On the move

Jacq, still managing a smile

Bangkok, Thailand – Tuk tuk to Vientiane’s Talat Sao bus station. Sold out for the 11:30am border crossing into Thailand. Instead we get another tuk tuk to the border. Exit stamps. Bus over the Friendship Bridge into the land of smiles.

Visa stamps. Bus to Nong Khai markets. Tuk tuk to bus station. Big bus to Udon Thani bus station. Tuk tuk to Udon Thani Airport. Flight delayed. Finally board at 6pm.

Arrive in Bangkok at 8pm, too late to strike out for Kanchanaburi, two hours away. Instead taxi to Banglamphu. Farang everywhere. Wasn’t this busy when we first arrived in October. Hotels and guesthouses are full. 9pm and starting to get worried.

Finally find a room in Soi Rambuttri. An air conditioned room with a window opening into the internal stairwell. We take it.

Eat on the road and watch the freak show walk past. Do these people voluntarily stay here? Or are they just en route like us? Some look like they are in no plans to leave. Crazy.

Travel tired

Patuxay, Laos’ national memorial

Vientiane, Laos – A cramped mini van ride fromVang Vieng down the dusty highway brings us to Laos’s quiet capital city of a few hundred thousand people.

My first impressions are that its similar to Phnom Penh. A city on the river with the usual bars and restaurants on the foreshore and along the river road. Various wats and monuments throughout the city.

Enough of an NGO presence to suggest a dirt poor country trying to improve its lot with foreign aid. Like PP none of it is spectacularly beautiful or colourful.

Unlike PP, it’s not dangerous nor dirty nor crowded.

We’re here for a few days before crossing the border into Thailand, just down the road.

Already I think that’ll be enough time. I’m a little tired after New Years. The accomodation options in this city are depressing. It’s hot but there’s no where to swim.

One saving grace in Vientiane is the river bank. On the shore of the mighty Mekong, Jacq and I spend the evenings sitting on cushions at low tables under the stars, ordering cheap Lao dishes and gazing across the river to the twinkling lights of Thailand.

We wonder if there are a bunch of Thais, or even travellers like us, sitting on the river bank over there, tucking into a cheap meal and wondering, like us, what’s going on over on the other side of the river.

I suppose we’ll find out in a couple of days when we cross over.

New Year’s in Vang Vieng

The big swing and riverside bamboo bar

Jacq, Alex and me, as photographed by Miranda

Tube hire, Nam Song river

Vang Vieng, Laos – If my New Year’s Eve was a little quiet this year, I’m confident my New Year’s Day more than made up for it.

After a long day spent freaking out in caves (me) and fighting a tummy bug (Jacq), NYE was a quiet one for the Backpack Storybook team.

At around 9pm we walked across the bamboo footbridge into town to see what VV held in store for us. We didn’t expect a great deal after seeing the dusty, soulless main street the day before. And in the end not much was delivered.

At one stage we were having a quiet beer in a concrete beer garden and we could hear four separate songs being played by four separate bars. All at full volume.

Our venue had Blondie. Two across the street had driving dance music. A Lao bar had two guys on a keyboard and a microphone. With a stack of speakers five high. I’ll give it to the Lao, they may be among the poorest nations in the world, but they sure like a decent sound system.

In bed before 11:30pm in our bungalow across the river, we were bright eyed and bushy tailed for the next day.

As I described before, tubing down the Nam Song River is a right of passage for most travellers in this area. And despite the eye rolling and cynicism this activity usually brings about on the backpacker trail, it was damn good fun.

US$4 buys a tuk tuk ride a couple of kays up the river and tube hire for the day. They drop you off, you walk to the river’s edge and jump in. Peace of piss.

We passed bars selling Beer Lao. They were little more than bamboo platforms with an esky but they had studied the river’s flow and realised the current would push customers right past them.

We avoided most but it was impossible not to stop at the two biggest bars for a few hours. Booming dance music, private bamboo platforms, giant swings out into the river and a hundred-odd boozed-up Westerners created a surreal Ibiza-meets-Waterworld vibe in the middle of the quiet Laos countryside.

Jacq, myself and Alex, a Queenslander we met on the tuk tuk, gave the small swing a go. At 8 metres it was quite exciting jumping off the platform and swinging about over the river before letting go and splashing into the green water. I’m not sure if I was shaking more before or after the jump.

But the big swing was all Jacq. Alex and I made various excuses for not jumping but she climbed the ladder to the rickety 12m platform all by herself. Swing in hand, she almost jumped and then hesitated. And then froze. And then had to give the swing to the next in line.

