Journeys in Laos

Muang Ngoi Neu 

Just as I stopped imagining what I hoped Laos would be like, we stumbled upon this village, only accessible by boat. The guest houses sat high on stilts above the Nam Ou, but there was an aura about the place that had a peace I had not felt so far in any other place in Laos. A very friendly lady showed us our room and her husband spoke French with lots of friendliness and pride. Our room is very basic, electricity runs from around just after dusk to 10:30 at night. There is no fan, but we do have a mosquito net and a cold shower within our room. It is very comfortable, though it takes some getting used to the darkness at night and having no control over it except by using a flashlight.

The lifestyle here is so calm. Children swim naked in the river. Sometimes the men and teenaged boys will chase them around or show off. Women bath in sarongs and a few still wash their cloths in it. Long wooden boats, coloured in blues, some with the occasional sun painted on their sterns, sit along the bank. Children play hide and seek, swimming between them and hiding under their peers. Men carry lumber up the riverbank and under the guesthouse where we eat, a man and his wife carved bamboo into long thin strands, perhaps to make a basket or thatch.

 Away from the bank and into the village, homes are very simple, much simpler that our guesthouses, with thatched roof and a running tap for women to collect water from. Chickens, waddling ducks, cats and dogs are all to be seen, but they are healthy and happy. The Wat … is reached by a quiet clean dirt path overgrown with floors and grass. Butterflies are everywhere and trees ofer the much needed shade and peace. The monks, not used to visitors, grin, the young boys we met outside the temple opened the main door for us to look inside, but not to enter, as they were "studying", though some modern tune seemed to echo from the windows when we were arriving. We looked at the painting of the lives of the Buddha, still trying to figure them out. Around the Wat were some big mounds, perhaps tombs, or wishes, with bits of material flapping from sticks and a stupa like structure in its centre. We saw them near the river bank as well, and wondered what they were.

 The path outside the village leads to other vials much more remote, though we hiked for about an hour and a half, we still could not reach Hau Shen village and decided to turn back, but the views where spectacular. Rice fields, with grazing buffalo, surrounded by lush forest that grew on mountain karst that rose in all directions. A beautiful sight, almost incompressible. 

Though there is a peace, and the people are much friendlier here, there is still the shadow of war that once affected this peaceful village. A big momb, dug up by a local is on display outside our resteraunt. And some bombes, sit next to the menus, they looked like balls of iron, almost tempting to pick up and exam. Even I knew what they were, these were obviously disarmed, but I could see the temptation in picking them up. 

There are still some older people in this village. I wonder what stories they would tell, what they had seen, how they feel. We saw one older woman gathering a bouquet of flowers, she looked like she was at least eighty years old, but she still smiled at us when we said hello. 

I do wonder if the people here would be happy to leave and move to a big city. Who could deny them that freedom? Yet a part of me wishes that they did not have to see other parts of the outside world. A part of me hopes that this village will never have a road running through it to disrupt its peace and innocence. 

So what of Laos now? We have less than a few more weeks left here and I don't know if we have learned more or less about Laos. Have we learned anything about ourselves even? Have we taken away something from these longs months of travel that seem that they have just started, that we have only taken a small step in a long journey. Thinking about the lifestyles of the people here in Dong Koung, it makes me see how different lifestyles are compared to people from Europe and the West. We meet doctors, fruit picking backpackers, students, educators and all with different levels of education and experience, all with jobs, some with careers, prestigious careers and yet when they travel they are just like us. No different estranged to the culture of the place, astonished and vulnerable to the ways of the people. In Dong Koung, presstige or career perhaps holds no meaning. Village life near the river is calm, though we see it as redundant and perhaps unbearable. We are so used to climbing the ladder, advancing towards something bigger than ourselves. What do people here strive for. We see locals napping, children playing under their houses so happy to wave a "Sabaidii" and jump up and down. Men and women, sometimes nowhere to be seen, sometimes on motorbikes or outside 'restaurants' drinking beer Lao, talking, sleeping. Sometimes locals fish or work on baskets, traps and other things. The woman are school teachers, the men own resorts or small businesses run outside their homes. The fields seem untended, though perhaps they are working all morning and we do not see them. Some houses are littered with garbage and I wonder why people don't clean up their lawns. Do they notice it? Dores it not bother them. IN the temples are many young boy novices talking, sleeping, joking around with their fellow novices. Some of the wats even have garbage in them. Some of their homes seem unattended. Their temple complexes are clean and the Buddhas attended to, but what about their own homes? 

