Llew Wanders the World

Laos isn’t a heavily touristed country compared to some of its neighbours (most notably Thailand) but it still does have some areas that receive a good number of visitors. The most notable of these are the capital, Vientiane, Luang Prabang, 330km to the north and areas in between. It was to this part of the country that my travels would take me next.

Though the bus ride to Vientiane had taken a painful nine hours (to cover just over 400km on the best road in Laos) I was finally there. It took a bit of negotiation with tuktuk drivers to find an even vaguely reasonable price for my trip into town, but eventually it was done.

I climbed aboard and off we zipped (I’m fairly certain now that the only proper descriptor to use for travel by tuktuk is “zip.” Unless they’re stuck in traffic, of course.) into the streets of Vientiane, headed for a dense concentration of inexpensive guesthouses as noted in my guidebook.

After checking in at one of these, I went out for a wander about the immediate environs. It quickly became apparent that (unsurprisingly, given my method of finsing a place to stay) I’d landed in the “tourist ghetto” of Vientiane. Nonetheless, it wasn’t too much trouble to find a little Lao restaurant in amongst all the guesthouses and tourist eateries. With a quick look at the language section of my guidebook I managed to order myself a pappaya salad with sticky (glutionous) rice. It was incredibly, wonderfully delicious and as the bill came to 6000 kip (10000 kip to the US dollar) I vowed to eat nothing else for my whole stay in Vientiane.

After supper I sat and reacquanited myself with the world at an internet cafe and then took a further walk around while waiting for a reasonable time to phone my grandma in Canada, who I’d learned from my e-mail was not well.

I returned to my dinner spot in hopes of having another pappaya salad only to discover they’d run out of food. They had not, however, run out of Beer Lao. As a result, I was invited to the table with a couple of lao men who were having a beer outside. As we spoke, I learned that one of them was the neighbourhood or “village” chief, who was also a police officer. Apparently in Lao a large number of ordinary, untrained citizens are deputized into a secondary police force in an attempt by the government to maintain law and order in remote (or in this case not so remote) areas.

After a pleasant sit, it was finally late enough to call home (Laos is exactly 12 hours ahead of Toronto) and I did so. I had a little bit of trouble communicating with my grandmother over the internet phone, but it was still nice to hear her voice and to learn that she was feeling considerably better.

I rounded off my first evening in Vientiane by breaking my pappaya salad vow when I had a plate of Laap (a Lao salad made with minced meat [in this case chicken] and various savoury herbs.]) I picked out the site for my dinner since A. It was open at 23:00 and B. An older French woman named Patricia invited me to sit down and help her finish her beer (Beer Lao usually comes in 750ml glass bottles.) I talked with Patricia a bit (primarily in English, though with brief French interludes) and finally headed off for a late bedtime.

The next day I planned to visit all of the tourist highlights of Vientiane, hoefully getting a bit of a feel for the city by travelling everywhere on foot. The day began with a breakfast of (what else?) pappaya salad and sticky rice at my local restaurant. This time, however, I arrived as the family that owned the place was sitting down to breakfast out front. They invited me to join them, so in addition to my dishes, I also got some yummy vegetable soup and grilled fish that seemed like (but obviously can’t have been) salmon. Once again, the bill was a mere 6000 kip.

After this, I headed down the street towards the Mekong river. On the way I ran into Jeff and Margaret, the American couple who I’d trekked with in Savannakhet. We shared stories of the brief period since we’d last seen one another and carried on our separate ways. Just before reaching the river, I stopped in at Patricia’s hotel, to see if she was awake (it was 10:00) and felt like going for a walk. She answered the phone in a groggy voice, so after a quick hello, I carried on unaccompanied.

It quickly became apparent that Vientiane was the most pleasant of all the southeast Asian capitals I’d visited. It didn’t have the roaring activity and plethora of goods and services that Bangkok did. It didn’t have the character of Kuala Lumpur. It wasn’t as interesting a place as Phnom Penh. But for all that, it was a lovely laid back place to have a rest with a few of the luxuries of home available.

