Matt and Kylie

Vientiane – last stop in Laos

We arrived in Vientiane from Vang Vieng in a mini-van, a little miffed at having to pay almost the same price for that trip as we did when we went from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng (which was actually a ticket from Luang Prabang to Vientiane -  we just got off early.)  We scrambled round and found a nice wee guesthouse that was recommended by Lonely Planet which naturally, had increased in price since the listing.  We have found so far that as soon as Lonely Planet list something, the proprietors up the price to meet the demand influx.  Understandable I suppose, we learnt quickly to take guide book prices as a rough guide – just add 30-50%.  We ended up staying here for two nights before relocating to the guesthouse next door due to the first having renovations.

We spent our first night as we usually do – wandering around the town, figuring out what’s what.  We found a market (we have found the markets in South East Asia and Hong Kong to be glorious treasure troves!) and turned down the offer from a shop keeper to buy a New Zealand cycling top – the kiwi’s must have made an impact in the Olympics, we were the only country represented on the counterfeited cycling top rack.  Matt was offered some weed on the corner by a tuk tuk driver which was politely declined (this turned into a regular nightly routine), and we marveled at the millions of fairy lights the locals had put up to decorate their stalls in the market and shops in the street.  Later on, we were flicking through the cable TV channels when we found an International computer game contest, complete with narration being broadcast… odd.

Vientiane, we decided is possibly the sleepiest capital city ever, and with a population of 200,000, it is Laos’ biggest city.  It was an odd juxtaposition; there was hardly anyone around and the traffic was light – yet mingled in with the tuk tuks and jumbos we saw a Hummer and a Lamborghini cruising the streets.  The street signs tended to be in French and English, and the Pedestrian crossings were present but regarded by locals as decoration and not to be trusted.  While we were there, Vientiane experienced the coldest snap it had had in years – so cold that the guesthouse receptionists were huddled up in wooly jerseys clinging to hot water bottles.  They stared at us open mouthed when we strolled out for the day decked out in shorts and t-shirt.  With the temperature measuring in the low twenties, I think we were as stunned as they were.

We headed to the Lao National Museum on our first full day in Vientiane,  which was by far better than what we expected.  Here we saw an original jar from the famous mysterious Plain of Jar’s as well as ancient artifacts, war memorabilia and dinosaur bones that have all been recovered in Laos, sporadically labeled in English and French.  It was good to see Laos so fiercely proud of its past, celebrating it’s history in a manner we did not expect for a country in such a developing state.  By the afternoon, Matt was starting to feel pretty run down and tired, so we headed out to dinner thinking perhaps he needed a good meal and an early night.  We found a divine steakhouse, run by a French man who served the best chicken steak with mushroom sauce ever.  

After not being quite ‘right’ for our whole time in Laos, we felt it was time to get Matt to a Doctor.  All of the information we had on Laos had reported that in the event of a serious medical condition or injury, to head to Bangkok as Laos is not equipped to deal with much more than tropical diseases and stubbed toes.  There was however a 24 hour international clinic at the hospital (staffed by the regular hospital staff with some Doctor’s that speak English) and an appointment-only clinic at the Australian Embassy with an Australian Doctor that will service all peoples of Commonwealth Countries (there is no New Zealand Embassy in Laos).  I tried to call the Australian Embassy in the afternoon, to no avail.  Matt assured me he would be fine until morning so we decided to try again then.  After a horrific night, with Matt ludicrously unwell and me continually asking if we should make our way to the 24 hour clinic, we decided our best bet was to head to the Australian Embassy.  After trying six different phone numbers – none of which worked, we headed blindly to the clinic with Matt feeling slightly better but still very unwell.

We managed to find a tuk tuk to take us out there who headed in the complete opposite direction to what the Lonely Planet map said but who took us to the right place.  After passing through the rigmaroles of the security clearance where they took our cameras, laptop and cell phone, went through our bags and sent us through the metal detector, we finally made it to a Doctor who saw us straight away.