The river here runs slowly, like the people. Steady, heavy and slow. Its great expanse offers me peace, especialy when I am reminded of the cities. It is almost separate from all that movement and all those events. It flows regardless of humanity, it flows  from a source far up in the Tibetan plateau, fed by the tributaries of many rivers, many veins that run through Laos and enrich the lives of many people who wash and eat from the river. But it is even greater than that. It is the origin of the earth, the way of nature before the beginning of 'time' as we now it. It exists in itself, it is a presence that has been carved without any human hands. For some reason this thought brings me great comfort, like the moon and stars. Last night Kevin and I looked up at the full moon and let our imaginations shape the clouds within its glow. We saw a cats eye, a dolphin, a great mage, a witch, a castle. We imagined a staircase of clouds leading to a door in the moon. I longed for those fairy tales and those mysteries that we seem to loss an awe for us as we get older.

I don't know if we have found the mysteries of Asia. Sometimes I feel there is no mystery at all, only misery and poverty. Sometimes I am angry when I see people beg or throw garbage in their lawn, or try to get as much money out of us as possible. I feel as if, being 'foreigners', we are prevented from being allowed in. Though at other times, like today, the locals want to talk to us. Kevin and I were riding our bicycles and from exhaustion we went to a place, which probably saw no foreigners at all, and the two men there were so eager to talk to us. Mr. Sai spoke English but the other man, I forgot his name, only spoke Lao. I wondered what they did most of the day, I think the main highlight was to enjoy each others company, to keep each other company. 

Muang Kong, the village we are staying at, has one road full of guest houses, but it still has that feel that it has kept something about itself, it has kept some sort of identity that differentiates the people here from other people in Laos. There is a calm, that I think we may have trouble understanding, but it is calm not bored. Why do we always feel the need to rush? I wish I could learn something of this village lifestyle. This calmness and uneventful life. Not the kind of life where you sit watching TV all day, but of watching the days come and go, chatting with friends, napping on the porch, watching the river and the moon. We have lost the ability to enjoy this calm, perhaps herein lies the unhappiness, we don't know how to enjoy the simplest pleasures of life.

Champasak

 The town near the sacred Wat Phou is peaceful and friendly. Kevin and I felt like celebrities as we constantly waved to the children and adults yelling "Sabaidii". Sometimes, just an easy smile from us would light up their faces and their grins would reach high and bright. Around the town, their are town roads running parallel to each other, one is through town, the other is the main traveling road that is adjacent to the Mekong. Along that side of the Mekong rice fields spread out through trees and beneath the many grazing livestocks. The mountains stand like great shades over the land, and the scared mountain, shaped like a square, reveals itself beautifully. The sky is busy with puffy clouds moving about its deep blue space. Wats are seen regularly and the monks are out and about, mingled with the people, fixing roofs and building on their temple grounds. At dusk we can hear them chanting into the darkening night. Their bronze buddhas, lit by a warm light, glitter out onto the terrace and the surrounding paths. We can see the monks sitting like their buddhas, facing each other, the buddhas garbed with a deep orange sash, like the monks. They sit and meditate, chanting a  deep mantra with deep voices, enriching everything that surrounds their Wat. We watched a sunset on our last night there and listened as the sky changed colours and beamed its final rays over the vast sky. The silhouette of palms and trees. 

