The next few weeks of our South East Asian adventure were simply wonderful, and brought me some of my favorite moments of the trip. As it was, many of those moments were spent doing a little bit of this...
In places looking a little something like this..
After the most relaxed and pleasant boarder crossing experience ever, Ali, Matt, and I found ourselves on the other side of the Mekong, with brand new Lao PDR Visas and a ride up North to our next destination. Technically, PDR stands for People's Democratic Republic (right...) but travelers, or perhaps just witty guidebook authors, have reassigned the initials to the far more accurate "Please Don't Rush," based on the countries laid back sentiment.
Things just move slower in Laos. There is less rushing and running and stressing. Unless, that is, you're a traveler late for your pre-paid night bus and even in that case there is really no need to worry. The bus most likely isn't leaving on time anyways. Everyone agrees, there is no hurry.
Everyone except our ride to
[Luang Namtha, Laos] apparently, who seemed to think that there was indeed some reason to drive the multi-hour ride north at the speed of light, on the wrong side of the road, in the dark, through the mountains. Oh, and did I mention, this was less of an official tour bus type thing and more of an awkward family mini-van carpool up North. nbd. Miraculously, the crew made it to Luang Namtha in once piece, and deposited ourselves at
Zuela Guest House. We had already emailed a local trekking agency to set up a two day trek in the Nam Ha NPA, but had the next day to kill before we set out through the jungle and rice paddies.
That day, as it turns out, was one of the best of the best. After a poke around the center of town [read: a single road] we acquired some bikes and a map, and pedaled off to find a waterfall. We eventually found it, but only after a long ride through the outskirts of Luang Namtha during which some of us lost flip flops, we all ended up ankle deep in mud, and we stopped every 5 min to take pictures of the beautiful fields and mountains. Eventually we made our way to the waterfall, and spent an hour or so relaxing and giggling with some local girls, before turning our bikes around and heading back towards the main drag.
So, chalk that one up to a lovely relaxing day right? Doesn't get much better? Wrong. I'm just getting started. On our way back towards the center of town, we took a detour of some sort, and ended up riding down a small "highway" through dazzlingly vibrant green fields. A little way along we spotted what looked like a large local platform restaurant/bar on stilts. It was late afternoon and we were sweaty, dirty, and ready for a nice Beer Lao. And there was a cute dog. And the view from the "bar" was this...
Six hours and one pitch black sky later, we found ourselves enjoying a few more beer lao's and some sort of spicy fried meat, whilst playing competitive low-stakes bocce ball with a group of locals who'd taken us under their wings. There was also Lao/Thai karaoke playing on a projector screen, which occasionally switched over to Millenium era Backstreet Boys at one of the girls requests (for us!!). I'm not quite sure how it happened but it was glorious, even if it meant riding our bikes back to the guest house a little later and loopier than anticipated. Also, for those who wanted to know, I suck at bocce ball, much to the disappointment of my new Lao best friends.
After our night out on the town (?) Matt, Ali and I, threw a change of clothes into our day bags, and head to the trekking office, where we met our guide Ponsa and the other members of our trek. We spent the next two days hiking through rolling rice fields and thick Lao jungle in the Nam Ha NPA. We slept next to a waterfall in a simple wood hut and ate amazing local food off bamboo leaves on the side of the trail. We also spent a frozen half-hour playing in the camp-side waterfall. It was awesome.
It was also a challenge. Did I mention we were trekking in Laos during the tail end of the rainy season? That being so, there was a bit of rain along the way. And did I mention we were hiking up and over and around mountains in the jungle. Needless to say, more than a few tumbles were taken by all, yours truly included, and more than a few moments were spent de-leaching various appendages. The relative clean state of the crew pictured below can only be attributed to many of those spills being taken in ponchos, our afternoon waterfall bath, and the fact that you can't see our tushies. And for the record, we were far better off than some of our companions.
Note to middle-aged-Spanish women (and also to everyone): Shape-Ups, even black "hiking" ones, are really an inappropriate choice of footwear for everything. They are especially inappropriate if you plan to spend 48 hours tip-towing up and down muddy mountains, with a bum ankle, holding on to the side of the mountain with nothing more than your bare hands and the force. Poor choice. Just saying.) 
Trek complete, my friends and I packed our bags and caught the next bus South to the "Jewel of the Mekong,"
[Luang Prabang, Laos] 11 hours, a rough first night, and a hostel change later, we dropped our bags at the very cool
X3 "Capsule Hotel" and set out to see what the hype was all about.
As it turns out, the hype was pretty accurate. Luang Prabang is a lovely place. A place to walk around or ride bikes and be happy. It is filled with happy travelers (and some douchey ones) and beautiful Wats and monastaries. There is an awesome night market, though entirely geared towards foreigners, and tuk-tuks waiting to take you to a waterfall outside of town. A few days were spent riding bikes, wandering in and out of some of the oldest temples in Laos, enjoying massages, and eating sandwiches from our fav Sandwich-Momma multiple times a day. Matt also spent four days trying to figure out if it was possible to jump from one (upper) bunk-cubby to the next. It was not.
