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.

Tags: Laos

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 6:17 am and is filed under Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.