Erin and Justin

Choosing how we were going to leave Luang Prabang and get to Thailand was a task. Our options were: a) Fly – 2 hour journey for $100 each; b) Slow Boat – 2&1/2 day journey for about $37 each (plus accommodation along the way); or c) Speed Boat – 15 hour journey for $40 each.

a) The flight would be expensive, and on Laos Airline, who do not perform safety checks on their aircraft in between flights, do not have training of an international standard, and do not produce statistics regarding their flight records and instance of crash (which apparently is more frequent than one should be comfortable with);

b) The slow boat would take 2&1/2 days of travelling, stopping in Pak Bang the first night, which is apparently an awful spot, half way to the border, and stopping at the border on the second night, because the boat arrives right after immigration closes. We would have to buy cushions to sit on, so as to avoid spending 2 full days on a wooden bench seat, have to pay for accommodation at 2 places where we had no interest in being, and would miss 2 days that we could potentially be spending in Chiang Mai;

c) The speedboat is dangerous. The Lonely Planet says that accidents involving a boat hitting a rock or a branch seem to occur on a weekly basis, some of them fatal.

Due to our seemingly bleak options, we had decided to fly to Chiang Mai. But we booked too late and there were no seats available. After speaking to multiple travel agents and locals, we decided that the Lonely Planet was wrong – or that it was old and out of date. We were assured that there used to be many accidents, but that now, with increased tourism, the boats are safe, comfortable, and dry, and that the last accident was a couple of years ago – in the rainy season. And it’s the dry season now! So we bought the speedboat tickets… and some dry bags, just in case!

So let us describe the speedboat. It is a small wooden boat, and the passengers sit on the floor, on a plastic-coated foam cushion. Bags are strapped on the front of the boat, and seats – well, sitting spaces – are separated with wooden dividers about a foot and a half apart, with the spaces being a little over 2 feet wide. Two people sit in each space.

That speedboat ride, in the morning, was great, and we couldn’t believe how lucky we were! It moved at a pace that was slow enough for us to take in the sights of the Mekong, and there were only 4 of us in the boat, so we had room to spread out.

We ate lunch in Pak Bang, happy that we weren’t staying there overnight, like our poor friends, Will and Ali, who cautiously and sensibly, bought slow boat tickets.
After lunch however, we were put on a new boat, with 6 other people, and 6 other people’s luggage, which made for a very heavy, very crowded, very cramped and very uncomfortable journey for the next 4 hours, wearing our lifejackets and helmets, sitting with our knees at our chins, unable to shift more than an inch or two. It was hell. But we made it, and in the nick of time to get through the border too!

SEE PHOTOS AT:http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Speedboat/

Sadly, due to our haste to make it through in time, we took no photos at this border crossing, which we expected to be far more formal, given that we were entering Thailand. Immigration to be stamped out of Laos was on one side of the Nam Ou river, and immigration through into Thailand was on the other side, with a small boat to take us between the two. Initially we got on the boat without even stamping out of Laos, because we didn’t NOTICE it! It was a travel agent that we had spoken to about a minibus that noticed we hadn’t walked off the boat ramp and up to the immigration window to stamp out!!

Immigration on the other side was the same. We only formally entered Thailand because we chose to, not because we were forced to. We could have just climbed on to the tuk tuk without even showing our passports!

And then, 5 hours later, after a long and comparably comfortable – luxurious, in fact! – minibus ride, we arrived in Chiang Mai. Phew!

Luang Prabang has brought out all kinds of emotions and expectations of the world.

Upon arriving at Luang Prabang, much like our arrival in Vientiane, we could not find a room and there were no touters to take us to their guesthouse. Our minivan driver from Phonsavan had stayed with us, assisting us in our mission to find a bed despite his multiple phone calls that were quite obviously from someone who was expecting his arrival.

After we had searched for a good hour, we sent the driver on his way, and about 20 minutes later, as we checked into a guesthouse, Will and Ali realised that they had left their month-old digital SLR camera, full of photographs, in the minivan!

We knew the name of the travel agency and the agent who sold us the tickets.

After 3 days of compulsively investigating each minivan we saw, would you believe it, Will and Ali got in touch with the travel agent who arranged the minivan, who gave them the driver’s phone number, and his sister’s phone number, and then after phoning, and being assured that they had the camera, the guesthouse owner drove Will to their village so that he could pick it up! AND, they had taken photos of themselves with the camera!!

The most wonderful part of the story is, although Will and Ali had felt doubtful about getting the camera back, none of us were surprised when they did!

Just love Laos!!

