Laos, Pt 1

Slow boat on the Mekong

By Heather & Pravin

October 28^th, 2018

The Slow Boat

After a few weeks of enjoying everything that Thailand had to offer, we were ready to slow down our spending and move on to Laos. Neither of us had been here before, and we were excited to be able to venture a little bit more off the beaten track than is usually possible in Thailand. On our last day in Thailand, we caught a morning bus out of Chiang Mai to the border town of Chiang Khong, then hopped in a mototruck to the actual border crossing. We arrived moments after the 4pm cut-off time, and had to pay an extra $1USD for "after-hours" service. We were laughing that we should have just passed the border officers a beer each instead of paying the $1 - it was a Friday afternoon at a sleepy remote border post and everyone in the office was cracking open beers!

Surprisingly, we again found ourselves having to pay the highest fee out of any nationality for our Laos entry visas. We can't complain as in general it's extremely easy for Canadian citizens to travel the world and gain entry to most countries, but we do find it strange that time and time again, as Canadians we have to pay more to enter than most (if not all) other nations. I'm not sure about Laos, but in some countries it's a reciprocal fee - these nations simply charge Canadians what Canada charges their citizens to enter Canada. Can't argue with that!

Our first adventure in Laos was the slow boat to Luang Prabang. We spent the night in the border town of Huay Xai, at Daauw Village, a guesthouse that is part of a non-profit project that provides housing, assistance and employment to people in crisis from the surrounding hill tribes. That evening on the cozy hillside porch at Daauw Village was our first introduction to the very tasty Beerlao, the national lager, and also to the warm Lao hospitality. The ladies that ran the guesthouse were friendly and sweet and we ordered a special dish of river fish with local vegetables to share. It was fresh and delicious, and perfectly paired with a number of surprisingly crisp Beerlaos. We had a great night chatting with others who were dining on the patio, several of whom we ended up seeing again on the boat the following morning.

The boat ride was scenic and lengthy, and much more comfortable than we had expected. We were anticipating wooden benches and extreme crowding, but we sat in what almost seemed like old bus seats, with ample leg room and a flowing breeze as we cruised down the mighty Mekong River and enjoyed seeing signs of life - and many, many doe-eyed water buffalo - along its banks. We had made a very important pit stop in the morning on the way to the dock to buy Laos SIM cards for our phones, because we were expecting some very exciting news from home. We were thrilled to have decent reception when the news came through that Pravin's brother Amesh and his wife Jessica had delivered their first baby girl, Anjali! It was hard to be so far from home at such an exciting moment, but we purchased a beer onboard and toasted the new addition to the family.

The boat ride was a two-day trip, so we spent one night in a town roughly halfway to Luang Prabang. We checked out a few places to stay, and were thinking of settling for a grungy but cheap room, when a fellow running a beautiful set of bungalows on stilts overlooking the Mekong made us an offer we literally couldn't refuse - unprompted, he gave us a price that was about 1/4 of what we had been quoted elsewhere! We quickly dropped off our bags and hiked up to a viewpoint above town, hoping to beat the clouds that were rolling in to block the setting sun. It was great to stretch the legs after sitting all day, and even better to do so among such stunning scenery. After all that, and the excitement of Anjali's arrival, we were more than ready for a good meal and some more Beerlao. We sat down at a cozy restaurant and were joined by a lovely couple from Nova Scotia, whom we had met the night before. Paul and Sarah enchanted us with their tales from having lived abroad in several countries while raising a family and then now taking off on a sabbatical from work to backpack through SE Asia!

Luang Prabang

Arriving in Luang Prabang (LP), we found a cozy place to stay with a great leafy balcony and more importantly, that was located directly on the streets where the morning market set up each day. The pace in LP was wonderfully slow, and we were up early each morning to wander through the morning market and see the fascinating variety of food for sale - more types of greens than you could imagine, buckets of live frogs, buffalo skin, larvae, fish, coconut products, you name it!

We also got up even earlier one morning to see the alms-giving in the local streets, but came away a bit thrown-off by the experience. The core idea is very beautiful; Buddhist monks from the many monasteries in town proceed through the streets and collect alms from local devotees who wake up before dawn to prepare nourishing sticky rice for the monks.

We dressed respectfully and modestly, and decided to silently observe the alms-giving from a fair distance. Unfortunately, busloads of morning tourists arrive in town with little regard to decorum and tradition, and from what we gather, this has really changed the experience for all. After purchasing cheap, subpar rice or sugary candies from opportunistic street vendors, they clamber for prime positions along the roadside. When the monks pass by, the goal is to get a great photo of them giving the rice to the monks. As you can imagine, the significant others or travel buddies taking the photos also lack respect, and get right up into the monks' personal space with giant camera lenses and generally just get in the way of the procession. Considerate townspeople have strategically placed rubbish bins along the procession route after the tourist groups, and you can actually see the monks picking out the crummy helpings of rice and junk food and dumping them as they pass by. It was quite shocking to see the impunity of these tourists' disrespectful behaviours, and a prime example of how not to behave abroad.

The afternoons in Luang Prabang were insanely hot, and we often found ourselves drained of energy, with just enough left in us to hit the nearest riverside patio for a cold, rejuvenating Beerlao and a game of cribbage. We wiled away many hours at plastic tables along the river, watching people and boats and processions of ants.

