Leisure Time in Laos

I'm going to admit geography defeat here. I had no idea that Laos was a country until I lived in Japan and people started talking about it as the cool new hangout in South Eas Asia. I have a bit of an excuse in that I took all of my grade-school geography lessons in French and therefore retained absolutely no useful information in either language that I can bank on. 

Sidenote: I have no pictures from Laos as my camera was stolen on the way from Laos to Thailand. More on that later...

Vientiane Visit

They don't make Laos easy to get to or get around. One of the drawbacks of enjoying a country that has not yet developed a mass tourism industry is that it is hard and expensive to get in and out of and even to travel within. I flew from Hanoi, Vietnam to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Marissa and Kat had taken the slow bus there and had been scammed, as is pretty much a certainty when you choose that method of transportation. 

Vientiane is perched on the edge of the Mekong River which was pretty low at the time as we were just on the verge of the rainy season. I stayed in a bare-bones room for 3 dollars a night so no complaints there. I basically enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere of the city for the day. It's filled with coffee shops and French cuisine restaurants and quaint little souvenir shops. And a respectable assortment of cheap spas.

The temples in Laos are really beautiful and I headed out to one that offered a free one-hour meditation with monks. The meditation was basically a big gathering of foreigners looking for enlightenment. The meditation itself was a mixture of sitting and walking meditation for an hour with some discussion afterwards with the young monks. It was a cool experience, though I had to stifle giggles with this one girl who decided to elaborately exaggerate every step when she did the walking meditation and as a result looked like a loopy clown walking through a big tank of water.

That night I had a facial and a nice dinner and tried my first taste of Beer Lao...which I am convinced is the best beer in the world. At least for my immature beer-tasting taste buds.

Cliff Driving

The next morning I caught the day bus up to Luang Prabang to meet up with Kat and Marissa. The bus ride itself was a sideways roller coaster where you hugged the face of a cliff for basically 8 hours straight. There is only one road that cuts through the entire country and it's a windy and dangerous mountain road where you go through a constant cycle of ups and downs/side to sides. I was nearly severely injured every time I ventured to the bus toilet (which as you know for me was quite often).

During the trip, we saw three accidents, one where a car had jumped off the face of a cliff, the inhabitants lost forever in a Laos' valley. The medics in a beat-up mini-van simply walked leisurely down the hill to inspect the car. They then came back up the hill and announced to all of the greedy onlookers that the people had died. That was it. I'm told they don’t really do much more beyond maybe putting a marker on the side of the road where the car went off, and the car is left where it is.

Now I didn't really expect CSI Laos to hop out of the bushes and assess the situation, but I did expect a little more attention to documenting the accident and figuring out who the people were etc. It's at moments like this when you feel really unsupported and a little bit scared and alone travelling by yourself in countries with this limited infrastructure. The funniest/sickest thing was that our bus driver stopped the bus so we could all get a good look at the tragedy. While the Laotians jumped out of the bus like it was on fire, all of the foreigners kind of milled about inside the bus feeling awkward and finally getting out once someone took the lead and we all felt like we weren't being disgusting voyeurs.

Luang Prabang Living

I finally arrived in Luang Prabang and hooked up with the girls at the bus stop. Found a nice though somewhat buggy guesthouse near the Mekong and in quick order headed to a beautiful and tasty Indian restaurant perched over the River. The next four days were spent relaxing, having massages (best in Asia I've decided), shopping at the market, and getting steamed in the steam rooms.

We took a half-day trip to a local waterfall where I got to feed a tiger (the picture is lost forever to the airport robber I'm afraid) and we took another half-day trip down the Mekong to see the Buddha caves. These are caves in the side of a mountain where over the years people have placed thousands of Buddha sculptures of different shapes and sizes. On the way, we stopped in some local towns that of course specialize in some handicrafts which you are harassed to buy.

Luang Prabang is beautiful and has a really good selection of western food shops that are actually unique and tasty. We got addicted to a few of the restaurants and kept going back for more. While our waistlines suffered (not even our morning sit-ups balanced out our decadence), our tongues were treated to fresh waffles, lasagna, quiches, chocolate chip muffins and milkshakes to name a few. It may sound elementary to you, but after eating all manner of quality and type of Asian food 24/7 for the past two months, it was a heavenly treat.