Wat Phao

An ancient Kmer temple, even pre Ankor, dating back to a time when people practiced animism. We saw a crocodile and elephants craved in great stones near the cliff . The great stones lay over the surface amist other giant boulders, some with stairs carved into their side. Perhaps they once led up the side of the cliff into a no longer existing cave. We stood amongst the ruins, with no one else about, and tried to imagine what this place would have looked like 1500 years ago. What the people would be like. What magic they believed in. What science, that was then not named, that they knew. Were there many children? Were woman powerful figures and models? Were there monks in their saffron robes? They say that the people practiced an old form of Hinduism that somehow got mixed with Buddhism. That the shrine on the hill below the sacred mountain was a shrine to Shiva, the god of destruction and renewal. One carving is of a spiral, I wonder what it meant to them, was is the continuation of life in the constant cylce of the circle that could spiral out into infinity?

I wonder what the scene would look like to them as they looked over the landscape from above. What did they see? We saw a ruined temple that is still splendid even in its decline. We saw giant man made lakes that symbolized, as the pamphlet suggests, the ocean surrounding the land. In the distance we saw many rice fields and tertiary forest. Were there giant rice fields then too, or was this Wat surrounded by jungle, hidden and kept sacred from the outside world. 

 Time is such a strange thing, though I wonder what time could not touch, what traditions have been passed down through time. Somewhere, somehow, the descendants, whoever they may be, perhaps still know something about this place. Throughout the temple we saw stupas made of leaves and flowers, burned incense sticks and yellow candles left on the alters and in front of sacred carvings. Is this what the people from the long past also did?

The next day Kevin and I visited Tomo Temple. it started with Kevin and I riding our bikes to the ferry. We boarded a boat, which was two boats attached together with plank boards where we could put ourselves and our bikes as well as another motorbike. We crossed the Mekong this way, feeling like settlers exploring new land. We then biked about 15km hoping to find Tomo Temple, a ruined shrine also built around the same time as Wat Phou. After intense heat, and using all our leg power to go up the many little hills, we managed to find the temple. It was deeper into a buggy 'forest', and was evidently less looked after than Wat Phou. Some doorways and windows still intact that looked out onto the Tomo stream. The stones that belong to the temple, or shrine, were covered in green moss and looked aged and porous. It was very quiet and almost haunting.  We read a little article hand painted on a big board that told the history of the temple. Apparently a tablet had been found near by a french explorer that was written in Sanskrit. From the tablet they believed that the temple was constructed for Shivas reincarnated wife. The story says that when Shiva left his wife to become a Bhraman, he told her he would return after a few years, but he never did. A man, i can't remember who and why, told her that her husband had died and so she gave herself up to the fires. When Shiva returned soon after to find out that his wife died, he became sad and depressed. A few years later he met a young woman and recognized her as the reincarnation of his wife. The temple was built in Tomo in honour of her perhaps. 

Now the temple does indeed seem to be forgotten, but by knowing this story perhaps a piece of it still remains. 

That day Kevin and i returned to our hostel  and greatly enjoyed our  dinner and rested our sore bums and cooled our hot bodies. Before we left  Champasak we said goodbye to the Mekong and let the cool air and soft laps of water sooth our minds and bodies. Then we departed on a Sangthaew towards noisy, reckless Pakse to be pestered by desperate Tuk-Tuk drivers wanting to make a few bucks. One thing we have come to learn about Laos is that the people in the country are so friendly and open hearted, but the people in the city are fast and desperate and perhaps overwhelmed with the need and urge to make money.

Kiet Ngong


Our next destination was Kiet Ngong, the famed elephant village. According to the lonely Planet and the information boards at the visitors information centre in Kiet Kgong, the people have had a relation with elephants for years. However what the elephants do is very different, they used to be working elephants, but now that farmers have machines, there main job is to take tourist on little trips atop baskets set upon their giant backs. 

