Oh Laos, We Hardly Knew Ye (Same same, but different)

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In the interest of saving time and space, I will just summarize all our stops in Laos in one entry. I was delayed by Laos having primarily garbage internet. Now, back in Bangkok, I'm free to revel in high-speed wireless.

So Laos was Awesome. It was interesting traveling there from Thailand, as it's very similar, but also very different in subtle ways, like traveling from Australia to New Zealand, or Mexico to Guatemala. The language is very similar, the main difference being that the 'r' sound is substituted for an 'l' sound. This meant I was able to continue to employ my pidgin Thai, which solicits many a confused giggle. But people generally seem to appreciate the attempt. People over here are generally eager to practice their English, so many exchanges consist of me butchering Thai/Lao while they butcher English in their responses to me.

Thailand is certainly not LA, but in many places it is certainly a modern country. In Laos...not so much. The largest settlements there are the size of a large town, not even the size of Pittsburgh. Throughout the country, there is a constant sense of isolation. Wherever you look, you can find a forested hillside, or deserted plains, with a few stray water buffalo roaming through them. Even in the capital city, Vientiane, goats and chickens roam through the streets. There are more bicycles than cars. The vehicle of choice throughout the country is a 100cc chinese motor scooter, which people deck out in very interesting ways, such as putting sunglasses on the front, or men putting Hello Kitty stickers on the front fairing.

We started our trip into Laos with a 2 day trip down the Mekong River, on a slowboat. It's a very strange sort of boat, sort of like a massive canoe with a repurposed truck engine bolted in the back and connected to a turbine set below the boat (Laos is all about rebuilding and making custom vehicles; I saw homemade tractors made with old motorcycle parts, bicycle wheels and scrap wood). We went down the river for almost 20 hours, with an overnight stop, and the only settlements (besides the small town we stayed in) we're thatch and bamboo huts clustered around fires, like something out of national geographic. The inhabitants of these towns were amazingly cutthroat capitalists for rural citizens of a communist country. At our first stop, a seven year old boy came down and hustled us all for Coke cans at the equivalent of $3 each (and that includes bargaining him down from $5. He knows what to do with a captive audience. Sometimes girls would run down from villages and hold out bolts of silk and homespun cloth, and just look sadly at us. No one really bought any, and they always looked so sad.

The mekong river is absolutely crazy scenery. I wasn't able to get any pictures that quite capture it, but there are just massive jagged outcroppings of black volcanic rock, but half the shoreline is all white sand beach. We would pass herds of wallowing water buffalo, villagers bathing naked and staring at us like we were from the moon, men out in the middle of river rapids in gym shorts and flip flops fishing with home made nets. It really was something out of national geographic. Our cargo also included local goods, bags of rice, and a few chickens, roosters and ducks in wicker cages. The cock-a-doodle-dooing along the boat added to the surreal feeling of the trip (along the lines of animal noises, we came up with this great games for mixed-language groups: we all pick an animal, and make the animal's noise in american understanding to the others, and then they tell us theirs. It goes great with a few beers. My favorite experience was an italian man telling us that roosters saying 'cock-a-doodle-doo' was ridiculous, they OBVIOUSLY say �coo-ka-ree-chee." Interestingly enough though, from the west, to africa, india and asia, everyone understands the cat as saying 'meow'. Lets here it for a moment of global understanding.)

Anyway, so we got to Luang Prabang, which is a quiet and sleepy old French provincial capital in Laos. The French influence is still present, as baguettes and crepes are everywhere, and people generally smell bad. Part of that smell is accounted for by the 'quaint' colonial architecture which includes open sewers running next to sidewalks on some side roads. We learned of this unfortunately, when jesse accidentally stepped into a half full one. He was QUITE distraught. Unfortunately, this was not his last run in with the open sewer, but more on that later.

Luang Prabang is really pretty, pleasant, and sleepy, and theres not really much to say about it (but look at the photos, its gorgeous). However, we had maybe our sweetest experience in Laos right next to Luang Prabang. After our crazy experience at the Miss Songkran contest, we made a rule to always follow loudly broadcasted Thai/Lao music to its source. So while wat-hopping (SE asian buddhist temples are called wats), we heard some crazy Lao pop bumping, and we tried to follow it, but ended up dead ending at the river. We found some sort of raft-pusher to take us across the river for about 25cents each (Laos uses Thai and US currency as well as its own; 1USD=8500 Lao Kip=30 Thai Baht) and we get to the otherside, which was nothing like Luang Prabang. This side of the river was all concrete boxes and thatch huts. Unshaken, we continued up the hill towards the music, while many a local stared at the falang (asian for gringo) wondering what we thought we were doing. We end up finding, at about 2 PM mind you, a set of four bocce courts occupied by about 20 or 30 openly drunk Laos men. Their courts were gravel, and they used metal balls, but we eventually figured out it was bocce, played just as we play at home in Frick Park. The locals, including a few Army officers in uniform, were thrilled to see us, and we quickly had a match set up. They were eager to gamble on it with us, but I've found over time that A) gambling in the third world is dangerous and B) I'm not that good at bocce. We ended up settling for winners getting a round of beers from the losers. We played 3v3 and ended up getting shut out, even with a few 'gimmes' from the other time. These guys knew their bocce. I also, cannot overstate both how drunk and how excited to see us these guys were. They were so nice, and kept giving us sweaty, beery hugs. Afterwards they had us sit down with the 'elders' who were the oldest and drunkest, and included one guy who had sort of a Laotian rico-suave hair gel tight pants thing going on. He pronounced us all 'very good friends' and told us that he hoped we loved Laos. They all drink beer there out of a communal bottle. It's about the size of a bottle of whiskey or vodka at home, and theyre usually shared among a few men (women dont seem to drink beer here) in little 4 oz glasses, with ice. This makes sense in a climate where its often over 100 degrees. Anyway, in a really awesome gesture, the local started pouring us beers, which has a big significance among locals here (sort of like having someone as your houseguest is at home), and it was also amazing because these people also have SO LITTLE and we obviously can afford to vacation halfway around the world. It was quite moving.

