Entering Laos from northern Thailand must be done by way of Chaing Khong, which is a small border town sitting on the Mekong River. To get into Laos from there it takes a 1 minute boat ride across to Huay Xai in Laos then a cursory look at your visa and finally an official stamp on your passport at the immigration building, which looks like nothing more than a 10 year old kids lemonade stand. Swimming across this section of the river is not recommended because it is very fast moving. Many people have drowned in the past trying to save the 5-cent the boat ride or to elude immigration. A friend of mine actually did this swim. He had been in a reasonably bad motorcycle accident and because of the costs and healing time he was out of money and had overstayed his visa in Laos. An overstayed visa means that the border officials would have demanded him to pay fines and bribes to cross into Thailand so he swam across to circumvent the costs and hassles. I’m sure that exposing his deep infected accident wounds to the dirty milk chocolate looking Mekong had nothing to do with his chronic wound infections that plagued him immediately after. You’re a nut Adam!
Once in Laos, my travel group and I had to find our way to Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is a small town nestled in the mountains on the Lao backpacker circuit. It is full of beautiful temples and some date as far back as the 16th century. As with most cities and towns in Laos you can still see the French influence left over from their rule before the Second World War. The most notable influences are in the French colonial architecture; the many people who are fluent in French but most of all in the food. The French brought the baguette to Laos and it didn’t leave with them when the Japanese chased them out. Anywhere you can buy food you are sure to find fresh baguettes. Mmmmhhh… baguettes!
My travel group and I had 2 choices to get to Luang Prabang and both were by boat: either a fast boat or a slow boat. Roads in Lao are either non-existent, in horrible condition or very dangerous thanks to the many rebels and bandits, so most transport in the country is done by boat. The slow boat was a 2-day ride and the fast boat was just 6 hours long. The fast boat was like a tiny flat bottom canoe with a modified high-performance car motor on the back. It just barely seated 6 people, their luggage and a driver. Passengers are told to wear earplugs because of the thunderous noise that screams out of the motor and are required to wear a helmet and life jacket because it is a fast, bumpy and dangerous rock-dodging ride.
Being the adrenaline junkie I am I chose the speed boat. It was quite a ride sitting with my knees squashed against my chest, bouncing down the rock and log filled river for 6 hours at 70 kilometers an hour. I’d do it again in a second except next time I would bring proper earplugs rather than using crumpled up bits of used tissue I found in my pocket.
Upon getting to Luang Prabang we searched around for a good guesthouse for quite a while finally settling on one, not because it was good but because after wandering around in the rain for an hour looking we were too tired to look anymore. It is surprising how tired it can make you when you sit on a boat for 6 hours bouncing around like you’re on a paint shaker thinking that you could die at any second. We settled into our settled on guesthouse then went out to get some dinner.
It was still raining and there was lightning flashing all around on our walk to the towns main dirt road. Just before we got there lightning hit a hydro pole just in front of us and knocked the power out all around. None of the restaurants were serving food because of the outage. We were all starving, tired and soaked by now. I think everyone was having the `What am I doing here….This sucks….I want to be home right now…` feeling. Things turned around for us when we found a lady serving soup on the street. We all sat under umbrellas slurping our hot and tasty soup by candlelight. Our spirits were warmed and we began talking and laughing about outlandish events of the day. The soup lady saved the day!
We spent our days keeping cool by moving from one shady spot to another, walking around the many markets especially the textile market, which was full of a wide range of beautiful handicrafts at below sweatshop prices. One thing that I could not get use to is the openness of the locals in regards to opium. Everywhere I went I was approached by old and young, ladies and men and offered copious amounts of opium.
Every night we went back to the soup lady for her spiritual soup. One night we sat on the bank of the Mekong drinking Lao Moonshine, playing guitar and singing until just before the sun came up. For the sunrise we climbed up to a temple, which was perched on the top of a small mountain in the center of town. As the sun rose we could hear Monks chanting and see the sleeping town below. It was probably one of the most peaceful settings you could ever be. Once all the roosters woke up and woke up all the dogs and all the dogs woke up all the people we headed down the mountain to get some breakfast.
It was now 6 a.m. and I was still so drunk that the single file precession of about 500 monks walking through town didn’t seem that weird to me. Every morning all the monks from every temple in and around town parade through the street in their bright orange robes. Many of the locals come out to the street and give each monk a little bit of rice. This rice they receive is their food for the day.
One day we took a trip up into the mountains to see Kuang Si Waterfalls. They are a beautiful multi-tiered waterfall with turquoise green pools at every tier. At the top there is a large pool with a rope swing. It was quite a steep hike up to the top and by the time we got there we were very ready for a refreshing dip in the pool. It was utter paradise up there, surrounded by high waterfalls, with cool pools to swim and splash around in and the rope swing. We were up very high so we could see the jungle canopy and mountains for miles around.
After a week and a half we had done all the shopping, sight seeing and drinking we could do there so decided to move on to the next place, which was Vang Vien. The only way to get there was by road and this strip of road was the most dangerous in Laos. Numerous busses have been shot up along that route. No one really knows how many times it has happened because the government tries to hide it when it does to protect tourism. These attacks are mainly aimed at locals and have been blamed on remnants of the anti-communist Hmong guerrillas who still have grievances with the communist Laos government. During the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited, trained and supplied the Hmong army to help fight the Communist Lao and the North Vietnamese who used Laos as a supply line to move troops and equipment into South Vietnam.Along this highway every 10km or so there was a plain clothed guy with a big machine gun. Our driver would throw them smokes every time he passed one. We were told when we booked our bus that we would get a guard with a machine gun to ride with us. We did not end up getting one but most others I talked to did. Along the way there we passed one of the busses that had been attacked. It was riddled with bullet holes and all burnt up.
It was a long and stressful ride which bought up the same `I am going to die` feelings as our earlier speedboat ride did. We made it to Vang Vien in one piece but when we got there there was no soup lady waiting to warm our spirits.