One day in LP, we rented a scooter from our guesthouse and headed out of town to the Kuang Si waterfalls. The road to the falls wound through an agricultural valley, and it was a good taste of rural life as we cruised past small homesteads. Upon arriving at the falls, we were braced for it to be very crowded, but we arrived early enough that it really wasn't bad at all. We took our time exploring the different pools, some of which you can swim in, some of which are restricted for conservation, and decided to take a short hike up to a view point at the top of the highest falls. The valley vistas were gorgeous, and with the intense humidity from the vegetation and flowing water, we were more than ready for a swim by the time we got back down. The turquoise waters were cool and refreshing, and we timed it just right to head out in the heat of the afternoon when busloads of people were starting to arrive. On our way back to town, we stopped at a buffalo dairy to check out their interesting-sounding operation. Although I do think water buffalo are close to the cutest animals I've ever seen, the price to take a tour of the farm and feed the buffalo was a bit too steep, so we compromised and split a scoop of apple pie-flavoured buffalo milk ice cream, served to us by a friendly American workaway volunteer who was completing a short stint of work at the farm.

nong khiaw & Muang ngoi

We had a hard time deciding where to go from Luang Prabang! We were starting to feel the time crunch of our approaching flights out of Asia, and with only a few weeks remaining after close to 7 months in Asia, we wanted to make the most of the rest of our time in the region. Instead of heading south and hitting up some of the more popular tourist hotspots that admittedly did sound great, we opted to take a road somewhat less travelled and head north to the small town of Nong Khiaw. You used to be able to travel there by boat up the Nam Ou river from Luang Prabang, but a fairly recent hydro project on the river means that at least some travel on the roads is necessary to bypass the area surrounding the dam.

We arrived in Nong Khiaw just as the skies opened up, and as the bus stop was a decent walk from town, we took shelter in a small eatery about halfway there and ordered some noodles while we waited out the storm. The weather continued to be uncooperative, and the torrential rain meant that our plans for hiking to the top of the iconic limestone peak towering over town had to be scrapped. Instead, we found accommodation in a rustic bamboo hut overlooking the river, and spent the afternoon reading in hammocks and then heading to a local bar to sip on some local lao-Lao rice whiskey for the evening.

The next morning, we made a snap decision to move on to the next town up the river, and hurriedly packed our bags, settled our tab, and headed to the river dock to see about catching a boat upriver to Muang Ngoi. We found passage in a small boat that stopped at some delightfully pretty riverside homesteads on the way up to let off passengers, and I was overjoyed to see lazy-looking water buffalo cooling off everywhere along the river banks.

The sun was out in full force when we docked in Muang Ngoi, and we settled in for the night in another simple bamboo hut with a fantastic view of the river. We spent a few hours wandering through town and down some trails outside of town, and decided that since it didn't work out in the last town, we would tackle the limestone peak standing tall over this village for sunset. As sunset approached, dark and menacing clouds started to roll in. We weren't afraid of getting wet, but we definitely weren't sure what the trail conditions would be like in a downpour. We decided to forge ahead and reassess if things got bad, but just as we were going through a gate to start the climb, an elderly local man came out of nowhere and starting gesturing to us that it wouldn't be safe due to the weather. Despite not having any languages in common with the kind man, we managed to exchange a surprising amount of information through various gestures, and listened to his advice to turn around. Another hike thwarted, but another cozy evening playing board games and eating local root vegetable curries washed down with lao-Lao cocktails. Can't beat that!

The Plain of Jars

From Luang Prabang, we took a couple of long and sweaty bus rides to get to our next destination, Phonsavan. We found a cozy little guesthouse run by a super friendly Laos guy that was a fountain of information on the area, and made a plan for our next couple of days. Our primary goal in the area was to visit a few of the famous Plain of Jars sites, but we were also interested in visiting some of the local organizations dedicated to unexploded ordnance removal in Laos.

What we learned at the visitors' centres here, as well as from one that I visited in Luang Prabang, was truly shocking and extremely sad. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States undertook a prolonged aerial bombing campaign over Laos in an effort to thwart Northern Vietnamese soldiers who maintained supply routes in Laos. Over two million tons of cluster bombs were dropped on Laos, making it the most heavily-bombed country in the world, per capita, and it's estimated that a minimum of 30% of these bombs never exploded on impact - they are still live and posing a deadly threat to many people in Laos. If you're interested, you can find out more here: www.maginternational.org

To explore the Plain of Jars, we rented a scooter and drove outside of town to check out a few of the sites that are accessible on visitors. There are over 90 sites, but only a few of them have been cleared from unexploded ordnance. Basically, throughout the countryside, there are thousands and thousands of large stone jars with disc lids, and they've been dated to between 500 BCE and 500 CE. It doesn't seem that there is much consensus between researchers on the purpose of the jars, but a common hypothesis is that they were burial vessels or at least used in burial rituals.

Throughout the sites, it's important to stick to the marked paths, and when you see red and white concrete markers in the ground, this is indicative that the area to the white side has been cleared of unexploded ordnance, while the area to the red side has not yet been made safe.

One of the craziest things that we saw was a bomb clearance team actually working to survey and clear part of a field that was just off the main path to a lookout at the jar site. They were stopped on their lunch break, and although our lack of Laos language skills made it difficult to communicate, they made it clear that there were bombs in the area and that they were working to remove them.

We had watched a series of documentaries on mine clearance work at one of the UXO visitor centres, and it featured interviews with workers who said that they weren't overly fearful while they undertook the task of clearing land, due to the rigorous training involved and the strict safety procedures that have to be followed. All the same, it still seems terrifying to me, and seeing this team calmly chatting over their lunch out in the field really hammered home that this is what they do every single day. It was amazing to get a first-hand glimpse of how so many dedicated young people are working in these conditions to make their country safer and more prosperous for the coming generations.