Dave & Claire´s Travels: Fabu..Laos???

Luang Prabang, Laos, 8 - 11 July 2008
Vang Vieng, Laos, 12 - 13 July 2008
Vientiane, Laos, 14 - 16 July 2008

As we had arranged our Laos visa in Cambodia we were able to quickly breeze through immigration at Luang Prabang airport (LP from now on). Then we had a most surreal experience. We walked out of the airport doors to where all the tuk tuks drivers were waiting, but get this... not one approached us, in fact they completely ignored us. Then we noticed the desk where you purchase a tuk tuk ticket and then the next guy in line would show you to his vehicle and away you would go. All very civilised, all very strange. LP itself is a bit odd too. I guess by Laos standards it would be considered a city but it has a real small town feel. In a nutshell it has non-existent street lighting, a large concentration of Buddhist monks (or judging by their ages novice monks), different style tuk tuks (why are the tuk tuks in Thailand different from the tuk tuks in Cambodia and the tuk tuks in Laos different again? Vietnam doesn't have tuk tuks but that's a different story again), an attractive night market, and a town that is coming to terms with it's new found tourist industry. We spent our first day simply wandering the streets, but we did take time out to book a trekking/kayaking tour for the following day. The attraction for a lot of people coming to Laos is the calmer more relaxed atmosphere and this is the case however we just weren't sure yet whether it was selling anything else that would justify its claims as a premier holiday destination. LP was nice but no more so than a hundred other places we had visited.

The following morning the rain was coming down so we decided to postpone our trek and opted to take a long-boat journey up the Mekong River to the Puk Ou caves instead. While the boat journey was quite nice, the caves were a disappointment. Their selling point is that there are lots of little Buddha ornaments inside that have been deposited by the devoted followers of Buddhism for hundreds of years. The truth is it looks like someones overly cluttered mantelpiece!! Then there were all the young children that wanted to sell you a small caged bird that you could set free for $1. "Hmm, so that you you can catch it again and sell it to the next punter that comes along.... I think not".

The following morning weather conditions had improved so we made our way to the tour agency where Claire just had time to check her email before we were bundled into a mini van and away we went. There were only three of us (Claire, myself and Lee - our guide) on the trail, and as seems to be our luck, it was exceedingly muddy. One of our first stops was at a village where three different tribal communities lived together. This place felt much more natural and harmonious than the "Union of Tribal Villages" we had visited in northern Thailand. As we rounded one of the village huts we came across a black aggressive dog foaming at the mouth. The animal was clearly rabid and didn't like us entering his territory. Thankfully we were able to back away without the dog advancing on us. Lee told us afterwards that rabies is a real problem in Laos. So, happy that we didn't have to test the efficiency of the Laos emergency response to a bite for a rabid animal, we left the village. I wouldn't have fancied our chances.
.

.

.

.
.

Our trek continued up into the hills and Paddy fields for another 90 minutes before we arrived at another tribal village. We stopped here for lunch and engaged the local children in some playful chatter. Claire decided to buy them a treat from the village store....and that's when disaster struck. Where was her purse? Then she remembered she had left it beside the PC that morning when she checked her email. About 4 hours had passed and when Lee rang the office there was no sign of it. Someone had obviously come in to use the internet and swiped an easy target. B******ds. We continued the remainder of our trip which consisted of a little more trekking, a short kayak to an impressive waterfall and finally a 2 hour kayak downstream to our end point. Needless to say it was difficult to enjoy any of it knowing that some scumbag was walking around with our money.

Back in the office we performed a thorough search but to no avail. A trip to the "Tourist Police" Office gave no reprieve from the pain as they were little more than children who found Claire's reporting of the incident all very amusing. The ring leader tried to explain that they weren't really the tourist police while still attempting to watch the TV with on eye. Claire, getting a little bit "crazed" went over and started pulling cables, sockets out of the wall until the TV fell silent. Still finding it all amusing the main man re-states that we needed to go to the "real" Tourist Police. They however closed at 5pm and it was now 5:15pm. Well, they were closed obviously. We were booked on the early morning bus out of town & decided against postponing our exodus in order to amuse the "real" tourist police.

