Lao Lao in Laos

Laos. Spent the roughly eleven days there before coming here, to Hanoi, in Vietnam. Very nice country and a nice change of pace from Thailand. I think only about 6 million people live in Laos and we could feel it. Most people live a simple life, pandering to foriegn tourists or surviving off the land, but everyone I met or saw seemed basically content and happy. The kids especially. We rarely saw any kids not playing and having fun. Big difference being back in a big ass city, but Hanoi isn't too bad either. But this is about Laos...

Crossed the border from northern Thailand and took a 2 day slow boat ride down the Mekong. New meaning to the words "damn, my ass hurts". About 8 hours each day on a slightly padded wooden bench. Day one we had two boats, day two we only had one so we were extra crowded. Along the way we stopped one night in a small town called Pak Beng, whose sole existance seems to be the daily herd of falang travelers. We ended up in Luang Prabang, the old capitol of Laos. Here are a couple/few pictures from the boat trip and Luang Prabang.

Mmm...snake whisky, good for limb sweat and "boom boom" Only take a small cup in the morning and in the evening.

The mighty Mekong. Not the clearest of water...Ethan dubbed it the diarrhea river.

The first day on the boat...those were good days when we could walk between the benches. The next day the aisle was full of people in plastic chairs.

Unloading our crap in Pak Beng. Definitely a frontier town feel. Had my first real bargaining experience too..managed to get a room for 50,000 kip instead of the requested 65,000 kip. It's about 10,000 kip to 1 US dollar.

Sunrise looking down the Mekong from the bluff at Pak Beng.

The scenery along the Mekong was really nice with loads of cool sandy beaches and rocky outcroppings. Lots on water buffalo also. This is a shot of a monastery near Luang Prubang.

An early sunset on the Mekong thanks to the constant smokey haze.

Ethan and I only stayed in Luang Prubang for 2 nights/1 day before moving on. Here's a nice little side street in town. It's a small place with only about 26,000 people but it was once the capitol of Laos and the Royal Palace is there as well as some of the most revered wats in Laos.

Some of the flowers were in full bloom and I seem to have a soft spot for flower pictures.

Rice cakes drying in the sun at on of the wats. I should mention that all the wats have groups of monks living there and taking care of them, so they are all essentially "active".

Picture of one of the wats. Here, have some information about wats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat

Had a few beers with some of the other boat people in Luang Prubang.

From Luang Prabang, Ethan and I took an 8 hour bus ride to a town called Phonsavan. I thought the roads in New Zealand were pretty curvey, I hadn't seen anything until this bus ride. I think, on a decent motorcycle, I could have made the trip, comfortably, in about 3 hours. The bus, not so quick. And motion sickness plays a major factor in these journeys. I didn't suffer but I saw several people utilizing the plastic barf bags along the way. Not a pretty site. Phonsavan is nothing to write home about, but nearby are several mysterious fields of stone jars that have been dated to over 2000 years old. So that's what we went to see. A couple of different theories exist about what they were used for, but I think the most compelling may be their use as sarcophagi or burial items. The other theory is that they were used to brew butt-loads of Lao Lao, basically a moonshine made from rice, scary, scary stuff. We went to three different sites and all were cool, but what may have been cooler is that we were very lucky and got invited to a Laos wedding. We'd read about them in Lonely Planet as a good pary place and they weren't kidding in the least. Here are some pictures from Phonsavan, the Plain of Jars, and the wedding.

The view from our balcony at our $5/night place. Fairly decent too, the room that is.



Interesting detterent on top of this fence.


At site one of the plain of jars. These massive jars were made of rock from a quarry about 7 km away and then hauled to this hill. Our guide was of the opinion that they were all moved solely by man power, but I overheard another guide mentioning the use of elephants. I hope, for the sake of those people, the elephant theory is correct.


Only a couple of the jars in all the sites had lids. My guess is that they were small enough to be picked up by people wandering through the area over the centuries, but that's just my own theory.

The area around Phonsavan also has the honor of being one of the heaviest U.S. bombed areas in Laos. We were told to stick to certain paths that had been cleared of UXO (un-exploded ordinance). About three thousand Laos people were killed by U.S. bombings and and equal or greater number were killed after by UXO. Lots of craters around this area as well, but our guide informed us that the craters were actually useful for some of the locals, supplying instant ponds for water storage and raising fish. Ahh, the ironies of war.

One the way to site number 2 we stopped at a lao lao, or rice whisky, village. What you see above is the meat of the operation with fresh lao lao dripping into the multi-use transmission fluid bottle next to it.