My sightseeing trip began with a walking tour recommended in my guidebook. I headed down along the river and met with a surprising sight. Here in the capital city of Laos, right in the heart of town, the mud flats revealed by the dry season drop in water levels were being cultivated. And the agriculture wasn’t limited to plants either!

The tour carried on past some lovely old colonial buildings and to a pair of the city’s most celebrated wats. The first, Hoprakeo, was actually no longer functioning as a wat, but had been converted into a museum for the display of religious objects. The outside of the building was surrounded by pleasant gardens. Along the verandah were some fine examples of Lao sculpture, featuring both
Buddha images and other subjects.

Inside were the real treasures, gold, silver and bronze Buddha images, including an absolutley beautiful standing Buddha, whose serene face, delicate lines and beautifully curved fingers were a sight to behold. The signs outside the museum made it very clear, however, that photography inside would not be tolerated.

My next stop was at Wat Sisaket. This wat the oldest in Vientiane, being the only one spared by Siamese (Thai) conquerors in the 19th century (perhaps due to its Thai inspired architecture.) Much more impressive than its age, however, is the fact that Wat Sisaket is home to an incredible 10 136 individual Buddha sculptures. 120 of these are medium sized figures in the shaded areas along the cloisted walls, but the vast majority are tiny (15 or 20cm) gilded figurines placed two by two into nooks in the inner cloister walls and the inner walls of the Sim (the central building in the wat.) These Buddha images are said to represent a miraculous instance from Buddha’s life when he reproduced his image infinitely before the eyes of doubters.

After a pleasant walk around Wat Sisaket, including a visit to the bat-filled Sim (their squeaking was very obvious, but where exactly they were living in the building was not.) I took a walk up to the Morning Market, Talat Sao, for a bit of shopping and for lunch.

From my shopping list of an alarm clock, a hat, super glue and a flashlight, I only managed to find the last two items at reasonable prices, but the walk through the market was more still very worthwhile. The pace of activity there was much slower than in other large markets I’d visited, and it was far less crowded and noisy. Perhaps most impressive was the large upstairs area devoted to jewelry sales.

After completing my tour of the market, I stopped at one of the food stalls outside for lunch. As I was sitting enjoying my fried rice and pineapple shake a young boy with a basket of goods for sale approached me. I invariably shake my head and say “no” as politely as possible to these saleskids, but lo and behold, for once one of them had EXACTLY what I was looking for. I imagine these children live for such moments, though I did my best to portray an air of indifference to the digital alarm clock/calculator/calender that he offered. A bit of bargaining and it was mine for a mere US$3. As annoying as they often were, maybe I wouldn’t be so hard on them thereafter.

Following lunch I wandered up to the Patuxai monument (the letter x, frequent in transliterations of the Lao language is pronounced a an “s” with a little bit of “z” in it.) Patuxai was constructed from American donated concrete which was meant to have been used for a new airport, and has thus been called “the vertical runway” by a few humourously minded expats. The design of the monument bears testament to the French influence on Laos, for while it was constructed long after the colonialists were gone, it bears a striking resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe. Up close, it bears a variety of Buddhist details, but from afar one could almost be gazing up the Champs Elysee.

After Patuxai, I headed back into the centre of town, stopping at the post office for stamps and postcards, before returning back to my accustomed dining spot for another meal of pappaya salad and sticky rice. This time I added the words “mak phet lai lai” to my order and finally got the even more delicious spicy Lao version of the dish instead of the blander version they’d presumed I’d prefer as a foreigner. Mmm…

The final stop on my tour of Vientiane was the National Museum (once again, no photography permitted inside, which was a shame.) The first portion of the museum dealt with Laos’ ancient history. It was interesting and well signed in English, French and Lao. On the second floor there were a variety of exhibits and artifacts from the Lan Xang (million elephants) era, which marked the height of Lao power in the region through to the country’s colonization by France. While these were interesting enough, it was the next sections dealing with the war of independence and the communist revolution that were far and away the most intriguing.

