Southeast Asia

I woke up early this morning so that I could go and visit the Royal palace museum that Brendan and Dee had already seen. I crept out about 7:00 and went and got breakfast at Joma. The museum opened at 8:00 and it was beautiful walking through the town at that time of the morning, the streets were quiet and there were almost no other travelers around.

What I hadn’t realized is that the Royal Palace Museum was actually the official Royal Palace that was the residence of the King and Queen when Luang Prabang was the Laos capital and that it has only recently been transformed to a museum for the public. The grounds were immaculate and each of the rooms was ornately decorated with gold, marble, jade and many semi-precious stones. All the rooms were furnished with the original royal furniture, including the King’s throne in the central room. More interesting were the actual living areas of the King and Queen and the dining room and sitting rooms, it was amazing to be able to see it all. Also on display in the cabinets in the sitting room were all the gifts that had been presented to the Laos royal family by international countries. Places such as Japan, Cambodia, China and Thailand had all presented precious gifts of jewellery, tea sets and silver and gold items. By contrast Australia had presented a wooden and opal boomerang, although this was not nearly as bad as the USA which had given a small plastic model of a space ship with USA written on the side.

Leaving the palace I went downstairs to see the traditional clothing exhibit which was located underneath the palace in what was obviously the servants quarters. The rooms were all stone and tiny, with no windows to the outside, only to the courtyard. It was enlightening to see both sides of the palace. I honestly found it the most interesting museum of everything I’ve seen in SE Asia so far. I was very glad I had made the effort to get up early and go and see it.

On the walk back to the guesthouse I stopped off at the post office to send home the sheet set I purchased last night, I hope it makes it back to Australia. I also stopped and bought coffees for Brendan and Dee to help pries them out of bed. We all packed up and checked out in good time and caught a tuk tuk to the bus station in order to catch the 10:00 bus. Arriving at the station a Laos guy came running up and enquired “Where you go?” he looked very surprised when Dee and I said “Phonsovan” and then turned to his mate and started to laugh. He informed us that the only bus to Phonsovan left at 8:30 each morning. We almost started with the “but Lonely Planet said…..”, but it wouldn’t have achieved anything.

Of course I think he just wanted to scare us because after a few minutes he finally remembers that all we had to do was catch the bus to Vientiane for the first half of the trip, get off at Phu Kun and switch to another bus. I consider it a bad sign for the journey ahead when the driver walks through the bus distributing sick bags and motion sickness pills before the journey begins. Our bus left at 10:30. When I say it left at 10:30 what I really mean is we drove the 30m to the petrol station and then sat there for about 40 mins. We finally set off at about 11:15.

The first half of the journey took four hours and even though we had paid twice as much for the VIP bus we still had a man walk on with a box of chicks which chirped for the entire ride. The roads were narrow and winding; they first went up into the mountains and then back down the other side. The scenery was amazing, the mountain ranges are huge and the cliff faces are impressive to say the least. After 4 hours we stopped in Phu Kun where Dee and I Bailed from the bus. Phu Kun is a town that exists only because of the intersection between the road that runs from Luang Prabang to Vientiane and the road to Phonsovan. It was the smallest town I’ve seen that’s made it onto my map. Dee and I bought ourselves some fruit while a collection of Laos people stared and pointed at us. I don’t think they see a lot of farang with big backpacks buying fruit in their town. We mentioned the word “Phonsovan” to a few people but no one spoke English and as far as we could tell they were indicating that we should wait by the road for the bus. After about 5 minutes a pickup pulled up and offered to take us to Phonsovan for US$5 each. We had no way of knowing when the bus would come past and we wanted to get going so we jumped at the opportunity and clambered into the back of the truck. US$5 each sounds like a lot, but contrary to my expectations and popular belief Laos is not an inexpensive country to travel in, the bus would have been at least US$4. I think it’s because everything is done in US dollars, but I found Thailand much cheaper when it came to travel.

Along the road we stopped a few times to pick up additional people. You know, the usual, an old lady, an old Laos couple, an Army man with an AK47. When he jumped on Dee and I couldn’t help but stare in disbelief and then glance at each other and laugh nervously. I think he caught onto the foreigners not liking the massive gun resting so casually in his lap and he removed the clip. I felt marginally safer after that. The old man was captivated by the child’s toy truck that was rolling around and he picked it up to inspect, playing with the little dirt scoop on the front and spinning the wheels for a good 10 minutes. He was fascinated. It seemed like almost instantly the scenery changes from mountain ranges to low rolling hills. It was amazingly picturesque. We stopped a few times to let people out and also at the driver’s village where he had a chat and all the young children waved at us.

Once the sun set the ride became bitterly cold and I had to dig out some warmer clothes and layer up. This area of Laos is know for its cold weather and miserable winds. Watching the sun set over the hills from the back of the pickup was gorgeous.

