THE MISSING POST – this is the miss­ing post from Francesca’s writ­ings on her laptop.  The laptop died and I have only just recovered the data – here it is!

Spend any time in Laos and it quickly becomes clear that tour­ism has the poten­tial to rav­age this beau­ti­ful cul­ture. Trav­el­ling through the Lao­tian hubs is to see his­tory in action. Start­ing with Luang Pra­bang; the epi­tome of French colo­ni­al­ism, forever been pre­served for the future by UNESCO. Then comes the hedon­istic delights of Vang Vieng; embra­cing whole­heartedly the wan­ton desires ‘twix tour­ism and Bac­chus.  Con­fid­ent and cas­ual Vien­tiane is a cap­ital that strives for pro­gress and mod­ern­isa­tion and yet has a totally inher­ited European atti­tude; all relax­a­tion and good food. South­ern city Pakse is the strange child.  It appears untouched by the 21th cen­tury and is rooted in the 1980’s.

Here is our journey…

Luang Pra­bang – UNESCO

Nestled beside the now golden river of the Mekgong, with temples scattered over the sur­round­ing hills, Luang Pra­bang is an idyllic set­ting. Arrival at sun­set is beau­ti­fully romantic and melts the heart of even the most hardened of trav­el­lers. As we dis­em­barked up the river bank towards town the warm low-light danced around us. The air was thick with tuk-tuk drivers laid in-wait.  With 7 of us in our trav­el­ling group we had bar­gain­ing power on our side and Bob­bits slickly nego­ti­ated a driver for the hostel trawl.  J&I had pre-booked a room and so the troop piled into the gues­t­house opposite.

The beauty of Luang Pra­bang

We hon­estly fell in love with this place almost instantly. Lao­tians are very warm, friendly people and much more relaxed than their some­what pushy neigh­bours. This relaxed vibe is so easy to slip into with the grand ex-colonial houses adorn­ing the streets, which infuse each new turn with beauty, char­ac­ter and charm. I’m happy to report that the UN shares this view and has pro­tec­ted it from the rav­ages of mod­ern­isa­tion by adding it to the World Her­it­age List thereby pro­tect­ing its charms.

The city is based around a large Buddhist temple atop a hill in the centre.  It has a richer, more clas­sic area at one end of town, which is filled with some amaz­ing and ancient temples.  This then gives way to two streets adjoin­ing this lush area to the more down mar­ket west end.  One street runs through town and is lined wall to wall with shops and travel agents of all types.  Some of these shops are very high end and charge accord­ingly, where as oth­ers offer more basic fare, with the night mar­ket being at the far west end hold­ing all the bargains.

The other street fol­lows the east­ern curve of the river and is made up, mostly, of bars and west­ern gift shops.  It was on this street that we found the excel­lent Kop Noi fairtrade shop and its coun­ter­part bookshop/café of L’ettrager.  The European influ­ence of this area is vivid and it could quite eas­ily be a con­tin­ental river­side from any­where in the union.  Once past these streets you are into the main accom­mod­a­tion areas, still nice, with large build­ings full of char­ac­ter and gen­tile soph­ist­ic­a­tion.  It was here that we stayed and all in all were very happy with the room.

One of the main attrac­tions, apart from the alms and the river, is the ancient temple.  This has a small cost to enter, but the money was well spent.  The temple is a majestic­ally old build­ing that exudes an ancient char­ac­ter all of its own.  The archi­tec­tural style of the Laos branch of Buddhist temple build­ing is very peace­ful.  Darker and more Japan­ese almost in its col­our choices, the temple belies the bright and gar­ish col­ours of its Thai­l­and and Malay­sian cous­ins.  Aside the main hall is a num­ber of other build­ings.  One con­tained the remains of hundred-year old Buddhist icons, statues and paraphernalia, all in an advanced state of decay.

The upshot was that walk­ing around here made one feel the hand of his­tory most clearly and the half faded, broken faces of the Buddha statues made for eerie but mov­ing images.  The main build­ing itself is painted all over with gold fig­ures in out­line.  The sight of these shin­ing in the sun­light, passing through slot­ted win­dows framed in wooden relief, made for some of the most mem­or­able pho­tos from my entire time in Laos.

We spent a good hour in the main hall find­ing all the inter­est­ing angles to shoot all this from and not ignor­ing the gigantic statue of the man him­self in the centre of it all.  Recommended!