These portions of the museum of a few weapons and a lot of photos with captions. They were almost exactly what one would expect from a (still nominally) communist country. Pictures of brave, smiling comrades taking up arms against their oppressors abounded. The photos and descriptions suggested that virtually all of the Lao people, from all ethnicities joined in the struggle (an assertion that’s definitely not true) and that men and women comrades alike joined in the battle for freedom (an assertion that I’m not certain about, but am mildly inclined to believe.)

Photos of the enemy almost invariably showed them in a negative light. The descriptive text on view was in a style that made it almost instantly recognizeable as Communist propaganda. One example: The words “US” or “American,” which I read perhaps forty times in the museum were, in every single instance, followed by the word “imperialist.”

It was definitely funny to look at, but also gave one pause. It was easy to see how a steady diet of this sort of thing could lead individuals to be entirely convinced of the truth of the official position to the exclusion of all others. That said, it also made me wonder if perhaps there wasn’t at least a little of the same thing going on in museums and other offical repositories of hsitory at home (if perhaps, a bit more subtly.)

I spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening catching up on my ‘blog and e-mails (which desperately needed catching up on) before having a late supper and getting to bed as early as I could manage, since I had a very early bus the next morning.

I woke just after 05:00, packed my bags and wandered out into the dark street to find a tuktuk headed to the bus station.

I climbed aboard the VIP bus (my experience with the local bus from Savannakhet had soured me on them, and the VIP bus was only $1.50 more) bound for Luang Prabang.

The ten hour journey was definitely more pleasant than my previous bus trip, but still had its problems. The main one of these was highlighted by the first entry in my notebook dealing with the trip. It reads “how do you say ‘please turn down the volume on the f$%#ing karaoke video’ in Lao?”

Despite the torment of blaring, hideously bad Lao and Thai pop music, the trip was actually quite nice. Immediately north of Vientiane we passed through much greener country than I’d seen in southern Laos and began to climb up into the hills. These weren’t the individual monoliths poking up out of the plains that I’d seen earlier, but the foothills of a genuine mountain range.

By the time we passed Vang Vieng (a spot that exists solely [in its current form at least] for tourists to break up the Vientiane-Luang Prabang trip and enjoy western food, television, and tubing down the river) the mountains were all around us. Sadly it was a hazy, misty, cloudy day, so the view wasn’t what it could have been. As it was, the dark grey silhouettes of the jagged peaks were an impressive sight, but on a clear day I was sure they would have been truly spectacular.

The second half of the trip followed tightly winding roads up and down mountain valleys and ridges. The beautiful scenery was only broken by equally picturesque small traditional Lao villages along the side of the road or (rarely) a larger town at one of the few crossroads we passed.

The bus arrived in Luang Prabang just before 17:00 and I climbed on a tuktuk into town in search of a place to stay.

Luang Prabang is an incredible popular tourist spot as far as Laos goes. Virtually every tourist who visits the country makes LP part of his itinerary, and for good reason. The entire city has been desgnated a World Heritage Area for its overall form as well as its Lao and French architecture. The city was laid out on an ancient pattern which consisted not of a central area surrounded by others of lesser importance, but of a series of small, interlinked villages centred on a Buddhist wat. With these cultural glories, its understandable why so many people visit LP, and why it was a bit tricky finding a guesthouse within my budget.

After a but of looking I eventually decided to stay in a dormitory (I didn’t even know they existed in Asia!) not only because it would save money, but also because I hadn’t done so in a while and thought it would be fun and because it would be a good way to meet fellow voyagers.

After getting settled, I went out for a walk in the city. And was disappointed by what I saw. It seemed that every single building in the place housed a tour operator, guesthouse, tourist restaurant or internet cafe. The street I was walking down was thick with light skinned people, the Lao being very obviously the minority. This was exactly what I’d hoped to avoid by not stopping in Vang Vieng!

