Keat and I met up again on the island of Don Det in an area
called 4000 Islands. (Cool name, but it wasn’t THAT many islands. Laos is
landlocked so everything was in the Mekong river. Not much space for islands
there.) We had cut time out from Cambodia to get back on schedule but were
thrown off track again by 4 nights in Don Det.
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| Curiosity... |
After the relaxing awesomeness that was Don Det we head up
to Pakse. There, finally on motorbikes again, we went to see some waterfalls. Laos’
roads are infamous but they weren’t that bad. You just have to keep an eye out
for occasional pot holes, but they aren’t hard to spot and dodge. What was
really bad were the side roads heading to the waterfalls because they were VERY
muddy. I’m not sure what is more difficult, driving down a mountain in trenches
of loose dirt, or muddy roads on a little 100cc moped with tiny road tires.
Somehow we didn’t wipe out, but had some close calls. One area was a few inches
deep in mud and you pretty much couldn’t turn. In another area we each ended up
sliding a full 90 degrees before coming to a complete stop. That was fun but I
was glad when it was over. The waterfalls were nice, particularly the second
one we saw. It was raging due to the wet season, and at the bottom this very
intense mist would fly up. There was a viewing area halfway down where the mist
flew up and one near the base. When you go there you’re suddenly blasted by
wind and water. We tried going down near the base but the steps disappeared into
a raging blast which felt like a typhoon. Water flew sideways off the railing.
Note, we were not under the waterfall but about 15 meters from it but we got
soaked. The ride back was a cold one! It also rained on us and all I had was a
rinky dinky bucket helmet they gave me with the bike. Fortunately Anne was with
us and gave me some sun glasses so I could see in the rain. My helmet was pink,
so were the glasses… too bad the bike was red.
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| The guy in the football shirt and the girl who hearts her boyfriend just showed up randomly and ended up in our photos... |
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| Waiting for the rain to pass. |
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| One of Laos' night buses. Relatively comfortable but quite dirty. |
Next stop was Vientiane, capital of Laos. It had a few
things to see but it’s small and quiet. The area around the Mekong river closes
at 11:30 pm and if caught there by police they demand a hefty bribe of
100-300$, but it’s a good place for the sunset. Most places close by 11:30,
including guesthouses that won’t let you in after that hour, so there’s
practically no nightlife. The national museum is interesting, but awful. It’s
mostly photos but the few written content available is practically unreadable
as it seems like it most likely went through Google Translate. Some random
texts were in French as well. It was a very polarized museum, mostly with
photos of massacre or communist heroes. From this place spun the inside joke of
us calling each other Komrad. Any hero or ally of Laos and communism was a
Komrad while the US was the “American Imperialists and their puppets”.
To some degree I understand the sentiment. In Laos I learned
of the Secret War. Why was this not in my US History textbook? Laos’ position
between Thailand and Vietnam was an unfortunate one. For various reasons,
including wanting to stop forces from North Vietnam going through Laos to get
to the south, and stopping military support from Thailand, Laos was heavily
bombed. VERY heavily bombed. This is a snippet taken from Wikipedia: “As of 2008, Laos is the most heavily bombed country, per
capita, in the world. An average of one B-52 bomb-load was dropped on Laos
every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973.” I know my understanding of the situation is limited, but
more people should know about this. Laos is still ridden with unexploded
ordinance (UXO) and very little is being done about it from responsible
parties.
We split up with the German girl (Therese) and met up with
Cherie from Singapore. She studied Korean at the same school as us and is now
working in Thailand. We also met Matt, whom she was travelling with. He’s
working on his film thesis so I got to geek out a lot about film stuff with
him. Cherie speaks Thai which was great because most Laotians understand a
basic level due to tourism and their love for Thai TV. Together we made our way
up to Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng is a funny place. It’s known for its tubing
scene. The very small town runs along the Mekong river (like most of the places
we went to) where you can rent a tube. They take you upstream and you make your
way down while crossing bars where they throw you ropes so you can come in and
have a drink. When you’re ready to move on you can jump back in and float down
to the next bar. Sounds cool and all except for the fact that it’s a stupid
idea to let a bunch of drunk foreigners float down a strong river with rocks.
There are also swings you can use to jump in. The strong alcohol, drugs and
poor decisions led to an average of 1 dead tourist per month. Now the tubing
scene has mostly died out because things were getting out of hand. We decided to
stay out of the water. Apparently cases of pink-eye are high during rainy
season anyway. Still, Vang Vieng was one of the most amazing places we visited.
It’s surrounded by dark, steep mountains that just seem to shoot out of the
ground. There are many caves to explore that are completely dark and full of
shallow puddles of clear water dripping from the stalactites. It’s easy to get
lost because all you can see is the narrow beam from your flashlight, and there
are deep holes here and there (they are clearly marked, you won’t fall into one
accidentally unless you are not using a flashlight), some so deep we couldn’t
see the bottom. We biked around the countryside and enjoyed some of the most
amazing views of the trip. The town was nice too; since it was off-season there
weren’t too many drunk falangs. They
sold their supposed “Lao traditional sandwich” which didn’t seem too
traditional… but they were packed with fresh lettuce, tomato, cucumber and meat
of your choice for a dollar to a dollar and a half. Top that with a 60 cent
smoothie. Yes, almost all of the smoothies there were 60 cents and that was frikin
awesome. I had 2 a day. Again, one of the places I was unsure about going to
ended up being one of my favorite.