Everyone we talked to, had warned us it's easy to get stuck in Luang Prabang (Did I mention that our hostel projected 1-2 hours of a bootleg copy of Michael Jackson's "This Is It" followed by D-List movies every night?) and it certainly was. There was very little not to like.
One of those select few things, that this super high maintanance traveler did find less than ideal in Luang Prabang is just that. Travelers. Now, I know what you're thinking..."Oh hey pot, calling out the kettle." I know. It's true. Sort of. The thing is, everyone loves Luang Prabang, so everyone comes, often bringing with them their best and worst selves (We would retain our worst selves for a little later down the road thank-you-very-much.) This was the point in the trip where we happened to meet the most obnoxious group of Bro's ever, who would continue down our same path for quite some time. People who think it is appropriate to not close the doors of other people rooms and/or slam them with all their might out of spite at 4 am, smoke in the dorm, flood other people bathrooms, and terrorize their slightly older, solo-traveler roommate should have their passports revoked. That being said, if you want to annoy me/pretend like your better than me/be insanely disrespectful to me, fine. I am one thing, and I am a better person than you. What is unacceptable is [pooping] all over local traditions and treating people like they are an exhibit at a zoo.
One of the most lovely (and, for better or worse, famous) traditions in Laos, and one that is especially famous in Luang Prabang due to the sheer number of Monks who call the LP monststaries home, is the morning
Alms giving. While people don't mind respectful tourists watching the morning ritual from an appropriate distance, wearing appropriate "temple" clothing, and in reality they don't mind photos taken discretely from the above appropriate location, what everyone should mind (and the locals do) is this...
If you go to Luang Prabang, please don't be that guy. He's rude, disrespectful, and inappropriate.
No one likes that guy. Just don't do it.
Now that were clear on that one, and in the spirit of a good old compliment sandwich, did you know there's also bowling in Luang Prabang? No? Neither did we! That is until we were shuffled out of a popular backpacker night spot at 11pm (government curfew) and herded towards a swarm of tuk-tuks shouting "Bowling?" "Bowling?" "Disco!?" "You go to the bowling ally!!?" "I take you to disco!?" Right.... w.t.f. As it turns out, not all the businesses in LP have to shut down at11 . Specifically, a spartan bowling ally on the outskirts of town, and a disco in some undisclosed location. This is apparently what you do when your young and traveling and not trying to go to bed at 11. Thus, Ali, myself, and our goofy Dutch companion Jerome, spent some time between 11:30 pm and the wee hours of the morning, in a dim, dumpy bowling ally, in the middle of nowhere, in Laos. Just another wind in the road.
Moving a bit further south, the next stop on the trail was
[Vang Vieng, Laos]. Vang Vieng is another (and perhaps one of the most) popular stops on the Lao backpacking circut. It also happens to be one of those "MTV Spring Break" sort of places. So, my friends, if you ever stop in VV, have fun and be safe. Because you're
not smarter than that, even if you think you are. Especially when you're surrounded by people who
definitely aren't smarter than that, I promise. Also, you should go to the Blue Lagoon. It's pretty sweet and looks (100% naturally) like this.
Riding to the Blue Lagoon was another one of those ridiculous amazing moments when I had to stop myself and think, "How is the my life???" My friends and I had once again acquired some bikes and head off down the road toward the mossy mountains surrounding Vang Vieng. Using a combination of trail map and telephone-poll-counting directions (and by that I mean Ali told us where to go), we got pretty far out and were starting to question whether or not we had missed our turn. Having stopped to discuss a fork in the road, the crew quickly became the object of curiosity for a group of local children. Matt shared some of his water with our new friends and, shortly thereafter, 3 of the girls made it pretty clear they were coming with us. No big deal. I mean it would be totally normal for parents back home to allow their six year olds to climb on the back of rickety bikes, with random foreigners, and pedal off into the distance with no clear return time...right? Welp, this wasn't like back home; so, for the next half hour we played babysitters and did our best not to kill small Lao children (neither the breaks on our bikes, nor the road were in the best shape) just outside their village. We eventually decided there was a monsoon coming (and come it did) and managed to convince our companions to head back towards home. As we said goodbye I used one of my barrettes to clip up my new friends hair and in return was gifted a giant stick, which she had been carrying and gnawing on along the way. Right. After realizing I had no idea what to do with such a gift, one of the girls snatched it back and, like the six year old bamf she was, tore away a large section of bark with her teeth and took a bite of the inner meat. A-ha! The gift was returned and I did my best to imitate the girls example, resulting in a mouth full of sweet, sweet,
bark. Perhaps it was sugarcane...perhaps not...
how is this my life??