Our driver dropped us off at a guesthouse in town which cost a US$5 per night for the two of us and was the cleanest room I’ve seen in a while, I think the bathroom may have been cleaned in the last month! We went out for dinner and booked ourselves on a tour of the Plain of Jars for the following day. While we were booking a crazy Swiss guy came out and told us not to book there because he had gone today and not had a guide. He then proceeded to yell at the guy booking our tour. Dee and I quickly confirmed we would have a guide before departing and leaving the Swiss man to demand he be put on a new tour with a guide for free and continue his yelling. We showered and went to bed about 8:30.

I woke at 9:30 this morning feeling about a thousand times better, the others were still asleep so I crept out and went to the coffee shop to get breakfast. I knew that given time they would each show up in search of coffee and food. We decided over breakfast that Brendan Joel and I would catch a tuk tuk out to the nearby waterfall and if there was time we’d also try and see the Pak Ou caves. We set off about midday, Dee stayed back in town because she wasn’t particularly interested in coming.

The ride out to the waterfall took over an hour on a very dodgy dirt road. The pot holes were close to the same size as the tuk tuk and occasionally our driver would slam on the brakes to avoid running into the wandering buffalo and we would go flying into the metal bars that separate the driver’s compartment from the back section. Thanks to this I now have a massive blue bruise on my upper arm.

At the waterfall we first walked up through the forest, passing the enclosures for 3 Black Bears which have been raised as cubs by the association since their mother was killed by poachers. Further up the hill we came across numerous stalls selling every souvenir ever produced in Asia.

The waterfall was spectacular; I could only imagine what it would have looked like in the wet season. I hadn’t thought to bring my bikini, which was stupid because the pools between each tier of the waterfall looked very inviting. We trekked up the steep rocky path to the first pool where we had to clamber over slippery rocks and pass under the flowing water just to reach the flat ground. From here we climbed even higher to the top pool which was a very demanding hike. the dirt had turned to mud which made the already steep hill impossible to grip and we had to use the vines to keep ourselves steady. Luckily, the view from the top was amazing so it was worth the climb. There were shallow rock pools with mini rock faces that the water flowed over, the vegetation was particularly dense. We waded through the water along the top of the waterfall and then began the climb back down on the opposite side of the waterfall, only to discover that on this side there had been wooden steps built which would have made the climb a lot easier had we known they existed.

By the time we got back to the tuk tuk and woke our driver who was asleep in his hammock in the back it was after 4:00.

I still really wanted to see the Pak Ou caves since they are the main tourist attraction in Luang Prabang because of their housing of hundreds of Buddha statues. Our driver decided we had just enough time to see the caves as well so we took off, although in retrospect I think he knew there wasn’t enough time but wouldn’t have found another fare that afternoon. When we were still on our way an hour later and the sun was beginning to set I grew slightly concerned. Along the road we passed dozens of school kids on their bikes cycling home from school to the villages, they all wanted to wave at us and a lot of the young boys tried to race the tuk tuk.

We finally got to our destination at 5:30 and we ran down the hill to the boat crossing and jumped into one of the wooden boats. We arrived at the caves with 10 mins of sunlight to spare and paid the 10,000kip entry fee before racing up the stairs into the cave. I can not pretend I wasn’t disappointed, the caves were less than impressive and the Buddha statues were covered with dust and less than interesting, perhaps if there had been some information on why they were there it would have been more interesting but there wasn’t anything like that.

We took a few photos and then dashed up the approximately 300 stairs to the second cave. A little Laos man came running up behind us and when he reached the top he was doubled over wheezing and trying to catch his breath. I don’t know about the boys, but I for one was glad to see that even the people who walk those stairs everyday find them a challenge. Once he had finally caught his breath he began unlocking the cave doors [they have had to chain the cave closed at night since people have been stealing the Buddha statues] with the keys he had brought, only to discover that he had come running up behind us with the wrong keys. He gave us an apologetic look that also implied he wasn’t about to go running back down to get the correct keys and rush back up again to let in 3 Farang who were stupid enough to show up just as the sun was setting. We told him it was ok, and we all stumbled defeated back down the stairs to the boat.

After crossing the river back to the tuk tuk we climbed back in for what promised to be a bloody freezing ride back into town. It actually wasn’t as bad as I expected, it was cold, but I survived. The driver dropped us off at the markets so that we could grab some food because none of us had eaten since breakfast. I finished eating before the boys and went off in search of tampons. it took me over an hour to find some and even then they cost US$3 for a box of 8. Since I was already out walking around I decided to go and have a look at the night markets now that I was feeling better. They were selling a lot of hand sewn sheet sets with the symbols of the local tribes on them. I bought a set for my sofa bed with the symbol of the Hmong people, I thought it would be a great souvenir of my New Years in the Hmong village. The set cost $19; I’ll have to post it home tomorrow.

Back at the guesthouse we sat outside and discussed the plans for tomorrow. Dee and I have decided to head east to Phonsovan and the Plain of Jars while Brendan is going to go south straight to Vang Vieng and we’ll meet him there in a few days. Joel is going north to Nong Kwai for a couple of nights and we might catch up with him in Vientiane. Once we were all decided on our destinations I left the others to debate gun laws in the USA and Canada and went inside to pack. Although I was feeling much better today I’m still quite low on energy and today’s adventures wiped me out. Fell asleep with no problems.

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