A Northern Loop

The road to Luang Prabang was very scenic and probably more than a little dangerous at points.  It went through a small mountain range and roads twisted up one mountain along a narrow ridge and down another mountain.  One place that the bus stopped for a snack had a view that looked out over a valley and was high enough that we were looking down on clouds.  It was something of a mystical mountain setting.  We would have enjoyed the ride a bit more if we hadn't have gotten the last seats, which hand the least amount of leg room.  We sure enjoyed the stops though.

A view from the bus

Luang Prabang gave us the greeting we have come to expect in any town or city in Laos "Tuk-Tuk!".  We walked to the area where we hoped to find a hotel that Jason and Dawn had told us about.  When we arrived almost everyone there was offering us a room at their guesthouse.  We had a lot of option, but when we were offered a room that was regularly 110,000Kip for 80,000 we took it.  I think its the only place we've stayed in Laos that had air con (there are plenty of options with air con, this was the only one we could afford).  We slept well while we were in Luang Prabang.  We also ate well.  There was a restaurant by our guesthouse overlooking the Mekong, that not only had great food but also some great views at sunset.  Our first night there we were a little annoyed at overhearing the conversation of the Western business men near us ("this how you make money off these people…" or "I turned my $100 into 10,000 by…").  All the other nights were more enjoyable and just as tasty (excellent Laap).

The view from the restaurant.

Else wise Luang Prabang had little in the city itself that we went to see as it was all very expensive.  We did cross the Mekong to see some temples on the other side, but all of them were separate and all had entrance fees. Some had tripled in price since the Lonely Planet had put them in their book.  We went to one that had a great view of the area and also some cute little boys who followed us around as we explored the area.

Luang Prabang from across the Mekong

One of the afore mentioned cute little boys.

On another day we went to the grave on Henri Mouhot a French explorer who had "discovered" Ankor Wat in Cambodia and eventually succumbed to malaria near Luang Prabang. Terzani talks about going there during his time in Laos and the way he describes it matched what we saw there almost exactly.  Getting there was another matter.  It was about 8KM from Luang Prabang and there was no shade.  Almost the entire way there seemed to be construction of something or another.  There was a bridge, to cross the a big (but not as big as the Mekong) river, seemingly to get at the trees (which were already being cut down) easier.  And at least 3 guesthouses.  And it was bloody hot with no shade.  But the area was pleasant when we arrived and there were Laotian picnic tables by the river bank below the graves.  There were the graves of several French explorers and administrators surrounding Mouhot's.  All of them were relatively young (Mouhot was 36 when he died).  We would have spent more time there if there weren't so many ants.  We did wonder as we left what Mouhot would have thought of all that had happened to Luang Prabang (and Ankor Wat for that matter) since his time.

We left Luang Prabang after about 3 days and headed North.  Our first stop to the North was a place called Udomxai.  It was purportedly a boom town because of its proximity to the Chinese border.  There was a waterfall that we had thought to see there but when we asked about it the guy at the travellers info place told us that the road might be closed about 10 KM up the way due to construction.  Once we found this out, we happily left Udomxai as fast as possible.  Though we did have a nice long chat with a former monk who worked at the information centre.

We were headed to Phongsaly, for a few reasons, one was that there was supposed to be the best trekking in Laos there, if we got lucky and ran into a group also planning to go (it was expensive for 2).  Another was the height of the place and isolation of it and finally there was apparently a fabulous river boat ride back south from a town very close to it.  Getting to Phongsaly was something of a challenge though.  The road remained entirely unpaved and muddy all year long was the report and buses could get stuck behind slow moving truck for hours as they plied this single mountain road.

