arewethereyet

22 October – 3 November 2009

Once we crossed the border into Laos, which was a completely painless affair in-spite of the fact that our visa wasn’t valid for another month, we headed for Don Khong – the main island of the ‘4000 Island’ group on the Mekong, just over the border. A vehicle ferry took us across to a very laid back island – just in time for Laos National Day. Don Khong has much ceremony as the current Prime Minister of Laos was born here. The very loud practice session lasted well into the night and started rehearsing again at 4.30am in the morning. The same 2 songs over and over and over… I can still hear them now.

National Day was spent chugging down to Don Kon (smaller island) checking out the waterfall and local life. It was fun for a couple of nights – but the call of Northern Laos was strong so we headed north for Savannakhet.

We reached Vientiane the following day – tiny capital of Laos. We stayed just out of the centre and explored by foot. We had dinner with Patrick, an expat teaching maths at the International School – loving the lifestyle of Laos and telling us some insider stories you don’t read about in the guide books. Let’s say it’s definitely still a communist country.

An Australian couple with a 10 y.o. son were living at the guest house we were staying at. Their son pointed us in the direction of Joma: Bakery Café, with excellent coffee and western café comfort food, and – most importantly – wifi.

After Joma, Kai went to get the van cleaned down the road, and it was here that he popped the bonnet for the first time since we left Bangkok to give the engine compartment a good clean out, only to discover that the battery was missing. Our theory is that this happened in Phnom Penn, which is well known for it’s street kids that have a habit of removing side mirrors and anything else they can get money for… it was also one of the few places where we couldn’t find off street parking with 24 hr security. (In Bangkok we were parked on the road, but conveniently opposite the 24 hour security of the United Nations building). Kai left to go find a new battery and returned half an hour later with a new battery imported from Thailand, 3500 baht poorer, which is less then what we paid for a similar battery in Melbourne.  The next morning he went to another mechanic to get a securing brace fitted to keep the battery in place, as the exsisting bracket didn’t fit.

Next stop north was the beautiful Vang Vieng. Amazing amazing scenery which inspired a day of caving and kayaking. The caves were beautiful, water clean and the forest incredibly dramatic. Just as we were getting lost in the beauty of it all – we turned a corner in the river to witness over a hundred inebriated backpackers looking very white and stupid in a few of the makeshift river bars. They were all drinking up the courage to jump off a swing 10 metres into the river. We must getting old…

We stopped at one of the quieter cafes along the river to give the people in our group the chance of doing a jump from 10 meters into the river, and for the guides to play some pool. Apart from the usual drink offerings there was also a ’special menu’. If anyone needs the translation for happy shake, let us know!

We offered Vinay and Poonima (fellow travellers from India) a lift to Luang Prabang the next day and enjoyed their company on the 7 hr journey round many many many windy roads. Kaia managed to hold her lunch in and the brake pads did us proud.

Half way through the journey, we stopped at Phou Khoun, where highway 13 intersect with highway 7 to Phonsavan (near the plain of jars). There was a great little market along the main road, with lots of trade in local produce.

We also met a couple of Melburnians on off road bikes, doing the journey from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. They were recovering after an accident on a wet road – there had been some rain early in the morning leaving Luang Prabang, and the wet road had taken it’s toll.

Luang Prabang is an incredibly beautiful town. A slice of revived french colonialism set in gorgeous countryside in Laos. Easy to see why it is a UNESCO world heritage city. The town was much more touristy than I thought – many foreigners now living and setting up businesses there. The above photo shows the gallery of a french photographer selling black & white prints of hill tribe villagers etc to the tourists.

Most of these businesses benefit locals with jobs etc – but with so many foreigners, it is hard to get a taste of what then town must have been like 10 years ago, and you wonder how much of the money tourists spend ends up with the locals.

We met the manager at the LP branch of Joma Bakery Café, and her story was very inspiring. A devout Christian, 10 years ago, back in the US, an image of a child in a cage had come to her in a vision after which she sold up everything and came to Laos. After a couple of months (on the day her money ran out) she met the owners of Joma, who were looking for a manager. Since then she has been rehabilitating, educating and training women in the hospitality industry. She employs them on a fair wage (read: double what most get paid in hospitality), for a maximum of 40 hours a week, again a new concept. These women come from forced labour, prostitution or otherwise challenging backgrounds, and yes, children do spend time in cages when sold by poor villagers in pure desperation.

During our time there, Kaia and I took an elephant ride at the conservation centre – I was pretty disappointed with the tour as we were told nothing about the elephant camp, the elephants themselves or any other part of the journey. Despite this, we swam in a beautiful waterfall pool and met a fantastic Tasmanian (Maz). Kai headed up into the forest to visit the hill tribes for the day. Unlike our tour, Kai got a full 7 hr run down of the tribes, customs, history and sat down with the locals to drink rice whisky.

Time pressure pushed us north to Luang Nam Tha and then onto Houay Xai to catch the vehicle ferry back to Thailand. The drive through the north was again breathtaking – with many hut villages around the main road. Life doesn’t seem to have changed much in modern times for these guys. The Laos govt. has made poppy growing illegal in this area – so many of the villages are reinventing themselves with new crops and the govt. is also supporting the rehabilitation of opium addicts. The money for poppy crops far exceeds rice or corn crops – so the people also have to contend with a major drop in income from their land.

The roads through this part of Laos were unpredictable. The sealed road would suddenly end for no apparent reason and then reappear a few hundred metres later. This pattern repeated itself for much of the journey. The road works that were taking place were all manual – rocks shaped by many hands – concrete mixed in hand mixers with the sand sieved beside the machines. The workers were all living in a number of makeshift camps along side the road – despite the incredibly hard work there were lots of smiles, waves and hellos.

Houay Xai was very typical border town – again the customs and immigration was a very smooth process, if rather time consuming, with immigration situated 2km away from the car ferry (but near the passenger ferry). After paying our 1000 baht and waiting for the crew to finish their afternoon rest we were on the vehicle ferry headed for Chiang Khong, Thailand.

More photos to come, so please check back soon!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:04 am and is filed under Trip Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.