Days 170-189: Laos (and a little more Thailand)
Spent a week in Thailand before heading to Laos for 11 days. We can see why the French liked the place.
In Thailand, we mostly did errands but did take some time out to sample the local produce. We have been smelling the enormous durian fruit for months and it has been growing on us. Marcus sampled some in Malaysia that was quite good, if a bit overpowering. It’s smell is best described as incredibly sweet eggs with onions. We bought some in Chiang Mai so Kelly could sample. Her response was “some parts are less horrible than others.” She made it through one bite. Marcus braved a few more bites but it wasn’t nearly as appetizing as the durian in Malaysia.
Yum! Marcus tries hard to look like he’s enjoying Thai durian.
We caught a movie at a theater (“Stealth”, which was a bit of a step down for Jamie Foxx after “Ray”) in Thailand. After all the previews, everyone suddenly stood up and our first thought was that we were supposed to evacuate. But then a video of His Magesty visiting the people came on. Speaking of which, the national anthem is played over loud speakers every morning at 8am. It’s quite catchy, as long as we weren’t trying to sleep in.
We have met a lot of interesting characters along the trip. On the way to the Laos border, we met Petr from Holland who was en route to meet his girlfriend in China. We asked him when he had seen her last. He responded by flipping through his passport to find his Malaysia stamp and said “March, 2004”. This guy also started a farm in northern Thailand, cut off his own toe with a shovel, and retrieved bodies from Koh Phi Phi after the tsunami.
We crossed the Mekong River over into Laos and were greated by a number of tasty beverages, including Beer Lao which is remarkably good for being the local version of Bud. A drink we decided not to try was bottles of local fire water filled with baby cobras and scorpions.
We took the slow boat down the Mekong (and we do mean the slow boat) to Luang Prabang with an overnight stop in Pakbeng. This boat must have stopped a hundred times to pick up all manner of people and things. We had joked about it turning into a “chicken boat”, and then we picked up a lady with a bunch of chickens. Next stop: a family with a goat. But the kicker was when we got a family and what must have been a good portion of the materials to build a house (roof included). All of the stops had people selling food, but we weren’t sure what the kid selling a dead civet and mouse deer was expecting tourists to do with them.
The Mighty Mekong.
During the night in Pakbeng, the power went out (and so did our fan) and didn’t come back on. We were awakened by the gentle rustling of a huge rat wrestling with a bag of curry Lay’s potato chips he drug into our room. Good thing that headlamp scared him off. It could have been worse. We were told a story of another couple staying in Pakbeng who had a rat run across them while in bed.
We did make it to the scenic riverside town Luang Prabang in northern Laos filled with neat French colonial buildings and even neater French bread.
Luang Prabang nestled along the Mekong as seen from Phou Si Hill.
A day trip brought us to a huge, many-tiered waterfall which we had to ourselves.
Marcus attempting to slide down the falls.
The waterfall was surrounded by thick jungle including some plants with really big leaves…
… and big critters.
We had some pretty tasty Lao food in Luang Prabang. A local dish was fried Mekong seaweed with seasame seeds and garlic which came with a condiment of ground chilis and dried buffalo skin. But the worst dish with the best name was Bean Curd Beautiful which was just a bunch of tofu cubes fried in rancid oil.
A mini-van ride brought us to Vang Vieng, which is a small town near a river and site of a former US airstrip. It now has more pizza places than guesthouses, and is known for its spiked “happy shakes”. Appearantly they make you paranoid for a few days, rather than happy.
Have we mentioned that it’s still the monsoon season? The unsealed roads don’t always have the best drainage and we did a fair amount of wading to get to some of the nearby limestone caves.
Good thing Kelly was captain of the swim team. 😉
We ran across one of the coolest swimming holes at the base of the cave, with a bunch of cool streams converging with loads of rope swings.
Marcus of the Jungle.
We also found a couple critters along the way. This black and iridescent-green butterfly was stunning.
What the heck is this? Marcus thinks it’s a badass flea.
We celebrated our first half year on the road by taking a “kayak to Vientiane” trip. We were told this was a great trip for beginners. Little did we know how wrong that was. We had made sure we would have life jackets and helmets, and joined in with eight other tourists and four “guides” for our river trip. When we got to the river we were warned the waters were quite high, but it wasn’t until we got on the water that one of the “guides” asked us if we could swim well. One “guide” would scout ahead, and the second guide would tell us which way to take the rapids. Class II and class III rapids don’t sound that bad, but we would soon find out what that meant in a kayak.