By day street vendors tempt you with Lao­tian del­ic­acies like ‘meat on a stick’, sug­ar­cane juice, fresh coconuts and for the less adven­tur­ous; French baguettes filled with ‘La Vache Qui Rie’ or Nutella. Nightly, the mar­ket comes to life full of accessor­ies and orna­ments galore. All this is crowned off by the seduc­tion of the life by the river.

I could have stopped here forever.

Night mar­ket and the fam­ous Laos T-Shirts (shame none fit­ted J or he would have bought 10)

Part of my jour­ney through Asia has been taken up with learn­ing about Buddhism. It was there­fore a real pleas­ure to see the Monks here wan­der­ing between their many temples in town and the sur­round­ing hills. Their simple, beau­ti­ful robes of rich orange cot­ton adds a vibrancy to life and its daily rituals. Each morn­ing, just before dawn breaks through the dark­ness, alms are col­lec­ted by monks in exchange for a daily bless­ing. Monks pro­cess along the pave­ments to greet kneel­ing devotees for a bless­ing. For me this was a beau­ti­ful moment to admire the devo­tion of these people and think of the gift that Buddha bestowed upon every­one by show­ing us the path to enlightenment.

Three of the team await the monks in the cold / The Buddhist path – Alms at dawn

Alms tra­di­tion­ally con­sti­tutes the gift of uncooked rice that is then cooked by the temple chef. Buy­ing cooked rice from dawn street sellers is dis­cour­aged due to the qual­ity of their pro­vi­sions. Bet­ter to buy uncooked rice in advance from the local mar­ket. It is worth remem­ber­ing that Monks are gen­er­ally veget­arian when select­ing your pro­vi­sions. It is not respect­ful to be higher than a monk and look down on them, so it usu­ally pays to fol­low oth­ers by adopt­ing the kneel­ing position.

Any­one want­ing to par­ti­cip­ate in alms-giving should take care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion to respect this sac­red pro­ceed­ing. Ensure you remain at a respect­ful dis­tance when tak­ing pho­to­graphs espe­cially when using flash pho­to­graphy. I chose to stay on the oppos­ite pave­ment and use my zoom des­pite the lim­it­a­tions this brought to my pho­to­graphy. I was saddened to wit­ness many onlook­ers make no such con­sid­er­a­tion as hoards of cam­eras encircled like vul­tures around the pro­cessing monks. This was dis­taste­ful to the monks, the alms-givers and oth­ers forced to watch. I wish people would con­sider put­ting any self-interest aside in this moment.

Dur­ing our time here Tony got his doc­tors pos­i­tion in Byron Bay Aus­tralia, Gal­lo­way nearly blew his weeks’ budget on a single fros­ted Duvel, and we were for­tu­nate enough to stumble upon an all-night temple party!

The temple party – the only photo taken

The temple party was a big event with Lao­tian and west­ern music pas­sion­ately played to a mixed audi­ence dan­cing in front of the temple. The Lao­tian way is to dance only to Lao­tian music and to empty the dance floor at the end of each song.  This made for an inter­est­ing vibe with the ‘half-cut’ for­eign­ers dan­cing to everything no mat­ter how bad it seemed to our west­ern ears! After a few hours of jump­ing around we joined a large gath­er­ing of candle bear­ing Lao­tians and pro­ceeded through town and back to the temple to pray and see a fire­works display.

Ven­tur­ing out of town we enjoyed jump­ing in for a swim at the local water­fall and caught a glimpse of a few brown bears.

A quick swim and then a dan­ger­ous climb

We then climbed to the top of the falls for fant­astic views of the val­ley. Back on the low ground we viewed the coun­tryside from a tuk-tuk and got a real sense of daily life. Farm­ing is still the primary occu­pa­tion with plough­ing done by water-buffalo and ele­phants used for log­ging. Chil­dren smiled and waved from their shell-like homes as we whizzed by.

It was hard to know where to begin to help

Vang Vieng – tubing and party central

Hav­ing begun with a cul­tural and very beau­ti­ful entrance into Laos it was now decision time. The ques­tion lay ahead, “do we fol­low our new found crazy friends to debauched Vang Vieng or fol­low the edu­ca­tional path to the Plain of Jars?” After much delib­er­a­tion about whether we were too old for tubing we decided, “You’re only as old as you feel,” and headed to Vang Vieng.

