So, with our backpacks packed again, and our passports safely in our hands, we jumped on the backpacker express for the 7 hour ride to the border town of Chiang Kong. After arriving at 3am, we rolled into bed for a 3hour power-snooze, up again at 6am for a quick breakfast before the border. The Thai side was extremely painless... the Lao side was a more interesting experience. We arrived just after the passports of 60 or so Chinese tourists were handed over by their tour guides for their visas on arrival. There were 2 American ladies next, then us. Naturally, the visa officers started working on the Chinese passports first. Only fair as they were there first right? Well after about 10 mins the American ladies in front (and I mean ladies, one was maybe in her 40s and the other late 50s?) suddenly remembered that they were Americans! And so they started harassing the visa guys with “hello?! We are American! Hello, the American passports are next! Can we have our visas now? Excuse me! American!” of course the visa guys don't speak English, so they would just pick up the American passports as if to say, your passports are here, then go back to processing the Chinese visas.. this went on for about 40 mins, until all the Chinese visas were processed, then they did the Americans, obviously as they were next. The Americans then left, happily chatting amongst themselves about how slack the Lao visa process was and how crazy it was that even Americans had to wait! Their American package tour leader then lectured them in being “more aggressive”. Even though we aren't Americans, and although we didn't harass the visa guys, our visas were processed in a matter of seconds and we even got smiles! Strange that!
And so we entered Laos, with not much of a plan, other then to get as far away from the other tourists as possible!
Out of the hundreds of tourists who crossed the border with us, only 4 of us took the bus north to the town of Luang Namtha, everyone else did the super-touristy boat trip to Luang Prabang. And so Sara from America (who cringed at our border crossing story) and David from England became our new travel buddies! We had heard not-so-great stories about Luang Namtha, and to us that is just more reason to go! We loved it!There were still tourists but hardly any and everyone was just soooo friendly! We stayed in a great little guest house off the main road, played boche and drank beer Lao with some super friendly locals outside the courthouse (?!), ate waaaay tooo many amazingly delicious baguettes, drank more beer Lao ($1 a tallie!), re-discovered Indian food, laughed when david's tooth fell out!! (sorry David... had to add that in!) and were harassed by the “hilltribe mafia” - for anyone who has been to Bangkok, imagine the frog ladies, minus the frogs. These ladies sold handmade bracelets and they would gather around the table, laying bracelet after bracelet on the table or on your arm trying to convince you to buy one, whilst the whole time blowing kisses and making weird sounds like when you suck in air through puckered lips?! And if you didn't buy one they would demand some of your dinner! It was quite comical and we soon had our favourite lady picked out. It was even funnier when we discovered that the “blowing kisses” was actually code for “do you want some opium”, and the weird sucking noise was “marijuana.” And all this time roh was convinced they were blowing him kisses because they all had secret crushes on him!!
Keen to check out more of the area, we spent one day on push-bikes riding around all the local hilltribe and minority villages and visiting out of the way stupas (about 40kms in total!) then hired motorbikes the next day and went even further away, through amazing and untouched villages, past novice monks on push-bikes, village children spear-fishing in the rivers, and through whats left of the lush Lao jungle, to the village of Muang Sing. And then recovered each night with more baguettes and beer Lao Obsessed by the wonderful new discovery of fresh baguettes (a welcome reminder of Lao's former French heritage,) roh and David decided to buy some chicken from the market and make chicken sambo's for dinner. They had been talking about it all day and so it was pretty funny when the chicken ended up being some cross-breed with a rubber band - Roh's description of the super-chewiness. After nibbling at the flesh and throwing the bones into a plastic bag, along came the hilltribe mafia ladies, and horrified at this waste of good food, they demanded we give the plastic bag full of bones and rubbish to them. We tried to convince them it was rubbish but they wouldn't listen and we eventually gave in, only to have it thrown back at us in disgust when they saw that we had dared to put a serviette in with rest of the rubbish! They weren't giving up though and wanted something from us. Benny and Sophia (from ozland) offered one of them a piece of rocksalt, which she promptly spat out in disgust, but then they all wanted some!! They got out bags and handkerchiefs and so the game of “she got more then me!” began, even though they had no idea what it was! We couldn't stop laughing when we saw our favourite lady secretly trying to sell it back to a tuktuk driver the next day!!
