Laos

After hearing only good things about Laos from everyone we met who’d been there Cheryl and I decided to pay it a visit and it was definitely worth while. We stopped in the capitol for one night which wasn’t overly impressive but then went on to a little town called Vang Vien further north. We got a local bus and set off on our journey through the most beautiful scenery of mountains, rivers and little villages. On the way, everywhere we stopped people crowded around the bus windows trying to sell us food. We seemed to stop for anyone who wanted to for any reason at all. Sometimes someone might have needed the toilet or a cigarette and sometimes just because someone wanted to buy something along the way. I’ve found that in Asia when traveling with local people in what ever sort of transport at least one person but normally more are sick out of the window. The busses even give out little sick bags!
Vang Vien is a really pretty little town set in between the mountains next to the river. The main thing to do there is tubing – floating down the river in rubber tubes / rings. All along the river are bars that you can stop off at that have huge rope swings across the river. We went tubing for a few days then on one day hired a motorbike and went to see a cave. Despite a sign telling us the path was fine for bikes we found ourselves traversing over very tricky land! It was a mud track to begin with that went up and down hill extremely steeply. The track had huge put holes and ditches and we feared we may get stuck at any time. Once we’d managed to get down the track (still fearing the return journey) we had to go across a field with no real path, just white flags to follow until we reached the cave. The cave itself was a bit of a mission. We were given head torches and set off with our guide who didn’t speak any English. We had to climb ladders and walk across slippery narrow stretches of ground with deep drops to the side. They’re not really too bothered about health and safety out here! After going quite a way through the cave we found that we had to turn round and go back the way we’d come. Then we had to take the bike back through the field and along the dreaded track – just about made it alive! As we were driving around we came to a river that we wanted to cross. It wasn’t very deep but we thought it probably wasn’t a good plan to go through so opted to go over the rather old and unsturdy, looking bridge instead. When the bridge started to seriously crack beneath our weight we realized that it probably wasn’t such a good plan after all and sped over as quickly as we could, narrowly avoiding plummeting to our deaths. Needless to say on the way back we drove through the river and had no problems at all! Another day we were in Vang Vien we helped make mud bricks at an organic farm. To get there we decided to do as the locals do and hired one bicycle between the 2 of us taking it in turns to peddle whilst the other one sat on the back. It was really funny but rather hard work. We had a race with a couple of Laos boys who were also sharing a bike although I think it was probably just us racing and them going along as they normally would have if we weren’t there. Even though at one point I jumped off and pushed the bike up the hill whilst Cheryl continued to peddle we still lost.
The next place we went to was the plain of jars. It’s basically fiends of man made stone jars that have been there for years but no one really knows why they are there or what they were used for. They guess that they were either used for whisky or as coffins but no one knows for sure. In a bar near the plain of jars we tried some of the most delightful looking gecko and snake wine. Don’t think I’d have it again as it’s probably not all that good for you to drink something that has dead geckos and snakes in it and has a warning on the bottle saying they take no responsibility for the consequences of you drinking it although as far as they know no one has experienced any fatal side effects and that they cant say exactly what it contains. Had to be tried though and I don’t think it did any damage!
From the plain of jars we got another local bus further up north. Again we drove through the most amazingly beautiful scenery, all along the sides of the mountains. This time we had a bloke with a huge gun on the bus with us, apparently to protect us from bandits. Again many people were being sick along the way. There weren’t enough seats for everyone which often seems to be the case. Normally they put plastic chairs down the middle of the bus but on this journey the floor of the bus was covered in bags of rice so Cheryl and I and a couple of the local people sat on the shelf bit right at the back of the bus. The roads were really windy so we spent most of the time clinging on so as to try and avoid sliding all over the place.
In the next place we stayed there was a night market with so many pretty hand made things that were very hard to resist buying. If only my bag was a little bigger! There were also vegetarian food stalls where you paid hardly anything and filled a bowl with as much as you wanted of all the many different sorts of delicious food. Another very good thing about that place was that they had cake stalls with very generous portions of many different flavored cakes. Whilst we were there we visited a monastery on top of a hill with stunning views over the town. We got up early one morning to see the monks walk around the town collecting rice and other goods off people who lined the pavements as they went. On one day we got a tuktuk up to a really pretty waterfall where you could swim in pools beneath it. On the way we passed a place where bears lived that had been rescued from illegal trading.
We got a boat down the Mekong back in to Thailand. It took two days. We stayed the night in a little town where there wasn’t much electricity. They used generators but they were switched off at 10pm and there wasn’t any electricity when we left in the morning. On the second day we decided to get a speed boat which was really good fun. We had to ware life jackets and helmets but I think if the boat had crashed they wouldn’t have been much help anyway considering the state of them.