After our rapid departure from the ever so easy country of Thailand we headed back across the same border we had passed through only 15 days previous. Upon arriving at Vientiane we jumped straight on a bus heading up to Luang Prabang, we had been here a few weeks earlier but didn't have enough time to explore it properly.
On our bus ride north we met two lovely girls one very shy cute Vietnamese/American named Megan and an equally adorable English lass called Laura, and as we all seemed to be going in the same general direction, we decided to hang out together. Over the next few days we all hired bikes and explored the second largest city in Laos, we rented a tuk-tuk and got driven to some STUNNING waterfalls (some of the nicest ones we had seen so far!), got drenched in buckets of water, and in general just enjoyed the sights.
After a few days in Luang Prabang, we sent Laura and Megan to Luang Namtha (one of our fav places in Laos) and we jumped aboard another bus to Phonsavan which is know for is famous “Plain of Jars”, 3 sites consisting of between 100- 500 stone vases weighing in over 2 – 5 ton each (big enough to fit 3 people inside). They were massive and amazing but their origin and meaning is still unknown today, although they have been dated to more than 1000 years.
For those of you who don't know much about Laos history:
During the Vietnam war, Laos was heavily bombed by planes flying from Thailand's US airforce base to Vietnam. Flying over Laos on their return from Vietnam, any unused bombs were order to be dropped on alleged HoChi Minh trails. When the Vietnam war finished, the US continued its bombing raids on Laos for a further 5 years in secret. By the end of this “Secret War” Laos had over 200,000 tonnes of bombs dropped over it out of which 30% failed to detonate on impact. At the time Laos population was a mere 400,000, meaning that roughly a half of tonne of explosives were dropped for every man, woman and child! These estimated numbers make Laos the most heavily bombed country in the world. Even now farmers, children and animals are being killed or maimed at an average of 2 per day, by Un-eXploded Ordinance (UXO).
The terrible thing is that the US has never admitted to this atrocity, although they do give extremely minimal assistance in removing the UXO. Extremely minimal. And due to the massively high levels of poverty in Laos, unfortunately opportunistic buyers have started to buy salvaged pieces of metals from bombs, bombies, grenades, land-mines and anything else with metal in it from the people. The problem is that these UXO have no used by date and sit in the ground until disturbed, either by a farmer tilling his soil, or sometimes a child thinks its a ball or a toy and picks it up, almost always resulting in loss of limbs, or even life. With the illegal trade in UXO metals, more children and villagers are being lured into touching or collection explosives, willing to risk their lives for a few extra kip to help their families.
The saddest thing is that the Laos except this life of danger, damage and death, and have moved on with their lives. They have adapted to their situation and even use some of these remnants around the home, 500 pound bomb casings are used as pillars for houses, barbeques or vegetable planter boxes, bombies and grenades are turned into oil lamps, the steel balls out of bombies are the perfect size for children to use as pellets for sling shots. The list is endless, and their creativity is high . But so is the risk and damage.
Now back to the original story. The “Plains of Jars” were fantastic and each site left us questioning how and who these jars were made for. But alas America didn't consider these sites sacred and bombed the crap out of them during the secret war so every where you look there are craters from bombs, and “WARNING! UXO” signs, and it made us really wonder how anyone could have survived at all!
After spending a few days here we once again hit the road and made plans to head down a road that is hardly seen by foreigners. But alas mother nature was against us and she threw down torrential rain to prevent anyone from travelling down the roads at all! So plan B. back to Vientiane,again!
This time we promised ourselves that we would actually stay a day in Vientiane (not like our first attempt which lasted only 2 hours in the Laos capital). We found ourselves a clean (cleanish) 5 star (1 star) resort (guesthouse) and explored the town.
Our first night saw us bumping into a girl we had met in Luang Prabang a few weeks previous while looking for a cheap place to stay and Rob was adamant that she knew her from somewhere else, so we all chatted for a bit and she divulged to us some very privy information in regards to a place she had been staying at for a week outside Vientiane that two Belgian guys had just set up in the jungle and told us to give them a buzz and see if we could go and have a look at it. We agreed to it and said our goodbyes.
After walking 2 blocks rob remembered where she had met this girl..... O.K. are you ready for this?