The first set of rapids we made it through in our trusty tandem kayak, though others were not as lucky. The second set of rapids had us all over the place, and we bailed at the end. We were able to quickly recover and get back on board. By the time we came to the third set of rapids we were hanging back to see how the others fared. The scout went ahead, and capsized instantly. Not a good sign. We followed the orders of the second “guide” and went to the left. We paddled as hard as we could, seeing the huge (5+ feet) swells crashing on our right. But our might was not enough for the swift currents had their way and threw us into the highest swells instantly. Up and over one, then smack, overboard again. Kelly came up, but Marcus found himself under the boat. He threw the paddle to the wind and climbed out from underneath. No sooner was Kelly aware of his presence than smack – another wave and she lost hold of the boat. Somehow we grabbed arms. A few more crashing waves and Kelly makes it back to the boat. No one remained dry by the end of the third set of rapids. It was a little bit scary but a lot of fun. We were happy for the lifejackets and helmets. Next time we’ll go rafting instead. Sorry for no pics; we would have lost the camera.
The capitol Vientiane has a newspaper that prints the cost of “main” food items. Stuff like rice, eggs, and, of course, snake heads.
Why does Saravan get all the cheap snake heads?
Vientiane has a huge Arc de Triomphe that is purported to have been cast using concrete donated by the States for an airport. You’ve got to make priorities.
Some serpents at a monestary with balls of sticky rice and flowers to keep them appeased.
One of the cooler things we saw was the Buddha Park just outside the capitol. The pamphlet declared: “Good News. The road from Vientiane to buddha park is good.” This was ironic because it was the worst road we had been on in the country. The park was filled with loads of crazy statues and, of course, lots of Buddhas. There was also a round structure done in Tim Burton style (think Nightmare Before Christmas) with a huge face for the entrance that was filled with bizarre scenes of the Underworld.
Nothing works up a thirst like frightening scenes from the Underworld. So we stopped at the Beer Lao Brewery and were given a private tour. The tour ended with complementary glasses of fresh Beer Lao for the thirsty travellers. Must be the tasty Mekong river water that gives Beer Lao that great flavor.
We took a local bus to Lak Sao near the Vietnamese border. (Just ignore the Savannakhet box on the map; we didn’t make it that far.) We were glad the people loading a moped into the passenger cabin weren’t going on our bus. Kelly was also thankful that the guys with mesh bags of live crickets weren’t on this bus, unlike our last bus ride.
Lak Sao is not a tourist town and we realized how dependent we’ve become on running water when the hotel water stopped running in the night. We roamed around town and were told many different things on how to get to Vietnam from the few English speakers, but none of the news was good. The worst was that the road to the border had collapsed from recent rains and wouldn’t be open for three days at the earliest. We decided to risk the ride, and even though there were many fresh landslides and one stuck truck, we did eventually make it. Checking out of Laos was painless and we walked into the 1.5km “no man’s land” between Laos and Vietnam.
Tags: Laos, Thailand
Kelly & Marcus
September 18th, 2005 at 7:34 am
I’ll have to assume that there will not be a bottle of the local “fire water” filled with snakes and critters in the next box you send!
You didn’t have to go to Laos to walk in waist high water you know, Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of that right here….
About the rapids – thank goodness you are both excellent swimmers!
Hugs xoxox
September 19th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Man, that’s crap, Saravan always gets the cheap snakehead. I tried to score some snakehead the other day and all I got was some lousy Luwak!!
MC
September 20th, 2005 at 1:45 am
mmmmmm, luwak! Hope to try Vietnam’s weasel shit coffee any day now.
There was no swimming involved. The life jackets did a good job of keeping our heads above water.
September 23rd, 2005 at 7:37 am
I’m impressed Kelly would stick her hand that close to that millipede (or whatever it was)…nice job.
Enjoy the weasel shit coffee Wally. I hear they make it fresh for Americans in Vietnam…
October 1st, 2005 at 7:49 pm
Amazingly cool Myanmar critters! The profligate diversity of nature is truly astounding.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the guide was right. Showy and colorful bugs are often carrying the implicit message “don’t touch/eat me, I’m bad news.” But there are a fair number of copycats, too (a USA example: butterflies that look like Monarchs but that aren’t toxic (to birds) like the milkweed-eating Monarch.) So you never know ’til you try…if you dare! Ah, life.
All the best!