Unfortunately, we had to go back to Pakse to get out some money. When we went back towards Champasak we took a sawngthaew, and got off at Thang Beng towards Kiet Ngong. We stopped in a village just past the same route we had taken with our bicycle just the other day, but here there was no guest house, only the knowledge that our destination was 10 km, so we figured we would walk and catch a tuk-tuk if it passed on the way. To our surprise, someone offered us a ride ad when we asked for money they refused. They were two young men and all seemed very sweet and happy to give us a ride. When we payed the conservation fee and ffered them money they adamently refused. We stopped in front of a restaurant that was also a guesthouse. We seemed to be the only guests, as the owners used two of the three rooms, one for sleeping and the other for storage. Our room was very basic with a decent mosquito net and a bed that was just berable, but they clearly but a lot of heart into making the room nice and we enjoyed our stay.

Our elephant was a girl, she was thirty years old according to our mahout. She was very sweet but also stubborn even with our Mahout who seemed to be quiet gentle with her. We were both happy to see this because in Tat Lo we saw how the Mahouts mistreated their elephants. But in Kiet Ngong the elephants seemed well fed and happy though they did work hard as there were lots of tourists. However this is also a great sign, because it shows that the elephants have work and hence the mahouts can afford to keep them.

Kevin and I got into the basket by climbing up a house on stilts and walking onto the elephant and into the basket. Of course we had to balance as we tried to sit and step onto her. We felt so heavy and a bit guilty as she did all the work, lugging all three of us up the hill to Phu Asa, the sacred mountain. Our mahout, talked to our elephant using a silent sort of yell, some longer and some short. He nugged her behind the ears with his knees to keep her going forward. At one point a little brown dog was following us and stopping when we stopped just a short distance behind the elephant. She did not like the dog, and kept trying to turn around to see it. The dog was very persistent in following us. It set me to thinking how once I read that elephants were scared of bees. How big they are, we were at least ten feet up in the air, and those giants were afraid, like people of little things. How sweat these animals are, so big, but humble. Still, there is an inteliggenc in their eyes that it saddens me sometimes to think that they have to listen to our orders. Our big girl walked up the steady hill, we felt her powerful muscles beneath us, even on the wicker basket, that was most definitely hand made perhaps by the mahout or his wife or someone in the village. At the shades she would stop, despite the mahouts orders, and it took much little shouts and nudges, and sometimes a hit with the little piece of round peace of metal attached to a string that was held by bamboo. The metal was round, it must of stung her but it would not have hurt her. 

Up and up we went thinking of ways people could make a hat for the elephant to keep the  hot sun of her giant head. The trees surrounded the road and grew strong and healthy.  A relief to see, but their beauty made us a bit sad because we felt afraid for this natural beauty that seems to be fading in Laos through deforestation and rapid development and has no mercy on the natural landscape.

 Phu Asa was on a giant rock with moss growing in patches here and there. Surrounding us stood round cylinders of stone, staring about 9 feet high, perhaps 1000 years old as the lonely planet suggests. But this place, in most recent history, was used as a training site for the locals who lived in this area to fight against the fudel lords that were treating them wrongly. A monk, who used a magnificent glass to make fire, was glorified in the eyes of the people in this village. He meditated at the top of this mountain, and when he heard that they were being treated badly, he trained them to fight, teaching them martial arts and other methods of combat. We tried to imagine all these men training, but a part of this memory seems a bit unsettled. Any sort of violence to me brings that feeling of unrest, but they were fighting for their rights. They did win the battle, but when the king found out, he sent a bigger army to 'settle' them. However, people still remember them, for fighting for their own well being and defending themselves.

Before this time in history, I am not sure what the sight was, but there is a footprint of a Buddha, that we then only saw as a lake. I saw pictures of monks near a carved spiral in the stone like we saw in Champasak. The view from the top of the mountain was spectacular, we saw the conserved wetlands in the distance, rice fields and forest. All a light bright green as neon in its fresh new growth, the trees were a deeper green as was their age. We hoped to climb back in order to see the sunrise, but we unfortunately did not wake up in time and it would have been hard to hike up that hill in the dark. 

