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Published: November 25th 2011
If Thailand is known as the land of smiles, then what do they call Laos...the land of more smiles than Thailand? Laos possibly by chance, has the happiest greeting in the world in “Sabaai-dii-” (hello), said by women and children as “sabaai-diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”. They also have the happiest form of thank you in the world with “Khawp jai lai lai”. This too is said with cheer and extension “Khawp jai lai laiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”. It really adds to your experience when the locals offer these small parts of their culture to you with great big smiles!
We began in Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage listed town in the central north. It is possibly one of our favourite places to visit on our trip to date. Luang Prabang somehow manages to successfully mesh the old with the new, the poor with the rich and the Buddhist religion also seems to somehow fit in without too much fuss. The town centre is nestled between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers on a narrow peninsula and boasts many wonderful restaurants (many with river views of course) and a host of old but beautifully renovated French style buildings. Blending in amongst all of the fresh paintwork
though stand the local folk with a welcoming vibe vending their dried sausages, grilled bananas, the world’s best (and cheapest) juice shakes and the tastiest baguettes (a welcome treat left behind by the French!). Monks dressed in their traditional ravishing flowing bright orange robes walk the streets in sandals sporting an umbrella, shoulder bag and often a mobile phone. This surprised us. The monks love their phones!
Each night Luang Prabang presents one of the best night markets that we have ever seen. A fair whack of the main street is cordoned off from 5-10pm for the artisans to roll in and hock their wares. Whilst it is a bit same same from tent to tent, the vibe is relaxed and the vendors never pushy. They are always happy to negotiate but this is done with big smiles and respect. We were shown a little alley amongst the markets where $1 each bought us a great big plate of assorted local delights. Add another dollar for a 640ml bottle of Beer Lao and wooshka, that’s a mighty fine dinner right there my friend! I think we ate there 3 times!
The highlight of Luang Prabang (and I must 
Almost There!
The climb up Phu Si, Luang Prabangsay at quite a splurge) was a day tour to the “Elephant Village”. We were firstly “trained” to mount and ride an elephant, without chair, just sitting on the elephant’s neck with knees on the ears for steering and a short list of Lao commands. Afterwards we had a 1 hour ride (on a chair this time) which took us surprisingly, through a river and even more surprisingly our “driver” jumped off at one stage and took photos of us whilst Chris resumed the neck position and drove us safely across. What would the insurance cost for something like this in Australia? Maybe I should start a Kangaroo riding tour when I return. It would be far more exhilarating but really probably no more dangerous. The day ended with us riding the elephants (one each this time) back to the river for a bath. We scrubbed them which they enjoyed and then were told to surf them. Standing on an elephants head in the middle of a river in Asia, was something I never thought I would do! It’s was great fun. The photos attached will help to describe this adventure.
We took an ice cold bus south to Gong!
Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang Vang Vieng. A small screeching monkey in a cage also made the journey. Before we embarked, the bus company handed out plastic bags to the locals on board, but curiously not to the westerners. We thought maybe it was for rubbish but we soon found out the real purpose. The route was very mountainous and the roads not so good and let’s just say that along the way, a few locals couldn’t handle their breakfast! Along the roadside on this bus trip, almost every house had a satellite dish, probably for TV. They used the dishes to dry clothes and to dry grains and chillies....as you would. They are so inventive!
Vang Vieng is the self-proclaimed home of “river tubing” in Laos. It really should be called river drinking as the majority of time is spent on the banks of the river in the various makeshift bars and not actually in the water floating on a tube. In short, the tourists, us tourists, hire a big bus/truck/tractor tyre inner tube thing, are taken up river in a tuk-tuk in order to start our floating journey back down to town. The problem with the system though is that the first
2 bars are sooooooooooooo much fun that many (including us) stay way too long and don’t leave earliy enough to allow enough time to get back to town in daylight. The bars boast rope swings, jumping towers, water slides and one even has a huge inflatable pillow that you can jump onto and subsequently be immediately bounced off into the water (that was at bar 5...I didn’t get that far!). Music is pumping at each place and mixers are served in small buckets.....ahhh so now you’re getting the gist! We ended up floating for a bit before getting a tuk-tuk back to town in order to avoid paying a late return penalty.