Immediately concerned, the Doctor ran tests for Dengue Fever and Malaria as well as general analysis.  He was very impressed when we showed him our vast supply of prescription drugs the Travel Doctor had set us up with and sent us on our way to return in a couple of hours – he had to leave to do a prison visit.  It turns out Matt had a kidney infection which explains why he had been so run down.  The Doctor recommended a double dose of the antibiotics that we had been carting round since New Zealand and another test about 10 days later.  With that we were on our way, relived to finally have an answer.  The acute stage of the illness was over after 72 hours straight of two paracetamol every four hours to control the fever and the kidney pain, and we were given the okay to make our way to the bus station the next afternoon to get to Nong Khai, Thailand to catch a train to Bangkok.  We did manage to squeeze in a wee bit more sightseeing before heading to the station.

The following morning, we first headed out to Patuxai, the ‘Victory Gate,’ a local version of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  The Lao were a bit cheeky here, they stole the design from Paris, added elaborate Buddhist embellishment, made it have four gates instead of two and made it a couple of meters higher than the original to spite the French.  They then used concrete donated by the United States that was meant for a new airport to build it.  Matt wasn’t feeling up to clambering up the seven flights of stairs to the top with me, so I ploughed up by myself to see the sights and snap the photos.  It was an impressive view, the park surrounding it and the view of Vientiane made it well worth it.

On the way out we giggled at the sign adhered to the side of the structure, which sounded a lot like it had been copied from a guide book, not only giving the location of the gate, but describing it saying ‘From a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete.’  hee.

Next up we ventured over to Pha That Luang, completely oblivious that it was lunch time and like most things would be closed, although we still managed to scout around the outside where we got the best overall view.  Pha That Luang is the most important religious monument in Laos, a three layered gilded stupa.  As the National Symbol, it features on the Laos notes and coins and dates back to 1566.  After a quick walk round, we headed to back to the guesthouse to pick up our packs and out to the bus station where we boarded a bus to take us over the Thailand-Laos Friendship Bridge – our first land border on wheels!

Vang Vieng

Our 229km trip from Luang Prabang took a mere seven and a half hours on a air conditioned bus travelling on a road similar to the Rimutaka’s.  With a greener taint to our skin than what we started, and a few more photos on the card (surprise surprise) we arrived in Vang Vieng.  A bus to Vang Vieng specifically does not exist, so we clambered on the bus to Vientiane and scampered off early instead.

Vang Vieng is famous for being a break in the epic bus trip from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, and for its tubing.  Consisting mainly of three streets, a hospital, a bus station and a couple of tubing shops next to the river.  Having seen ‘Tubing in the Vang Vieng’ t-shirts on loads of travelers all over South East Asia we were fairly determined to give it a crack.

As we hadn’t booked any accommodation (as per usual) we found ourselves a guesthouse by slyly hopping off the tuk tuk transfer from the bus station at the same place some fellow back packers had booked at.  It turned out to be a good spot so we set out to find some dinner.

We spent our first day trotting through the town, scoping out the best fruit shake shops.  The cafes are filled with re-runs of friends episodes and movies.  Vang Vieng’s activities are mainly exploring the caves, rock climbing and tubing, where you hop into a large tractor tyre tubes and float down the river.  With Matt still feeling fairy run down, and the Luang Prabang caves paling in comparison to the Vietnamese, we decided on tubing for the second day and relaxing for the first.  The tubing didn’t work out though, the second day was fairly overcast and to chilly to be in togs, so we ended up watching a fair few friends episodes!

There were a few interesting people around, at brunch one morning, we were sitting in a cafe with wi-fi when suddenly a British guy came barreling out from the back of the restaurant, clearly having just rolled out of bed dressed in a dirty ratty, holey toweling bathrobe and turfed out a pack of American tourists.  He came over to our table afterwards and told us they had been arguing with the wait staff over the ‘freshness’ of the orange juice.  He told them that the menu was written by a local and offered them a menu written in Lao to test their proficiency in foreign languages, cut off the wi-fi and biffed them out.  An interesting way to handle the situation.

Vang Vieng was all good though, a nice way to spend a couple of days in a sleepy wee village chilling out.

Luang Prabang

We finally made it to Luang Prabang  on the third of January after the slow (who would have thought?) slow boat.  Our first impressions of Luang Prabang was that it reminded us of Hoi An (Vietnam) but without the hundreds of tailor shops – a sleepy wee riverside town with perhaps a French flavour.  It is the former capital of Laos and a World Heritage protected city.  We found ourselves a nice wee guesthouse and settled in.  Luang Prabang seemed pretty expensive compared to Vietnam, China and Northern Thailand – but apparently it is the most touristy place to go.  The souvenir shops housed scarves for USD$200 (to be fair they were lovely), while the streets were lined with markets (more our style), crepe and shake shops and corner stores that sold Tim Tams (Oh my god!  Tim Tams in Laos!)  