Deciding it was time to wash our hands of Vang Vieng, my friends and I made our way South to the nations capital
[Vientiane, Laos]. People sort of hate on Vientiane, similar to the way they hate on Saigon and Kuala Lampur, giving it "just a stopover, nothing to rave about" expectations. Much like those other cities, I liked VT just fine. It wasn't my favorite stop on the trail, but it was certainly nothing to complain about. We spent two days visiting various markets and temples, eating street side Lao Hot Pot, and jumping on a local bus to the most bizarre
religious (??) site I have ever seen. I even gave some impromptu English lessons in the park, right next to a twelve foot, cement deity/monster. The evenings were spent wandering through a riverside carnival set up to celebrate a national rowing competition. Though we missed the race by about a week, the carnival itself was hilarious and entertaining, especially since as far as we could tell each of the hundreds of booths offered the same two games (throw darts at rows of identical yellow balloons or shoot a rubber air gun at identical stuffed animals) and the opportunity to win the same prizes (an odd assortment of odd beverages including, juice, bottled water, and weird wine coolers which, for the record, are WAY worse than Ice).
After two days, it was again time to mosey on out, so Ali and I offered to go to the station and purchase bus tickets. This turned out to be about as straight forward as solving the NYTime Sunday crossword; but, after two hours, we secured tickets for the most bizarre bus ride of our lives. Imagine you are on a bus filled with beds (think Harry Potter Night Bus) each of which are roughly the size of a small cot. No big deal, right? Except when you purchase the tickets you think its weird that you have to provide your sex, and decide to ask why. The answer turned out to be that each cot is actually meant for two people, who are expected to ride to their final destination practically spooning. Now, imagine you are not Ali or myself who slept in the same cot, but our good friend Mathew who got to cozy up next to a young Lao man approximately thirty seconds after meeting him. Like I said, no big deal.
Moving on. Remember how I said people sometimes hate on perfectly lovely cities? You know where they should be hating on instead? Savannakhet. Because, contrary to what Lonely Planet (thanks for nothing) would have you believe, Savannahkhet is not quiet and quaint. It's not relaxing. It's not a decent alternative to Pakse, when looking for a place to stop enroute to the Southern boarder. What it is, in fact, is a creepily empty town, filled with angry rabid looking dogs and too-expensive guest houses in various states of disrepair. There may or may not also be middle aged women trying to sell the only foreigners in sight drugs at 6 am, right across the street from an office of the Lao equivalent of the DEA. Not wanting to cave and write it off to quickly, we gave our surroundings a few hours to perk up, before snapping up some tickets out of town. See you never.
[Pakse, Laos] on the other hand was lovely. It was quite, not overly exciting, and a perfectly acceptable place to spend a day or so on the trip South. Should one be inclined, and should there not be a monsoon, there are motor bikes to rent and a few out of town areas to explore. There are also places to organize various treks and excursions, and a bizarrely large number of guesthouses to choose from. Make sure to stop in at Bolaven Cafe, and chat with Mamma Tan, who is full of hilarious insight and excellent advice, though she may casually/awkwardly slip in a comment about abortion. She also sells amaz Thai Iced Tea, for what it's worth.
From Pakse, we were able to arrange to kayak part of the way to our next destination. We spent a lovely day (only partially monsoon-y) paddling down a slow moving river, watching kids play and show off in the river after spotting our boats, and eventually making our way to Si Phan Don, or 4000 islands, a stretch of river and islands separating Lao PDR from its Southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Cambodia. It should be noted that at one stop, we left our kayaks and walked to a local temple, only to return to find what looked like a large portion of the near by village standing around the boats. What appeared to be the oldest male spoke a few words with our guide, spent a few more moments checking out the boats and then came over and inspected each of our paddles and life jackets. After giving us a thumbs up, and chatting another few minutes with our guide, we were apparently allowed to go. Just making sure everyone was safe and sound, and everything was in order. Naturally. Thanks for looking out for us friend!
After a second day of kayaking, visiting a waterfall, and "legally" crossing into Cambodia (sans passports and/or visas) to check out the endangered Irrawaddy dolphins, and an evening on
[Don Det, 4000 Islands, Laos] relaxing next to the river, our time in Laos had come to a close. When all was said and done, we spent a full week longer than expected in the country. Though, honestly, had we not been determined to fit Cambodia into the mix (making up for a my previous mishap) we easily could have stretch the visit a bit longer.
I would guess Laos is going to change rapidly in the up coming decades as the frequency of foreign visitors and level global exposure increases. I can only hope, for everyone's sake, that it doesn't loose itself and its amazing warmth along the way. That, my friends, would be a tragedy.
Two weeks and one
ancient empire to go... and ten days until
the next adventure begins. Wont it be weird when I get a "normal" job around these parts? Also, FYI, I will be ordering my last round of photos WEDS (Jan 18th). So, just in case you totally forgot that you wanted to buy one..
CLICK HERE, YOU ONLY HAVE ONE MORE DAY!!! Just thought you should know...
Thanks for sticking around,
Emily
Laos Travel Links:
http://www.travelfish.org/country/laos
http://wikitravel.org/en/Luang_Namtha
http://www.thejungle-ecotour.com/web_jungle/tour/our_trekking.htm
http://wikitravel.org/en/Vientiane
http://www.laos-travel-guide.com/buddha-park-vientiane.html
http://wikitravel.org/en/Si_Phan_Don