2 years previous Rob, all the boys, and all the girls and I (this is what our 2 groups of friends call themselves) were at Woodford folk festival on new years, having a blast getting soaked to the bone from rain and enjoying live music and camping, when we spotted a young lass who was trying to charge her mobile phone on her car battery, she wasn't having much luck and didn't seem to be very happy, so we invited her over for a beer or 2.
Who would ever imagine we would meet her again in the streets of Laos 2 and a half years later?
So we gave her friend a call and organised for him to pick us both up the next day. We didn't have any expectations and were happy just to see what this place was about.
Amazing is one of the first words to come to mind! The two owners Mike and Gerald had gotten their hands on a large block of land that resembled a jungle and even had a river running through the middle of it. They had kept everything very basic (no power) and built a few bungalows that were all separate from the others. This was paradise! Our days consisted of :1) waking at 6am with the sun and birds, Rob doing yoga for an hour while I sat in the hammock looking out over the jungle; 2) having a shower and lying around in the hammock for another hour or so, 3) when our bellies started to rumble, we would go down to the kitchen and order breakfast, eat, stare at the jungle some more and snooze. We would do this until our bellies rumbled again for lunch, then we would repeat step3 until dinner, and then repeat step3 again until we were exhausted from our hard days work; 4) with night around us and full bellies, we would retire to our hammock to listen to the jungle and snooze for an hour before dragging our exhausted bodies to bed by 9pm.
On our second last day we realised that it was Phimai Lao (Lao new year, also know in Thailand as Songkran)
For those who are unfamiliar with the Thai or Lao new year, here is a basic run down on what happens. Ok the new year goes for 4- 6 day sometimes 10 days depending on how energetic the town is. And over this period of time people line the streets from early morning til late at night and throw water at each other, or at moving cars, or at people walking by......... actually they throw water at anything that moves...and sometimes when things don't move they just throw water on themselves. (It is meant to wash away the bad from the past year, and to pray for rain during the upcoming rainy season.)
So our band of merry and dry men and women meandered into the local town and joined the village celebrations, got blessed by every elder there, and danced..... then we watched the village witch do her little dance before we all poured water on her and then the entire village. Then it was the foreigners turn! To say we got wet is an understatement, and then if water wasn't enough, they dumped loads of talcum powder upon us! (even the the locals knows us backpackers stink!)
After the water came time for business! Drinking time! And one of the local lads thought he would put me up to a drinking competition.... (the way most Asian's drink beer is with ice.... lots of ice so they think they are hard when they knock back a small glass full of watered down beer and ice...)
I don't think this guy had ever seen the concept of drinking hot beer from the bottle. So as he filled his glass and knocked back 30mls of beer at a time I was necking a tallie.... 10 seconds later tallie is empty, and ice and beer drinker is only on his second glass, dumbfounded! Round one to the wet oz covered in talcum powder!
Round 2... who can eat the most chilli's the fastest, I have enough brain's to know when i'm out smarted (or out dumbed if you choose) I step down....
After this we try to leave but we are told that we must stay for the duck... then they bring out the live duck, still flapping, they tie it to a tree, slit its throat, and catch all the blood, which will be used to add flavour to the duck soup. 20 minutes latter we are all munching on duck and blood soup (rob pretended to atleast)! Yumm!
After this we were all drunk, full and very wet! Time to go home and dry off! We finally make a plan to leave our new home and continue on with our journey and head south. So we jumped on board another long bus ride and enjoyed the still continuing water festival, with people throwing water AT the bus!! It was quite hilarious when sleeping people still had their windows open...
We had heard of this great place down south with a water cave that was so long that you needed to hire a speed boat to get through it! Because we opted for the local bus instead of the crazy expensive, nonstop tourist bus, we arrived at Tha Khaek very late at night, so we grabbed a tuk tuk to a cheap guesthouse, found some cheap food and cold beer and fell asleep. The next day we hired a motorbike and set off to explore the surrounding area. The caves that we found were stunning to say the least, inside all of them there were shrines and statues, some of the caves had rivers that we could follow that would open up into giant swimming holes which were just amazing, but unfortunately we found out that the one we had wanted to go to was about 200Kms away so.. no... It was a long hot day on the bike and we were super grateful for the few people still celebrating new year and throwing water at us, actually we would stop so they could pour whole buckets on us, but it was well worth the ride! The next day we kept moving south to the quaint village of Savannakhet. We didn't really have much of a plan for this town except to stop for a few days, and to stay out of the heat! Well, it was the hottest part of Asia we had been in so far, and it was bloody hot, so hot that I ended up turning the Mandi into a bath!! And we were hoping to finally re-meet up with 2 friends we had made in Sumatra some 8 months before.
