Lovely, lovely Laos, part two

It was with a heavy heart that we left Luang Prabang - not only had we fallen on love with this town, our journey south signified the last stage of our trip. Once we left Laos, there were only two weeks remaining to rejuvenate ourselves on the Thai islands... I know, I'm really tugging at everyone's heart strings right now. Pity us, and our wonderful holiday!

But first, we still had Vang Vieng and Vientiane to consume: the first being the infamous tubing town; the second the über-relaxed capital of this small nation.

The bus trip (actually it was a minivan-such luxury!) from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng was a vast improvement to our previous transport experience, and one that took us through the back streets of the Laos countryside, over the tops of mountain passes, through lush jungle-clad valleys and along patched up roads that had been hit by landslides. At one point the paved road just disappeared off the edge of a cliff, and to the left were two old guys digging out the mountainside to carve a new path for us to drive along. The landscape in Laos is spectacular. I don't think I have seen so many lush shades of green in such a short space of time. Rice paddy fields swayed next to swathes of old jungle forest - surely some of the last remaining in the world - their canopies reaching up to the sky where they are met by karst-like peaks that carve their way through the clouds, giving way to scrub and hardier plants that can only survive at such altitudes. It really was a paradise of flora, with so many different varieties, all in the same breathtaking scene.

Here's one I paved earlier...

After six hours of bumpiness and in parts, a painstakingly slow ride (our driver seemed to have no confidence in his brakes; instead choosing to drive down each mountain in first gear and at a speed of 10 km/h, we arrived safely in Vang Vieng, back on the riverbanks of the Mekong and in the loving embrace of what seemed like 10,000 hostels looking for business. Vang Vieng used to receive backpackers in their droves - gap yaahs and 'never go homes' who were seeking thrills and pleasures by sailing down the Mekong in a rubber tube, while being hauled into bars along the riverbank to ingest vast quantities of alcohol and happy pizzas. That is, until numpties started dying along the way because they'd get so off chops and hurl themselves into the river off zip lines and end up banging their heads on rocks and drowning. Fun times! So, last year the Laos government decided to close the whole enterprise down, leaving just three bars in business and a whole load of accommodation sitting empty. Still, better that than people killing themselves. I suppose...

The river wild...

Even though the experience was clearly a fraction of days gone by, we still caught a glimpse of what it must have been like in the heady naughties. You collect your rubber tube in the morning and catch a tuk tuk to a place about three kilometres upriver. Once wedged into our homes for the day, we started to float downstream, karsts on either side of us, with houses dotted along the riverbank interspersed with washing lines and fishermen. The organisers are clearly keen for you to start drinking early as the first stop-off was only 100 metres or so down the river. Water bottles attached to long lengths of rope are hurled into the water which you duly catch and then wait to be dragged onto shore. Once back on terra firma we were given our first Laos whiskey of the day (actually doesn't taste too bad, but is way stronger than it feels), before settling down for a couple of beers while watching the young'uns play a good ol' game of beer pong. Once lubricated, it was time to pick up our tubes and continue downriver to the next bar. More shots, more beer, hot sunshine and really bad music certainly made for a surreal experience, and there were clearly some festive goers who refused to let go of long-forgotten heady days. Body paint came out (not sure how well that goes down once back on the river), singing ensued and we could tell that for some people things were going to get messy. After a couple more hours it was back to our tubes of joy for the next leg of our journey and down to the final bar of the day. I won't deny that by this point the Laos whiskey had started to take effect and things started to get a little hazy. We'd been told that the float back to town was at least another hour down the river and under no circumstances could we arrive back any later than 6pm - not only to ensure you get your deposit back on the tube, but also to make sure you're not sailing along the Mekong in the pitch black and inadvertently heading back to Luang Prabang because you missed the last stop. So, at 5pm we set off on our merry way expecting a relaxing last hour on the water. Bearing in mind we had no way to tell the time on the water, we were completely clueless as to how much further we had to go. Was it around the next bend? As the sun set, the need to 'paddle' (who would have thought that thongs would make such good oars?) became all the more urgent, and our last thirty minutes of floating through paradise were spent concentrating on reaching our destination as fast as possible, all the while sitting in a rubber ring, quite tipsy and with no sense of direction. As the final light started to fade, we saw up ahead people clambering out of the river and hobbling over rocks to what looked like a make-shift path back to town. We paddled furiously to this speck in the distance and got out just as the sky and the Mekong blended into each other under the cover of darkness. I somehow managed to lose my thongs as I was getting out of my tube (two pairs in a week, so unfair!), and they are now probably half way to China. Still, get home we did, and with full desposits rembursed - hurrah! I'm ashamed to say it certainly wasn't a late one, and I was tucked up in bed by 9pm, such is my inability to cope with daytime drinking these days! It was probably for the best though, as the next morning we had an 8am bus down to the capital, Vientiane.