I was recently asked by a monk what I thought of transportation in Laos.  I immediately thought of this bus ride, though all I said was that it was kind of slow (he seemed to agree with that assessment).  Our bus immediately had problems.  Half an hour after the bus departed Udomxai it broke down.  There seemed to be some sort of liquid leaking from the engine (it wasn't brake fluid we were fairly sure). and the bus driver and his attendants fixed the problem after about 25 minutes of working on it.  It gave everyone a nice long break.  We then drove for a few hours before arriving at the first stop (the lunch stop).  Already we were thinking that the 7 hour time that had been posted for the trip was wildly optimistic.  We had gone less than a third of the way in 3 hours.  Our next problem came when we rounded the corner and saw a large truck stuck in the mud, blocking the road.  The bus stopped, people got out and milled around as the driver and his helpers went to see what they could do.  Nothing apparently.  As we waited a mini bus managed to get itself by all the obstructions and, much more alarmingly, a poorly dressed man on motorbike drove by with an AK-47 strung across his back.  After half an hour they put chains on the tires and had everyone walk past the truck (which conveniently backed itself further into the mud) to he top of the hill.  Fortunately it managed to get by and we were all able to board the bus again and continue.  A short while later there was a loud bang near the back, followed by a hissing.  One of the back tires had blown.  We stopped in the next village so that the crew could replace the tire.  We were in sight of Phongsaly when the bus stopped to unload its cargo.  We had noticed that behind us were several boxes (of cigarettes as it turned out), but were unsure when they would be moved.  Not far from Phongsaly apparently.  One of the helpers came back and began tossing them out the window to the other helper.  We decided to help, as it seemed to be going rather slow.  We formed a sort of relay to the helper and the back of the bus was cleared relatively quickly.  The bus driver shortly before we left came to the back of the bus with a big bottle of water and said thank you.  The whole bus crew seemed quite happy with us.

The truck that got stuck ahead of us.

Our bus to Phongsaly.

We arrived in Phongsaly at 8:30 in the evening.  We had left Udomxai at 8 in the morning.  We arrived at a guesthouse by 9 and were lucky to find a place still open for us to eat dinner in.  There were some foreigners there who would be leaving on a trek the next day.  They turned out to be the only foreigners in town.  We had arrived a day too late for trekking with a group and the prices we saw for two people trekking were well beyond what we could afford at the time.  We were a little disappointed but decided to stay at least one day and see if anyone showed up.

That night I found myself in great pain on the toilet.  One of the side effects (we now learned) of doxycycline was constipation.  I spent all night trying to go to the bathroom, finally being able to do so in the morning after drinking a lot of water throughout the night.  I was not really in good shape that day, but we explored the town of Phongsaly.  The tourist info building was closed so we could not actually find out any information about trekking.  We saw no other foreigners.  The town was a dusty, dingy place, the population of which was divided 75% ethnic Lao and 25% Yunnanese (from the Chinese province of Yunnan).  The Yunnan section seemed a bit friendlier than the Lao section, though I don't think there were many foreigners who wandered through any of Phongsaly.  We ate at a Chinese restaurant for lunch which had some of the strangest menu translations we had ever seen: Coca Cola was translated from the Chinese as "white matter cola" another one (I have no idea what it was): "heaven defends the four point cutlets".  We ordered Szechuan pork as it was the only thing we had a fairly good idea of what we would get.  It was not the veggie lunch we were hoping to find though.

We went to the top of the hill overlooking the town, which did offer a nice view (for some reason we took no pictures).  There was also a nice old stupa at the top and, not far behind it, a communications tower.  This and some of the nice Yunnan shophouses were the only "sights".  After climbing down we found a place to have a beer, which also had nice view and as it turned out, the proprietor was a teacher who spoke good english.  He said he was working on becoming a guide to do some trekking with the tourists.  This struck us as kind of odd.  He was a teacher and a restaurant owner, why was he looking at another career.  We were more recently told that teachers in Laos only get paid about $30 a month and every single one of them needs to have a second job in order to support themselves.  I can see why he might want to get out of teaching here.  We ended up eating there that night and it was a Lao BBQ, which was a bit different from the other Asian BBQ's that we had had.  We spent 100,000 Kip ($12 about) on 3 plates of barbequeable meat and 2 large buckets of veggies and 2 beer laos.  It was wonderful (though the pictures don't look so appetizing).  We were given cubes of fat to wipe on the grill (well I'm not sure it could really be called a grill) so as to keep our meat from sticking to it.