Tony and Erin have the same game plan as us and want to travel for as long as possible on as little money as possible. We were so excited to meet up with them again, and hear all there stories and we had been trying to catch them for months! They had just crossed over from Vietnam and were planning on heading north, but after an hour or so, and a few beers, we convinced them to come and travel down south with us. The next day we all jumped onto another over crowded and overheated bus and made our way down to the Pakse and the Bolaven plateau.
The funny thing about busses in Asia, is that there is always room for 5, 6,7,8,9,or even 10 more people no matter how full it looks or is. This trip took the cake though! It was a standard 40 seater bus, the type you get to and from work. Some how they managed to fit 60 people onto the 40 seats (Asians have the tinniest arses ever and kids under the age of 15 NEVER get their own seat) then they managed to fit another 40 people standing up. So the bus had around 100 people on it, plus luggage, not including kids on parents laps. And the bus trip was 6 hours, oh... and there was no air-con, and most of the windows didn't open very far....you have to love Asia!
After arriving at Pakse we dropped our bags had cold showers and explored the town, then decided to hire motorbikes the next day and do a road trip. So the 4 of us on 2 motor bikes headed down to Wat Phu, a beautiful temple ruin from the same era as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and that at that time even had a road connecting the two!
After a few hours inspecting the ruins and hiding from the sun, we jumped back on our ever trustworthy chinese motorbikes and headed to the Bolavan plateau. We had underestimated how long it would take us to get there though and arrived almost at dark, and running on the smell of petrol. We found a cheap lodging, ate some terrible food, played a few games of cards and passed out. The next morning, well rested we all jumped back onto the motorbikes and took of to find some waterfalls, that turned out to be stunning waterfalls, cascading over massive drops into deep pools and fast moving rivers in sublime dense jungle. Not exactly what we were expecting but we were definitely not complaining!! We spent the day riding through small villages, past more waterfalls, and in more stunning jungle. All day long. As the day wore on we needed to find a place to stop, eat and recover as all 4 of us were now getting riders bum (a syndrome where your arse is numb from sitting on it for too long) so we stopped in a village called Tadlo and found ourselves a great bungalow to stay right on the river. So that was it, we spent the rest of the day swimming and acting like children, well tony and I did, the girls looked on thinking how childish we were. At the local waterfall, the local kids had strung up a few lengths of bamboo and were riding it like a boat under the10 metre falls, and the force of the water hitting you was incredible, pushing the bamboo 2 feet under the water and all you could do was laugh and hang on. Just as fast as the kids turned up, they all took off like an imaginary bell had rung and they rushed up a bamboo ladder and crossed the top of the waterfall and ran back to their village. It was one of the highlights of the trip. The following day we saw more waterfalls, more beautiful villages, and more stunning jungles. One of these waterfalls was epic to say the least. We had to hike down a steep cliff face for 20 min literally hanging on with one hand to a vine and the other trying to take a photo. This was the highest waterfall I had seen ever, and probably the hardest one to get to as well. When the day was complete we had seen half a dozen epic waterfalls, 2 dozen villages, and countless kilometres of pristine jungle. It was a fantastic road trip and well worth spending 3 days doing it by bike.
Next stop was the four thousand islands right down south on the Cambodian border. Our plan was simple... go by boat to these islands on the mighty mekong river, stay till our visa expired then head to Cambodia! Sounds easy doesn't it.
So we got the boat, found a room on the river for 2$ a night and settled down to drink lots of beer. And that's all we did for 6 days, not so difficult a lifestyle really! Occasionally we would rent bicycles and head to a different part of the island, or a different island, eat some different food, drink some more beer and ride back to where we were staying but in general we drank beer, talked shit, and did nothing but have a great time, and many a joke was shared.
After a week, and literally on the day our visa expired, it was time to say good bye to our now very good friends Tony and Erin, and to our favourite country so far-Laos, and head to Cambodia.
