Hurry up and relax - Laos

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First of all apologies to everyone who has been waiting patiently for the next installment of this blog. I've found myself too preoccupied (read: lazy) to spend the time coming up with the quality that you happy readers are used to. But after being persuaded by people - this is a shout out to you Katy - that i need to pull my finger out I've eventually got round to this. hope you enjoy!

I crossed the boarder between Thailand and Laos in the early morning but the sun was still hot & reflected brightly off the Mekong River which represents the boarder. My destination was the ancient Lao capital of Luang Prabang 300km away. I would be there in 2 days.
This is typical of Laos. You need to slow down about 4 or 5 gears (or you'll go insane) and once you get into this rhythm you can really start to appreciate a life that is relaxed & runs at its own pace.

I remember the first time I heard of Laos. I thought I'd known every country there was to know but then I'd stumbled across a book in my Uni library called something like "Pathet Lao & Economic Development in Laos" An obscure title I know but something about the fact that here was a whole country i'd not previously known existed was a revelation & I became fascinated by the place like i'd personally discovered it. So to finally be here was both strange and fantastic.

I took a slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang which was slow (exactly what it says on the tin!) hot, and uncomfortable sitting on cramped wooden benches but did provide me with views of some of Laos' more remote and rugged scenery, chugging past tiny quaint riverside villages where the locals depended on the boat for their contact with the outside world. On the was our boat hit a rock on the bottom & the captain had to strip down & dive overboard himself to inspect the damage. the propeller was knackered... great how long is this going to take? well they had a spare prop on board & fitted it within an hour (this must happen a lot... not a nice thought!).

We made it (safely) to Luang Prabang, a declared UNESCO world Heritage site. The Lonely Planet describes it as "a tonic for the soul" and there definitely is something refreshing about wandering the night market, the mixture of colonial and Asian architecture, the friendliness of the people, and the sight of saffron robed monks with umbrellas to shield them from the oppressive sun.
We visited two waterfalls in the surrounding area of the city, both contrasting wildly, from the powerful torrents of 50m high Hoykhua Waterfall to the serene cascades of the beautiful Kwang Si Falls, where water tumbles over small Limestone rock teirs into shallow turquoise pools which you can swim in. To get to the falls we took peddle bikes through the lush countryside where the people manually tended fields and through quiet villages of straw & bamboo (although bizarrely all seemed to have huge satellites dishes attached!) where often the kids would come out to wave and shout “sebadee!” meaning hello. The kids here are beautiful, all friendly and inquisitive and always cheerful.

At night we found a place to eat all-you-can-eat rice & noodles for 5000kip (40p) which we washed down with a large bottle of BeerLao for 10,000. It’s amazingly cheap. Then we’d stroll the night market, or get a few more beers before the town officially closes down at 11pm. After this the only place you can find a beer is the local bowling alley which serves until 3am. It’s weird, after 11 there is a mass exodus of backpackers to go bowling, where the party continues to the sound of rattling pins.
After Luang Prabang, and the relatively peaceful atmosphere of the ancient town we got a bus south to Vang Vieng, a place which, a decade ago in all likelihood was a sleepy backwater town rarely visited by tourists despite its amazing location on the banks of the Nam Son river shadowed by huge mountains. But now it's probably the main stop on the backpacker circuit of Laos & SE Asia. This is because of the phenomenon known as Tubing. I'd heard about tubing for the previous 5 months of the trip, hyperbole varying from "most fun ever" to "best day of my life". I was worried it wouldn't live up to the hype... I needn't have been. It was awesome!
the basis of tubing is floating down the river on a giant inflatable tractor inner tube. Add to this a few bars along the way where you can stop for a cheap beer or free whiskey shot (& you can have as many as you want!) and playing party tunes. Then add to this a variety of swings, trapezes, zip-lines and slides and you're on to a winner. The swings are pretty high (& the risk here is real - loads of people hobble around the town with tubing wounds!) so a few whiskey shots are required to attempt them, but they're so much fun you have to go back!
There are also a couple of bars with mud pits where you can play mud volleyball but the games usually end up in a massive mud fight! The sun is shining, the beers are flowing, people are dancing in shorts or bikinis so the place has a pool party feel and there are crazy rope swings to play on! Usually the party continues long into the night after the people have floated to the end of the river at one of the many bars in town. A quality day, certainly worth the hype.

