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Published: October 15th 2008
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Off to Luang Prabang
Despite enjoying Vang Vieng and the tubing very much we decide that we must move on. Vang Vieng is the type of place where you could easily find that you have spent a week without really meaning to.
We book onto the bus, only it doesn't turn up! The lady that we booked it through goes to see what has happened and comes back with the simple explanation that the bus isn't going today. She thinks that maybe it rained too much in the night? She'll see if she can find us a mini bus. Again we find ourselves on "Laos time" (which is even slower than "traveller time").
A mini bus is found and we can get on it. There are only four passengers including us, so we have lots of room. There aren't very many roads in Laos, so like the trip from Vientiane to Vang Vieng, there is only one way to get to Luang Prabang and it's straight over the mountains on a very, very, very windy road. The scenery is fantastic but the journey would have been torture without the anti-sickness pills.
Luang Prabang is a very pretty
place. It's kind of on a peninsula where two different rivers, the Mekong and the Nam Khan flow either side. It's also the Buddhist centre of Laos with hundreds of temples and it's one of the few places in the world (maybe the only one?) where the locals still give traditional alms to the monks in the morning.
We get up early to see the alms giving - 5.30 am! The locals all line the streets and then the monks, most of whom are very young, come out to receive their alms. As bystanders, we must sit at the opposite side of the road so that we are lower than the monks. The monks all carry a metal basket and each person a puts a small bit of rice or some other food into the basket. The monks don't know what they are going to get and it must all be mixed up by the time they have finished, but I suppose that is part of being a monk? It's all very peaceful and serene and I'm glad that we got up to see it, Andy is not so sure.
We spend a couple of days wandering in
and out of temples and taking in the sights. We also go to a museum which explains about the different tribes of Laos which is excellent. Luang Prabang has a night market where lots of the local tribes people come to sell their handicrafts. Many of them wear tribal dress. Luang Prabang also has a thriving cafe scene which, considering that it takes 8 hours to get in by road or 2 days by boat, is quite remarkable.
We're on the boat to no-where
We decide to get the boat out of Laos up the Mekong and book on a nice slow boat. The speedboats aren't recommended as they can hit logs and people get thrown out and die and the not nice slow boat is sitting on a wooden bench for 2 days!
We board the Luang Suay at 8 in the morning and find out that there are only two others passengers. This means that there are twice as many staff as passengers! We are given breakfast and it all looks very nice. We even have our own guide who speaks excellent English.
There aren’t many stops as the river is very high because
it's rainy season but we do stop at some caves where a small boy follows us around all the time with a tiny bird in a cage chanting "Me have no money. One dollar. Ten thousand kip. You get good luck. Set the bird frrrrrreeeeeeeeeeee!!!" over and over and over again. We eventually relent and give him some Vietnamese Dong which is all that we have in small notes. He seems happy enough. The caves contain hundreds and hundreds of Buddha images which people bring for good luck. There is an annual statue washing ceremony when they all get a good clean.
The rest of the day is spent chugging up river. The Mekong has always been very difficult to navigate due to its rapidly changing water level and rock formations. The captain sends the boat off in zig zag patterns across the river and the whirlpools that we pass look quite vicious. The huge logs that we see floating down river are also quite scary - we certainly don’t fancy the speed boat now!
The boat is very comfortable and our lunch is lovely, but there isn’t a huge amount to do. There are some books on
Laos, its people and culture and a map or two. I have a look through them and decide that my favourite is a book of Lao traditional folk tales and settle down to read that. My favourite is called “What’s in the bamboo tube?”. You can’t make this up but it’s actually about a bloke who bottles a fart in a bamboo tube because he wants to trick his rival into smelling it! The scenery soon becomes repetitive apart from the odd village where the children all come down to the water to wave to us. As the hours pass it makes you realise just how isolated the people who live here are.
We spend the night at the hotel that is connected to the boat. It’s really nice and we stay in an individual little house on stilts overlooking the river. Again, the food is lovely and we spend the evening chatting with our fellow passengers, Brenda a retired teacher also from the UK, and Brian, a Kiwi.
The next day is very similar to the first, only today we stop at one of the villages. It’s quite a large village with about 150 people and we
take a look around to see how they dry fish, store corn and weave cloth. It’s a very simple existence but the people seem happy enough and the village seems to be wealthier than most with some fairly big pieces of machinery and brick built houses.
At the end of the day we make it to Huay Xai. Here Laos is on our right and Thailand is on our left. The boat docks on the right as it’s not allowed to dock on the Thai side and we disembark and get a small boat across the river to cross into Thailand at Chiang Kong. The difference between the Laos side and the Thai side is huge. Billboards and new trucks meet us in Thailand, there was none of that in Laos. I feel a bit sad to be leaving the gentle Lao people with their gentle, slow pace of life.
We had put our faith in the Luang Suay as we’d already booked a flight out of Chiang Rai that same evening. We are on time and manage to catch the last bus from Chiang Kong to Chiang Rai. It’s chucking it down in Chiang Rai and we make our way to the airport. We obviously didn’t pay much attention to the bag allowance, which must have been tiny, as our bags are too heavy. To avoid paying anything extra, and to the amusement of the airline staff and anyone else watching, we unload the books we have and stuff them in our small rucksacks and re-weigh. Still too heavy, we each tie a jumper around our waists and swap our flip flops for our walking boots. My bag passes but Andy’s doesn’t. In desperation, he decides to put his jeans on over his shorts (which makes him look like he has a really big bum) but, probably in sympathy, the airline staff allow his bag to go through. Sitting in the airport lounge, with a lot of stuff, we feel a million miles from Laos.
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LynneandAndy
Lynne and Andy Lea
Thank you for your comment
Hi Bernice, Apologies for our delay in getting back to you. We are really pleased that you liked our blog on Laos. Most of the time we are convinced that our Mums are our only readers! We hope that Mike enjoyed it there as much as we did, and that you get to go soon. Happy New Year Lynne and Andy