But my imagination can be in that place. I imagine the sun rising behind that vast space behind the mountain, slowly casting its light on the the row of cylinders, lighting them in rosy colours and the manifesting picture of the landscape changing in colours from dark grey, to pink, to rosy green. All the world below still asleep, except for the monks who sit and greet the sun with their mantras and their deep voices. All there is atop that mountain, is the spirits and energy of the dead, nature, and the sun. Pure life giving sun, its warmth, oblivious, neutral, unaware of the life it allows and allowed. Unaware of the beauties and imaginings and names that people gave it. I would like to imagine it too as a great spirit, a god, awakening the world in its splendour. I would like to fear it and awe in it, not to see it, think about it, even wonder, but just feel and marvel in complete innocence and awe. This place was not a place of science, it was a story, something separate from the modern world and its knowledge. This was a place for the imagination, and for the people of Kiet Ngong. I hoped that it would remain just as it is, and that the people would continue to revere in it. They deserve a place of their own, a place they can identify in and say that it is different and separate from places like the West, or Thailand, China and Vietnam. 

Sometimes I hate those countries and 'my' country, at least their politics and their bully ways. Those 'superpowers' and their roads, the way they cut through Laos and bring with them deforestation and greed. Every place that we have visited near these connecting highways seem to have plundered the towns and turned them into street shops selling car parts and repairing motorcycles All the same, and those big homes, though made to be modern, look ugly on the treeless streets filled with garbage, manholes, dust, cement and traffic. 

We reluctantly went back, and there was our elephant, swimming and resting under the tree and our mahout sleeping atop the basket. We descended down and made our way back. On our way we saw a parade of elephants and tourists going up the way we had come. A mahout, walking and leading his elephant by a string. Our mahout also descended and walked us back. Our elephant seemed pleased and walked much faster. When we got there a few girls brought some sugar cane and bananas. We bought some and fed her.
She took it happily with her trunk. Another, lighter gray elephant came, she seemed much older, and we gave her some too. But she did not take the bananas with her trunk, she opened her mouth instead. So we gave her the bananas by putting them in her mouth, on her giant tongue. It was so much fun. She was so beautiful and sweet. Her eyes showed such intelligence, at that moment I wanted to be a mahout. We kept buying fruits, because we wanted to help feed them because of the huge diet they required and to help the mahout feed her as well. We also had to resist not giving them all the fruit because a group of people had arrived and wanted to feed them too. We met a french man who spoke Vietnamese. He was married to a Vietnamese lady, who was a chef in France.
They had two children, beautiful children, though very spoiled by the looks of it.  The lady spoke very good french, but neither of them could speak English. They had family from laos as well and they bought us beer despite the fact that we ordered it and said we would buy it for them. The Lao family there was also very sweet, and the food delicious.

 We slept early that night, after sunset, but before we walked around the town we saw the mahouts and their elephants leaving to their home to wash them and rest themselves. We looked through the trees and took in the mountains and the quiet that is filled with the music of wind, green rice fields and those jungled mountains we have come to love so much. We even saw a protected wetland, green and home to over 70 species of birds. We saw no hornbills or kingfishers, but knowing that they were there was enough. I longed to hold this place in my heart, and prayed that it never changed, except in the slow natural way of things.

The Eco lodge that showed us this magnificent view from the viewpoint was closed. It seemed that many of the locals that were there were happy and they always smiled.

That night, before bed, after the man at the guesthouse tried to tell us, "I am going to Pase tomorrow" in Laos, we went to our room and watched the fireflies fly up into the twilight sky. It was an illuminated darkness, filled with bioluminescence and speckled stars.

The next day we got a ride with a Lao couple who were heading in our direction. We tried to teach each other Laos and English and felt like grandchildren as we rode in the front of their truck. Many of the locals came to take a look at us when the man stopped to sell some of his goods, or to buy others.

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.