Thankfully after returning to the guesthouse I went out for a walk with an Israeli fellow to his freinds’ guesthouse. I soon discovered that it was only one section of the main street that was so choked with tourists. A very short walk in a different direction took one to the quiet streets and alleyways lined with beautiful buildings that LP is known for.

I went to bed early that night as a result of my very early start that morning and had no trouble settling back into sleeping in a room full of strangers.

The next day I woke and set out to explore Luang Prabang. The central area of LP is located on a peninsula jutting out into the confluence of the Mekong and Khan rivers. My walk took me on a loop around this peninsula. Though my wandering was pretty much aimless, I still saw many of the treasured aspects of LP. Beautiful old colonial buildings (many of which had been turned into guesthouses) lined the streets, while small alleyways or footpaths led to what could have been small Lao countryside villages.

There seemed to be a Buddhist wat around every corner, and even the smallest of them were beautiful, quiet places. I stopped at one for a chat with a few monks before continuing my wander back down the main street past several of Luang Prabang’s paper factories (somehow I don’t think factory is quite the right word here, but I couldn’t come up with a different one.)

The riverside roads were the busiest in the city, but still very pleasant to walk along. Their far banks were covered with vegetable gardens tended by the city’s residents. I spent the entire day in this fashion, walking back along the Mekong, stopping at four different restaurants along the way, and enjoying a pineapple shake and a chapter of my book at each. Finally I headed back towards my guesthouse via several more small alleyways, passing all sorts of activity, including the drying of sheets of sesame covered seaweed out in the lowering rays of the sun.

As sunset approached, I sat and read near the Mekong once more, watching the sun set on the two most common flags in Laos.

In the evening I prowled about the streets some more, spending most of my time in LP’s wonderfully pretty night market. Beautiful textiles, including embroidered scarves to pretty woven sarongs and many others were the most common items for sale, but paper products and other goods also featured prominently.

The next day I’d arranged for a bit of a trip with a fellow dorm resident. Katy, an 18 year old Australian was volunteer teaching English at the LP teacher’s college, and had said she’d be happy to take me along for a chat with her students.

Before departing I headed to the post office for another (hopefully clear non-internet) phone call to my grandma. I found the telephone, though our talking time was rather limited by the US$2 per minute price. Our three and a half minute talk cost as much as four night’s accomodation at my guesthouse!

Telephonic duties dispensed with, I rejoined Katy for went for a walk to the market for breakfast and then up the main street to meet Nika, a Slovenian girl. Our party thus formed we carried on walking to well outside the centre of town. During our stroll we ran into a couple of Katy’s Lao friends along the way. When we finally arrived at the college we were disappointed to discover that the language centre was, for some unknown reason, closed that day. No matter. I’d thoroughly enjoyed the walk and we headed back into town.

That afternoon we stopped in at the Children’s Cultural Centre, where a teacher friend of Katy’s had a couple of young Lao students who were a bit shy, but still quite happy to practice on foreigners. After half an hour or so of chatting with them, we walked next door to the library. Most of the books were in Lao, but there were still a fair number of foreign language titles, with Russian, followed by French and English being the most common. There were actually some fascinating books on the shelves, including a half dozen copies of Marx-Engels Correspondence, and two volumes of Soviet military history translated from Russian into English. I dearly would have loved to have read a Soviet account of the Great Patriotic War, but just didn’t have enough time in LP to justify checking the book out.

Next door to the library was a petanque (petanque is a French game rather like lawn bowling or, more precisely, bocci, which is popular in Laos as a legacy of the colonial days) court which could put in a fair bid for the most picturesque sporting ground I’ve ever visited.

