Advertisement
Ok so been spending some time in Laos for the next little while. Has been a little bit of a culture shock I must say - for some reason I expected it to be a lot like Thailand but it really isn't tho'. We crossed the border at Huay Sai and met our Lao group leader who's name is Tui. We are pretty much staying at guest houses in Laos rather than hotel's and our first stop was kinda interesting. The guest house is kinda similar to a motel rather than hotel in that you get a room, bathroom and that's about it. No airconditioning! pretty sticky i gotta say.
From Huay Sai we took a "slow boat" down the Mekong river. The Gecko's guide book said you have one day slow boat and one day fast boat however the fast boats are causing problems along the river with erosion so we had two days (6 hour journeys) on a slow boat on the Mekong! hmmm .... the boat looked like a house boat (or what a assume a house boat looks like since i don't recollect ever being on one?!) There was a place down the back of
the boat where a family lived anyways. The scenery along the river was absolutely amazing. Laos is very hilly and green and made up of all this jungle and stuff and was pretty cool. The Mekong river was absolutely filthy and i made a special point of not getting any of it on me hehe.
We made a couple of stops at villages along the mekong and they were just incredible. The people in these villages live like totally isolated (excepted for the occassional boat stopping). They have no electricity, no cars, nuffin. they do have fresh water thanks to red cross international but that is literally a couple of taps in the middle of the village. the kids from the villages were soooo adorable - i totally see whats up with angelina jolie adopting children from these countries (or the neighbouring countries anyways). they would follow us around as we walked around the village and if we took photos and show them they were totally spinning out - it was neat.
Our first day we stopped at a village called Pakbeng to stay the night. there were apparently a few thousand people living there and they do
not have a power main or whatever you call it. they have generators which they run till about 10 at night and then get turned off - just unbelievable really. apparently it is a stop that anyone going along the river has to make as you can't travel on the river at night so there were a few guest houses and things in the village but it was pretty much a spin out. cos the generators go off everyone was pretty much home back in bed before "lights out" (and fans out and going to the toilets out etc etc). kinda interesting stop.
The next day we headed to Luang Prabang which was such a beautiful place. About 25000 people which i think is about the same size as Bunbury (?) so not very big but has a lot of french influence in the buildings and lots of gorgeous temples as stuff (altho' i must admit to feeling a little "templed" out by now). the one we had to see here was in the middle of town on the top of a hill which had 328 steps straight up! grrr worth the climb tho cos the view was great
but still. the Lao people must have a great time laughing at all the lazy westerners puffing their way up the hill! We hired bicycles for the day and rode around the town, it was way nicer than walking cos if you ride fast enough u get a little breeze too. For some reaosn I had this almost overwhelming urge to break into that song from sound of music all day "doe a deer a female deer, ray a drop of golden sun ... " anyways oh and i had a Lao massage, anyone who likes the thai massages ... nup these were wayyyy better! everything in Laos is sooo cheap which kinda makes you feel bad in a way. There was this thing at a bar we were at that had facts to put it in perspective or something but basically the average Lao person's daily wage is the same as a bottle of beer lao! and there were quite a few beer bottles on our tables too!
Ohhh forgot to mention we made one little stop as well at the place where they make whiskey. I brought a bottle for my darling baby sista Soffy and she
has to drink it! nah nah nah nah. check it out sooo interesting.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0299s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Sarah
non-member comment
Hahaha
You're such an evil sister!!!