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Published: December 10th 2009
Hello
Back online now after struggling to get a network in Loas! We crossed the mighty Mekong river from Thailand to the Laos border (if you can call it that) then got on a very slow boat down river. And we mean slow, it took 2 days to get where we were going. There must have been a good 100 people on board all perched on tiny wooden benches. Unfortunately the guys sitting next to us managed to destroy their benches after a few too many Beer Laos…. needless to say, it was a long journey!
The overnight stop off was a small village on the riverbank. Nice though apparently it was a major transport hub for opium smuggling.
So our first impressions of Laos weren’t great until we arrived in Luang Prabang. It was really pretty, full of old French buildings (France used to occupy the county, not quite sure why though) and plenty of bakeries to satisfy Lisa‘s cake cravings. We were there for Laos National Day so celebrated with a traditional Laos barbeque, see pics.
Next stop was Phongsaven famous for the ‘Plain of Jars’, kind of like the Laos version of Stonehenge - loads of massive
stone jars randomly scattered across the countryside. They were probably used to bury people but nobody has any idea how they made them or transported them. Weird.
However, what was most shocking were the huge bomb craters. The country was massively bombed by the Americans during the Vietnam war. Despite Laos not actually being in the war, they dropped 2 million tonnes of bombs… 2 million! Apparently a third of the cluster bombs did not detonate so the place is littered with unexploded bombs that still kill hundreds of people every year.
After another minibus journey we got to Vang Vieng. On route the driver spotted something on the roadside that he fancied for his tea. For some reason he passed over the dead rats on sale and went for a mammal the size of a dog. The passengers weren’t too pleased when he slung it into the back of the minibus for the remaining 2 hours of the journey! We think it may have been a dodgy purchase as Laos is fairly renowned for hunting its endangered species and he seemed to be in more of a hurry with his new cargo.
Vang Vieng was a bit of a
strange place, it was famous for people jumping in tyres and floating down the river. It was a bit like Ibiza in SE Asia. You could also get three types of pizza, normal pizza, happy (weed) pizza or funny (opium!) pizza. If funny pizza had come with a baked potato, I might have been tempted, but good old cheese and tomato did us. Being the old farts we are, we hired bikes and went for a ride in the countryside. It was a bit of a bumpy ride and quite an effort not to hit the chickens, cows or goats along the way.
After Vang Vieng, we headed down to the capital Vientiane and more cakes….yum. We struggled to find somewhere to stay since it was the host city for the South East Asia Games which were just about to start. There wasn’t a great deal there so with our bellies full of cake and Vietnam Visas in our passports, we headed down to Savannakhet to get the bus across to Vietnam. 22 hours later we were glad to arrive at our destination without any more interesting animal passengers to join us.
We’re on the journey home now, although
it’s quite a long journey from here. Looking forward to our Christmas dinner!
Stu and Lisa
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Amanda Gardiner
non-member comment
you have gone to the dark side
a Pepsi bottle!!! I know it had Rice Whiskey in it, but really, a Pepsi bottle!!!! Hope you have a great trip back, the weather here has now become so cold that you might want to head back to warmer climes quickly - I think I am seeing snowflakes outside the window.