The BBQ.

Having seen all we could of Phongsaly we decided to (hopefully) take a boat down the Nam Ou (Ou river) to Nong Khiew eventually.  We had to take a bus to the small town of Hat Sa which is where the river is.  The bus ride along a mountain ridge was beautiful in the early morning with the mist and clouds swirling around the valleys and mountain peaks.  We descended quickly after a half hour journey and found ourselves at the river.  The boat was the same as quoted in the Lonely Planet (100,000 Kip).  There was an official there to see that things went smoothly.  We were on the boat and floating down the Nam Ou pretty quickly after that.  The voyage was pretty uneventful but the scenery was nice and the water made a much better road than the one the bus had taken.  We relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

We arrived at Muang Khua about 4 hours later had lunch and wandered around.  There was not that much to see in Muang Khua but we enjoyed the wander.  We picked up some crafts and postcards after the wander and had our dinner while writing to family and friends.  The next morning we walked down to the boat landing to ask about the boat to Muang Ngoi.  We waited around for an hour and were told that we were the only ones that were taking the boat and it would be 500,000 kip each.  We did not like that figure very much (Muang Ngoi is actually closer than Hat Sa and we were still going down river).  Down cast we set about looking at bus fares in the book; we could go back to Udomxai, a prospect that did not appeal much.  As we were ready to get up and head to the bus station, two more foreigners showed up to get ticket for 3 (the 3rd was not quite there yet).  They had just come from Vietnam and knew more about negotiation than we did (they had also been promised a figure of 120,000 Kip to get to Nong Khiew which was farther away than Muang Ngoi the previous day).  They were offered 300,000 per person if we joined and they argued it down to 150,000 a person which we all accepted.  We boarded the boat and noticed that we were actually not the only people who were going down the river, there were also several locals.  The ride was nice and we had a good chat with the other foreigners (two Dutch guys and a German guy) along the way.

On the boat.

Some of the many water buffalo along the river.

A view from the boat

We got to Muang Ngoi about 3 hours later.  The scenery was beautiful and the first guesthouse we came to had nice bungalows for 40,000.  We decided that we would stay for a while.

We stayed for 3 days, walking around this completely roadless town, that was only accessible by boat.  Or just sitting and looking out over the might Nam Ou at the karst mountains beyond it.  One thing we noticed all through our journeys in Laos was small boys wielding large knives and doing various tasks with them.  We saw where this somewhat alarming trend led to in adulthood in Muang Ngoi.  We saw a man using one such large knife to part bamboo stalks for a basket.  He did tho with such skill and ease that it seemed obvious that he had been holding one of those knives since he was a toddler.  We have never seen anyone with apparent knife wounds while in Laos, so one assumes that they get it right pretty quickly.  We did take a longer walk on one of the days we were there.  The path led to several villages and rice fields.  We never actually found the villages, but the scenery was still spectacular.  On our way back we stopped at a restaurant just outside the town.  We ordered pumpkin curry.  Shortly after ordering we saw the lady who had served us run to her garden and come back with some very obviously fresh pumpkins for our curry.  There was something so very pleasant about Muang Ngoi, its quiet, its stillness.  We had not felt so peaceful for a long time in Laos.  We were sorry to leave.

There was a lot of good food in Muang Ngoi.

Just a short walk along a path to this view.

The restaurant and bridge of the pumpkin.

What we saw from any restaurant in town.

But leave we must, we were running out of money and the nearest ATM was an hour downstream.  The ride to Nong Khiew was spectacular, but crowded and we could not see as much of the jagged mountains surrounding us as we would have liked.  We had thought we might stay in Nong Khiew, but after taking a quick look at the town we decided that it was unnecessary. It would just be a bad version of Muang Ngoi, as there was in fact a highway running through it.  We hopped on a Sangthaew (a truck with covered benches in the back) and were back in Luang Prabang in less than 3 hours.

From the boat to Nong Khiew.