We rented motorbikes then and went to Kuang Si waterfall, which makes my top 5 most beautiful places in the world list. And i'm not fast and loose with that list either. Look at the pictures. It was magical. There was a ropeswing into its pools, and there was a group of 5-10 year old lao boys doing things that grown american men lack the huevos to do. This seven year old literally shimmied up a tree about 15 feet above jagged rocks to get a better jumping position (about twenty feet high) with his dad cheering him on from the shore the whole time.

On the way home we got off the beaten track on our bikes, and saw more national geographic worthy Laos. Amazingly, even thatch huts and bamboo still have 1980's style satellite dishes. Gotta get your soaps and ThaiPop vidoes!

After our quiet time in Luang Prabang, it was on to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is one of those spots, Like Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, Dahab, Egypt, Goa, India and Koh Phangan, thailand, that has sort of a touristy smelly backpacker party vibe. The scene in Vang Vieng is referred to as 'the tubing scene', as it involves floating the Mae Nam Song in a tube. I only knew this much back home, and was so excited for it, as I love to tube the rivers back in Pittsburgh. However, in Vang Vieng, it's a little different. There are little bar dance clubs set up along the river at various points on the way down, and instead of tubing down a peaceful river with a beer (as I'd hoped), it's just hundreds of drunk Brits and Aussies getting drunk and dancing like idiots to dubstep and house music riverside. They also cover eachother in paint (people only wear their bathing suits to these clubs) which I later learned is actually real spray paint. One of the big stencils for the guys was "lads on tour." However, the more drunken individuals tend to get taken advantage of by the staff, who spraypaint on the backs of these intoxicated fools things that they would be disappointed to read. While theyre trying to dance like their the coolest cat in cairo, they have something a 3 foot motto spraypainted on their back expressing their enthusiasm for homosexuality. I can only imagine when they sober up back at the hostel and realize the phallophilic slogan on their back was put on by SPRAYPAINT and isn't going anywhere for a few days.

This whole scene was quite disappointing. Not the tubing I imagined. No one actually seems to actually tube. Luckily this whole 'Spring Break Laos' scene takes place a couple km north of town. You can always pick out the tubers in town by the spray paint all over them, and often the sunburns, as the whole bacchanal ends when it gets dark, around 6pm.

The worst part of this is that people die by the dozens at this scene every year. This is Laos, not Florida, so when someone dies, theres no investigation, no autopsy, only a little pressure on the bar where it happened (apparently its always these river side bars where it happens). To attract patrons, the river bars set up all kinds of rope swings and ghetto tile slides into the river, and jumping platforms. However, depending on the rain, the river is sometimes no more than two feet deep, and it has tons of jagged rocks jutting up from the bottom. Then when Susie from Leeds drinks too much and swings from a forty foot platform, and drops too early cause she's too drunk to hold herself up, no one knows what to do but drag her to the shore and hope someone recognizes her, cause her friend Sally from Worcester is blacked out at the next bar up the river. Our guide told me that this has happened DOZENS of times in the past few months. And this is in a town of maybe 3,000 people, maybe 300 tourists at a time. The European-style 'gap year' gone wrong. A lot of these 18 and 19 year old kids don't realize that just because you won't get in trouble in Laos drunk-driving a motorcycle you don't know how to drive in the first place, doesn't make it a good idea.

We never ended up going tubing. We did do some kayaking, which netted Jesse the meanest sunburn i've ever had the sympathetic agony to witness. Our guide was awesome though, he gave us a really interesting view on local Laos culture. I met quite a few locals in Vang Vieng who lent a lot of cultural insight.

It was a lazy week we spent there overall. We did some hiking, kayaking, some river swimming. some off-roading on little chinese scooters, and tested our courage on some sketchy looking bamboo bridges. There were also rainy days where we ate every two hours, read in hammocks, and one day I got 3 massages in 12 hours (at about $5 a pop! Why not!).

I haven't mentioned it, but Laos has the most amazing scenery ever. The landscape is amazing, almost everywhere you go. However, poverty was in evidence everywhere. In a little village we stopped in on our travels for a short break, we saw a World Vision office. The children of that village looked straight out of a World Vision tv ad. I have pictures. Once again though, I was amazed by how happy people seem to be while being absolutely destitute.

Sorry, this got really wordy, but I put off updating for way too long. Next update will be from Indonesia!

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