Vang Vieng actually lies in a very picturesque setting. You could be excused for not noticing though as the western world has totally consumed the town. A backdrop of sheer limestone cliffs is visible from every corner of town but unfortunately so are the many pizza restaurant bars that play a continuous loop of “Friends” or “Family Guy” on big plasma screens as entertainment. Is that really what the tourists want? I have never seen an episode of “Family Guy” and I wasn’t about to start in
Laos. Just about every bar and restaurant in town has been gifted a big yellow illuminated Beer Lao sign from the brewer which further detracts from tradition from the town. You can however watch the local girls cycling one handed around town holding an umbrella to shade themselves from the sun and dust....it’s a somewhat unusual sight.
The capital of Vientiane was our next stop. We were fortunate that an English chap Chris has met through her studies lives in Vientiane with is Lao wife and they offered to put us up for a night. We drank and ate with their big Lao family and duck was the specialty of the night.....the whole entire duck. The full shmear. Plates on offer were fried duck heads (complete with beak, eyes and brains), a stew which included the gizzards amongst other things but the best dish of all was the duck blood soup. We are told that they drain the duck of its blood and then refrigerate it so it ends up kind of looking like a deep red raspberry jelly.....but according to Chris it didn’t certainly didn’t taste like jelly! I couldn’t bring myself to trying it. They certainly didn’t
waste any part of the duck and I am sure that the feathers are now tucked safely away in a pillow somewhere in the house!
An overnight bus took us further south to Pakse, the country’s second largest city (but it was still only a very small town). The bus was called a “sleeper bus” and it truly was just that. Inside, the bus is decked out with two rows of two level bunk beds. What’s funny though is that the beds sleep two people but are only the size of a very small single bed (I couldn’t stretch my legs right out). This was OK for us being a couple but we had a little quiet chuckle when we overheard a young guy and girl beside us exchanging pleasantries before they had to get cosy with each other for 10+ hours ahead.
On arrival at Pakse, tuk-tuk drivers actually boarded the bus spruiking their services. The aisle of the sleeper bus was barely wider than the breadth of my shoulders and we arrived at 6am which meant that some people were still asleep and therefore woken to the most annoying question in SE Asia......You wan tuk-tuk? You
Monks!
Luang Prabang wan tuk-tuk?
We did end up taking a tuk-tuk (and got the run around of course) and that day I also went for my second hair cut of the trip. This time a $2 payment sealed the deal. As in Brunei it was again an eventful experience. My request for a wash and chop was set up with a lady in her late forties via a short exchange of smiles and a quick game of charades. She exuded the confidence of the experienced hairdresser I had so dearly sought. You could say that she looked as experienced as the well-worn red vinyl treadle lift chair I was asked to sit in. I was quite chuffed. A short, very short Lao girl of about 17 then appeared and robed me up. Ah, the apprentice. Nice. Still chuffed. Everything was on track. The older lady acknowledged my request for a wash but it was shortly after that point that the wheels started to fall off. I wasn’t asked to approach the wash basin. Rather, the older lady put a TV on only about 2m from my ears, changed channels to a Lao news station and pumped the volume to about 1.53
million. The toddler, ah hem, I mean assumed apprentice, then skidded over a milk crate, jumped on board and motioned like she was about to cut my hair. My face was whiter than hers and that was saying something given she was conspicuously caked in skin whitening facial cream. What about my wash? She didn’t understand and proceeded to start the ordeal, dry hair and all. I cut her some slack but soon reeled it in when 10 minutes later she was still cutting the same patch of hair, snipping miniscule lengths away one small flick of the wrist at a time. I was literally getting a hair cut. In fact I was getting many of them. Her scissors were blunt. Some hairs were pulled out whereas others required two or more amateurish movements. She hadn’t cut her starting point (the lower back of my right side) too short so when I had signalled that the length was good, she moved on to the upper right side of my head. I think that she would have still been cutting now had I not requested for her to move the cows to a different paddock. The upper right side of my
Taking the Plunge
Tat Kuang Si, south of Luang Prabang head includes, quite normally, my right ear. We had reached a crucial point in our relationship. It could all downhill very quickly from here. It’s like the nervous hand on the knee thing in the movie theatre when you are 17, but I digress. She negotiated the ear region tiny snip by tiny snip avoiding the fleshy parts and kind of getting the line straightish. She kept chopping, her endurance was astonishing. Words, most probably instructions, were exchanged from old to young throughout which was concerning but undeterred, she kept on cutting. She halted as though she was finished after about 25 minutes in. And she was. The whole right side of my head had been beautifully manicured like topiary. All she had to do now was mirror the image on the left. In the end she managed to do this successfully and I was again chuffed with the result.....until. She then pulled out the thinning scissors. Unlike many of my mid-30 friends, the “crocodile scissors” are a welcome final instalment to my time in the chair. Again though, she would have just kept on chopping had I not called a halt to proceedings. The final result was a shorter
Well, Aren't You Going to Haggle?