The other things that made Luang Prabang beautiful, were the waterfalls. The two famous ones are Tat Kuang Si, the big waterfall, and Tat Sae, the “small” waterfall. Kuang Si, is really tall waterfall at the beginning, and then gently falls into tiers with deep swimming holes, a beautiful misty blue colour. It is surrounded by jungle, and right by the falls there is a sun bear sanctuary and a tiger sanctuary for animals that have been rescued from poachers. The second waterfall, Tat Sae has no tall section, but is much wider and in our opinion, far more spectacular. It too has amazing blue swimming holes, and it is surrounded by jungle, and it encompasses trees. It ends at the Mekong, which you see as you arrive, as the only means of getting there is by boat. It’s really incredible.

The night markets are another treat that Luang Prabang has to offer, where not only could we find the best quality items we have seen for sale yet, the same price as elsewhere, but we also found vegetarian and vegan food stalls (street stalls!) with buffet-style options, where you can fill a bowl for 5000kip – which is 50c!!!

SEE PHOTOS AT: http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Luang%20Prabang/?start=all

We caught the bus for 7 hours to Phonsavan, and were shocked to find the carnage that we did. Quite apart from some very grizzly sights at the fresh food market (like skewered rats, whole badgers, and a little Bambi cut up neatly and its pieces all stacked up next to itself!) we found artillery shells displayed inside every store, restaurant and guesthouse.

During our bus trip we met Will and Ali from Bristol, and we stayed at the same guesthouse (that was heavily decorated with old bomb shells), and we also managed to get a sweet deal whereby instead of the next day paying for a tuk-tuk to take us to the Plain of Jars, come back to town, kill time and then get the bus to Luang Prabang the morning after (there was only one bus daily), we scored for about $2 extra each, a minivan to drive us to Phonsavan, via the Plain of Jars - so we were very happy to be able to get to Luang Prabang a day earlier than planned!

The Plain of Jars: It was amazing and wonderful, but about it there is far more to see than say, as like many other ancient structures like this, no one knows much about it – why it was there, who put it there, and what it was used for.

SEE PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Phonsavan/?start=all

What we do know however, that surrounding and throughout this sacred sight, bomb craters are plentiful, and the cleared areas are marked for walking through.

Unlike Vientienne, Vang Vieng is a place to return to. The locals and the landscape charm you instantly, and the easy going vibes are contagious. Being a very laid back town, it makes for an ideal place to stop and rest. And we have so far, for 9 days!

The small town seems to be set up with drug use in mind. Pretty much all the cafes/restaurants/bars/convenience stores, as well as selling really cheap alcohol (long neck beers for $1 and the same sized bottle of Lao whiskey for 80c) openly sell pot, opium, and mushrooms. A popular drink is the big bucket of fun ($2.50), which combines a third to a half bottle of whiskey with a bottle of red bull and a bottle of cola. The drugs are unashamedly on the menu, and the décor allows for lying down and TV viewing. It’s strange to walk down the one main street in town and, on either side of you, see people positioned horizontally transfixed by an episode of Friends or a Hollywood movie. Its surprising to find such overt drug use in such a beautiful place – you’d expect that somewhere else that was really dull, wouldn’t you?

With the friendly people, natural beauty and fun activities, Vang Vieng doesn’t need to offer the drugs. There are caves to be explored, clear water lagoons to swim in, and most everyone who visits goes tubing down the Nam Song at least once! We went tubing twice. “Tubing” is where you get in a tuk-tuk that takes you and your tractor tyre tube a few kms up the river and drops you off. You get on the tyre and float down the river, stopping periodically at bars that are set up along the way (where the bar owner comes to the bank to pull you in using a long bamboo pole), so as to try out the flying foxes and giant swings!

We stayed at a wonderful place run by a Laotian/NZ couple, Neil and Pan. They were superb hosts and while we stayed, Neil’s sons Seth and Eli, Eli’s girlfriend Kat and their friend, Jacyn opened up a bar/restaurant – Jeska’s – out the back of the guesthouse.

SEE PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Vang%20Vieng/?start=all

It has proven hard to leave Vang Vieng, but we plan to tomorrow... we think.

This zoo adventure was surreal. SEE PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Ban%20Kern%20Zoo/

We reached the zoo on a small local bus (which was actually a ute with a cage and 2 bench seats on the back), that a tuk tuk driver put us on. The hour-long trip was cosy with about 20 people piled in, and when we reached the zoo, we ate some tasty street food across the road before paying our entry.