Our journey was fine and swift, not nearly as grand as the trip from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, but still worthy of spectacular countryside views, accompanied by a few good iPod tunes. Vientiane has more of a large town feel to it than a capital city. No one beeps, shouts, pushes past you or vyes to get your custom. Food is cheap and the beer is cheaper, and the only architecture that gives away this city's capital status are a few communist-esque government buildings lined along the river that look over beautiful ancient temples and somewhat detract from their mysticism.

Rush hour in Vientiane 

We only had one night here, as we'd decided to cut our financial losses and fly down to Phuket the next day for extra beach time on the islands. We checked in to a rather strange hostel, run by a worn out Aussie who looked like he should have given up going to raves 20 years ago, but was still clinging on to his 'yoof' by dancing to spaced out ambient music and chatting to his ever-so-young ladyboy wife. (Sadly, Vientiane has its fair share of dirty old western men leering after young beautiful Laos women). After downing bags we set off to explore (well, mainly eat) our way through the town. The food was delicious to say the least and all of what we had come to expect from Laos cuisine. Papaya salad for me; Laos pho for Ais. By evening, we had ventured into the night market in the hope of finding replacement thongs/flip flops (just to clarify) for me, but instead ended up scoffing our faces on salted deep-fried fish and tofu and bbq'd lamb sausages. Money well spent and a great way to finish our Laos outing. 

This was a 500 g fish, and I ate him all. Too fishy for Ais, apparently!

And so, the next day we were up and out early, and on our way to the airport for our very last stop-off: two weeks of doing and achieving nothing, somewhere on a beach in Thailand, where we will no doubt reflect on all the wondrous things we have seen and done over the last six months.

Lovely, lovely Laos - part 1

Luang Prabang 

Laos was never part of our original itinerary; we planned to head straight to Vietnam and then Thailand. But, because Laos borders both these countries, and we were trying to save money (badly) by travelling overland, it seemed an obvious stop-off point. Plus, I have always wanted to visit after hearing such wonderful stories from fellow travellers.

A quick word on Laos history: Laos is the most heavily bombed country on the planet, to date. During the Vietnam war (a war that Laos was not combatant in) the U.S. army dropped over 200 million bombs on this small country, in a bid to close off the Ho Chi Minh route that was plying weapons across the border into Vietnam. That is more bombs than were dropped during the whole of World War II... On one small country. As a result, it is estimated that 80 million 'bombies', or cluster bombs, remain undetonated across the Laos countryside, rendering much of the land on which this poor nation relies, unusable. Even so, Laos people have to risk their lives every day in order to grow food and sustain a living, and over 100 people die each year by accidentally stepping on, ploughing over or inadvertently picking up a bomb. Children often collect cluster bombs and use them as toys, and more recently, a black market is growing for weapons memorabilia to be sold overseas at a high price; a price locals are increasingly willing to risk with their own lives in order to feed their families.

Until recently, the U.S. government refused to even acknowledge this atrocity, and from what research I have done, I can't find any evidence that it is taught in U.S. schools. At the moment, one of the only countries supplying aid in the form of bomb removal experts, prosthetics specialists and awareness is Australia. I do not often put forward articles, but I was so moved by what we saw and believe very strongly in the support that is being given, I've attached this article for you to peruse at will.

http://aid.dfat.gov.au/Publications/Pages/9237_184_8953_7961_6055.aspx

OK, history lesson over with; lets get on with the wonder of Laos: its people, its landscapes, its food, its beer and its towns, all come together to form what might be for me, the perfect SE Asian country. Laos is just gorgeous. From the minute we stepped off the bus to the moment our plane left Vientiane; we soaked up and absorbed Laos' utter beauty like two giant sponges. 

As our tuk tuk drove us into Luang Prabang we were met by hundreds of candlelit lanterns floating into the sky. The city had celebrated its yearly Festival of Lights and we were fortunate enough to catch the last remaining flames before they disappeared into the ether forever. We quickly located some digs, chowed down on a Laos baguette and slept deeply after our immense bus journey.

The next day we explored the old town. Luang Prabang is an UNESCO World Heritage site (the whole town, not just a few buildings...), and its streets are lined with numerous temples, all intricately designed with painstaking care and skill, painted in hues of green, blue and red and lacquered in gold relief. It's like walking through a peaceful technicolour dream. Monks aged eight to 80 live in these auspicious structures and can often be seen walking through Luang Prabang's streets in their vivid orange robes, adding a sense of tranquility and ancient mysticism to the place. The monks still receive alms from the local population every day at 6 am. It is considered a precious and sacred ceremony but one we did not want to intrude upon.