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| Got bored while waiting for the sunset... |
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| A huge gecko with a cicada on its head! |
We had already said goodbye to Anne, and now to Cherie and Matt as well. It was time to go to Luang Prabang. Most minivans were for 10 dollars and took 6 hours. Well the day before we saw some people trying to hitchhike and decided to try it ourselves. We’re still not sure if what we did counted as hitchhiking though. We took off extra early with a sign with the name of the town we wanted to go to written in Lao. We weren’t completely sure if we were doing it right but after 45 minutes nobody took us. We decided to walk a bit and only stop when we saw trucks coming until finally a minivan came up. It seems it’s common to pay a little bit when hitchhiking so we had to negotiate a price. He wanted 10$ each. That’s the regular going price so that wasn’t going to fly. We managed to negotiate 5$ and hopped on. Not only did we save a few bucks (5$ is a lot in Lao!) there was nobody else on the minivan, which will usually be packed, and we didn’t have to make stops for people so we got there in less than 3 hours. Along the way we got to admire Laos’ amazing mountains. Every bathroom break the driver would suddenly stop, announce “pee-pee!” and be done in less than a minute, no time lost. This was the only minivan ride that wasn’t miserable.
By the time we arrived in Luang Prabang it was still
morning. We grabbed some breakfast and made our way to the center to find a
guest house. Most places were quite expensive. “LP,” as we later dubbed the
town, was quite pricy and had fancy bars and restaurants. It was a lot like
Antigua but with French architecture instead. Beautiful town but not too much
to do if you don’t plan on spending much money. And again, no nightlife. At
11:30 it’s lights out everywhere. You then have 30 minutes to get to your
guesthouse before they lock you out. There was an elephant sanctuary, and
elephant tours were the thing to do there but they were a bit out of our
budget. We did go to Kuang Xi, a 30 minute tuk-tuk ride out of town. I was looking
forward to a swim but it happened to be a little cold that day, out of all days
in summer. It still was amazing to see the multiple pools of blue water leading
up to a large waterfall. I was really bummed about not having a tripod then.
Waterfalls just need long exposure, but I was still able to get some decent
shutter speeds by just standing still, leaning on things and relying on the
lens stabilizer. The best part of the trip was to be able to meet other people
on the share tuk-tuk and hang out with them the rest of the day. We caught up
for dinner in what we called the “food alley” which was a dark side street that
filled up with food stands in the evening. They had these street buffets, which
were amazing. It only cost about 1.20$ for an all-you-can-eat vegetarian feast.
(You can’t go a second round though, so you gotta stuff your plate.) I did have
slight issues with allergies, though, but it’s not surprising to find traces of
peanuts in a vegetarian meal. I couldn’t eat one of my buffet meals, but it
didn’t cost me enough to cry over. One of the last things we did was get our
last (4th) massage of the trip. It came with a free fruit shake, so
I had a 5$ massage with a banana shake included, and that doesn’t sound right.
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| Trying to catch a ride. |
By now we had decided to skip Thailand. We overstayed in
Laos (I don’t regret it) and Thailand would basically be buses and trains
without sight-seeing. We did the math and it was cheaper to just fly straight
to Malaysia, but we still had one last stop. Nong Khiaw is a ways off. You have
to take a minivan ride (I don’t remember how long it was, but any minivan ride
is too long) to a town called Muong Ngoi and then take a boat for an hour
upstream. It just so happens that a very hot and sunny day suddenly became
heavy, sideways rain as soon as we got on the boat. It had a small, low roof
but we mostly got wet and so did my bag. Our original plan was to trek to one
of Nong Khiaw’s surrounding villages called Banna but almost had to cancel due
to rain. We took off as soon as it got low and made it just before sunset. The
views were amazing and there were more butterflies than a sanctuary. At the
village we stopped at the only guesthouse for about 3.5$ a night. We dropped our
bags and walked around the rice patties and village but most of our hellos were
met with stares. I guess, despite the guesthouse, they still weren’t very used
to foreigners. We got back just before dark to lay in our hammocks and stare at
the mountains over the rice patties as the sun went down. Dinner was just a few
options available off the menu which the kind lady there prepared for us. They
had no drinks, just 2 warm sprite cans, so it was a good thing I brought a lot
of water with me. Next morning it was back to Nong Khiew where we took another
cheap bungalow by the river with hammocks and food brought straight to the
balcony. That was just a bunch of amazing time doing nothing but relaxing and
staring at the river and massive grasshoppers that occasionally came by. The
only downside was the bedbugs, but I guess it was fortunate that we only had
this incident once. Laos is infamous for its bed bugs since they don’t really
clean the beds often in guesthouses, and it was a regular event to see other
travelers covered in bites. From there it was all riding back to Vientiane for
our flight. We spent a night there and came across this Korean we had briefly
met in a bar back at Luang Prabang. I had dinner with him and a Japanese guy he
was with called Leonardo… It was very interesting because there were too many
languages going on at once. The Korean spoke English and Korean, while the
Japanese spoke a little English and Spanish on top of his Japanese. It took me a few seconds to choose a language
and then form a sentence. It was my first time really getting to practice
Japanese out of class as well. We had a good time with beers over the sunset
until it rained.
The next morning it was time to fly to Malaysia, where I
didn’t do much more than relax, eat (so far I’d say Malaysia has the best food
in South East Asia) and hang out with Keat and Ming Rui, a friend from
Singapore who quit the scholarship. (We stayed with him when we went there last
winter.) Not too much to say about our time there. Our trip was pretty much
over.
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| Another lightning storm. |
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