Laos. Lay Os. Lay about. Love It.
HOT DAMN, we are seeing some pretty speccy stuff over here.
We fly from Hanoi straight to Luang Prabang. We are over the bus thing. Air Lao has the worsed safety record in the world. That’s not why we chose it. (Breath out Dad.)
Our flight is delayed for 8 hours just because. How do you argue with that?
Eight hours in Hanoi International is less than stimulating. There are two rows of shops. And we know how the Vietnamese love to duplicate. Its like watching evolution on fast forward. Someone starts selling books. Next door they think it’s a good idea becuase someone bought a book yesterday. So they sell books too. This happens the whole way down the street until someone at the end finds a bar of soap on the road that fell off a passing scooter and so they put it on the shelf, someone buys it and WHAM! Tomorrow someone opens up a soap shop. Next week, everyone in the street is selling soap.
Anyway, Hanoi International. I look at books, beauty products and chocolate. I do it again. And again. I want to wash my face, read a book and eat sweet things. I am skipping the alcohol sections as I’m hung over like a dog from a rowdy exit from Hanoi the night before with our crazy Spaniyard friend Antonio and a date with Bia Hoi.
Aparently, we are the only people in the world who don’t know about the schedule change as we are the only people in the whole airport. Even the chocolate shops are stocktaking. There are two crazy yanks who are with us in misery and they are equally as happy about our plight. I can tell they want to wash their faces, read and eat sweet things too. We have dinner with them – FREE from Air Lao. And make great friends. Funny how fate works.
Our flight lands (!) at Luang Prabang. Pitch black and zero degrees. Nothing is open. Everyone here sleeps at nine and there is a curfew at eleven. Far above the town is a floating castle – white and gold. I am wondering if I am halucinating. It’s actually a pagoda on a mountain lit by flood lights. Looks like a crazy Disney Land fantacy island acid trip. I’m really happy about the situation because the Free Dinner has landed me a stomach issue. Couple that with the cold and the hangover and life is pretty great in Jaq’s world right now.
By a stroke of Buddha we find a guesthouse. I spend the night on the dunny. But I am not alone. In this town of 26000, it is entirely possible that 20000 have a rooster. And they are some mixed up birds. They crow ALL THE TIME. Every time I get up they are crowing. One close by and then every other from there to Hanoi.
In the morning I feel like I have been hit by a bus. Full of roosters.
I refuse to let it get the better of me and we set out to explore this new country. Luang Prabang is a sleepy, quiet laid back town that we love already. It is not as hectic, noisy or hassled as Vietnam or Cambodia and there are not as many hawkers, and they don’t pack hunt you down the street. No-one uses the horn so the streets are quiet and all go to bed around 11pm latest.
Rhys is devastated by the news that foreigners cannot drive moto’s here. Aparently it causes accidents (who knew?) For 10 days we point out every person of caucasian decent that is atop a moto and ask the ever-more-infuriating question “where did he get that?”
We are looking forward to a rest and a lazy Christmas. That is, apart from the roosters. Every one has one. Like a pet. They wonder everywhere. Kitchens, restaurants, streets, shops. Under your chair. AND they are loud bug*ers. Singing or music and each other sets them a-crowing. One rooster gets a whiff of it and you hear them for miles. It’s like a horrible recurring nightmare. Pretty funny though. Relentless Roosters. It gets me thinking. Chickens, I understand. They lay egs, you can eat them. But roosters? They just get randy with chickens. Oh and wake you up all night and crow at dawn. In packs they are even more of a blast. So why so many roosters here? Surely if you want to make more chickens there could be a communal rooster. All the guidebooks say this this a sleepy town and I can understand why. Everyone is awake all the time because of their rooster.
All that aside, the longer we stay in LP the more I love it.
Let me try to describe what it is like here. Poor. Bull dust lines the streets and fills the air. It is very cold in Luang Prabang now, the air is dry. Your skin is always dry and peeling or cracking and you are never warm enough. It is only this cold for a month, so all the buildings are built for the incredible heat – around 40 degrees all the time. Cracks in the walls, no glass in the windows, space under the door. Cold tiles underfoot. Blankets are few and far between. Everything is outside – restaurants, street markets – everything but your bed! The people are always frozen and all anyone talks about is the cold. The hot water is always running out – its cold too – but you are always covered in the bull dust – its like powder – in your nose, ears, coating your skin, under your nails and your clothes are always dusty. So you need lots of cold showers in the cold.
So what to do? You snuggle. Hot chai tea by the big screen in the day beds watching arthouse movies at the local culture vulture coffee shop and library. Laying in the midday sun by the most beautiful waterfalls with a picnic. Beer and coctails around an open fire in the yard of the only night club in town. Cooking your own meat over an open fire in the middle of your table (!) for dinner. Massages in the arvo.
Christmas
SO. Us aussies are doing it tough – to say the least! Rhys and I have met some awesome people on our travels and we have organised for all of us to have chrissy together. Two Americans, a Sweed and two Dutch. All used to the cold. Anyway, Aussie style, we have arranged for all of us to catch a tuk tuk through the bull dust clouds to a little river where we all pile into a little skinny canoue like boat. These are big people for a skinny boat. The boat is very old and leaking. Cold, glacier like water is flowing thorough the cracks in the wood as we cast out. The Laosians must have learned to sail from the Vietnamese, because here too, you cast out no matter what. You certainly dont start the boat first. If you are ready to go, you cast out. We cast out. The engine wont start. The driver is banging on the generator and eventually pulls out a spark plug. Growns from the goup. We are now drifting down the Meekong and the water is starting to come through the floor boards at the bottom of the boat. The sides are one inch above water level. Bits of the engine are being extrated in a most un-calculated manner. I dont like the irrational pulling appart of electrical or mechanical things. It took centuries to perfect thier construction. To take them apart in such an ad hoc, matter-of-fact kind of way does little to instil confidence in the would-be mechanic.
