A bit of Laos

We started our time in Laos on 2/9, after a 7 hour bus ride through northern Thailand and a boat ride across the mighty Mekong River into the border town of Huay Xi, Laos. After dinner by the river, some BeerLaos (the national beer) and Laap (minced meat with a fried noodle/rice) for me and a Laos noodle soup for Em, we went back to the guesthouse. Later that evening, Em decided that the noodle soup didn't agree with her stomach, and decided to remove it.

The next morning, we caught a minibus to Luang Nam Tha, whipping through some of the curviest mountain roads I've been on. Once there, we put Em in bed at the guesthouse and I went exploring by bicycle. While looking for the Laos Airlines ticket office at the world's smallest airport, a local guy about my age came up and asked if I spoke English and if I needed any help. I said, "Yes, I'm looking for the Laos Airlines ticket office" and waved my arm at the construction-filled dirt strip and single room terminal in front of us. Beaming a big smile, he replied in his best English, "Yes, it's beautiful, isn't it!" Needless to say, I kept searching without his assistance for a while. Back in town, after checking on Em again (still a bit sickly), I signed myself up for a 1-day trek out into the jungle to see some local hill tribe villages.

The next day, up early to go hiking. Besides our 2 guides, both natives to the area and English-speaking, there were 3 other "trekkers": a couple from Hawaii and a lone guy from Paris. We walked a few kilometers through rice paddies until we got to a village of 80 people. They were building a new house for someone, carving the joints of the wooden structure by hand. We learned that almost everyone there made a living planting and harvesting rubber trees for China. This explained the large patches of slash-and-burn (jungle clear-cut and then burned down to allow new plants to be planted) we'd been seeing in the jungle around. After another jaunt through the wild, we stumbled upon a wedding reception in the next village. Apparently, a Laos wedding reception is a 3 day party that anyone and everyone is invited to partake in. We were led to chairs along tables covered in food and drink, and given shots of Lao-lao, the locally distilled rice whiskey, which tasted disturbingly like cheap tequila. After 5 little shots with the locals, I said "no more" and refused their invitations for me to get on the dance floor. That night, Em was feeling healthier, so we booked a 2-day trek with the same company leaving the next day.

Our trek was a party of (once again) 2 locals for guides, and an Israeli couple, 2 Germans, 1 Austrian, and 1 Brit. After hiking through the jungle for some time (luckily not all slash-and-burned), we stopped for lunch. This consisted of dumping bags of bamboo-shoot salad, some chicken concoction, and tomato sauce onto freshly plucked banana tree leaves as a table. Arriving in the village in the mid-afternoon, we kept ourselves busy playing Bocci Ball for awhile and then strolling through the village, spying into the villagers' lives. It was a bit awkward, and had us hoping that the income generated by these well-regulated treks was a positive thing for the people. The locals either don't seem to care that you are there (adults) or want to smile bashfully and wave to you while getting their picture taken (children). The village chief ate dinner with us, and told us a bit about the village (most income from selling rice and animals) and his duties as chief (election every 3 years, been chief for the past 21 years, meetings, etc.) He also poured us some lao-lao to wash down the sticky rice with. Since our guides and the villagers were in bed by about 8pm, the trekkers sat around a fire chatting until a more appropriate bedtime.

The next day, after a breakfast of sticky rice and food that looked a whole lot like lunch and dinner the day before had, we kept moving. At the next village, Em got some great pictures of children fighting over a puppy, a woman pounding the shells off of the rice for the day, and a blacksmith forging a knife blade with a hot fire, a hammer, and a home-made anvil. At the next village a few kilometers further, I bought a small journal of bamboo paper they made there in the village. The rest of the day (and trek) was spent getting back out of the jungle, made quite a bit more difficult by the rain that pummeled us and the Laos' adversion to switchbacks in uber-steep dirt single track trails. Back in town, we were lucky enough to catch Die Hard 3 playing on the TV in our $6/night room before meeting up with the others from the trek for dinner and drinks.

Photos from Huay Xi and Luang Nam Tha.