When we entered the zoo however, there were wallabies and kangaroos and emus and crocodiles (LOTS of crocodiles!), and monkeys that were furiously masturbating. Furiously. And there was an excited elephant that became shockingly aroused by a sugar cane snack. No one knew where to look!! But we managed photos

And then we left the zoo at zoo closing time, to find that we had missed the last bus to Vientiane by 40 minutes! So we stuck our thumbs out, and were offered a ride on the back of a ute, by a woman asking us to each pay her $10 – $10 EACH! – for the ride. We walked on, and then a great big transport truck with a flat back trailer stopped, and the driver told us that all four of us (we were with Sofia and Henrik) we could ride in the cabin with him and his two friends. For free. No charge. What a nice man! And he took us all the way back to Vientiane. So we left him $10 anyway.

PS: Happy Birthday Mum!

We arrived in Vientiane in time for the nations only real (certainly biggest!) annual festival, the That Luang festival! We couldn’t believe our luck! And we couldn’t believe how many monks we saw – I think that we must have seen all of them!!

SEE PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Vientiane/?start=all

We rose long before the sun and pedalled our bicycles to the national monument of Pha That Luang where the festival was held, and arrived before the carnival rides were operating. The entire district was decorated with stages, market stalls, food tents, rides and games, and the already huge number of people there was growing by the moment. Monks were everywhere. On everything. There was nowhere to look where monks weren’t.

At this festival, almost everyone that lives anywhere nearby, heads to Pha That Luang were they sit on the ground with small baskets of sticky rice and ornate bowls containing any number of treats - chocolate bars, packets of chips, fruit, money – and they all sit facing a long line of monks and nuns that surrounds the enormous groups of people, and stretches on as far as the eye can see. This is all taking place before sunrise. Soon after the sun has risen, everyone is united in collective prayer, led by someone with a loud speaker, and this carries on until some magic moment when people begin rising to their feet and making their way with their basket of delights, over to the beginning of a row of monks and nuns who have all been waiting patiently with their own empty bowls, and one after another, deposit small gifts into the monks’ empty bowls, and the monks in turn, empty their soon-over-flowing bowls into huge plastic garbage bags and wait for their bowls to fill up again. At the end of the day, monks of all sizes could be seen lugging themselves and their bags into the backs of trucks.

There is no set amount of time that a monk must commit to their religion. Many people spend a month or two as monks when they are adolescents or young adults. If you were going to spend only one day as a monk, I think that this would definitely be the day to choose.

Given the options of 2 flights over about 5 hours for $130, or a 26 hour bus ride for $25, the choice was easy – definitely fly! BUT, when we were told that the 26 hours included a 10-hour stop at a hotel, everything changed and we bought our bus tickets.

However, there was no hotel stop. We were on the bus from 1:30pm until 1:00am, at which time we alighted the Hanoi-bound bus we had been travelling on, and we waited for the Vientiane bus, ticketless (ours were taken from us on the first bus), to collect us at a roadhouse type restaurant until 3am when we were picked up (thankfully, despite our empty pockets!) and taken to the Laos border, arriving at 5am… however the border does not open until 7am, so we waited there for another 2 hours. Then, when we crossed the border (which I might add, must surely be the most relaxed customs unit that exists in this world!), we had about another ¾ hour to wait before we could all climb back onto the bus, now headed for Vientiane. We had only driven far enough to decide that we already liked Laos and its jungle and rivers and rough cliffs and pretty farmlands, before we made an 8:30 breakfast stop. Following breakfast, we carried on in our bus, without air conditioning or windows that opened, and we did not stop again at a restaurant or toilet (bar one side-of-the-road toilet stop!) until we reached our destination at 5pm!!!

And to make things worse, our photos are no longer uploading, as the iWeb is experiencing an "unknown error" with each attempt at publishing! So we have to find a new photo page to send photos to...! Arrrrgh!
...so SEE PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Bus%20to%20Laos/?start=all

Anyway, in Vientiane, 7 of us shared a jumbo (a big tuk tuk) into town, and after much walking and asking in vain, found ourselves some digs, and then with almost as much difficulty we found ourselves a meal. Then we introduced ourselves(!) and we learnt that we were with Steve from New Zealand, who disappeared never to return before our meals had been ordered; Mariana from Argentina; Julia from Austria; and Henrik and Sofia from Sweden.

It turns out that with no tuk tuk drivers competing for our business or trying to take us to their own guesthouse or a restaurant that pays them commission, no pressured selling in the street, very few people (and little traffic) in the streets, no real centre of town, and no openly accessible tourist information, Vientiane is certainly the least intrusive, relaxed and quiet town, let alone city, let alone capital city, that either of us have ever visited!