After fun and games in Luang Namtha we said goodbye to David, Sara, and of course or hilltribe ladies, and with our new travel pals, Benny and Sophia, headed further off the tourist trail – to the dusty and touristless truckstop town of Oudomxai for a night, and then up north to Phongsali – on the Chinese border. After roh and Benny single-handedly bought the bus station baguette lady's entire supply, the super packed bus, with motorbikes on top, and a fridge attached to the back window left for the 10 hour ride up north. We were expecting just another bus ride but it was the most scenic, and amazingly beautiful trip of our travels so far! Through lush valleys, dusty isolated villages, over crystal clear rivers, and of course with local hilltribe ladies throwing up before the bus even started to move!
Phongsali itself was quite a pretty town, and we spent hours walking along the cobbled streets, watching kids play boche, and people just go about their daily lives. Food was a problem though. There were only 3 restaurants in town, and only 1 had a menu! Problem was the food wasn't that great. The other 2 restaurants were run by Chinese people who didn't even speak Lao and in true Chinese style really couldn't give a sh*t! Language problems and lack of enthusiasm made trying to order hard, and trying to order vegetarian food with NO chilli, near impossible! I ate plain rice. Rohan gave up and bought instant noodles and we survived. On our last day we met a local monk who offered to take us to the stupa on top of the hill because he wanted to practice his English Of course we took him up on the offer and Som told us all about his family and his dreams, about Buddhism and life in general. He gave us blessings and invited us to watch afternoon prayers, a very rare opportunity that we were honoured to be invited to. We took along all of the other foreigners in town (6 of us in total) and Som was over the moon to have so many people to practice English with. He had been wanting to take English classes, but for a monk with no income, paying the crazy expensive fees is near impossible.
Our next destination, and part of the reason we had come to Phongsali in the first place was to travel down the river Ou, all the way back to Luang Prabang. First stop, Muang Khua 5 hours away. About an hour into the slow ride through amazing jungle like scenery with limestone karsts jutting out in every which direction, and with tiny isolated villages hiding behind lazy buffalo bathing in the tiny rapids, our driver hit one of the many rocks in the sometimes only centimetres deep water. And so we spent the next hour chilling out on the beach, watching Benny swim, and playing cards while we waited for a replacement boat! Seems it happens quite a lot....Muang Khua was a very funky little town that only sees a handful of tourists, usually entering or leaving to Vietnam only 2 hours away. We spent 2 lazy nights, walking the quiet streets, watching the pigs and buffalos bathe in the river and trying to find baguettes!
Next stop on the river was Muang Ngoi, a village even smaller then Muang Khua, accessible only by boat, but with twice as many tourists (maybe 15 in total?). We scored a great room, brand-new and right on the river and settled in to chillout in the hammock and re-rediscover baguettes for a couple of days. Still with Benny and Sophia, our crazy Aussie friends, we headed to the nearby caves. The first cave was a water cave and so, following Benny's lead we stripped down to our togs (in itself a rare privilege) and went for a swim! Our waterproof camera of course came along for some happy snaps... until it stopped snapping... yes, our waterproof camera drowned in only 10centimetres of water, trying to take a pic of a fish. Bugger. And so camera-wielding Benny and Sophia became our official paparazzi (thanks again guys!).
We said goodbye to Muang Ngoi and jumped in another boat for Nong Khiaw, only 1 hour down stream and only 3 hours away from Luang Prabang. Giving its convenience to tourist-hub Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw used to be a very touristy little town, but now most people head to Muang Ngoi instead, and so we found it extremely quiet and quaint. About 2 kms outside of town we found some more caves, remnants of when the area was bombed by the Americans in the 60s. The original ladder along with other artefacts and remnants of how the entire township hid and survived in the caves during the bombings were amazing to see and horrifying at the same time. Hungry as always, we also found the only Indian restaurant in town, and watched cricket with Deen over breakfast, lunch, dinner and then breakfast again.
We again opted for the less-touristy route, and took the bus the rest of the way to Luang Prabang. We had been warned that accommodation was expensive there and it was, but not as bad as people had made out. And food was crazily cheap! Made to order fresh sandwiches (yes more baguettes!) with whatever filling you want for only 10000 KIP ($1.25) and all you can eat vegetarian buffets for only 5000 KIP kept us full and happy!!! yum! After walking the funky streets for a bit, looking at the beautiful old colonial era buildings, shopping at the night markets, catching up on the net and being amazed at the number of scantily dressed foreigners, we decided to keep on the road with Benny and Saph and headed to the notorious party town of Vang Vieng.
