A Less Laosy Time In Laos (19th September - 24th September 2006)

Well things in Laos got better after we left Luam Nam Tha. Luckily we'd been told the wrong time for the bus so we were there over an hour early and in time to get two of the last seats. We had to fight for these though. For some reason nobody wanted us to sit next to them, normally people are more than happy to sit next to you, but nearly everyone we asked motioned that the seat was taken and that they were waiting for their friend. When these seats were finally taken though it was obvious that they had never seen these people before :( We did get a bit of entertainment though when a group of 6 westerners managed to cram themselves onto the bus (this one was a 24 seater mini bus instead of the proper bus from the journey a few days before). Most of them were sat on the floor facing the back of the bus. This is fairly normal over here, and normally the locals just accept it, but there were a couple of them that spent the entire trip complaining loudly about it. I don't think that they'd even noticed that one local lady had given up her seat for them!! So once we were all on we had the obligatory fuel stop 5 minutes into the journey and then our first break down was 30 minutes later. After all of the rain over the last few days the roads were a lot worse than on the way here, in a lot of areas the tarmac had broken away so the road was just mud or there were just massive pot holes. I'm pretty sure though that the main reason for this break down, along with the other 5 was more down to reckless driving than the state of the roads - some times he'd hit the pot holes so fast you'd bang your head on the roof!! The only other stops were for food, best of all was the lunch stop at Udomxai. Around the outside of the bus station are about 10 "restaurants" all serving the same kind of thing; noodle soup, stir fried noodles, various rice dishes and some have menu's written up on boards outside trying to tempt you in, and a couple even have these menus in English. One of these restaurants had a translation for item number 9 as "Bitter soup tastes of fly excrement" - Excellent, I'm assuming that whoever translated it from Laotion for them had an axe to grind against this particular dish and it wasn't actually a correct translation. Either way, we decided to eat somewhere else. The other food stop was a little more disturbing, as we drove past a group of people sat by the side of the road one of the passengers shouted for the bus to stop while he went and bought some live animals for his dinner!!No idea what these things were, but they were kind of like rabbits but a bit smaller, and like everything, when you buy them you get them in a plastic bag!! So this guy had 2 live rabbity things in plastic bags between his feet for about 6 hours of the bus ride. We were so glad not to be sat anywhere near him. By the end of the bus ride, with all of the breakdowns etc. We were only 2 hours late, but really looking forward to showering and walking.

The next day we were supposed to be going around the areas of interest in Luang Prabang. But the day got taken up with various admin things like booking plane tickets, getting laundry done and emailing family to let them know that we weren’t caught up in the military coup that was happening in Thailand. Oh and some eating.

Thursday was another write-off as far as sightseeing went. We weren't going to do anything all day. We’d booked into the Villa Santi Resort which is a few kms outside of town, it was way more than we’ve spent before on the trip, $100, but we were planning on getting our monies worth. So we checked in at 10.00 (complimentary minibus from the sister hotel in town and then complimentary drinks while we checked in .... nice) and had no intention of checking out until late on Friday. This place was amazing, it used to be one of the royal mansions but has recently been converted into a hotel with pool, spa and fancy restaurant but it’s the grounds that were the most amazing. The place is huge and so beautifully landscaped with all of these little ponds, bridges and secluded little picnic spots. Absolutely stunning!! We ate here in the evening and it was the best food we’d had in Laos. Not that it had much to compete against, we’d been eating in “traveller cafes” so the food isn’t usually that great, but Laos isn’t really renowned for its food either. Most of it is bland stir-fried meats or noodle soup, the only good thing that they do is a traditional salad (Lap). We are missing the spicyness of Thailand.

It was a shame to check out on Friday and get back to reality. It did mean though that we could get around to that sightseeing. First was the temple Wat Xieng Thong which was built in 1530 and it was well worth waiting so long to get to - all bright colours and fantastic carvings. One of the buildings in the complex houses the funeral carriages that were used for the royal family and on the outside of the building are “gilt panels depicting erotic episodes from the Ramayana”. They weren’t quite as lewd as the pictures that the boy was looking at last time we went to the internet cafe (in the middle of the day - no shame some people), but considering it was 1530, it was still pretty racy. Next on the list was Phu Si. This is a big hill in the middle of the Old Quarter, there are are a couple of temples up there, but they aren't really anything special, we were here more for the view. And what a view. The Old Quarter was built on a peninsular bordered by the Mekong and the Nam Khan river and from the top of the hill you get to see them on either side in all of their brown dirty looking loveliness. Actually despite the fact that the rivers are really brown it does look very impressive. And then beyond the rivers are the lush green hills. Sadly we didn't take any photos because we had been befriended by a boy on the climb up. He was a little bit too friendly and his story didn't quite add up so we were reluctant to take out the camera just in case he was planning on snatching it. After the hike up here neither of us were looking forward to running down chasing after him and our camera.