To her credit she had another go – and hesitated again. On the platform below I was almost rolling around the floor with anxiety. I was torn between yelling out “do it!” and “come down!”.

She had a third go. Which by now every tuber in sight was watching, most yelling “jump, jump, jump!”. And she did. She swung down, out over the river and up, screamed, came back and let go into the water. The crowd cheered and I relaxed again.

Accidental spelunking in Vang Vieng

Jacq sizing up the mountains outside Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng, Laos – VV is both as ugly and as beautiful as the guidebooks and the travellers grapevine suggest.

Ugly because it seems to be a town built in a style merely to succeed in its two functions, without a thought for aesthetics or decoration.

And its two functions? A) Deliver re-runs of ‘Friends TV episodes at full volume to backpackers in the various TV bars around main street and B) send the same backpackers down the Nam Song River in tractor inner tubes and fill them with Beer Lao.

But it’s also beautiful. Just 100 metres from the dusty, treeless backpackerland main street is the shaded river bank with its quaint bamboo bridges and small market gardens. A couple of kilometres over the river are the magnificent limestone karst outcrops – home to a natural wonderland of caves, lagoons and streams.

Jacq and I turned our back on the town, rented a moto and explored the karsts for a day.

At one cave entrance a young boy greeted us at his stand which featured a row of headlamps attached to bulky battery packs. We paid our 5000kip entrance fee and followed him into the blackness. Apart from exchanging our names, he never spoke during the rest of the adventure.

The first section of the cave was relatively easy. We saw a buddha and marveled at the stalactites. But the deeper we went the more it became a struggle to squeeze through the passages. I had a camera bag and battery pack to balance on different shoulder straps. Jacq had our backpack.

But it got tougher. The shaft became so small even our guide had to crawl on his belly. Jacq took the pack off and pushed it ahead of her. I did the same with my camera bag and watched in horror as it got coated in mud and dust.

I also started to get a bit nervy about the small tunnel. With Jacq and the guide ahead of me, and another couple with their guide behind, I was feeling a little hemmed in and quite fucking keen to turn back. A sentiment I shared with Jacq in increasingly urgent whispers in the half-darkness.

But we crawled on. Just when I thought I was at melt down stage somewhere deep underground with thousands of tonnes of rocks above me, Jacq announced “I can see sunlight”. And it was true.

We had come full circle and swung back to the cave entrance! As I clambered out into the light I felt a little foolish about wanting to turn back when we were so close to the exit.

But to their credit, neither the young guide nor Jacq gave me too hard time about it.

Through the mountains

Bus break down somewhere on Route 13, Laos

Northern Laos – Travel is a little bit like life. It has its ups and downs, the exciting parts, the sad bits and the times where you just have to put your head down and get through it to enjoy what lays on the other side.

Yesterday we left Luang Prabang and travelled south through the mountains to Vang Vieng, a journey of about 180kms that took six long hours.

The Lonely Planet warned that those who suffered motion sickness should take precautions as the route was a winding, bumpy one. I felt a little worried as I sometimes get sea sick, but I was confident that us spending the extra money on the Special VIP bus would pay off.

Not quite. The bus was a very shabby around the edges, the suspension worn and it had an interior fitted out like an Arabian tent. Curtains covered the top half of the windows, including the windscreen.

It meant that as we started to take one lurching hairpin turn after the other through the mountains, all I could see out any window was the green landscape rushing past first one way and then the other. Deep breaths out the open window and a packet of ginger motion sickness tablets were my saviors during the trip. Even then, it was real “please God, if I make it through this I’ll do anything” sort of stuff.

Jacq, normally a rock of stability on buses, was also looking a little green.

Queasiness aside, the journey was still interesting. At some points we crested a hill so high it brought us above the other mountain tops. It felt like we were creeping through a thin space between the sky and the mountain ranges.

In the aisle of the bus a young Lao sat on a plastic stool, an AK-47 assault rifle slung over one shoulder. He looked like any other young twenty something bloke. You know, blue jeans, sneakers and a black band t-shirt. He just happened to have a very fucking serious looking weapon on him.

I guessed he was our security detail, hired by the bus company to protect its Western customers who were weighed down by bundles of US dollars and electronic goods. The LP guidebook had warned that banditry was once a problem on Route 13 and I wondered if perhaps it still hadn’t been entirely wiped out by the police.

He was diligent, I’ll give him that. He only put the rifle down once, and that was when the bus blew a tire and he got out to help the driver’s offside change it. He simply stuffed the dull-grey ammunition clip in the back pocket of his jeans and got to work.

Small highland villages dotted the roadside of Route 13. In many places the terrain was so steep the villages were actually inhabiting the small shoulder of dirt beside the road, it being the only piece of flat land for miles. Apparently a metre or two of gravel is enough for a wooden two storey house.

