It’s been quite a while since the last update and it’s probably been the busiest month or so since I’ve left New Zealand so I’ll give as best an update as I can but I’m home soon enough anyway to be able to fill in any gaps if necessary.
Once I’d escaped Bangkok, I made my way north to Chiang Mai for some relaxation and a vain attempt to get a Chinese visa. I was there for about 10 days or so, got messed around by the Chinese consulate as they suddenly decided to enforce regulations long since dormant or pretty much make up new ones as they pleased. I tried to jump through all the hoops they set out in front of me (the Olympics were still on at this time) but in the end I gave up and wandered round Chiang Mai for a while. It’s a really nice town, temples everywhere, and it has a good set of fortifications (complete with moat) surrounding the town centre, some of the battlements are more historic than others. I took a tour up to the ‘Golden Triangle’ which is where Thailand, Burma and Laos all come together at the Mekong river and it was a nice enough tour but we spent so long driving around compared to the length of time actually spent at places so perhaps it could have been better.
I think by this time I’d had enough of Thailand and had set my sights on neighbouring Laos (but not in the American military sense) so I spent time at the travel agents trying to figure out how best to get there. I could have taken a slow boat (2 or 3 days) into the country via the dirty Mekong but there were concerns about the recent floods and the water levels, etc so that was one option. Another was to take the much fabled Lao Airlines on a 1 hour plane journey but considering their safety record (or lack thereof), I had doubts about that too. The basic dilemma was to either slowly drown in the Mekong or quickly crash and burn with Lao Airlines. Great. As time was short (another recurring theme), I decided I’d risk the flight.
Despite my very real concerns, the flight wasn’t too bad although it was the tiniest plane I’d ever been in and I felt each and every bump along the way but I made it in one piece (despite the in-flight ‘food’). Luang Prabang is a gorgeous little town, yet another one of those World Heritage sites and former royal capital of Laos so it’s packed with tiny side streets, a couple of palaces and yet more temples. I stayed at Spicylaos backpackers which was so much fun, the house itself once belonged to the middle son of the former Lao king so I think that best highlights the circles I now find myself in. Yet more chilling out was the primary activity in Luang Prabang, only interrupted by a waterfall trip and a good few nights out with the rest of the guys at the hostel. I even spent a fine day watching several episodes of Band of Brothers with Cat, making my first impressions of Laos even better.
After a couple of days, a whole bunch of new people arrived and I took the bus with them down to Vang Vieng (and continued to have an amazing time with them further into Laos and Cambodia) for tubing. Tubing probably is the greatest thing ever, there’s no way it would ever even be considered to be allowed in Britain or any other country with even the smallest fragment of public health and safety but God bless Laos for their lack of regulations as I’ve never had so much fun in ages. Essentially, it’s a pub crawl down a river on large rubber tubes but it’s so much more! When we first arrived, we saw the battered, bruised and drunk tubers (if that’s a word) make their way slowly back to their guesthouses after a solid day of tubing and we laughed at them but over the next few days we were amongst it.
You hire a tube and then get a tuk-tuk down to the start, we even painted ourselves with brightly coloured face paints because we’re cool and then it was into the river. There was about 10 of us, safety in numbers and all that, and it took a little bit of time to get used to being in a tube (a very stark contrast to my tubing experiences in New Zealand) but Matt made the error of getting a Beerlao at the start as a little slip left him and his beer in the river. We all learnt from that. I think there were about 6 or 7 bars along the river in total, whenever we wanted to stop at one the locals at the bar would either through a rope towards us to drag us in or there’d even be some local children to swim out and grab us. It was a fine system. At each bar you’d get a free shot of Tiger whisky (which I was starting to get used to) and then it was the usual Beerlao or the girls often got a bucket. After a while at a bar, it was time to move on. At one of the bars, the owner really loved us and she’d often just leave us the bottle of Tiger as we tried to peel apart our soaking kip to pay for more drinks (plastic money would really be fantastic, if only for tubing).
I can’t remember too many details of tubing but there was a mud bar where clean looking people were given the option of either running into the mud themselves or being thrown in but some form of mud wrestling happened regardless. Only once in 3 days did we manage to get back at both the correct end point and in daylight, which we were proud of but other times we ended up being tired and emotional stuck somewhere in the dark where we’d be rescued by locals. There were repeated calls amongst the group to “man up” if ever something needed drinking or there was even a slight hint that a day of tubing would be avoided, although Justine did miss a day because of an eye infection and we lost Tammy after the first day due to her ‘happy’ milkshake. There’s lots of stories from Vang Vieng but I can’t even attempt to recall them now, it was definitely the best time I’ve had whilst travelling away from New Zealand and I’d certainly do it again.