Friday morning we were leaving LP on our way to Vientienne, the Laos capital. Out at the bus station there was the normal crap that everyone takes with them, lots of big bags containing god knows what, but best of all was that someone was taking their motobike!! I think that I managed to get a picture of them getting them hauling this thing onto the roof of the bus!! This time we'd splashed out the extra $1 for the "express" bus. I think that this just meant that the driver was a bigger maniac than the normal bus driver because I swear we never got anywhere near these speeds on the previous bus rides. The roads were in good condition, well we had tarmac all of the way, but the first 6 hours or so were crazy twisty and climbed really high up into the hills, so that at one stop you actually needed a fleece to keep warm. The combination of high speeds and twisty roads meant that the numbers of passengers suffering with travel sickness were loads higher than any other journey. But these guys are pro's, you never hear them, they never look ill and they never stop eating or drinking. The only reason you know that anyone is suffering is because the "conductor" keeps handing out the plastic bags and you keep seeing these, now filled, plastic bags being thrown out of the window. Before we got to see all this fun though we had a group of guys join us for the first few miles from town. In Laos at the moment there is a large government campaign trying to increase the awarenes of HIV and Aids. So there are posters in all of the hotels, ads on the tv etc and now it seems presentations on the bus!! These guys handed out some leaflets along with some samples of the sponsoring condom manufacturer and then sang a song!!! Really weird. Then a few miles further down the road a lady joined the bus along with about 50 bags full of flowers!!!! Luckily the bus was only about a quarter full because these flowers took up about 20 seats. At least it made the bus smell a bit better. Of course there was the obligatory break down - a puncture this time so in the end the express bus took as long as the ordinary bus should have taken. All in though an enjoyable trip with some great scenery (although there were a few bits that I wasn't feeling well enough to look out the window - never needed a bag though).

Although Vientiene is the capital, there really isn't much there to keep you entertained, so we were only planning on staying one day, so we got up on Sunday and started the sightseeing. First was the Lao National History Museum (which was originally called the Lao Revolutionary Museum). They have added a lot more of the ancient history of Laos since I was here in 1997 including some intersting stuff on the Plain of Jars out at Phonsovan. There are hundreds of these stone jars spread over 3 sites in a town called Phonsovan which are up to about 6 feet high and nobody knows where they came from although they suspect that they were burial urns, although no human remains have been found. I went last time (a 3 day trip compared to the 9 hours that it now takes on the improved roads) and Kamay didn't really fancy it so we just made do with the museum instead. The rest of the exhibits include an area dedicated to the hill tribes and some prehistoric bits but the majority of the museum is still dedicated to the various conflicts that Laos has been involved in against the French and the Americans. It's all typically one sided and some of the descriptions are verging on the entertaining.

After the museum we went to the beautiful Wat Si Saket, the oldest temple in town. Then it was the not so beautiful Patuxai. It's a kind of Arc de Triomphe replica built by the French, with concrete that was donated by the Americans to build a runway!!! It actually commemorates the Laotions that died in the pre-revolutionary wars but looks incredibly ugly - nothing like the Arc de Triomphe! After a bit of lunch Kamay went back to the hotel as she wasn't feeling well and I went to Pha That Luang armed with the camera having promised to take lots of pictures to make up for her not being able to see it for herself. I'm a bit worried that this may be the way that the sightseeing gets done in the future!! This place is mainly made up of a massive gold stupa that can be seen on the national seal. You can walk around it and up the 3 flights of steps to the actual stupa and then all around the outside is a high walled cloister with hundreds of tiny holes so that you see outside. It was really good, except that 2 sides of the cloister were taken up by an artists paintings that were all on sale, they weren't even any good!! In the evening we came back out to Patuxai as they have a water fountain that was donated to them by China and they have a music and lights exhibition - the fountain shoots water from various spouts in time with the music and gets lit up with lots of pretty lights - it was good, but not sure if it was worth the 30 minute walk to get there (the tuk tuk drivers had been annoying us so we didn't want to give them the satisfaction of taking any more money off of us).

Tomorrow leaving for Hanoi!!!