The first days of Laos

Its strange to think that we have been in Laos for a month (at least when I started writing this; we're back in Vancouver now…).  It seems like we have been here no time at all.  Maybe this is because there is an appalling similarity about all of the places we have gone to.  Don't get me wrong everywhere is different, has new and interesting things on offer, but Laos (unlike Malaysia) seems to have the same mentality the whole way through it  (this is also not really true; the tourist spots all do though).  We had high hopes for our time in Laos and this was probably not fair to it.  Our first disappointment was immediate upon our entry into Vientiane (Laos' capital and largest city).  We had been expecting a quiet city with few cars or any motorized vehicles of any sort.  What we were presented with was noisy streets crammed with cars (though surely still less than Bangkok or KL).  Where were the trafficless streets of Vientiane we were informed of?  The ones that we could ride bikes down without any worries.  We did eventually find some, yet to be paved roads, that had few cars or motorbikes on them.  This is a city on the up towards being developed, to take its place beside other great cities, or at least that's what it seems to be aspiring to.  New paved roads and covered manholes are important in any new city, but one wonders why the touristy areas are the ones that were first (obviously) to be paved.  Why there are so many restaurants along the Mekong that only cater to tourists.  I do not think I saw a single Lao person eating at one of these restaurants while we were there, though I could be wrong about that.  Certainly the vast majority of the clientele were foreigners.  Well tourism is a big business here and there are locals working at all of them the tourist outlets (though from what we heard they were largely owned by foreigners).  Perhaps Vientiane will not become the Bangkok of Laos, there seem to be no sky scrapers going up and construction actually stops promptly at 6 everyday, in every village or town we have been in thus far.  It certainly must be better than it was in 1973 when Paul Theroux described it as a brothel for American soldiers fighting  in Vietnam, where opium was easier to get than a can of coca cola.  Development has its costs, but when it seems that development is largely for the sake of those visiting your country perhaps it is best to step back and take stock.  Wide spread corruption of officials does not help.  This was partly my initial view of Laos through the lens of its capital city.  It has changed somewhat in the past month.  My view of the government has not.

My other impression, first garnered at our guesthouse, was not of Laos but of the people visiting it.  This at least has improved since then, we have met many culturally sensitive and genuinely caring people since leaving Vientiane, but we met almost none in Vientiane.  Foreigners in Vientiane seemed very tightly wound, ready to snap at the smallest thing.  They seemed to complain about everything and seemed to take pains to speak as loudly as possible.  For instance, I overheard one girl complaining about the slow internet speed at our guesthouse, "slow like Laotian people."  She said to her friend while looking snidely at the people behind the counter.  In a temple, which was more or less tranquil, I recall a woman chew her gum so loudly that I could hear it from across the temple.  When I looked over to see who was making the noise I could not help but compare her to a cow chewing its cud, so vapid was the expression on her face.  There was one man who (apparently frustrated by all the offers of Tuk-tuk drivers) screeched "TUK-TUK! TUK-TUK!" back at the latest offerer, while flapping his arms like a chicken.  And making a proper ass of himself.  There were a lot of Tuk-Tuk drivers about, just like taxi drivers in Malaysia and were usually silenced by a simple "no thank you".  Some tuk-tuk drivers would lower their voices and offer marijuana or opium.  Another simple "No thank you." would do.  A large group of foreigners apparently thought that having a loud argument was a good thing to do just outside Wat Sisaket.  There were many more such events, I'm still not really sure what everyone was so keyed up about.  We met one Australian man who told us that they were worse in Vang Vieng which was our next destination.  He also said that he wished he had stayed in Myanmar, which was much better.  We seriously considered abandoning Laos and heading to Myanmar a few times.

There were some very nice things about Vientiane our two favourites were Wat (that means temple by the way; just like in Thailand and Cambodia) Sisaket, which was so calm and peaceful that we did not want to leave.  It was apparently the only temple in Vientiane that the Siamese left standing when they sacked the city about 200 years ago.  Wat Sisaket held some of the damaged buddha images from that sacking.  The main square has them all facing the main temple.  Inside the main temple there are many images from Buddhist mythology and more large and tranquil Buddha images.