That evening Katy and I took another wander through the night market, meeting several of her Lao students selling their wares, before returning once more to our guesthouse. That evening a big group of us visited the food section of the night market. I hadn’t noticed it before, tucked down a small alley off the main street as it was. I was, however, overjoyed to have been introduced to the place. Most especially I was happy to discover the three vegetarian food purveyors at the far end (though the adorable little girls who more or less ran the place probably would have captured me anyway, with their cries of “sabai di!” and “one plate 5000 kip.” Your 5000 kip got you a plate, which you could pile as high as you cared to with any of ten or so vegetarian dishes sitting in trays on the table. The food was absolutely delicious, and ended with complimentary banannas sitting on the tables where we sat down with our food.

Dinner was spent chatting with my room-mates, including Luke, a Scot teaching Engish Literature in China, Sunny, a Chinese woman on vacation, Brett a brashly interesting American and Katy.

Day three in Luang Prabang was probably the best yet. Katy had already been in the city for over ten days and had explored a bit on her own, but very kindly offered to take me on a walk out to a small village nearby.

We walked down the main street enjoying our breakfast of sticky rice acquired at the market. It was still pleasantly cool in the morning, a fact that many locals including the monks took advantage of to get their outdoor work done.

Our walk carried on through some more of the beautiful villages within the city that make Luang Prabang so special. We then headed back onto the major streets and over a rickety motorcycle/bicycle/pedestrian bridge over the Nam Khan. The streets we walked along were ones that were probably infrequently visisted by foreiginers, as was the small market we stopped in at to procure fruits and vegetables for lunch. We continued walking along, back on well travelled roads, passing by the airport and eating a bunch of oddly sweet and tasty root vegetables that I’d first tried in Savannakhet.

We finally arrived at our destination, a small village near the Nam Khan. Many of the villages around Luang Prabang have traditional professions that many of of their residents participate in. This village was no exception, and its profession was blacksmithing. We only saw one group at work beating hot iron, but it was still a cool sight.

Walking through the village and down a dusty hill, we came to the river itself. We sat down by the riverside and I went in for a quick swim. Or rather wade/float. The current was so strong that it was difficult to stand up in, even though it was rarely more than knee deep. Refreshed, I climbed back out and sat dripping on the bank where Katy and I had a nice lunch of peanut and bananna sandwiches.

Shortly after lunch, a few Lao children who had been playing in the river nearby began to take an interest in us and shortly attracted a group of their friends. My almost non-existent and Katy’s existant but very very limited Lao didn’t help much with conversation, but we still had a really fun time with them with minimal communication including hand gestures and making animal noises 🙂 I went out for a swim and float down the river with one of the boys (and was entirely unable to walk back up against the current… I had to slowly work my way to the bank then walk back on land) while Katy mimed some “dance steps” that were eagerly imitated by three absolutely adorable little girls at play in the river. So cute were the kids that we just had to take a few photos of them. This, predictably, sparked an entirely new round of excitement. Kids (indeed, people) all over Asia just love to look at their image on tiny LCD screens. I figured that my camera was tough enough that I could even let them have a bit of a play with it. While this resulted in a whole bunch of pictures of grass, feet and fingers, one of the kids did manage (entirely by chance) to get a very nice picture of one of his friends!

We continued playing around with the kids, making animal noises and trying to come up with other entertainments for them. Eventually they tired of this a bit and ran off on their own. I’d not expected them to reappear, but they did, this time bringing us small green fruits from their garden. I took a taste of one and found it very bitter and seedy. When they seemed disinclined to eat one of them I began to worry a bit, but finally one of the kids popped one into his mouth and I relaxed a little 🙂

This pattern continued with the kids bringing us one small fruit or bean or vegetable at a time, and ended with us getting up to go and cutting up a bananna for them to share.

Our walk back took us along the same route, with a brief stop at the airport, and we arrived back in town just before sunset. Before supper time we had a look at a free one-for-one book exchange run by an Australian expat who apparently had some family in Laos and had been living there for several years. After making our trades and having an interesting talk with her about the changes in Laos (e.g. it used to be much safer to drive or ride a motorcycle when the roads were terrible and motos cost four times as much as they currently do) it was time for supper.