Anywho, we had our hopes up that we were well and truly over or food poisoning – no such luck!  Matt came down with a fierce fever which knocked him out of action for a while.  Thinking he was badly dehydrated from the food poisoning, I pumped him full of panadol and rehydration sachets and he seemed to put him back in action the following day.  Luckily he recuperated enough to discover a new-favourite beer; Beer Lao Dark.

We headed out for a day trip to Pak Ou caves, stopping on the way to see the ‘Whisky Village,’ a tourist trap where they allegedly make ‘Laolao’ (local rice whisky) and you can see how they do it.  We didn’t see any whisky, only thousands of scarves and linens for sale. 

The caves and the village was accessed by a wee river boat – a much smaller version of the slow boat we had come down from Huay Xai on.  It took two hours sailing North on the Mekong to access the cave, and one hour back.  Set in the limestone cliffs, this trip seemed comparatively quick, but freezing cold.  The Pak Ou caves are considered a sacred place for Lao people, it is used almost as a ‘graveyard’ for Buddha images that have become to old and damaged to be used in the Wat (temple).  The caves were filled with thousands of small Buddha statues varying in material and size from a couple of centimeters to a couple of feet. The statues at the back looked like lumps of wood, most were dusty and a few had a bit of gold paint left.  It was less impressive than what we imagined, but was still worth the trip.

What we found more interesting was the people outside the caves making a living by selling live birds in small bamboo cages for a couple of dollars.  It seemed such a bizarre proposition – ‘Buy bird one dohl-lar,’ until someone explained that you buy them to set them free, then they go and catch them again and sell them to the next sap.  I resisted the urge to buy an owl in a cage for Granny and bring it back to NZ for her so she would have a real one for the collection, because Matt assured me that customs would have issues with it – but I did manage to snap a photo!

After heading back into town for lunch, we headed out in a mini-van to the Kung Si waterfalls.  We  thought we had it made with only four of us spaced out in the luxury air conditioned van… until we pulled over and were booted out into a jam packed van, squished into the front seat.  We stopped at the Bear Rescue Centre (where the biggest, nastiest looking spider was hanging out) on the way into the national park where Asiatic Black Bears had been rescued from poachers.  The Kung Si waterfalls are 29km South of Luang Prabang, and were a multi-story waterfall, similar to the falls in Kanchanaburi (Thailand).  They had a fantastic colour to them, kind of like the Huka falls (NZ).  We traipsed up to the top of the waterfalls, then to the top of the hill before heading to another Minority Village/tourist trap and back to Luang Prabang all worn out.

The next day we spent time wandering around Luang Prabang to the sounds of ‘Sab-a-deee’ (Hello in Laoation), and went to the Markets (I couldn’t drag Matt away… you can imagine!)  The night markets had every souvenir possible – loads of silk duvet covers, cushion covers and pillow sets, beer Lao t-shirts, crafts, watches and paintings.  The Lao people have quite a distinctive style. 

We went to the former Royal Palace, now the Luang Prabang National Museum and saw the old Royal cars and bits and bobs.  Laos no longer has a Royal Family.

There were random things to be seen of course; an electrical plug in a tree – for all those times you need an electrical socket when walking down the street; trays of cashew nuts and chilli’s drying in the sun, tables of knives for sale and cats with no tails.  For some reason all over South East Asia, cats have stubs instead of tails.  Random.

Our final morning in Luang Prabang saw me up bright and early before dawn, (somebody else couldn’t quite make it out of bed..) to see the Monks collect their alms from the kneeling villagers and tourists.  There was about a dozen of tourists there.  It was a picturesque ceremony with gongs and scores of monks streaming past in single file, pausing briefly to receive food.  Apparently there have been problems with unscrupulous locals selling unsuitable and unsafe food to the keen tourists wanting to take part, resulting in the monks falling ill after consuming the food.  Because of this, the Monks have been resistant to continue with the tradition however, the government have told them that they are to continue the ceremony for the tourists, or they will be replaced with Lao people dressed in saffron robes to keep up appearances and tourist money rolling in.  I’m really glad I got to see it, it was a unique thing to witness – Matt missed out on a treat!