We miss you Tony and Erin... well I miss Tony giving me an excuse to drink beer! And Erin we will always have the dirty Mekong dip and clitorapatra! And well Laos, we will be back!
On our bus ride north we met two lovely girls one very shy cute Vietnamese/American named Megan and an equally adorable English lass called Laura, and as we all seemed to be going in the same general direction, we decided to hang out together. Over the next few days we all hired bikes and explored the second largest city in Laos, we rented a tuk-tuk and got driven to some STUNNING waterfalls (some of the nicest ones we had seen so far!), got drenched in buckets of water, and in general just enjoyed the sights.
After a few days in Luang Prabang, we sent Laura and Megan to Luang Namtha (one of our fav places in Laos) and we jumped aboard another bus to Phonsavan which is know for is famous “Plain of Jars”, 3 sites consisting of between 100- 500 stone vases weighing in over 2 – 5 ton each (big enough to fit 3 people inside). They were massive and amazing but their origin and meaning is still unknown today, although they have been dated to more than 1000 years.
For those of you who don't know much about Laos history:
During the Vietnam war, Laos was heavily bombed by planes flying from Thailand's US airforce base to Vietnam. Flying over Laos on their return from Vietnam, any unused bombs were order to be dropped on alleged HoChi Minh trails. When the Vietnam war finished, the US continued its bombing raids on Laos for a further 5 years in secret. By the end of this “Secret War” Laos had over 200,000 tonnes of bombs dropped over it out of which 30% failed to detonate on impact. At the time Laos population was a mere 400,000, meaning that roughly a half of tonne of explosives were dropped for every man, woman and child! These estimated numbers make Laos the most heavily bombed country in the world. Even now farmers, children and animals are being killed or maimed at an average of 2 per day, by Un-eXploded Ordinance (UXO).
The terrible thing is that the US has never admitted to this atrocity, although they do give extremely minimal assistance in removing the UXO. Extremely minimal. And due to the massively high levels of poverty in Laos, unfortunately opportunistic buyers have started to buy salvaged pieces of metals from bombs, bombies, grenades, land-mines and anything else with metal in it from the people. The problem is that these UXO have no used by date and sit in the ground until disturbed, either by a farmer tilling his soil, or sometimes a child thinks its a ball or a toy and picks it up, almost always resulting in loss of limbs, or even life. With the illegal trade in UXO metals, more children and villagers are being lured into touching or collection explosives, willing to risk their lives for a few extra kip to help their families.
The saddest thing is that the Laos except this life of danger, damage and death, and have moved on with their lives. They have adapted to their situation and even use some of these remnants around the home, 500 pound bomb casings are used as pillars for houses, barbeques or vegetable planter boxes, bombies and grenades are turned into oil lamps, the steel balls out of bombies are the perfect size for children to use as pellets for sling shots. The list is endless, and their creativity is high . But so is the risk and damage.
Now back to the original story. The “Plains of Jars” were fantastic and each site left us questioning how and who these jars were made for. But alas America didn't consider these sites sacred and bombed the crap out of them during the secret war so every where you look there are craters from bombs, and “WARNING! UXO” signs, and it made us really wonder how anyone could have survived at all!
After spending a few days here we once again hit the road and made plans to head down a road that is hardly seen by foreigners. But alas mother nature was against us and she threw down torrential rain to prevent anyone from travelling down the roads at all! So plan B. back to Vientiane,again!
This time we promised ourselves that we would actually stay a day in Vientiane (not like our first attempt which lasted only 2 hours in the Laos capital). We found ourselves a clean (cleanish) 5 star (1 star) resort (guesthouse) and explored the town.
Our first night saw us bumping into a girl we had met in Luang Prabang a few weeks previous while looking for a cheap place to stay and Rob was adamant that she knew her from somewhere else, so we all chatted for a bit and she divulged to us some very privy information in regards to a place she had been staying at for a week outside Vientiane that two Belgian guys had just set up in the jungle and told us to give them a buzz and see if we could go and have a look at it. We agreed to it and said our goodbyes.
After walking 2 blocks rob remembered where she had met this girl..... O.K. are you ready for this?
2 years previous Rob, all the boys, and all the girls and I (this is what our 2 groups of friends call themselves) were at Woodford folk festival on new years, having a blast getting soaked to the bone from rain and enjoying live music and camping, when we spotted a young lass who was trying to charge her mobile phone on her car battery, she wasn't having much luck and didn't seem to be very happy, so we invited her over for a beer or 2.