Once again, dinner was a gathering of our dorm-mates, at the night market’s delicious and cheap vegetarian food stands. We were also joined by a couple Australian friends of Katy’s and (much to my astonishment) a couple who’d I’d met in Coral Bay, Western Australia!

After dinner we headed for the bar. Often “the” bar is just a figure of speech, but at 22:00 in Luang Prabang the “the” is quite literal. There’s only one. A cool place called the Hive Bar. Beer Lao (12000 kip) and lao lao (5000 kip) were a bit expensive, but I still enjoyed a few of them while chatting first with Luke (the English literature teaching Scot) and then with Katy and some of her friends.

We were all tossed out when the place closed at 00:30, and Katy and I (we’d somehow misplaced Luke) wandered our slow way back to our guesthouse, pausing to interestedly observe some of our bar-mates trying to buy opium from a tuktuk driver (both anecdotally and from my personal experience of receiving offers a high proportion of the tuktuk drivers out at night in Laos seem to be drug dealers.)

We finally got back to our guesthouse, a little bit concerned by the lateness of the hour (the front gate was supposed to have been locked at 00:00) but were let in by one member of the family who was still awake and watching TV.

Much to my distress I actually had a (very mild) hangover from the previous night’s tow Beer Lao and pair of Lao Laos. It disappeared quickly, however, with the (admittedly late at 10:30) but delicious breakfast Katy and I shared.

We headed to the market to procure some sticky rice and then picked up a waffle and some onion-seasoned fried dough from a stand on the the Mekong Road, before heading down to the banks to eat.

Katy and I sat on a log by the river enjoying the sticky rice with a super sweet ripe mango (sticky rice with mango is SOOO good) and our other treats, just watching the boats go by and smiling blisfully at the happy-coolness of our situation.

After breakfast Katy needed to meet some other friends, and I headed back to the guesthouse. On the way there, I met Dirk, one of the Belgians with whom I’d crossed the Cambodia-Laos border. We had a quick chat and I learned that he’d just arrived in LP. We wandered back to my guesthouse where he was quite pleased to take the last dorm bed, and then carried on back up the Mekong road where we spent the remainder of the morning sitting in a restaurant with Claire, one of our dorm mates. Here, I tried a tamarind shake (not as good as pineapple) and the others had breakfast in a positively lovely setting.

I finally realized that it was already 13:00, and I still needed to visit many of LP’s sights, as well as to do some weblog writing! I made plans to meet my companions back at the guesthouse and sat down at an internet cafe to do some serious keyboard pounding.

By the time my spell of writing was complete it was already late afternoon. This presented a problem in that there were still a number of things I wanted or needed to do in Luang Prabang before my planned departure the next morning.

The first of these was to climb up to the top of the hill that forms a focal point for the city centre. I walked quickly down the main street to the foot of the stairs, then literally ran up to the top of the hill. The temple at its summit was a bit disappointing, having been constructed quite recently in fairly unspectacular fashion, but the views of the surrounding city definitely made the climb worthwhile. Also while there I ran into still more people I’d met previously. This time it was David and Callista, a couple with whom I’d shared a pickup truck with on the road down from Bokor Hill Station in Cambodia.

After running back down the hill I walked along the Mekong (rather further than I’d remembered it being) to see if there would be a boat leaving for Nong Kiaw the next morning. Kate (my travel companion in Champasak Province, Laos) had raved about this trip and I was pleased to discover that the boat would be running.

With all of my urgent business completed (or at least all of it that was going to get done) I headed to the night market food alley for dinner one more time. I piled my plate high with delicious veggies, noodles and tofu one more time enjoying my meal and a talk with some familiar (and some not so familiar) faces.

With that I returned to the internet cafe to finish up my writing in anticipation of heading back out to the webless wilds next morning.

Many thanks this time to Katy, who was a really fun, pleasant and interesting companion for several of my days in Luang Prabang and who was more than happy to share her already accumulated knowledge with me and other newer arrivals. Hope to see you again in Thailand or India or Nepal or somewhere or other…

Tags: Laos

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