The other place was COPE visitors centre.  COPE is the .  We met a young man as we walked in named Peterkim.  He asked us to read out a Skype message he had just received.  He had no hands and was blind, but he seemed quite capable of doing most things with the stumps on the end of his arms and a cane that he kept under his shoulder.  We never asked what happened to him, but the contents of the visitors centre perhaps was enough to let us guess.  Despite his impediments, Peterkim was very happy, bubbly even.  He told me I sounded like a politician or something when I read his message to him (I'm fairly sure he meant this as a compliment) and asked if Nancy had a sister (he was disappointed to find she only had brothers).  After Peterkim made his way out of the centre we explored.

Laos has the dubious record of being the most bombed country in history.  More bombs were dropped on Laos than on Germany during the second world war.  This was all done "secretly" as the USA was not at war with Laos.  But as the North Vietnamese were wandering through Laos on their way south (and they did have Lao allies; known as the Pathet Lao they eventually took over Laos in 1975), this gave the US cause to bomb the areas that the Vietnamese and their Lao allies were.  Apparently, since this was a secret bombing campaign the bombers had no protocol on what to avoid dropping their bombs on (1000 year old temples or isolated villages say) they could drop bombs anywhere they pleased.  And they did.  All over the country.  Now almost 40 years after the bombs stopped falling people in Laos are still being blown up by bombs that did not explode on impact, but needed a little extra kick from something (a farmer digging in new land; a kid running over it) to go off.  COPE provides free prosthetic limbs and such for anyone who is in need of them (mostly for those who have come across a bomb and not faired well for the experience).  Actually there were so many bombs dropped on Laos that there is now a lucrative trade in bomb scrap all over the country.  Of course some people also try to pull unexploded bombs from the ground for the scrap metal too.  Not really a good idea.  We were told that at the current rate of of clean up by MAG (the Mine Advisory Group), Laos will be free of UXOs (unexploded ordinance) in about 200 years.  We also watched a great (and surprisingly funny) movie about the bomb clean up called Bomb Harvest.  You should watch it.

A "bombie" display at COPE.

There was also a very informative and friendly woman at the front counter named Zai, who we struck up a conversation with.  She told us a lot about Laos and its people as well as about the trouble with the UXOs.  She also told us several dishes to try in Laos.  One of which she told us she would make for us if we ever returned to Vientiane, as she did not trust any restaurant to make is half as well as she could do it at home.  This was Bamboo soup and was excellent (we did return to Vientiane briefly to get our Visas extended and contacted Zai before we arrived; she had it ready for us the day after we arrived and got as many people as possible to try it as well; seriously one of the best meals we had in Laos).  

Speaking of food, my favourite Laos dish is Laap, a meat salad with lots of herbs and spices in it.  Fortunately the meat is no longer served raw, as it was traditionally.  Nancy's favourite dish (of sorts) seems to be sticky rice.  Guess what that is.  There were also a lot of nice coffee shops and bakeries in Vientiane, which probably did not help us stay fit...

We left Vientiane by local bus, which was a cheerful and cultural experience.  There were no livestock coming with us fortunately and over all it was a pretty uneventful ride, though at one stop several people boarded the bus to sell what appeared to be small birds, fried.  We did get lots of stares though; most foreigners usually take the air conditioned buses.  We found that fans and open windows are much more appealing (especially given that the air con is unlikely to be working).

Bus stations in Laos seemed to be universally located away from city centres, in what seems to simply be a way to give Tuk-tuk drivers business.  So we found ourselves 4 KM away from Vang Vieng centre with (of course) "Tuk-Tuk!" coming at us from all sides.  Irritated, we walked the 4 KM.

