Laos

As usual the posts have been infrequent; blogging is a surprisingly time consuming process. We are now in Vietnam but haven’t told you anything about Laos so below I have attempted condense pretty much our whole time there. Happy reading.

Luang Prabang and the police

Luang Prabang (LP) is a UNESCO world heritage city like Meleka and Georgetown in Malaysia; this basically means that it has exceptionally pretty main streets—which have been restored—and a lot of tourist-focussed infrastructure. Making it a pleasant place to spend a few days.

Our first mission, however, was to obtain a police report for the missing Kindle. The police man and our friendly interpreter in Pak Beng had been exceptionally pleasant if somewhat unhelpful in not issuing us a report simply because it was Sunday. I had, however, convinced them to write a letter in Laos—the language—for us to take to the LP police station to explain the situation.

Plain sailing one might think; and to begin with it was. The young policeman who took the statement was friendly and spoke fairly good English. His older colleague—who read the letter from the Pakbeng police officer—seemed less friendly. But I figured he probably spoke less English. So the report was made and the appropriate form completed. I was quietly happy with how smoothly everything had gone.

But then: “you pay 30,000 kip” the older policeman said. “No” I replied “we don’t”. Although 30,000 kip is a pretty small amount of money—less than $5—paying for a police report is not the usually course of events; and this was clearly a “stamp fee” going straight into his pocket.

Things deteriorated from there. I got angry, which of course didn’t help. Eli tried reason and logic—which seemed to make headway with the younger guy, but the older guy was having none of it. In the end we paid—or rather Eli paid and I sat outside in protest. At least we got a receipt—we are not sure whether the insurance company will cover this bit..

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While I know this sort of thing happens all too often in this part of the world, I was still mad. Of course by western standards these guys are not well paid. But by Lao standards they certainly looked well fed. Also, LP is a tourist town and these guys are the tourist police; so they know that if a tourist looses something they need a police report. Meaning that tourists have no choice but to pay—creating a nice little earner for the police.

After our run in with the police, we determinedly set of to enjoy the rest of what LP had to offer. We wandered the quaint streets along the river banks and climbed to the temple atop the hill to watch the sunset. Unfortunately this time of year is slash and burn season when the farmers burn off their rice paddies and clear new land for farming. This meant that the sunset was obstructed by smoke haze—the view was worth the walk though.

The next day we headed to ....waterfall just out of LP and spent the afternoon swimming in the cool refreshing pools and enjoying the picture perfect scenery.

After quiet a lot of tooing and froing over the rest of our plan for Laos, we decided to head directly to the capital Vientiane and take our next steps from there.

We got up early on the morning we left to watch the ritual of alms giving. This is when the the local Buddhist monks walk the streets collecting donations of food from the local members of their congregation. This is the monks’ only source of food for the day and by donating the people receive spiritual benefit.

Vientiane

The bus trip from LP to Vientienne was 9 hours. The roads in Laos are very poor and the area is quiet mountainous. It was a tortuously slow journey—especially surrounded by many locals suffering from motion sickness.

We started our first morning in Vientiane with our usual informal walking tour. We find it a great way to get the lay of the land in a new city. Often we come across interesting things we wouldn’t otherwise discover. We also you get a sense of what the touts and street sellers have to offer—because they pop up every few metres.

This walking tour included the unintentionally comedic—but also quite informative—National Museum. I say ‘unintentionally comedic’ because the exhibition about America’s involvement in the Indochina (Vietnamese) war and the information on the roles of the various government departments, are a series of photos with propaganda captions. The quote “the US imperialists and their puppets” features regularly. As does the title “heroic leader” under pictures of the various communist party members. The exhibition on the early Lao history and the travelling exhibition on life along the Mekong were vastly better.

For our last day in Vientiane we hired bikes and biked to the Pha That Luang—supposedly Laos’ most sacred sight. But, to be perfectly honest, it was fairly underwhelming. It was restored using gold coloured paint. From a distance it looks quite impressive, but up close it’s obviously quite an amateur job. To be fair, we have seen an inordinate number of temples in recent time and may be suffering from NAFT syndrome—Not Another F****ing Temple.

We decided—with some trepidation—to head to Vang Vieng: home of the infamous (for its drunken debauchery) tubing. Thinking we were probably too old and out of drinking practice, we decided to see if we could re-live some of our former (in)glorious student days. In the end it didn’t matter—I got sick and tubing with a stomach bug seemed like a very unwise decision.

Before I got sick, however, we biked west of Vang Vieng in search of an emerald pool and cave system. The roads were bumpy and it was hot. We passed through villages and dodged motorbikes as we navigated the limestone cliffs, similar to those around Krabi, Thailand. The pool was cool and popular with other tourists—with rope swings and rocks to jump off. Eli climbed up to the cave opening, reporting back that it was cool and large and contained a small golden Buddha temple.

After two days recovering in Vang Vieng, we headed back to Vientiane for our 24 hour bus journey to Hanoi, Vietnam.

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Tonight we head to Sapa, North Vietnam on the sleeper train. Hopefully trains here are as good as Thailand

Love to everyone, please keep the emails and comments coming they really brighten our day

xxx