We were graciously offered samples and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try some warm goodness. (ok, it's not good, really, not good, at least I didn't like it, Ethan seems to think it was ok, but I don't think he really remembers what it tasted like)

After visiting site 2 and site 3 we went to the wedding. We were supposed to have lunch at a restaurant at site 3 but it was closed because the daughter or son was the one getting married. But they went ahead and told our guide to bring us along. It's customary for all guests to give a monetary gift in a white envelope to help the wedding couple cover the costs of the celebration. We eached pitched in about 10,000 kip each, and our guide said that was plenty. One of the main customs of a celebration like this is the mass consumption of Lao Lao. Each table had a bottle or two and someone would play "bottle master" pouring him or herself a shot and then pouring one for each person at the table. It's a good thing they provide plenty of food too.

Stuffing my face with sticky rice.


Dancing is a big thing at the wedding too. I felt I was an expert after dancing with the hill tribe lady in Northern Thailand so I was plenty happy to show off my mad skills. It's actually a pretty slow and mellow dance with a lot of hand waving and shuffling of feet. It made the hill tribe dancing feel like a disco, but it was still good fun.


The whole family (and it felt like the whole village) comes to the event.


Our jar guide had a little too much of the Lao Lao even though he was telling us before hand about only having 3 or 4 and maintaining a level of moderation. He was a total crack up by the time we left. We had a group of 7 and one of them was this sort of cantankerous old English guy who I never saw smile and just sat around smoking his cigars. When we got in the mini-bus for the ride back to town our guide was telling Ethan and I that he like the 6 of us but was "scared of the big English man". He said he'd come back for Ethan and I and take us to a party later that night but we left him in the van in the position in the picture, basically completely passed out.

From Phonsavan we took another bus the next morning and back-tracked some through the gnarly twisty mountain roads for about 7 hours to Vang Vieng. Lonely Planet describes it as the Las Vegas of Laos, but I'd have to disagree.... It does have a decent nightlife and some fairly gaudy lighting but it's fairly ridiculous to compare this small town to Las Vegas. Highlights include the trekking in the amazing mountains nearby but the town is probalby best known for it's tubing down the local river. For about $4 you can rent an innertube and float down a fairly benign section of the river. along the way there are little bars set up on the shore where people pull you in with long bamboo poles and you can sit and enjoy a beer Lao. I think there are 10 or 12 of these bars and we stopped at 6 I think, drinking a Beer Lao at each. Ahh, but that's not all. Another highlight of the bar was the giant rope swings that got progressively higher the further along you went. It seems to make complete sense, put the more dangerous swings down river where people will probably be most drunk.....beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera along so I don't have any pictures of the tube trip. Ethan has a waterproof camera that we brought along, but he'll need to use up his roll of film and get it developed before we see how they turn out. And seeing as how we're probably only going to be traveling together for another week or so it may be quite a while before I get a gander.

The second full day in Vang Vieng we decided we need to off-set our debauchary from the day before with a nice hike in the hills. It was quite awesome up there, but man, I was definitely hurting from the day before. Smart Luke... Anyway here are some pictures from Vang Vieng.

We stayed at a pretty decent place right on the river for a whopping $7 each the first night, but we were able to haggle them down to $5/night for the next two.


Hmmm....doesn't get too much better than this.


The days of the ox and cart are long gone in Laos. Now the use these two-wheeled plow type things to pulled them around. The river was pretty shallow here and we saw quite a few of these guys working as taxis, avoiding the toll on the bridge.


On our hike we went up a pretty steep mountain and down the otherside into a valley where we swam and ate lunch in a stream that went into a cave in the mountain. Way cool.


The view out from our lunchtime cave.


Some water fun.


Our guide, Ted, cooking up some wicked kabobs.


After coming back over the mountain (and feeling like I was going to die) we had a little more tubing fun into another cave. Once again I didn't take my camera in, I didn't want to risk getting it wet, especially since digital cameras seem to be more expensive here than back home. Go figure.

The last couple of days in Laos we spent in the current capitol, Vientiene. We went out the first night to a couple of clubs with some local Laos people that we met and that was some good fun, but otherwise we just chilled out a lot and relaxed. Here are just a couple pictures from Vientiene.

The Black Stuppa....

Vientiene has a pretty strong French influence and this sort of copy of the the Arc De Triumph is a testamony to that. I guess the local American expats call it the vertical runway since most of the concrete for it's construction came from a local U.S. air field.

And now we're in Hanoi, Vietnam, and tomorrow we head out to the coast to an area called Halong Bay for three days and then to a town back the other way called Sapa for some more hill trekking.

Coolio.