We boarded a bus later that morning and headed to Vang Vieng, 229-ish km South of Luang Prabang.

Slow Boat to Luang Prabang

We woke fairly early to get the whole getting to Laos process underway. We continued with our all inclusive package with a short 5 minute minivan ride down to the river crossing point. Clearing Thai Immigration was a piece of cake as all we had to do was queue for 5 minutes to get our exit stamp and then jump on a small little river boat to be shuttled across to Laos. This was actually the first time we were going to be crossing an (almost) land border on our trip (and in our entire lives for that matter) which is pretty shocking when I think about it as we initially set out to do most of the trip overland… oh well… I guess we will just have to admit that we are not true doing it on the cheap backpackers and like to throw the odd flight in here and there.

After the short little boat ride we jumped off on to the muddy banks of the Mekong on the Laos side and walked up the hill to Laos Immigration. This turned out to probably be the most unorganised messy Immigration stop I’ve ever completed. There was literally a scrum of people trying to get to the Visa window to purchase their visas – some poor chaps got to the front only to discover that they needed to fill out a form first so were forced to fill it out and then wait another 40 minutes in the line – we didn’t make that mistake but didn’t enjoy the constant line cutting from cheeky tour group leaders and snarky old package tour European tourists. We eventually managed to pay the fees and then line up in another line for the actual stamps and what not you need to actually get in the country – it took about 2 hours in the end I think. One thing I did find funny was that it cost $30US for us as New Zealanders to buy the visa but it costs Canadians $42US – I wonder what Canada did to piss Laos off?

After walking out of Immigration we managed to some how find the boat company we were meant to be going with and had to wait around in their office for a bit while we waited for enough people to get the transfer to the slow boat dock. Eventually we got taken around to the place that the boats leave from only to have to wait in a cafe for over an hour while they waited for more people to come across the border to fill the boat up more… well I assume that’s what they were doing. Once they were seemingly happy with the numbers of people they sat us down and gave us a weird little speech about how all the tour companies only tell you about the boat but there is another option of taking a minivan in one day to Luang Prabang… we had been told about this tactic by an Australian couple we met in Vietnam who told us that they had met up with some people who took this option on their trip and had experienced a 20 hour hell ride… so we just laughed and decided not to take them up on their offer… after another half hour of waiting around we finally got to go to the boat where we discovered that there were already a lot of people on board with almost all of the seats taken. That made waiting in a cafe up the road seem even more weird to me, but I guess it may have been a tactic to try and get more people to take the minivan which was “leaving right now.”

Once on the boat we managed to get a couple of plastic chairs that were actually pretty comfy and we settled in for the supposed 5-6 hour journey. It was a fairly pleasant journey and in between checking out the scenery, reading and talking to people we managed to pass the time easily. We stopped every so often to pick up or drop off some locals – one time a bunch of kids scrambled on to the boat to sell packets of chips, coke and beer etc. I was still feeling pretty crappy from the food poisoning incident and had been spewing the night before after jumping back into the food and beer to soon for my stomach’s liking so couldn’t fully partake in the beer Laos drinking as much as I would have liked, but I still managed to knock back a couple which took the chill out of me a bit – it was actually pretty cold on the boat… I guess it is winter after all! 7.5 hours after we left we arrived in Pak Beng and found a place to stay, we skipped dinner and went straight to sleep… both pretty damn tired.

The next day we got up for a 9.00am departure and found we were going to be travelling on a different boat for the day. A much smaller and more uncomfortable boat. We arrived early enough to get a seat but a few people missed out and so had to sit where ever they could. Compared to this boat the boat from the first day was luxury. There were 5 New Zealanders on the boat including us and Kylie had a good chat to a couple coming home from two years in the UK. It took 8.5 hours to reach Luang Prabang, by which time my arse was pretty damn sore, I was completely de-hydrated, starting to run a temperature and feeling pretty crappy. Overall I guess its one of those things that I’m glad I’ve done for the experience but I probably won’t be in a hurry to do it again any time soon.