Who would ever imagine we would meet her again in the streets of Laos 2 and a half years later?
So we gave her friend a call and organised for him to pick us both up the next day. We didn't have any expectations and were happy just to see what this place was about.
Amazing is one of the first words to come to mind! The two owners Mike and Gerald had gotten their hands on a large block of land that resembled a jungle and even had a river running through the middle of it. They had kept everything very basic (no power) and built a few bungalows that were all separate from the others. This was paradise! Our days consisted of :1) waking at 6am with the sun and birds, Rob doing yoga for an hour while I sat in the hammock looking out over the jungle; 2) having a shower and lying around in the hammock for another hour or so, 3) when our bellies started to rumble, we would go down to the kitchen and order breakfast, eat, stare at the jungle some more and snooze. We would do this until our bellies rumbled again for lunch, then we would repeat step3 until dinner, and then repeat step3 again until we were exhausted from our hard days work; 4) with night around us and full bellies, we would retire to our hammock to listen to the jungle and snooze for an hour before dragging our exhausted bodies to bed by 9pm.
On our second last day we realised that it was Phimai Lao (Lao new year, also know in Thailand as Songkran)
For those who are unfamiliar with the Thai or Lao new year, here is a basic run down on what happens. Ok the new year goes for 4- 6 day sometimes 10 days depending on how energetic the town is. And over this period of time people line the streets from early morning til late at night and throw water at each other, or at moving cars, or at people walking by......... actually they throw water at anything that moves...and sometimes when things don't move they just throw water on themselves. (It is meant to wash away the bad from the past year, and to pray for rain during the upcoming rainy season.)
So our band of merry and dry men and women meandered into the local town and joined the village celebrations, got blessed by every elder there, and danced..... then we watched the village witch do her little dance before we all poured water on her and then the entire village. Then it was the foreigners turn! To say we got wet is an understatement, and then if water wasn't enough, they dumped loads of talcum powder upon us! (even the the locals knows us backpackers stink!)
After the water came time for business! Drinking time! And one of the local lads thought he would put me up to a drinking competition.... (the way most Asian's drink beer is with ice.... lots of ice so they think they are hard when they knock back a small glass full of watered down beer and ice...)
I don't think this guy had ever seen the concept of drinking hot beer from the bottle. So as he filled his glass and knocked back 30mls of beer at a time I was necking a tallie.... 10 seconds later tallie is empty, and ice and beer drinker is only on his second glass, dumbfounded! Round one to the wet oz covered in talcum powder!
Round 2... who can eat the most chilli's the fastest, I have enough brain's to know when i'm out smarted (or out dumbed if you choose) I step down....
After this we try to leave but we are told that we must stay for the duck... then they bring out the live duck, still flapping, they tie it to a tree, slit its throat, and catch all the blood, which will be used to add flavour to the duck soup. 20 minutes latter we are all munching on duck and blood soup (rob pretended to atleast)! Yumm!
After this we were all drunk, full and very wet! Time to go home and dry off! We finally make a plan to leave our new home and continue on with our journey and head south. So we jumped on board another long bus ride and enjoyed the still continuing water festival, with people throwing water AT the bus!! It was quite hilarious when sleeping people still had their windows open...
We had heard of this great place down south with a water cave that was so long that you needed to hire a speed boat to get through it! Because we opted for the local bus instead of the crazy expensive, nonstop tourist bus, we arrived at Tha Khaek very late at night, so we grabbed a tuk tuk to a cheap guesthouse, found some cheap food and cold beer and fell asleep. The next day we hired a motorbike and set off to explore the surrounding area. The caves that we found were stunning to say the least, inside all of them there were shrines and statues, some of the caves had rivers that we could follow that would open up into giant swimming holes which were just amazing, but unfortunately we found out that the one we had wanted to go to was about 200Kms away so.. no... It was a long hot day on the bike and we were super grateful for the few people still celebrating new year and throwing water at us, actually we would stop so they could pour whole buckets on us, but it was well worth the ride! The next day we kept moving south to the quaint village of Savannakhet. We didn't really have much of a plan for this town except to stop for a few days, and to stay out of the heat! Well, it was the hottest part of Asia we had been in so far, and it was bloody hot, so hot that I ended up turning the Mandi into a bath!! And we were hoping to finally re-meet up with 2 friends we had made in Sumatra some 8 months before.