We were expecting revelry, but after being away from foreigners for so long, it was quite a shock to see people walking the street in only togs or shorts, drunk, stoned, loud, or in contrast, just lounging around watching old “Friends” re-runs! Quite a contrast and quite a shock. So we decided to head off the party trail and instead hired push-bikes and went caving again!! At the first cave we met a local kid who wanted to practice English and volunteered to show us around. And so we ventured to the elephant cave – full of Buddha statues and a stalagmite shaped like an elephant, and to the water cave – a cave full of water that you can float through with headlamps and rubber tyre tubes!! Most people only go 30 or so metres in until the rope finishes but our guide Sarw showed us a secret passage and we must have floated atleast 400m or so until we reached the end and then paddled all the way back again. It was amazing and eery at the same time, floating soundless through a cave with massive stalagmites and stalactites jutting up and down all around.
Day 2 and feeling braver now, we decided to do what most people come here to do, go tubing through the bars down the river. Roh and I set off in a tuktuk upstream with our tubes, and Benny and Sophia headed off in a kayak to meet us there. We must have really shown our age, because we were the 8th and 9th person there and the bars were all completely empty! So instead of drinking (afterall it was only 11am!) we started to float ever so slowly down the barely moving river until we were dragged to a floating table by a local Lao family. After brief hello's we were given beer Lao to skull in true Lao fashion – 2 cups – one for each leg, and soon discovered our cups were of the magical – continual topup variety. We didn't see a single other foreigner until about an hour later when Benny and Sophia turned up in their kayak, and after being initiated with the same 2 cup ritual, we laughed at how we still managed to have a local experience doing the most touristy thing possible in Lao! But determined to watch some drunk foreigners jump off crazily high swings, we headed back up stream, this time towed by Benny and saph only to find the first 3 bars absolutely packed! Atleast 1-200 foreigners dressed only in a uniform or swimwear, each with a bucket of their beverage of choice in hand. And what a variety of buckets – everything from rum and coke to the crazy bucket – rum, redbull, opium, pot and mushrooms... hmm.. no thankyou. Saph and I decided to stick to a tame malibu bucket and sat back to watch the shenanigans. The swings are absolutely insane, some higher then others but the river is not that deep and you only really have a 2m x 5m patch of deep water to aim for. We saw some nasty falls but fortunately no injuries, though I'm sure the local hospital has seen its fair share. Eventually we continued on with our slow float down the river and back to town, with 3 minutes to spare on our tube rental.
After chilling out for another day – roh couldn't resist a day of baguettes, beer, comfy cushions and family guy, we boarded a tourist express bus for Vientiane, the capital. But, in true rob and roh fashion, in less then an hour we suddenly changed our minds and instead headed straight for Nong Khai in Thailand to get a new camera and visit a friend. Goodbye baguettes, hello pad Thai.
And so we entered Laos, with not much of a plan, other then to get as far away from the other tourists as possible!
Out of the hundreds of tourists who crossed the border with us, only 4 of us took the bus north to the town of Luang Namtha, everyone else did the super-touristy boat trip to Luang Prabang. And so Sara from America (who cringed at our border crossing story) and David from England became our new travel buddies! We had heard not-so-great stories about Luang Namtha, and to us that is just more reason to go! We loved it!There were still tourists but hardly any and everyone was just soooo friendly! We stayed in a great little guest house off the main road, played boche and drank beer Lao with some super friendly locals outside the courthouse (?!), ate waaaay tooo many amazingly delicious baguettes, drank more beer Lao ($1 a tallie!), re-discovered Indian food, laughed when david's tooth fell out!! (sorry David... had to add that in!) and were harassed by the “hilltribe mafia” - for anyone who has been to Bangkok, imagine the frog ladies, minus the frogs. These ladies sold handmade bracelets and they would gather around the table, laying bracelet after bracelet on the table or on your arm trying to convince you to buy one, whilst the whole time blowing kisses and making weird sounds like when you suck in air through puckered lips?! And if you didn't buy one they would demand some of your dinner! It was quite comical and we soon had our favourite lady picked out. It was even funnier when we discovered that the “blowing kisses” was actually code for “do you want some opium”, and the weird sucking noise was “marijuana.” And all this time roh was convinced they were blowing him kisses because they all had secret crushes on him!!