We stayed one night in Vang Vieng proper, saw the stoned foreigners watching Friends, Family Guy or The Simpsons in restaurants around town; saw the advertisements of "happy" (read: drug infused) pizza or shake or muffin.  Well maybe under different circumstances we may have thought to join.  As it was we were not thrilled.  Especially with the loud music that was on the entire night, seemingly everywhere.

The bridge across the river in Vang Vieng

Fortunately on the other side of the river, looking out at the beautiful scenery that Vang Vieng has to offer and in a butterfly garden, we found our sanctuary for our next 4 days.  This was the Maylyn Guesthouse and for 50000 Kip (about $6CND) we got a bungalow that looked out on the mountains and rice fields (en suite bathroom too).  The owner, a guy named Joe, was crotchety, but in a good way and good to talk to once he got started.  He said he had been here the longest of the foreigners in Vang Vieng (he was Irish but raise in London) and had seen a lot of changes to the area.  From the time that people came to Vang Vieng only for the scenery to now where it seemed to be largely for the drugs.  He had seen a lot of guys pack up and leave after a few years of running a guesthouse.  And the seeming hunting to near extinction of everything in the area that could be hunted and eaten.  He was not all together happy about these things.  We also talked some about books (travel types mostly) and he put on someone "Canadian" when he found out that all of the people in the restaurant were Canadian (Alanis Morriset).  The restaurant was also awesome.

From the Maylyn we could ride bikes to a place called the Blue Lagoon which was a large swimming hole with a cave above it.  The cave had a reclining Buddha in it and got very dark (not surprisingly) the farther you got from the entrance.  The Blue Lagoon was cold and fresh and wonderful to swim in.  We are still considering a return trip to Vang Vieng simply to swim there.  We swam a few days in the Blue Lagoon and explored some more caves and trails around Vang Vieng in the next few days.  One of the more concerning things about the area was that every Lao child we saw along the road from the Maylyn to the Blue Lagoon seemed to think that we would give them money.  They would put one hand palm up and twirl the index finger of their other hand on top of it.  We did not know what this meant at first but after a child yelled "money" along with this gesture we got the message.  This is apparently a big problem all over Laos, kids skip school and beg for money from the foreigners in tourist spots.  Its terrible and heart breaking to see but, of course, the worst thing you can do is give them money.  The only kid we gave money to was a boy who fixed Nancy's bike (and that was largely because he did not ask for it; it was also not a school day).  On one of our rides home we were stopped by four girls who ran out in front of us.  They just wanted a ride back to their homes which were in our direction as it turned out and (they were small after all and our bikes did have "passenger seats") we managed to get them all on our bikes (two each).  Much to our disappointment they did ask for money the moment they got off.  To be fair we should have asked for money from them, but we did give them some water (they looked thirsty).

Nancy entering a cave.

Some Vang Vieng's karst mountains.

The Blue Lagoon

More of Vang Vieng's impressive scenery.

And still more.

At the Maylyn another Canadian couple was also staying (well actually several Canadians were staying there but this was the only couple that we talked to for a goodly amount of time) who we talked to on several occasions.  They were Jason and Dawn Bernard from Calgary but would be heading to New Brunswick (where Jason was originally from) after they finished their vacation.  Their vacation had thus far lasted 16 months.  They had saved for a few years and then sold everything (sounded like they had owned a fair bit of stuff) before heading on vacation.  They were also travelling until they ran out of money and had been all over Oceania and Southeast Asia (most recently Vietnam, which they weren't huge fans of) and were off to Europe next by the sounds of it.  We talked a lot about travel and its ups and downs.  It was nice to share travel stories and travel feelings.  Unfortunately we never could find them on Facebook (we can never find anyone on Facebook though).

Further North was the call and we eventually had to depart from Vang Vieng to the UNESCO heritage city (and former capital) of Luang Prabang.  As the bus was supposed to leave early we got up early paid our bill and even took a Tuk-Tuk to the bus station.  We needn't of bothered as the bus left 2 hours after we had expected it to and waited for a whole horde of other foreigners to arrive before departing.  So ended our first week in Laos.