up, either for the Laotian dinner table or for sale to Chinese doctors. Because of the vast sums of money to be made in Chinese medicine, it's apparently commonplace for Chinese businessmen to visit rural Laotian villages and 'order' endangered species from local hunters. These tigers, leopards and bears are then smuggled back across the border and killed to create useless traditional headache cures and fertility potions.

It's a huge problem. Sadly, if you want to see wildlife in its natural habitat, don't come to Laos. Or for that matter anywhere in Indochina.

Vientiane:

It has to be said that Indochina is not blessed with a wide selection of good local cuisine, and Laos is no exception. True, Laos has its 'laap' (salad) just as Cambodia has 'amok' (curry) and Vietnam 'pho' (noodle soup). But all too often, your resolve to go native wavers when you see nothing but 'rice with vegetables/chicken/pork' on the menu for the umpteenth time. If you want variety, your best bet is the expat cafes and eateries dishing up European cuisine.

However, in Vientiane you get the best of both worlds. On the one hand, there's no shortage of French and Italian restaurants, and expats abound in European cafes and bakeries that wouldn't look at all out of place in Chorlton or Didsbury. You can even get 'Bangers and Mash' in the Hare and Hound pub (no, really!). And this being southeast Asia, it's all available for a fraction of the price you'd pay back home.

On the other hand, meanwhile, Vientiane is unusually well stocked with good food from within the region. PVO does a mean spicy Vietnamese baguette and it's joined on the riverfront by an army of Asian food stalls and al fresco restaurants. All of them boast terrific views over the Mekong and into Thailand.

Then there's Makphet. Run by kids from the streets, it serves some of the best Laotian food in Laos - and is the sister restaurant of Friends Cafe in Phnomh Penh, again run by former street kids and again serving some of the best food in Cambodia.

All things considered, Vientiane is the nicest capital city in south-east Asia. You don't feel guilty about skimping on sightseeing because, quite frankly, there are no sights to see. Instead you're forced to follow the Laotian example, kick back and take it easy. And for that, the cafes and restaurants of Vientiane are perfect.

Random facts:

Tubing 4km of the Nam Song in Vang Vieng takes a soporific 3 hours in the dry season - or under 1 hour in the wet.

A tiger carcass can fetch up to $35,000 in China.

Nature and culture-based tourism generates over 50%!o(MISSING)f Laos' total tourist income.

Impressions:

Of all the countries so far, Laos is the first one I'm itching to revisit. We spent 3 1/2 weeks here and yet it feels like we barely scratched the surface. There are so many out-of-the-way treasures, in fact, that we could quite happily return with another couple of months under our belt. Enough to check out the communists' former HQ underground, the Elephant Festival, the Plain of Jars, 4,000 islands...

Nevertheless, what we did see has confirmed the view of every other visitor to this part of the world - Laos is a wonderful country, the best in Indochina.

This is because it pulls together the best qualities of both its neighbours. You get the friendliness of Cambodia without the dust and litter, and you get the natural beauty of Vietnam without the relentless hard-sell.

There are signs Laos is starting to take advantage of its reputation as a travel haven. Those misty-eyed backpackers who visited years ago recall how ridiculously cheap this backward country was in relation to its neighbours, whereas present-day visitors are likely to tell a different story. Today, Laos is actually slightly more expensive than Cambodia and Vietnam for budget accommodation, food, tours, transport and everything else. But to put this into context, it's still a fraction of what you'd pay back home.

And Laos is no longer so backward either. The wave of overseas investment may have serious long-term consequences, yet from a tourist point of view its making Laos an easier travel destination with every passing year. Now there are good roads, quality hotels and enough restaurants to keep you entertained wherever you hole up.

No doubt it'll be swamped by falang (Western foreigners) as soon as word gets round but for now it's in a fantastic transition period where the facilities are in place but the tourists haven't totally taken over.

In fact, you positively look forward to meeting other tourists in this country. It may just be my imagination but it feels as if even the travellers are friendlier here than anywhere else. Almost as if the Laotian creed of chilling out and enjoying yourself seeps unwittingly into the bloodstream of everyone passing through. Must be something in the Beerlao.

Laos maintains a remarkable balancing act. It's everything your adventurous half hoped for from south-east Asia, with impressive jungle treks and welcoming tribal villages. Yet your lazy half can rest easy too, because it's far more comfortable than you thought possible for a 3rd world country to be, with homely guesthouses, quiet towns and gloriously sealed roads.

Laos is so damn pleasant, in truth, you wonder why you'd want to go home at all.

Next stop: Indonesia

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