Indo-China 7

Great drive with just a driver, the two of us and air con and Muang Khoua turns out unsurprisingly to be a sleepy dusty place at the end of nowhere in north eastern Laos.   Roughish hotel  but still one of the best in town for about $7 a night with internet but no breakfast.   While looking round Muang Khoua for an evening  meal, frankly a waste of time because every menu is the same even as far as the Lao Beer cover we did spot the delicious sounding  ‘One plate of non-glutinous Rice’ for 5000kip (about 60 cents or 50p).   Noodles and vegetables again !  The tourist office has one hand drawn map on the wall as its total information.  This is a place to get out of which we do in the morning.  This time we have a private boat for two days down the river Nam Ou to Luang Prabang.    On the pebble beach we have trauma No.3.  Heather falls but is unhurt apart from a nasty graze on her foot.  The computer fares rather worse and the screen is badly damaged to a point where we can just about use it by reducing documents to a small part of the screen.

The boat is about 4 feet wide and 50 feet long, seems to draw no more than four or five inches with the helmsman at the front to see his way through the white water and rocks on the way down.  The boatman speaks no English at all.   It’s a spectacular route in many places through high limestone country.   Villages are dotted along the banks occasionally every now and again and lots of kids are playing in the water.  It’s good to see them playing instead of working which seemed the norm pretty well everywhere else.   One obligatory stop where with the only visitors being by boat and us currently being all the passengers we are shown lots of woven material.  Lovely stuff and we know it’s made here, not so much because we see the looms as knowing that there’s no one poorer that they can be buying in from.   Heather buys from an older woman who’s spinning the yarn and then weaving the cloth.   We’ve noticed what we think is a common problem in this country and it’s about variety.   At all the stalls and in all the villages the cloth is about 15 inches wide and 4 feet long, the colour and pattern varies but the size doesn’t.   A market might have forty or fifty stalls and you know it’s all gonna be the same.   There may be twenty food stalls in the street and they all have the same stuff.   Likewise with restaurants in smaller towns.

Our overnight stop is in a village whose only access is by river and it’s clearly a drop outs sort of place. (what are we doing there).   Surprise. all restaurants have the same menu (except for one which has a wood burning pizza oven).    Our second day is through even more spectacular scenery and in the middle of nowhere we see the first (and only) raptors in the whole six weeks.  Raptors are hunting birds for those who don’t know and to see none is very disturbing.  We haven’t even seen scavenging black kites which are all over India, in and out of town.   Birds generally are extremely scarce.  Lots of tree sparrows in towns and a few mynahs: two kingfishers in two days of remote river journey: birds heard in the jungle but not seen.   Our guide on the trek had told us that everything was hunted for food.  We saw more birds confined in tiny cages at temples than in the wild.  The idea is to buy the birds freedom thus gaining some heavenly brownie points.  Presumably those catching the birds don’t mind losing a few points and hopefully they’ll be reincarnated as local birds.   It’s a bit like the medieval European church selling indulgences to bump you up the queue at the pearly gates.

Arrival by boat on the Mekong sounds very exotic to me and we get back to rather attractive and lively Luang Prabang.   At a really nice restaurant here we were next to one of those seemingly odd groups you see from time to time which then have an invented history concocted for them.  This was four men, one Caucasian probably late 40’s, very overweight plus three Orientals in their 20’s of varying hues.  They just looked suspicious which probably meant that despite appearances they were Mormon missionaries or something but we decided they were drug dealers come to check out the local opium crop.  I think we’re up in what used to be called the ‘Golden Triangle’, the centre of opium growing.  Anyway the big guy paid, one of the others handed him his walking stick and as they stood outside ‘Mr Big’ gave each of them a wad of cash and they all walked off together.  All very odd. 

Overnight in Luang Prabang and then the VIP bus over the mountains to Vang Viang.  VIP appears to mean varies in punctuality and on an awful road we take 6 hours to cover an estimated 230kms.

Vang Viang is full of obnoxious young slobs, many of them British, here for the boozing and the slobbing.  Set in more fabulous scenery, the big thing is tubing down the river, stopping to drink in all the bars along the route.   Clearly too much booze and unsupervised tubing often after dark isn’t the safest mix.  At least two people have gone under this year and not surfaced for a day or two.  The road south is the main one into the capital Ventiane and was probably the worst road we saw anywhere.  Every 50 or 100 yards it seemed the tarmac was replaced by dirt or was it the dirt was replaced by tarmac.   This is worse than just dirt because a dirt road can be ploughed and rolled now and again but a tarmac/dirt mix doesn’t even allow for that sort of maintenance.   It’s roughly a 160km journey on flat land which takes us another 6 hours.    New bus stations are being built here but they’re all located out of town in order to provide tuk tuk drivers with work.  Unfortunately they then create a cartel and all overcharge by the same amount so you either walk several miles into town or pay the fare.  So in Ventiane the cost is 20,000kip to town per person compared to 60,000kip for the whole 6 hour ride from Vang Viang.   The bus we were on had 16 people so they made 330,000kip for the trip.   Now I know that’s only about $40 but remember my earlier note where a teacher in the mountain village gets paid $70 a month.

Ventiane.  That’s all I think is necessary to describe the delights of the capital city, although to be fair we weren’t there very long.   It’s small enough for us to meet a German girl who had been on the bus with us from Vang Viang on three different occasions in the one day we were here. 

We overnight in Bangkok and this is being sent just before we leave for the airport.

Random thoughts

Ain’t never seen a fat Christ or a skinny Buddha.

Very few flies seen in Cambodia, Vietnam or Laos, even in the markets where meat is just left uncovered for hours.

Phnom Penh has an Olympic Stadium but they’ve never had the Olympics.  I thought they might have had some events when the Games were in Seoul in 1988(?) but they didn’t .  I was going to suggest  perhaps the three legged race considering what Cambodia is like for amputees, but I’ve decided not to because I think it’s in poor taste.

The best road we saw in Laos was the last 50 or 60 miles north to the Chinese border on which we saw lorry loads of tropical hardwoods heading north and lorry loads of motorbikes heading south.

The End

Despite the impression I may have given with tales of woe about mishaps, roads and food, we’ve had the usual great time.   It’s been hot, sweaty and humid which I find uncomfortable but that makes a cool shower all that more inviting.  We’ve met some interesting people, both travellers and locals and almost everyone has been really helpful and friendly.   There are a few hassles but I’m no racist, I can get arsey with anyone whatever colour they are.

 

Of course knowing what we know now we would do some things differently, like zipping up my wallet pocket for instance and perhaps not eating those prawns in Cambodia but overall it has gone very well.

We didn’t spend much time in Cambodia and apart from Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area, we didn’t think much of it.  Vietnam we liked although rather stupidly we stuck to the cities and managed to not fit in a trip to the highlands and see some wilder country.  With more time we would have sorted out a few days in the wilds.  Laos, despite being an incredibly poor country is not as cheap as we expected although we are here as tourists and get charged accordingly.  We did enjoy Laos and thought ourselves quite privileged to see some of the real mountain people in their villages rather than selling stuff in the towns.   They really do have it tough.    

We hope to see most of you over the next few weeks.

love

Les and Heather