When you're not tubing in Vang Vieng, you can relax in one of the many bars that show back-to-back episodes of Friends or Family Guy & lose hours in their ultra-comfy seats.

Vang Vieng was the last place me & Jake had together before we parted ways, him going to Hanoi in Vietnam and home in 3 weeks and me continuing south to southern Laos, Cambodia, & Vietnam still to be home at xmas. After 5 amazing months of taking on experiences side-by-side it was sad to watch him go. I was on my own now, and despite it being a daunting prospect I was quite excited by the few weeks that lay and still lie ahead.

I traveled south on my own to Vientiane, the sleepy capital of Laos. It would be better suited to the status of provincial backwater town rather than capital city but i suppose it is typical of Laos that the capital has a laid back charm that many critisise as boring. True, there is not much to see or do in Vientiane but I found that nice after the none stop party of Vang Veing. It was nice to sit back and enjoy a nice meal by the river or a few games of pool with a cold beer.

I took in some culture during my time in Laos by visiting the Laos People’s History Museum. There werew some semi-interesting exhibits about Loas’ pre-histroy, including some 2000 year old giant urns, and about the ethnic minorities of the country, but nothing particularly exciting. The history of the Pathet Lao (Laos Communist Party) and their “glorious struggle against the American imperialist and their puppet allies,” however, was amusing. The rhetoric they used was so biased that it made me laugh. There was a huge array of weapons from the time of the war, including some rifles that were apparently used by "comrade Lao" to shoot down American Jets... impressive shooting!

The rest of my time was spent playing pool in a rooftop terrace bar overlooking the Mekong with a couple of English guys i'd met. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. It turned out they were also traveling South like me so we took the overnight bus to the South of Laos the next day to a place called Si Phan Don - Literally meaning Four Thousand Islands. The bus had actual beds where you could lie down which was so much better than the many other overnight buses i've used so far. But the beds were shared and were slightly too small - even for me at 5'10" - and so it felt quite cosy with the Lao guy who shared the bed!

The Island we were staying on was called Don Det (Don means island in Lao, I kept looking for an island called Corleone but to no avail), one of the 4000 islands produced as the Mekong diverges from its slow, steady course through SE Asia & spreads to an extent that it more closely resembles a lake because it gets so wide you can't see the other side. At 2-3km across, Don Det is one of the larger islands of the 4000, most representing little more that a sandy mound of shrubs. The area is typified by peasants manually toiling in their fields, water buffalo wallowing in the muddy shallows or wandering aimlessly into the road (the amount of times our bus nearly hit one was crazy!) and fishermen tending their nets on tiny, rickety looking wooden long-tailed boats.

The island only has electricity between 6pm-10pm which means it's an early night all round, but when the power goes the stars come out in an elegant glowing patchwork across the night sky. There are a couple of activities to do here. We rented a bike a couple of times to explore the islands, or you can take a boat cruise down the river but often the most appealing activity I found was to relax in the hammock of my $2 per night guesthouse & watch the river life slowly pass by. One day we did get out of the hammock and took a "party boat" ride down the river. the boat was only small (max 10 people) and only had a limited selection of Lao rock music because we couldn't hook our ipods up to the system, but there was a huge BBQ, plenty of cheap beers and we spent most of the day soaking up the sun on one of the sandbanks or jumping in the river, joined by a few local kids who showed us how to pole-vault into the water using a long bamboo stick. On the way back from the cruise we were treated to a wonderful sunset, capping off a great day.

The best sunsets were, however, were witnessed from the decking of the aptly named sunset bar where, over a cold beer or a glass of wine you can watch the sky fade from bright orange to dark blue and then to black over the wide expanse of the river, casting huge sunbeams like those of a child's painting into the heavens. only pictures come close to doing it justice.

Laos really is an enchanting and encapsulating place. As close to the old image of SE Asia you can probably get in this region. A Jewel on the Mekong where life slows down a beat or two; a place where the scenery is breathtaking; the people are hospitable while still adhering to their ancient traditions; and has, in tubing, one of the revelations of the backpacker trail unlike anywhere else in the world.

Oh and it's cheap as chips too. In my 3 weeks there I spend less than 300 pounds... so it's probably cheaper than chips!

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Photos

fixing the prop
the captain is the one in his y-fronts

view from my room
from my Pakbeng room - the halfway point on the slowboat to Luang Prabang

lagoon
from the bottom of the Hoykhua Waterfall