Tony and Erin have the same game plan as us and want to travel for as long as possible on as little money as possible. We were so excited to meet up with them again, and hear all there stories and we had been trying to catch them for months! They had just crossed over from Vietnam and were planning on heading north, but after an hour or so, and a few beers, we convinced them to come and travel down south with us. The next day we all jumped onto another over crowded and overheated bus and made our way down to the Pakse and the Bolaven plateau.
The funny thing about busses in Asia, is that there is always room for 5, 6,7,8,9,or even 10 more people no matter how full it looks or is. This trip took the cake though! It was a standard 40 seater bus, the type you get to and from work. Some how they managed to fit 60 people onto the 40 seats (Asians have the tinniest arses ever and kids under the age of 15 NEVER get their own seat) then they managed to fit another 40 people standing up. So the bus had around 100 people on it, plus luggage, not including kids on parents laps. And the bus trip was 6 hours, oh... and there was no air-con, and most of the windows didn't open very far....you have to love Asia!
After arriving at Pakse we dropped our bags had cold showers and explored the town, then decided to hire motorbikes the next day and do a road trip. So the 4 of us on 2 motor bikes headed down to Wat Phu, a beautiful temple ruin from the same era as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and that at that time even had a road connecting the two!
After a few hours inspecting the ruins and hiding from the sun, we jumped back on our ever trustworthy chinese motorbikes and headed to the Bolavan plateau. We had underestimated how long it would take us to get there though and arrived almost at dark, and running on the smell of petrol. We found a cheap lodging, ate some terrible food, played a few games of cards and passed out. The next morning, well rested we all jumped back onto the motorbikes and took of to find some waterfalls, that turned out to be stunning waterfalls, cascading over massive drops into deep pools and fast moving rivers in sublime dense jungle. Not exactly what we were expecting but we were definitely not complaining!! We spent the day riding through small villages, past more waterfalls, and in more stunning jungle. All day long. As the day wore on we needed to find a place to stop, eat and recover as all 4 of us were now getting riders bum (a syndrome where your arse is numb from sitting on it for too long) so we stopped in a village called Tadlo and found ourselves a great bungalow to stay right on the river. So that was it, we spent the rest of the day swimming and acting like children, well tony and I did, the girls looked on thinking how childish we were. At the local waterfall, the local kids had strung up a few lengths of bamboo and were riding it like a boat under the10 metre falls, and the force of the water hitting you was incredible, pushing the bamboo 2 feet under the water and all you could do was laugh and hang on. Just as fast as the kids turned up, they all took off like an imaginary bell had rung and they rushed up a bamboo ladder and crossed the top of the waterfall and ran back to their village. It was one of the highlights of the trip. The following day we saw more waterfalls, more beautiful villages, and more stunning jungles. One of these waterfalls was epic to say the least. We had to hike down a steep cliff face for 20 min literally hanging on with one hand to a vine and the other trying to take a photo. This was the highest waterfall I had seen ever, and probably the hardest one to get to as well. When the day was complete we had seen half a dozen epic waterfalls, 2 dozen villages, and countless kilometres of pristine jungle. It was a fantastic road trip and well worth spending 3 days doing it by bike.
Next stop was the four thousand islands right down south on the Cambodian border. Our plan was simple... go by boat to these islands on the mighty mekong river, stay till our visa expired then head to Cambodia! Sounds easy doesn't it.
So we got the boat, found a room on the river for 2$ a night and settled down to drink lots of beer. And that's all we did for 6 days, not so difficult a lifestyle really! Occasionally we would rent bicycles and head to a different part of the island, or a different island, eat some different food, drink some more beer and ride back to where we were staying but in general we drank beer, talked shit, and did nothing but have a great time, and many a joke was shared.
After a week, and literally on the day our visa expired, it was time to say good bye to our now very good friends Tony and Erin, and to our favourite country so far-Laos, and head to Cambodia.
We miss you Tony and Erin... well I miss Tony giving me an excuse to drink beer! And Erin we will always have the dirty Mekong dip and clitorapatra! And well Laos, we will be back!