Small, fat pigs snorted around in the dirt under the houses. Chickens, chicks and a surprising number of puppies also foraged around the homes. Dirty faced children stopped playing to watch our bus rumble pass. The adults barely looked up from their work of cutting wood, cooking or arranging bunches of what looked like rushes.

We rounded one tight corner and surprised a young boy squatting on the side of the road, his pants around his ankles. He looked up, saw the bus and barely had time to jump backwards over the drainage ditch and lean against the side of the cliff before the bus shot past. Not even enough time to pull up his pants.

Christmas in Laos

Tat Sae waterfall, near Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang, Laos – Spending Christmas in Laos has got Jacq and myself, and the international crew we are hanging out with, pretty confused.

The five from the northern hemisphere are used to cold weather, hot drinks and maybe a decent dump of snow to make it a proper White Christmas.

Jacq and I, on the other hand, have spent all our Christmases baking in the Australian summer. Swimming. Drinking cold beer and eating cold meats and salad.

But December in Laung Prabang has disappointed everyone, at least weather-wise. The day time temperatures, while warm, aren’t quite hot enough to allow me to strip off and paddle about the Mekong with a beer in hand. The nights are bloody freezing, according to Jacq and I. The Euros just shrug and reach for a light jacket and reminisce about spiced wine and roaring fireplaces.

We all spent Christmas Day at the Tat Sae waterfalls, reached via a half hour sawngthaew (truck) ride out of town and then a quick punt up the river in a tiny wooden boat. An amazing place featuring numerous waterfalls pouring into aqua-blue pools.

The water was cold, but with a fortifying bottle of Beer Lao in hand, we braved the icy pools and I got my wish to spend Christmas swimming and drinking.

New country, new smells

Rhys and friend, LP main street baguette stall

Luang Prabang, Laos – Leaving Hanoi earlier this week created mixed emotions. I’d finally be leaving a city which had frustrated me no end with its maze of streets and unrelenting hawkers.

But I’d be leaving behind its delicious pho bo and super-cheap bia hoi. Could Laos compete in the culinary stakes?

The initial answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes. On my first morning in Luang Prabang I discovered the Laotians like chicken and salad rolls just as much as I do. Walking through the main street, I passed a dozen stalls set up to fill the stomachs of hungry tourists with bread rolls.

10,000kip (about AUD$1.20) buys an enormous baguette (and solid too, not the airy fairy ones they sell in Vietnam) filled with roast chicken, lettuce, tomato, onion, huge slices of cucumber and a spoon of mayo. On top they pour on two kinds of chilli sauce and a dab of soy. Beautiful. They’re so filling I’m doing without lunch right now.

In the evenings Jacq and I make for the night market. Stalls sell whole barbecued fish on bamboo sticks, laap (a traditional Lao dish of minced meat, fresh herbs and lettuce cups) and vegetarian buffets. For 5,000kip they give you a large bowl and you help yourself, loading up on fried rice, noodles, curries, spring rolls and vegetables. Then you simply sit down at one of the communal picnic tables next to other travellers and steam into it.

I’ve been washing this incredibly cheap and tasty meal down with a bottle of Beer Lao. They weigh in at a whopping 640mL. It feels like drinking out of a wine bottle. No matter how big a drink from these babies I take, or how frequently, they always seem only half empty. Its hard work to get through a couple in one night.

Which is just as well, because at 5% they can do some real damage.

Laid back Luang Prabang

Monks in the LP main street

Luang Prabang, Laos – I’ve yet to meet a person, or read a guidebook, that’s got a bad thing to say about Luang Prabang.

Laid back and relaxed is the most common description. And its not hard to see why. After travelling through the kind of busy, batshit crazy cities and towns common in the rest of Asia, LP looks good simply by default.

But it has its own charms to make this a must see stop on the trail. This town of 30,000-odd is dotted with wats and great bakeries. It’s provided with flashes of colour by the monks in their orange robes and the colourful hill tribe people.

The options to explore and be active also seem limitless. The tour companies and travellers cafes along the main road offer trips to the waterfalls, mountain biking, climbing, caving and white water rafting.

In the build up to Christmas the boats and buses have been delivering ever increasing numbers of backpackers. Each evening we see them dazed and confused and with their giants packs on, looking for a rare spare room in one of the guesthouses.

Luckily Jacq and I are already set up in a little guesthouse down near the Mekong River. Its located in a quiet lane way in what is already a quiet town. The only problem is the rooster outside our bedroom window. But apparently there is no escaping them in LP. Their strident calls ring out across town every morning from 4am.