Down the Mekong and into Laos

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So school was out let early on Friday (since I’m the headmaster!) and by mid-afternoon, I was winging it over to Luang Prabang, courtesy of Lao Airways, an hour’s flight from Chiang Mai. Not as scary as it might sound, as the aircraft was quite new, and the reservations clerk did me a big favour by putting me in seat 1A (not first class, I can assure you!), but which let me be first in line of the 30 or so foreigners (‘farang’) seeking ‘visa on arrival’.

I hadn’t booked any accommodation up front, but they fixed me up with something at the airport and the end result didn’t disappoint, as the room was clean, bed was comfortable, had hot and cold running water, aircon, and a TV with enough channels that I managed to catch the Brumbies Super 14 game against the Cheetahs on the Oz channel. What more could a guy want out of life!

Luang Prabang’s charms, with its French colonial architecture, its Buddhist heritage, and its tropical setting, certainly didn’t disappoint. There are some great buildings, obviously influenced by French colonialists and longstanding Lao tradition, as well as many beautiful wats (temples) within the old quarter, along with narrow lanes paved in brick to retain the old world charm. These have basically been renovated tastefully, thanks to a UNESCO heritage listing and its restrictions. This is no doubt also a major contributor to Luang Prabang being without a doubt the cleanest and tidiest city I’ve seen in any developing countries of Asia.

But there is always some downside, and Luang Prabang’s is that it has become a real tourist trap. Everything in the main part of the city now seems geared towards the farang tourist, with the main road being a mix of restaurants, guest houses and tour operators, and little else. And while still cheap by our standards, I didn’t think it was by Indochina’s. For instance, while I hired a near new motorbike in Chiang Mai for $8/day, I was only able to get a crappy pushbike in LP for $12/day (foreigners are not permitted to rent motor bikes). In general, I was paying around $7-8 total for a meal, eating local cuisine, but this could double if you had a craving for western food.

While my Asian travels over the last 10 years have pretty much saturated me on night markets, I must say that LP’s were pretty impressive. They cordon off almost a kilometre of the main street each evening and set up stalls on mats on the ground, basically on either side of the road and another row in the centre. I didn’t have the inclination to count, but there may well have been 500 different stalls, which I suspects exceeds most nights the total number of tourists, so trade must be very slow for lots of them.

As mentioned, I hired a bicycle on my first day (Saturday) and took off out of town zigzagging in and out of the various Hmong hilltribe villages that surround LP. A couple of hours of that in the hot sticky weather pulled me up, but I was pleasantly surprised I didn’t pull up stiffer next day, given I don’t think I’ve ridden a bike in earnest for about 30 years. In the afternoon, I just browsed along the banks of the Mekong, which flanks LP, and took in the various activities of local boats, animals and people. That evening, I climbed the 328 steps up to Wat Chamsi on the Phousi mountain to capture the ‘glorious colours of the sunset’, but having overstayed my time just before that chatting to a young couple travelling with a 2 year old kid, when I got to the top, the sun had set! I was so knackered after the climb, I had visions of Joan becoming widowed (memories of climbing Wayna Picchu floated before me - refer Machu Picchu blog), but half an hour later, and a cold Beerlao behind me, I was back on all cylinders again.

One of the truly interesting sights in Laos is that of the monks being given alms by the locals each day at dawn. So on Sunday morning, I sprang out of bed at 5.30am to take in this sight (the things I do to bring you these photos, and I’m sure you don’t appreciate them!). There must have been a line of at least 120 locals on stools, each with their little basket of food (predominantly rice) and as the ‘orange wave’ of monks passed through (ages ranging from kids about 10 to old farts my age), I lost count well after counting 200 of them.

In the afternoon, I felt like some company, so signed up for a group visit to the Kuang Xi waterfall, about 40km out of town. It was a pleasant enough excursion, although it did not have quite the presence of the Iguasu or Niagara Falls, and we were able to stroll through some pleasant local countryside as we accessed the various levels of the falls. A side attraction was the viewing of a tiger and a number of small black bears, all of which had been rescued from poachers and were now fully grown and living in their own enclosures, near the waterfall.

Finally, the big trip home, or at least back to Chiang Rai, where I was due to teach at summer camp on the Tuesday. The only real access back to far northern Thailand was along 500km of the Mekong, to the Thai border town of Chiang Khong. There were two travel options available to me - the ‘slow’ boat, which takes two days (and up to 20 hours), which would have then allowed me only 1 day in LP, or the ‘fast’ boat, which does the whole trip in 8 hours and allowed me 2 full days in LP. No prizes for guessing which I chose.

The trip did not start well! There were 8 of us (4 farang, 4 locals) plus driver plus a lot of luggage, all crammed into a boat not much bigger than a rowboat. Because of the speed it travels at, we all had to sit at the floor, basically on thin mats. Now imagine the leg room you had on your most uncomfortable economy flight ever, and halve it, and that was how much room I had. My knees and chin became inseparable and looked like they would have to stay that way for the next 8 hours! But there’s more. Suddenly the sun disappeared and it got quite cold, and of course all our warm stuff was in our knapsacks that we couldn’t access. And then it started to rain …..

After seriously considering throwing myself off the boat to the mercy of the Mekong, things progressively turned around. The rain cleared, we accessed some crash helmets that gave us some relief from the noise of the motor and the wind whistling past our ears, and then two locals got out and I managed to commandeer one of their spaces to stretch out my legs. So the back half of the trip was not so bad, but I’ve got to say that 8 hours in a speedboat is slightly different from the 10 minutes of exhilaration on a jetboat in places like Queenstown etc. So any long-legged foreigners thinking of doing this trip should think twice, as you may not inherit the extra leg room the way I was able to. But to be fair, the experience of travelling down the Mekong, taking in the scenery (all hilly and very green), the occasional villages, and the activities of the locals, primarily fishing etc was rewarding.

One pleasant aspect of the trip was the very pleasant company of my fellow farangs, a guy from Czech Republic, and a really amiable young couple, a Scottish guy (isn’t that the country that beat England at rugby recently?!!) and his Swedish girlfriend, who have the distinction (?) of having met at Tully in NQld. Their good company certainly made the hardships a bit easier to bear, and we shared a minivan for the last 2 hour road trip from the Thai border to Chiang Rai, for a well earned meal and shower.

So that’s it for Laos folks. Sorry if I bored you, but I was certainly able to pack quite a deal into my 3 day Easter weekend. I trust that each of yours was just as fruitful.

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Photos

Main street of Luang Prabang at dawn
Thus no traffic or tourists!

Comments

[Lorna Coochiroff]

Great Life
Boy you lead an interesting life Neil. Can't wait to hear all about it when you get back - especially the teaching gig. Lorna