Keen to check out more of the area, we spent one day on push-bikes riding around all the local hilltribe and minority villages and visiting out of the way stupas (about 40kms in total!) then hired motorbikes the next day and went even further away, through amazing and untouched villages, past novice monks on push-bikes, village children spear-fishing in the rivers, and through whats left of the lush Lao jungle, to the village of Muang Sing. And then recovered each night with more baguettes and beer Lao Obsessed by the wonderful new discovery of fresh baguettes (a welcome reminder of Lao's former French heritage,) roh and David decided to buy some chicken from the market and make chicken sambo's for dinner. They had been talking about it all day and so it was pretty funny when the chicken ended up being some cross-breed with a rubber band - Roh's description of the super-chewiness. After nibbling at the flesh and throwing the bones into a plastic bag, along came the hilltribe mafia ladies, and horrified at this waste of good food, they demanded we give the plastic bag full of bones and rubbish to them. We tried to convince them it was rubbish but they wouldn't listen and we eventually gave in, only to have it thrown back at us in disgust when they saw that we had dared to put a serviette in with rest of the rubbish! They weren't giving up though and wanted something from us. Benny and Sophia (from ozland) offered one of them a piece of rocksalt, which she promptly spat out in disgust, but then they all wanted some!! They got out bags and handkerchiefs and so the game of “she got more then me!” began, even though they had no idea what it was! We couldn't stop laughing when we saw our favourite lady secretly trying to sell it back to a tuktuk driver the next day!!
After fun and games in Luang Namtha we said goodbye to David, Sara, and of course or hilltribe ladies, and with our new travel pals, Benny and Sophia, headed further off the tourist trail – to the dusty and touristless truckstop town of Oudomxai for a night, and then up north to Phongsali – on the Chinese border. After roh and Benny single-handedly bought the bus station baguette lady's entire supply, the super packed bus, with motorbikes on top, and a fridge attached to the back window left for the 10 hour ride up north. We were expecting just another bus ride but it was the most scenic, and amazingly beautiful trip of our travels so far! Through lush valleys, dusty isolated villages, over crystal clear rivers, and of course with local hilltribe ladies throwing up before the bus even started to move!
Phongsali itself was quite a pretty town, and we spent hours walking along the cobbled streets, watching kids play boche, and people just go about their daily lives. Food was a problem though. There were only 3 restaurants in town, and only 1 had a menu! Problem was the food wasn't that great. The other 2 restaurants were run by Chinese people who didn't even speak Lao and in true Chinese style really couldn't give a sh*t! Language problems and lack of enthusiasm made trying to order hard, and trying to order vegetarian food with NO chilli, near impossible! I ate plain rice. Rohan gave up and bought instant noodles and we survived. On our last day we met a local monk who offered to take us to the stupa on top of the hill because he wanted to practice his English Of course we took him up on the offer and Som told us all about his family and his dreams, about Buddhism and life in general. He gave us blessings and invited us to watch afternoon prayers, a very rare opportunity that we were honoured to be invited to. We took along all of the other foreigners in town (6 of us in total) and Som was over the moon to have so many people to practice English with. He had been wanting to take English classes, but for a monk with no income, paying the crazy expensive fees is near impossible.
Our next destination, and part of the reason we had come to Phongsali in the first place was to travel down the river Ou, all the way back to Luang Prabang. First stop, Muang Khua 5 hours away. About an hour into the slow ride through amazing jungle like scenery with limestone karsts jutting out in every which direction, and with tiny isolated villages hiding behind lazy buffalo bathing in the tiny rapids, our driver hit one of the many rocks in the sometimes only centimetres deep water. And so we spent the next hour chilling out on the beach, watching Benny swim, and playing cards while we waited for a replacement boat! Seems it happens quite a lot....Muang Khua was a very funky little town that only sees a handful of tourists, usually entering or leaving to Vietnam only 2 hours away. We spent 2 lazy nights, walking the quiet streets, watching the pigs and buffalos bathe in the river and trying to find baguettes!
Next stop on the river was Muang Ngoi, a village even smaller then Muang Khua, accessible only by boat, but with twice as many tourists (maybe 15 in total?). We scored a great room, brand-new and right on the river and settled in to chillout in the hammock and re-rediscover baguettes for a couple of days. Still with Benny and Sophia, our crazy Aussie friends, we headed to the nearby caves. The first cave was a water cave and so, following Benny's lead we stripped down to our togs (in itself a rare privilege) and went for a swim! Our waterproof camera of course came along for some happy snaps... until it stopped snapping... yes, our waterproof camera drowned in only 10centimetres of water, trying to take a pic of a fish. Bugger. And so camera-wielding Benny and Sophia became our official paparazzi (thanks again guys!).