Shoes off before entering the nice temple please...

The Buddhist tree of life

In between the ancient temples and Buddhist traditions colonial French architecture proudly looks on, giving the town a distinct European feel. Add to this the gushing of the mighty Mekong, on which this town stands and you have a truly unique place where you could spend many weeks soaking up the atmosphere, and just be.

As if this wasn't enough, Laos cuisine is some of the finest we've tasted - a melting pot that borrows from different cultures, yet is still distinctly Laotian. Croissants, French pastries and coffee are sold for breakfast; at lunch you might choose between a foot-long baguette, or a Thai-style pancake filled with cheese or chocolate; and at dinner you can sample anything from laap salad to Vietnamese-style noodle soups to the famous Laos curry, or eat the finest green papaya salad I have ever tasted, all made in front of you at the night market.

Yep, that's my papaya salad he's making. You even get to taste it before you buy!

To cap it all off, everything is ridiculously cheap. Dinner can be yours for as little as $1.20, a whole carp stuffed with lemongrass will set you back just under $4 and a 640 ml bottle of beer Laos costs a mere $1.10. AND there are more vegetarian options than you can shake a stick at. So lets just say we ate and drank very well...

 In fact, we fell in love with the food so much that we signed up for a cooking course the following day. Starting early, we were treated to a cooking demonstration of nine dishes, including Laos' famous chilli paste. Of these dishes we got to cook five of our choice. Me, being the sole non-meat eater got a cooking station all to myself, which was probably for the best as I do have a tendency to act executive chef when I'm in the kitchen (although I'm sure none of you have ever witnessed this trait in me...!). Our day started at the local market where we were shown an array of weird and wonderful food for sale: from Burmese pythons to crabs in little wicker harnesses to a type of bark that is used to smoke food from the inside. Buffalo was sold in every permutation possible (tastes like beef, according to Ais): Huge blocks of congealed buffalo blood to flavour soups, buffalo burgers, buffalo steaks, buffalo sausages and not forgetting dried buffalo skin all ensure every part of the animal is used. After collecting our ingredients we headed back to the restaurant for our very own edition of Masterchef.

Python? Tastes like chicken.

The latest in must-have crab fashion accessories - you're very own live crab bangle!

We started off with a classic Luang Prabang salad - nothing fancy, consisting of watercress, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and egg, but taken to a whole new level with the addition of a special homemade mayonnaise - a recipe I just have to share with you for its deliciousness and simplicity. No blender required here!

2 hard-boiled egg yolks

2 tablespoons olive oil

1-2 tablespoons white vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

Use a mortar and pestle to pound the egg yolks into a fine paste. Add the remaining ingredients and adjust the seasoning to taste. Use as a salad dressing or as a dip for chips. Mind-blowingly simple and unbelievably tasty. This is definitely my new mayonnaise of choice; although you do end up wasting the egg whites, which is a pity.

We then made stir-fried noodles, Laos-style, which required us to make a fried noodle pancake in a wok before mixing through an egg and adding our vegetables of choice. Voila! And lunch was served.

Luang Prabang salad...

In the afternoon, I opted to make a laap salad with delicious banana flower as the star ingredient, and with enough punch to make it linger on your palate for the rest of the day. I then made a tofu and pea aubegine red curry served with sticky rice and a large helping of fish sauce. This was to be dinner, which we ate approximately three hours after lunch, and therefore sadly under appreciated because we were all still so full! Still, we came away with all the recipes and I'm sure we'll be having a Laos dinner party pretty soon after we get home. You guys bring the beer and we'll do the cooking!

'Did you mean to put that sauce in there?' Ais and Ian get to grips with Laos red curry.

The following day was a wash out (it literally didn't stop raining for 12 hours), so we whiled away the hours sipping coffee and eating pastries to our hearts' content. Sometimes, it's just bliss to do nothing. That night, we met up again with the lovely Ben and Alex and sauntered through the night market, where the tourist 'tat' is not only half decent, but also half the price (if that's possible) of Thailand and Vietnam. At the food market we scoffed our faces with fish and an all-you-can-eat vegan buffet, before finishing the evening at a bar overlooking one of the Mekong's estuaries. And, where I sadly had my favourite havianias stolen from an opportunistic tourist who obviously took a shine to them. That's the last time I leave my shoes at the door!