They also had a cool little movie theatre where you could rent a DVD and a room to watch filled with cushions and surround sound. Basically your own mini-theatre. The whole town was asleep by 10 though. It was definitely a wake-up early, enjoy the day, and get to bed early kind of town.

In Laos, sitting in a steam room is a daily ritual for most locals. This was heaven for me as I am a heat junkie. I went to a local steam room which was a bit of a shocker. In these steam rooms you pay your dollar, get a sarong, strip down and go through a ritual of steaming, drinking tea, cooling down and steaming again. On this particular day, I was the only woman. I asked one of the men where I should go in, and he motioned at one steam room. I went in and realized that it was all men, but pretended that I was in the right place and that I was not bothered, even when my sarong accidentally fell down a few times.

When I came out I looked more closely at the doors and realized that the other one was for women. I was a bit peeved at the man who had jokingly sent me to the men’s room, but quickly realized that the women's room wasn't working on that day. So I continued to steam it up with the boys. Trying to ignore their limp and sweaty bodies as they draped themselves around the room in between their steam sessions.

At the end of the week, we turned on the news and found to our horror that the middle of Thailand was flooded and that a number of people had died and trains were out of service. We proceeded to Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand anyway.

Overall Laos was totally relaxed after the fast-paced aggressiveness of Vietnam and was complemented by some spectacular scenery. The kids aren't yet at the point of selling things on the street and only once did we say hello to children only to have them shout back "MONEY...GIVE US MONEY!" It will be interesting to see how it develops over the next few years.

Return to Thailand

Marissa and I headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand on another sketchy Laos plane. We met up with Marissa's friend Bree and in the sweaty heat, we searched for an "acceptable" room and finally decided to treat ourselves to a really nice room for the night. We checked out the night market and a bit of the town and had an early night.

The next day I explored some temples and a couple of festivals in town. The temples in Chiang Mai are my favourite so far (sorry I will never have the pictures to demonstrate their beauty). That afternoon we all headed to a Muay Thai boxing lesson at a local gym and we were by far the star attraction with our wayward punches and intro technique. The training started off with a 3k run which none of us was really gung ho for so we were down for the count before we'd even begun.

The lesson was fun nonetheless and we each left with our fair share of bruises. After a quick and cold shower where we got all gussied up at the boxing gym, we headed to this restaurant that the Lonely Planet says is THE place to have a classy drink and a not-so-cheap meal. Again we were in the treating ourselves mode. We arrived after much ado (TukTuk drivers generally never tell you when they don't know where they are going so we went on a grand tour before arriving at our destination) only to find that the restaurant was closed that night for a private party. We ended up finding this nice gallery cafe where we were surrounded by an exhibit of naked people, followed by a drag show. 

Later that night I awoke to the sound of a fire alarm and called the front desk to ask if I should leave my room. The desk clerk asked me to describe the sound so I proceeded to make this siren-like sound and he announced to me with a bit of a giggle that I was only hearing a gecko somewhere in my room!

The next day went "trekking" north of Chang Mai. Basically, just another tourist herd trip where many different buses head to Elephant riding, to a tribal village where you can buy stuff of course, to a bamboo boat down a river (I got on a boat with four 18-year-old boys from Holland so our ride consisted of trying to knock some sexy ladies off of the boat next to ours - a bit of an impromptu wet t-shirt contest), and going on a little walk that was termed a "trek".

I finished my time in Chiang Mail with a Thai massage course (I need to practise a bit when I get home...any volunteer recipients?). That night we met up again with Kat and had a tearful last dinner before I left the next day for Bangkok where the real "fun" part of my trip began.

Sadly as I'll tell you about next time my pictures for this portion of the trip are in the hands of the guy who stole my camera. This is quite disturbing for me as I am at the addictive digital camera stage where I sort of feel like if you experience something in life and you don't take a picture, it didn't really happen. 

Crime, Corruption and Crazy temples in Cambodia next...