Luang Prabang's amazing night markets than-I-had-hoped hair cut. But I did finally get my wash. But no gel, even though she asked and I said yes. Go figure.
Pakse was our launching point for a “Tree Top Explorer” tour. And what an amazing tour it turned out to be. To get to our overnight stop we trekked through jungle for a few kilometres and then had to abseil a few times and take a series of 12 or so zip lines which zig-zagged the way down through an enormous jungle valley. Some of the zip lines were as long as 400m and as high as 30m. We zipped from tree top to tree top twice flying across the face of a huge waterfall. Accommodation that night was in a tree house which was perched about 15m off the ground. We had to take a 30m zip line to get to it! Day two saw us hike a seriously steep path (unfortunately they haven’t yet invented a cheap way of zip-lining up hill!) and we also had to climb a sheer rock face of about 10m high in order to return to our starting point. It was such a great tour with a-class scenery, service
$1 Meal
Night Food Market, Luang Prabang and safety!
After our tour the tour group decided to have dinner together on our return to Pakse. Our tour guide had recommended a “restaurant” on the river front. On arrival it was abundantly obvious that the music was far too loud. It didn’t deter us though as we had a recommendation, right? We sat and ordered from the world’s funniest menu (photo attached). We refrained from eating “grilled tiger” and steered clear of the “fried convolvulus” mainly because we just didn’t know what a “convolvulus” was. The “fried collar pork cyprinid”, “beef neck stir fry” and “fried spicy Rambo (Lao style)” were all very tempting but we opted for the conservative “chicken tendon stirfry” and “cashew stirfry”. We shouldn’t have been conservative as I ended up with a plate of tasteless crusty crumbed burnt “chicken” (sans rice) and Chris well, she got a plate consisting of just cashew nuts. Nothing else on the plate. Only cashew nuts. Maybe we should have taken a risk and selected the “chrimp powder stirfry”. The beers were big, cold and cheap which made up for the poor food and mind you, the cashews did compliment the beers sensationally well!
Our final destination in Laos was only a 2.5 hour bus trip away. The Mekong winds its way south dividing Thailand and Laos and in the south of Laos it expands dramatically and forms a series of islands called Si Phan Don or “4,000 Islands”. We chose Don Det to lay out packs for a few nights. It’s an unusual sight really because the islands are similar to what you would expect to find in the Pacific or Caribbean. They have dusty narrow paths (no roads), palms trees and even some white sandy beaches. The backdrop though is of murky brown fast flowing water. Accommodation was very basic. Just a thatch rooved bungalow. The best part of our stay on Don Det was the interaction with the local people. They were so unbelievably friendly. We hired bikes for a day and rode around the island and passing the locals (especially the children) they would always offer a huge smile and wave and say Sabaai-diiiiiiiiiii. We once passed a string of school children who lined up to high five us. We really loved hearing Sabaai-dii! You can’t help but smile back and return the gesture.
The neighbouring island south of Don Det, Keepin' Fit
Cycling around Luang Prabang Don Khon is the launching point for Irrawaddy dolphin watching, one of the rarest dolphins in the world. We were told that it is the wrong time of the year to see them as they are currently “in Cambodia where the water is currently deeper”. We rolled the dice anyway and rode our $1 a day rattling bikes to the southern point of Don Khon. A boat man approached us saying that we would definitely see some dolphins but we would have to go to Cambodia to do that and it would cost $2 each for us to pass into Cambodian waters i.e. a small bribe to hand the Cambodian authorities to turn a blind eye. Our group of 5 (consisting of Per the Swede who we had met in the Philippines and amazingly he turned up on Don Det, Steve and Audrey aka “the Canadians” whom we had shared the tree top tour with, and us) hopped in the long tail boat ready for a vast adventure into the far away Cambodian waters. None of us knew that Cambodia, that far away mystical dolphin sanctuary was actually just a couple of hundred metres away. We were there in about
Just Chillin'
S Bar, Luang Prabang 3 minutes. Not the best $2 we have ever spent but we did have numerous sightings of the rare dolphins and Chris managed to snap 3 in one photo too!
If for no other reason than great (and cheap) fruit shakes and Beer Lao, I would implore every one that managed to read to the end of this blog to get over and see Lao! You’ll love it and the people will love you!
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