We said goodbye to Muang Ngoi and jumped in another boat for Nong Khiaw, only 1 hour down stream and only 3 hours away from Luang Prabang. Giving its convenience to tourist-hub Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw used to be a very touristy little town, but now most people head to Muang Ngoi instead, and so we found it extremely quiet and quaint. About 2 kms outside of town we found some more caves, remnants of when the area was bombed by the Americans in the 60s. The original ladder along with other artefacts and remnants of how the entire township hid and survived in the caves during the bombings were amazing to see and horrifying at the same time. Hungry as always, we also found the only Indian restaurant in town, and watched cricket with Deen over breakfast, lunch, dinner and then breakfast again.
We again opted for the less-touristy route, and took the bus the rest of the way to Luang Prabang. We had been warned that accommodation was expensive there and it was, but not as bad as people had made out. And food was crazily cheap! Made to order fresh sandwiches (yes more baguettes!) with whatever filling you want for only 10000 KIP ($1.25) and all you can eat vegetarian buffets for only 5000 KIP kept us full and happy!!! yum! After walking the funky streets for a bit, looking at the beautiful old colonial era buildings, shopping at the night markets, catching up on the net and being amazed at the number of scantily dressed foreigners, we decided to keep on the road with Benny and Saph and headed to the notorious party town of Vang Vieng.
We were expecting revelry, but after being away from foreigners for so long, it was quite a shock to see people walking the street in only togs or shorts, drunk, stoned, loud, or in contrast, just lounging around watching old “Friends” re-runs! Quite a contrast and quite a shock. So we decided to head off the party trail and instead hired push-bikes and went caving again!! At the first cave we met a local kid who wanted to practice English and volunteered to show us around. And so we ventured to the elephant cave – full of Buddha statues and a stalagmite shaped like an elephant, and to the water cave – a cave full of water that you can float through with headlamps and rubber tyre tubes!! Most people only go 30 or so metres in until the rope finishes but our guide Sarw showed us a secret passage and we must have floated atleast 400m or so until we reached the end and then paddled all the way back again. It was amazing and eery at the same time, floating soundless through a cave with massive stalagmites and stalactites jutting up and down all around.
Day 2 and feeling braver now, we decided to do what most people come here to do, go tubing through the bars down the river. Roh and I set off in a tuktuk upstream with our tubes, and Benny and Sophia headed off in a kayak to meet us there. We must have really shown our age, because we were the 8th and 9th person there and the bars were all completely empty! So instead of drinking (afterall it was only 11am!) we started to float ever so slowly down the barely moving river until we were dragged to a floating table by a local Lao family. After brief hello's we were given beer Lao to skull in true Lao fashion – 2 cups – one for each leg, and soon discovered our cups were of the magical – continual topup variety. We didn't see a single other foreigner until about an hour later when Benny and Sophia turned up in their kayak, and after being initiated with the same 2 cup ritual, we laughed at how we still managed to have a local experience doing the most touristy thing possible in Lao! But determined to watch some drunk foreigners jump off crazily high swings, we headed back up stream, this time towed by Benny and saph only to find the first 3 bars absolutely packed! Atleast 1-200 foreigners dressed only in a uniform or swimwear, each with a bucket of their beverage of choice in hand. And what a variety of buckets – everything from rum and coke to the crazy bucket – rum, redbull, opium, pot and mushrooms... hmm.. no thankyou. Saph and I decided to stick to a tame malibu bucket and sat back to watch the shenanigans. The swings are absolutely insane, some higher then others but the river is not that deep and you only really have a 2m x 5m patch of deep water to aim for. We saw some nasty falls but fortunately no injuries, though I'm sure the local hospital has seen its fair share. Eventually we continued on with our slow float down the river and back to town, with 3 minutes to spare on our tube rental.
After chilling out for another day – roh couldn't resist a day of baguettes, beer, comfy cushions and family guy, we boarded a tourist express bus for Vientiane, the capital. But, in true rob and roh fashion, in less then an hour we suddenly changed our minds and instead headed straight for Nong Khai in Thailand to get a new camera and visit a friend. Goodbye baguettes, hello pad Thai.
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