We then took a bus down to Vientiane, the capital of Laos but the journey down there was much more eventful than the city itself. There’s not a great deal to the city, the museum was closed so that took out one of its attractions so Sean and myself covered the remaining sights in an hour or so, including the victory monument and obligatory temple. We all had really good curries though, probably the highlight of Vientiane. By this point, we’d lost Matt as he was off to Australia via Bangkok and we almost lost Justine to Bangkok as well but she had a quick change of heart and stayed with us. The group then kind of broke up a bit as I went down to Pakse with Lauren and Justine, with the others remaining for a little while longer in Vientiane but we didn’t know then that we’d all soon be reunited.
Our bus broke down at about 1am on the way to Pakse, with the engine and air-con off it soon got unbearable on the bus so we managed to get out and find our way to the side of the road whilst we waited for another bus. Lauren and I had a brief inspection to the back of the bus where a healthy crowd had gathered to figure out what went wrong, obviously our talents were wasted in that situation so we went back round the other side and sat next to Justine. We loved the safety precautions used by the bus driver to protect us on a pitch black road in the middle of nowhere – a few strategically placed branches either end of the bus. Of course I’d have every faith that they’d manage to prevent a large lorry from going straight into us but we survived all the same.
Got into Pakse sometime in the early morning after being rescued by another bus and made our way to the hotel, which was nice enough. Pakse was a bit of an odd town, not a great deal to it but quite big and we were a bit freaked out as we had a wander round and the few people who were on the streets just stared at us as if we were missing out on something, it was otherwise deserted – very surreal. To get away from all that for a bit, we took a trip up to the plateau for some waterfall action and visits to tea and coffee plantations although they did hype that aspect of the tour a little too much as it was essentially someone’s farm with a few plants here and there and the coffee wasn’t even that nice. When we returned to the hotel, we got a nice surprise to see Sean sitting at reception, he’d gone to a small town in between Vientiane and Pakse but wasn’t impressed enough to stay longer so our group now swelled back up to 4!
Once we’d experienced the glittering sights of Pakse (and had more curries), we made our way to the 4,000 islands in the south of Laos, although the true number of islands is largely dependent on how bad the flooding is. Don Det was our island of choice, one of the larger ones with luxuries such as electricity between 6pm – 9pm and a choice of location between the sunset and sunrise sides, we went for the sunset side for the chance to see one and also to avoid the very hot, very early wake up calls of the sun. Another gorgeous place, the brown Mekong did its best to spoil the view but it failed as the mountains and distant forests were amazing. We were there for a few days but only once managed to see a sunset but it was such a sight! At breakfast one morning, we saw a dead cow float by our bungalows, which Sean took a photo of. It was probably still alive as it entered the Mekong. There wasn’t a great deal to do on Don Det but we didn’t mind that at all, we just relaxed, ate cake at the little bakery, sampled the occasional Beerlao and explored the island. We really pushed the boat out on the accommodation front as our own private riverside bungalows cost an earth-shattering 10,000 kip a night (compared with the 15,000 kip it costs for a Beerlao!). There was a really heavy thunderstorm on one of the nights, Sean somehow slept through it (we’d been at the one bar with a pool table) but it woke me up and I think I was still half awake, half asleep as I found Lauren on her balcony wondering what was happening, she actually had to point out that there was a rain storm as that fact had so far escaped me (it hadn’t occurred to me what was making that heavy repetitive pounding noise on my roof). It didn’t last long though, so that was ok. Once our time was up on Don Det, we had to decide on how to get to Cambodia, another 2 or more days via bus and boat or back to Pakse to hop on another Lao Airlines flight. Oh, the dilemma.
I’ll update on the Cambodian section in the next day or so but I really did love my time in Laos, probably my favourite country outside New Zealand and a place I’d like to go to again. I had a great time travelling with the people I met in Luang Prabang and who I continued to travel with in Cambodia (it was only Lauren and Sean by that stage, Justine finally left us for Thailand on our return to Pakse). I don’t know if I mentioned earlier but I got my Chinese visa in Luang Prabang easily enough and I’m in Beijing at the moment, trying to find time to get my Mongolian visa, visit the sites of Beijing and somehow keep this blog updated on what I’ve been doing. It’s such a hard life!