So we are in the waif like boat that is challenging the Milan Fasion Week Zero Size Models for silhouette. Sinking. I take off my shoes and socks. The boat is scraping and bumbing against rocks on the bottom which is causing water to come in over the sides. The bottom is only two feet deep – but its freezing water and when you only have one set of clothing, getting them wet is somewhat of an emergency. Mild panic has set in. It spreads through the group like a silent bout of bird flu. At first no-one says anything, not wanting to spread the panic. But small glances and tense body language is enough for air borne transfer. Soon everyone is squaking – including the Laosians at the front. We are packed in like sardines and if anyone moves the whole canoe is going over. At the last minute (you could literally tell this was going to happen – like a bad comedy) the engine roars to life, amoungst much banging of spark plugs from the driver.
Emergency over (we all knew it was going to be okay) we chug noisily down the pristine river to our destination, where it is imagined we will have an Aussie-style picnic in the sun with swimming and footy and beer. I get ripped off at the entrance for the waterfall fee.
Of all the waterfalls I have seen (being the national park fan I am – there are a few) this has to be one of the most spectacular. It looks like someone crafted it. A work of art. Sandstone coloured rocks are more like an organic flowing platform of combined stalectites that wind their way down the gentle sloap. Willowing graceful trees become one with the rock, their roots entangled with the rock itself. They mark the edge of each terrace of this multi-staged waterfall, like silent balerinas all a-poise and ready to slowly wave their graceful arms back and forth in unison. But all this is just a stage for the water. It is absolutely clear, yet as you gaze father away it appears aqua blue and cloudy. It is a phenomenon.
The boys all jump into it. What is it with boys and water? They always have to go in. I sit with the chicks and our deck of cards, beer and sangas in a patch of sun and we lap it up. What a great orphans chrissy.
We leave Luang Prabang reluctantly. We cannot enjoy the lingering ease we had in Vietnam. There is the omnipresent Flight To The UK looming and we still have to get to southern Thailand. OMG. I now have a stone elephant in my backpack that I gave to Rhys for Chrismas. HAHAHa I think as I buy it from the lady at the market. This will be funny for Rhys to have to carry in his backpack. What a laugh. In fact, so funny I will buy two. They are friends. hahah. Well. Since we are sharing the burden of luggage on this trip, I now have one of the pair in my backpack. Very funny Jaq.
Tubing in Vang Vieng
We take the bus to Vang Vieng. I love how innocent that sounds. The man with the AK47 over his shoulder was probably thinking the same thing. I think he was there to protect us from the gangs of thugs that hang out in the hills and loot the passing traffic. Needless to say, I was not going to speak out of turn on this trip. The trip had to be the most windy, hilly trip of my entire life. I do not suffer motion sickness, but on this trip anything was possible. Rhys was all shades of green. I did not know there was an option for skin to turn such colours. When the bus broke down it was actually a relief. We watched as they fixed the bus (in the similar irrational manner that one would fix a boat in this country) and we remembered where our stomachs were and what it felt like to have our feet on the ground.
Vang Vieng was the site of our new years eve. On arrival I realised I was sick not just from the bus but from another ill fated meal and needed to spend another night on the dunny. Great.
I felt like mary and joseph in bethlehem as every guesthouse was full. Eventually we hired a motorbike (Rhys’ mood had improved on learning that they do not care if forigners have accidents here) and atop our faithful stead, we checked every bed-bug ridden hovel in this grimmey ugly little town. I am so less than impressed. Again, it is getting dark. And I need the dunny.
Somehow we found the most beautiful little bungalow across the river and set in for another long night of dunny trips. This town is Ferral. I hate it. I want to go home. There are streets of dirty restaurants that pump out loud music and have massive TV screens showing re-runs of Friends and The Simpsons and backpackers sit in puddles of sweat sipping beer and stuffing pizza in their mouths. This sucks.
As usual, the next day dawns on the most beautiful town in the world. I cant imagine how it got so ferral the day before. You need to stay out of the two main streets and the rest is a dream. We go tunnelling with crazy lights mounted on our heads amid limestone craggy outcrops of mountains and watch the most amazing sunsets.
We give New Years Eve the flick as we are so in love with the way this town comes accross at night. We listen to it from afar from our bungalow of peace. Dont even do the countdown. I dont care becuase NYs day was amazing. We are tubing.
You get a tractor wheel tube, sit in it, and drift down the river. You drift past riverside bars that throw beer at you. You stop and sunbake on the wooden decks that crop out around the corners where the current pushes your tube. They include entertainment – 20 metre high swings scale the mountain side – you climb up and swing out over the river to let go mid air and plunge to your DOOM in the water. Piece of piss, I think. It takes me 20 minutes, having climbed to the top of the rickety ladder leading to the swing, to actually jump off the platform. I do this to the sounds of 100 backpackers below chanting JUMP JUMP. For the rest of the day, whenever I walk or tube past someone, I hear – hay – there is that chick that took so long to jump. At least I jumped. Not many did.
Tubing continued all day and many whiskys later until we watched the big red sun sink behind the huge upright mountains. What a WOW moment. Microsoft would have loved it. Rhys and I share one of those I Cant Believe We Are Here looks. Makes it all worth it.