Friends reunited

On our last day we all took a tuk tuk out to the local 'cascadas', which came with a surprise bear sanctuary attached to it. Here, rescued sun bears from as far away as India come to live out their days in peaceful environs after a life often filled with cruelty and abuse. Apparently in Laos, there is still a demand for bear bile (yes, it is as gross as it sounds), as it is considered a delicacy. And although you don't have to kill a bear to extract said bile, the process is somewhat akin to the cruelty associated with foie gras and definitely doesn't have the bear's best interests at heart. So, when you visit Laos, go say hi to the bears, but don't eat the vile bile! Of course, The waterfalls were beautiful, as waterfalls are wont to be and many-a picture postcard picture was taken. 

A bear in a hammock? There must be a pun in there somewhere. Send your answers to...

I told you they were pretty...

At night we took a small boat (and I mean small: less than a metre wide and close enough to the water to ensure one awkward step would put us all in the drink. I have no idea why no one wanted to have me in their boat!) to the other side of the river, where a small restaurant draped in fairy lights awaited us. We dined on the finest Laos food ($7 - expensive by Laos standards) and drank beer and wine under the starry sky. After successfully navigating the river back to the mainland we farewelled our friends for the third and final time, and made our bleary-eyed way home to bed, for the next day we were taking a minivan to Laos' party (by Laos standards anyway) and tubing capital: Vang Vieng.

Thank you Luang Prabang for being what you are. May you never change and may you reign long as a hidden gem in the middle of the South-East Asian jungle. Adios.

The bus trip - Ha noi to Luang Prabang.

So, 30-hour bus trips. I don't recommend them, funnily enough. 'What?' I hear you cry. What could be more pleasurable than spending 30 hours in exactly the same position in a space the size of a small coffin, where you are neither sitting up or lying down; precariously perched on the 'top bunk' with no bathroom and emergency exits, while you are driven over some of most hair-raising roads we've ever been on, and your only company is your iPod, Kindle and a packet of Pringles. For 30 hours! And we weren't even entirely convinced we were going to Luang Prabang!

Ok, maybe it wasn't quite that bad, and for once my small stature paid dividends as I could lie out while poor Ais had to keep her legs bent the whole time. How anyone over six feet would cope; I have no idea.

Our travelling companions for this leg were five English girls from Essex (no judgement) who were all of 21 and heading to Vang Vieng to get, "fucking wasted, man!" We eventually crossed the border after 12 hours of travelling, a relatively painless experience given the wonderful courtesy of Laos immigration. The girls, however, turned out not to be quite so lucky. At the border they asked with great difficulty to retrieve something from their bags (if the locals can't understand you just start shouting at them and waving your arms around as though your playing drunken charades; that's bound to help clarify the situation!), and after eventually getting the message across were rewarded to find a stowaway puppy in the luggage hold who had (unsurprisingly, and probably from fear) pooed itself all over their backpacks. They were not happy campers....

The next 12 hours were spent navigating Laos' many unpaved roads, where recent landslides had washed away the Tarmac, leaving in places only a dirt track to drive upon. It was certainly slow-going and kudos to our bus driver who didn't send us plummeting to our deaths over the numerous sheer drops that descended from Route 13. Now, we knew at some point the bus was either going to take a detour or either us or the girls were going to have to catch another bus, as Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng  are in opposite directions. When we finally stopped and the girls were asked to jump off we presumed we must be in Vang Vieng. As we'd been travelling for so long we thought we might as well get off too and head to Luang Prabang the following day, as it was getting late and we hadn't booked accommodation. I got off the bus with the girls to enquire if the town was actually Vang Vieng. The town, or rather village, was extremely small and quiet for such a known party paradise, and our suspicions started to get raised. Our bus driver knew exactly what we were asking, but feigned not to understand and before we knew it he was back on the bus and driving away leaving the girls and me on the roadside. Suddenly I was running after it shouting "Luang Prabang, Luang Prabang", with Ais on the inside hassling the driver to stop to let me back on board. The bus slowed, the doors opened and I was literally dragged on to the bus by the scruff of my neck! Once back on, we were told the next stop would be Luang Prabang in another four hours. 

It was certainly a close shave and I spent the next four hours thoroughly relieved that I'd been reunited with Ais and my belongings.

A few days later we bumped into the girls in Luang Prabang who informed us they'd actually been dumped in a village three hours from Vang Vieng with no bus connection. They had to spend the night together in one bed at a truckstop with no food or water, as there was no cash machine for them to withdraw money from. The next day they scraped together their remaining US dollars to hire a minivan to take them to their destination.

So in light of all that, Ais and I felt as though we'd had a lucky escape and were fortunate enough to end up where our ticket said it was taking us. The Vietnamese scam strikes again!

But now, over to Laos - a country that could not be more different in temperament and atmosphere, and somewhere we completely fell in love with...