Above the clouds jour­ney to Vang Veing

Vang Vieng is essen­tially a party town for young trav­el­lers who love noth­ing bet­ter than to get battered and recover watch­ing end­less back-to-back epis­odes of ‘Friends’ while slumped on a couch in any of the cent­ral res­taur­ants. For ‘Team Gal­lo­way’ this was heaven. Enthu­si­ast­ic­ally they arrived the day before the rest of us who decided Luang Pra­bang deserved us to ‘Stay Another Day’. The coach jour­ney was long and very beau­ti­ful above the clouds, though the undis­puted high­light was see­ing a King Cobra on the road (thank­fully from inside the coach). J saw it through the win­dow and it then reared up to its full height.  Every­one on that side of the coach went wild with excite­ment– it was a massive snake. Only five minutes pre­vi­ously our group had stopped for a pee break with some people ven­tur­ing into the undergrowth!

On our arrival Colin was as excited as a jack rab­bit and instantly jumped at the invit­a­tion from some ran­dom fel­low Irish­men to go tubing imme­di­ately. We, how­ever, settled into sun­bathing on plat­forms over the river; peri­od­ic­ally jump­ing in for a dip between games of cards and mojitos.

Bliss.

The view of the steep caste-shaped moun­tains cre­ated a won­der­ful back­drop and the sun glistened on the water.

River­side fun

That even­ing our Span­ish con­tin­gent (Mariluz and Mari­ona) were get­ting increas­ingly con­cerned about Colin’s where­abouts. The Irish­man had gone off without a word to them and they were not happy as it was now dark. As we dis­cussed his dis­ap­pear­ance Colin’s new-found Irish buddy arrived at the table and delivered to us Colin’s wal­let and per­sonal effects. Now noth­ing could calm or reas­sure Mariluz and the girls depar­ted to check his room again for any signs of his return. With that Colin was spot­ted stum­bling up the street. I have not seen someone so messed up in a long while.  Sport­ing only Ber­muda shorts his torso was covered in red draw­ings and his legs were torn to shreds.

We hollered to him, “How was tubing?”

“It’s the best fun I’ve EVER had EVER and I’m not jok­ing!” Was his reply.

There is noth­ing fun­nier than a battered Irishman!

From there on in the night was a done deal, Colin was just too far gone to under­stand any­thing of the worry he caused and Mariluz couldn’t help but laugh at the state of him. We all decided to cut him no slack and went out drink­ing and dan­cing all night.

We decided to join in the fun

As morn­ing dawned it was the rest of the group’s turn for tubing.

The defin­i­tion of tubing is the strap­ping of one­self into a lorry inner-tube and float­ing down the river like a horde of mis­dir­ec­ted ducks.  Lao­tian tubing is noth­ing like this at all.  The tubing part is really only used to get across the river from one out­rageous bucket-bar to another. At these make­shift mud banked bars, drinks only come it buck­ets with added M150 (super Red Bull). After the first bar we were plunging into the river from swings and wrest­ling in mud pools between dan­cing like crazy-things and it las­ted all day long. Mariluz demon­strated how to get really quite drunk the redress the bal­ance with Colin.

J, of course, took a water­proof video cam­era and later made a You­Tube of the day which is here:

It really took us a few days to recover down by the river, and there was hardly a wrench strong enough to prise us out of our ham­mocks, but even­tu­ally we moved on.

Vien­tiane – The Capital

Vien­tiane has a charm about it that grows on you quickly and belies its nature as a third-world cap­ital city. Vientiane’s old quarter oozes with post-colonial charm and is home to some of the most beau­ti­ful and old­est Buddhist temples. It is also easy to get sucked into the relaxed European-style café cul­ture; pop­ping out for a long brunch of crois­sants and excel­lent Lao­tian cof­fee, sight­see­ing by bicycle in the after­noons and enjoy­ing a deli­cious even­ing meal of crispy spring rolls, morn­ing glory and Mekong fish wrapped in banana leaves by the river at sunset.

The river view / a fish sup­per! / Bik­ing around town

There is no short­age of fun and dif­fer­ent things to do here.  Hav­ing melted for the best part of two months in Asia it was finally time to don our bathing suits again and go to a water park. Have you ever been to a water park where there were no queue for any of the water slides?

We have.

In fact we had the whole park to ourselves as although it was over 30 degrees in Laos it was still winter!

Vientiane’s water park would prob­ably be closed down in Europe due to EU safety reg­u­la­tions. None-the-less, foam mats securely beneath us, arms firmly bent and legs straightened we launched ourselves down slides and dark twis­ted tubes into the waters below.  This was topped off with some sun­bathing and a deli­cious Turk­ish lunch.