Van Vieng has become, thanks to the Lonley Planet, a must stop of point between Luang Prabang and Vientiane. Young backpackers seem to love this place. Personally we mourned the demise of the town that must have existed before LP marked it for superstardom. Now, it is little more than a soul-less string of budget accommodation and something else most unusual... some genius had the idea of setting their restaurant up in such a way that the customers sit as though sitting up in bed with a low table across their waist and pillow supporting the back. Then the piece-de-resistance, they had TV's at the front showing nothing but back to back episodes of friends all day long.... and every other restaurant in town copied them! One place had just started showing Family Guy so maybe there is hope for the town yet. But what is there to see and do, what is the draw for V V?

It would appear that the town is blessed with more than it's fair share of geniuses, another bright spark got the idea of renting out inflated tractor tubes to enable customer to float downstream on the Nam Song river. Then as though a genius convention was taking place bars started springing up along the riverside where "tubers" could stop off for a whisky bucket whilst on their journey downstream. We met quite a few people who had partaken in the aforementioned activity and came a cropper. One girl had gashed her leg and needed to go to hospital and another had banged her head and could not recall the last 30 mins of her experience. And the stories went on. Claire, in her wisdom, decided to abstain. I was to go down with a couple we had first met in Vietnam (Sophie and Graham) however both had to pull out. Graham because he had pulled a muscle in his abdomen on his first outing and Sophie because she had a cut on her leg during her first outing and it was infected. Hmm, this did not bode well. I got talking with 3 Irish girls during the tuk tuk ride to the drop off point so we all hit the water together. After floating 100 yards we arrived at the first pub. Staff were employed to throw out sticks on rope for you to catch onto and be dragged into shore. So far so good. We each sank a bottle of Laos beer (which is pretty rough). For entertainment purposes, in case the booze wasn't enough, the bars have set up high trapeze-like swings for you to swing out over the river and plunge from a height into the murky brown water of the Nam Song below. Belly and face flops were the order of the day. At Bar # 2 and 3 we were intrigued to see unoccupied tubes floating past, then we saw tubeless swimmer #1 fighting for her life. She was pulled into safety but was clearly shook by the ordeal. We later met a girl who had her leg cut on an underwater rope. She had one persno trying to keep her head above water while another pleaded with the locals for a knife with which to cut the rope, apparently by Laos standards ropes are pricey and so none were too keen to see one cut just to save the life of a careless tuber. They relented and the girl was glad to be able to tell the tale. A funny thing then happened to our band of 4, the next bar required you to make your own way into shore and while 3 of us made it one floated on by. Not wanting her to be on her own, and assuming there would be endless bars on the riverbanks, we got back in the water. After 20 mins and no additional bars we arrived at the finish point in V V. Trip over. All in all it's a sociable day out and if you keep your wits about you there is no reason to come to any harm. The problem is that a lot of the young ones are irresponsible with alcohol.

Claire loathed the town of Vang Vieng and was adamant that we catch the first bus out of town the following morning.

Vientiane was lauded as the most laid back capital city in the world and it certainly lived up to it's reputation. It was sleepy, very sleepy. It was strange to stand on it's main street during what should have been rush hour and witness so very little going on. It has much more of a small town feel than that of a capital city. We decided to treat ourselves for our last few days in Laos and checked into a fancy hotel with all the trimmings. There isn't very much to do in Vientiane so consequently we didn't do very much. We walked along Lan Xang Street, Vientiane's answer to the Champs Elysee to Patuxai, Vientiane's answer to the Arc de Triumphe. It was constructed in 1969 with cement donated bu the USA for construction for a new airport. Hence, ex-pats refer to it as the vertical runway. Fro here we took a tuk tuk further out to Pha That Luang, Laos most important National Monument. It is a temple and also home to the supreme Patriach of Laos Buddhism. It came as a surprise that here was the country's most important monument located in the capital city and we saw maybe 20 other people in all the time we were there (including a novice monk who wanted to have his photo taken with Claire).

Other than that we just mouched around town and enjoyed the comforts of our hotel room before catching a flight to Sabah in Malaysian Borneo.