After an 8 hour bus ride, we arrived the next day in Luang Prabang. This town is French colonial (the French controlled Laos from 1893 to 1949, and are responsible for adding the silent "s" to the country's name), very different in architecture than the more rural areas we'd been to thus far. It also is a bit more touristy, with a lot of restaurants, art shops, and souveneir-type stores. The next day was spent buying a plane ticket from Laos to Cambodia, setting up our Vietnam visas, and getting a bus ticket for the day after. We did get to walk the Hmong night market, where Em bought some hand-sewn story books for her little nieces (don't tell them if you see them!). The little girl helping her mom in the booth had sewn them, and showed how she'd sewn the English, Laos, and Hmong words for the pictures in the books. We ended the night with foot massages, my first. I spent the whole time wondering what the poor girl massaging my callous-covered, dirty, and not-so-fresh smelling feet had done in a previous life to be forced into this, but she seemed plenty happy about doing it.

The following day, we were off to Phonsavan, a city famous for it's Plain of Jars. After another 8 hour bus ride (this one made much less fun by the older guy sitting next to me in the aisle of the bus on a plastic stool throwing up every 10-15 minutes for the entire duration of the trip), we found a place to sleep and got ready for the tour the next day. The short story of the Plain of Jars is that there are thousands of stone jars used 1500-2000 years ago by a group of people that we know nothing about. Theories include food, wine, water, or whiskey storage, and funeral urns. We saw 3 of the 60-some sites (the only 3 currently accessible), a village where they were making lao-lao in the coolest barrel still I've seen, and the shell of a deserted Russian tank. All part of the tour package that we had to join to see the Jars.

Besides being interesting to look at, the jars spread all over the countryside was a chance for me to learn a bit about the US-led secret war in Laos during the 60's and 70's. The short story is that the US thought that if the Communists in the north of Laos spread, all of SE Asia would fall to the Reds and the HoChiMinh trail ran through parts of southern Laos. To prevent this, the US dropped 2 million metric tons of bombs on the country of Laos, more than we did over Germany and Japan in WWII, combined. This was done with over 500,000 missions, 50% more missions than were conducted over North Vietnam. Roughly 30% of the dropped munitions never detonated, meaning that a huge share of Laos is littered with cluster bombs, and the removal effort is slow, tedious, and completely under-funded. To complicate matters, farmers who can't farm their own uncleared land due to the threat have taken to finding, unearthing, and dismantling weapons for the valuable scrap metal they might be able to feed their families with. The story is utterly heart-wrenching and a sad glimpse into one of the short-sighted mistakes made by the US and still impacting lives daily. Worst of all, I had never (that I can remember) heard of the Secret War or it's effects until this trip. If you have a few extra dollars laying around and want to help, you can go to MAG's (Mines Advisory Group) website and donate online.

Photos from Luang Prabang and Phonsavan.

That afternoon, we hopped another bus over a winding, bumpy, puke-inducing road (luckily not Em or I) to Vang Vieng. (Everyone of the Laos people gets sick on the bus, it seems to be the "in" thing to do the ENTIRE trip. The driver's assistant hands little baggies to everyone and they do their business and then chuck the filled bag out the window. It's disgusting. Added by Em) The next morning, after looking at the gorgeous mountains towering over the town, we rented bikes and rode 13km out of town to a site with several caves. The caves were neat to see. One of them had a natural rock that looked strikingly like an elephant, another went down over 1/2 a mile, and the third had big, cavernous rooms throughout. The downside was the guides; although decent guides, one of them had said he couldn't speak enough English when I asked him how much his guide service cost as he walked with us. There was no signs at the beginning saying that you had to have a guide or how much one would cost, so it was a little sketchy. After we'd toured the caves, he and his guide partner demanded (in pretty good English) $10 per person after 1 hour's worth of work. Remember, this is a place where you can 24 oz. beer for about $1. We argued for a bit, and explained that you can't not tell people how much you are going to charge them when they ask and then be pissed when you ask for a huge sum later. We gave them what we thought was fair, and walked off. Luckily, this is one of only a handful of times that we've caught someone trying to blatantly rip us off, so we got over it shortly. That night, a bit tired of sticky rice and such, we found a place with big pizzas and gorged on Western food to resettle our stomaches.

Our second and last day in Vang Vieng, we went tubing down the Nam Song river. Just like back home, we rented tubes, were driven upriver (except this was in a tuk-tuk), and then floated lazily back down. The difference was that along the banks of the river, spaced every 50 yards or so, was another makeshift bar! These bars were complete with ice-cold cocktails and beers, people at the river's edge to throw you a line and reel you in, and (some) had tall platforms from which you could zip-line or swing into the river for kicks. It was incredibly touristy, but such a fantastic way to spend a warm, sunny day (on the river mildly intoxicated) that we debated staying another day!

Photos from Vang Vieng.