The lovely night­life of the capital

I felt ready again for a night’s antics and the cry went up to find a nightclub.  Club­bing and Laos are not some­thing that nat­ur­ally mix.  The Lao­tians notion of dan­cing is incred­ibly reserved and akin to line dan­cing. Thus, our team’s attempts to find a real nightclub induced some very funny moments includ­ing being driven halfway across the city only to find, whilst stand­ing bemused in an empty hotel car park, that the nightclub was inside the hotel and didn’t open until the wee hours. Embar­rassed we took the drivers recom­mend­a­tion of where to go next and wound up in a line-dancing host­ess bar, where the waiter insisted on pour­ing our beers into glasses and Lenin got an all-male shoulder mas­sage in the gents! Finally after one beer, and a quick line-dance, we departed.

We finally found a sol­it­ary bar with the sign of the bat on the door.  This place was a last resort but was play­ing some great live music, includ­ing a bril­liant rendi­tion of Pink Floyd.

The next day, J and I explored the city by bike.  Bik­ing in Laos was not the smartest thing we ever did, as the roads are mad­ness, but we enjoyed vis­it­ing the amaz­ing temples and sights of the cap­ital at our own pace.

Cap­ital delights and a great break from the norm

Our final stop in the cap­ital was to visit the inspir­ing and amaz­ing MAG (Mines Action Group) and COPE.  These two are covered in other blog entries, but I can­not stress enough the bril­liant work they do for this won­der­ful country.

Pakse – south­ern regional town

Ini­tially chosen as a stop-over on our way through to the 4,000 Islands we ended up here for four days.

As we waited for our pickup for the night-bus to Pakse, Bob­bits and Lenin came to see us off. Little did we know they were plan­ning a ruse. As we said our good­byes they launched their sur­prise by announ­cing that they were com­ing with us! Sadly though events con­spired against us and we ended up on sep­ar­ate buses!

The night-bus was a nightmare.

J and I squeezed ourselves into the ‘double’ bed with feet dangling into the aisle and my face pressed against the win­dow. Mov­ing was not an option. Top­ping off the phys­ical tor­ture was the ear-bursting caco­phony of Lao­tian music screech­ing out at full blast from the bus TV. God-bless ear-plugs and eye-masks.

Smil­ing through adversity on the night bus to Pakse

We arrived at dawn in Pakse in need of a good nights sleep and a chiro­practor! It took sev­eral hours wait­ing to secure ourselves a very basic room in a nice hostel, sor­ted. Rooms, we found out, were like gold dust; unbe­known to us the Laos Games (their ver­sion of the Olympic Games) was being held here and the fol­low­ing night was the Open­ing Cere­mony. As it turned out our friends had skipped town and gone straight to the 4,000 Islands. In all hon­estly we felt a little cheated and jeal­ous at the news, but soon events turned back in our favour.

Next after­noon ‘Team Gal­lo­way’ arrived in town after a dis­astrous jour­ney via Savan­nahket (involving a small bus fire!) The Open­ing Cere­mony was today and abso­lutely every room was full. We helped as much as we could, but even­tu­ally advised them to skip town and head onwards to Cham­pa­sak. Begrudgingly they clambered into another tuk-tuk. Without a word uttered between them, we waved them goodbye.

That was the last we saw of them, until we met in Bangkok 2 months later!

That night J was very unwell and so I watched the cel­eb­ra­tions com­plete with para­chut­ists, tra­di­tional per­form­ances and fire­works explod­ing into the nights sky, without him; only accom­pan­ied by some loc­als. We later learned that some people ended up sleep­ing in temples that night, so bad was rooms’ situ­ation in town.

Open­ing cere­mony fire­works at the Laos Games

The next day, as we planned our escape to the islands, Bob­bits and Lenin sent us a mes­sage, “We’re com­ing back up to Pakse tonight as there are no ATMs down here!”

How we laughed!

We fixed them up some gold-dust rooms (now a few had come avail­able) and they arrived the next morn­ing.  So on our final night here we partied hard at the local funfair.

We were more bouncy than the bouncy castle and more dodgy than the dodgems. After the oblig­at­ory ‘meat-on-a-stick’ din­ner our Pakse adven­tures were com­plete and the 4,000 islands were yet to come!

From here we had one last adven­ture on the Mekong before depart­ing for Cam­bodia. For this please see my post on Laos PDR – Mekong Meanderings.

Regards,

Cesca

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