A Little Bit Whoa, A Little Bit Whey…

21May07

Itchy feet again. Time to get moving! We’d done the Thailand thing and were ready to hit the road again, and where better to trundle off to than the much raved about destination, Laos? The newest hot-spot in South East Asia, Laos promised a relaxing combination of French food, quiet towns and, of great importance, less rain than further South! With the full rath of the Thai Monsoon snapping at our heels, we grabbed our bags and struck out for Thailand’s peaceful neighbour. Baguettes and pate, here we come! First stop, the teeny Laos capital of Vientiane.

And we do mean teeny. Barely reaching the population mark of 200,000 and having the infrastructure that would spur even the lowliest of Irish villages to pride, Laos’ largest urban area felt more like a little mountain town than a capital city. A little mountain town that some careless troll has vomited concrete all over. We hopped off our bus, sporting new and increased price visas, we set towards finding a place to stay. A short wrestle with the resident Jumbo drivers (like a tuk-tuk, only bigger and with half the engine power. Oh, how very, very slow…) and we found ourselves at the hotel centre. And, as it turns out, all the talk about dirt cheap living in Laos must not have included Vientiane. We eventually found rooms (more costly than Bangkok) and set to finding food. The grub was uniformly more costly than we were used to, but we found a nice Indian restaurant and set to filling ourselves with the much missed Naan!

It seemed that the colonising French had some strange ideas of what advancement is. The road systems were largely non-existant, and the ones that were more than just mud where more holes than not. There were actually warnings to tourists about looking where you were going, in case you disappeared down one of the deep chasms. In a strange twist, the victorious Laos people erected a large monument in memorial of their struggle for independence. It eerily resembles L’Arc De Triumph in Paris. So much so that we assumed that it was a French monument designed to make the Colony feel more at home! The lack of amenities and transport that quickly wore our energy, time and wallets made for quite a dull city. Ja Yeon did drag us to another temple, a great big dirty stupa covered in flaking gold paint. Riveting stuff. Not too impressed with our first taste of Laos, we quickly decided to head North. The Northern “city” of Luang Prabang, with it’s remaining French architecture, was the destination. But we decided to make a quick stop on the way.

Vang Vieng was once heralded as a “best kept secret” of Laos, it’s peaceful rivers and captivating rock formations made this a place worth visiting. Until everyone  did. We arrived at a bus stop with two roads leading off it. It seemed that the too-common tourist fever had taken the village completely long before we got anywhere near it. At night the place really did resemble the neon lit streets surrounding the infamous Ko San road in Bangkok. Each building served as a hostel, travel agents or restaurant/cafe that played re-runs of Friends. Quite often they were all three in one. Again, prices had soared and we were paying through our teeth for less-than-incredible food and accommodation. We stayed only long enough to float down the river on a tractor tyre (the activity of choice, called tubing. Good fun, until the toll is taken from lying under the baking sun for three hours) and then we grabbed the next bus to Luang Prabang.

The bus rides in Laos deserve a special mention. We payed the extra dollars for the top-of-the-range, ultra-luxurious VIP coach. What we got was an old Korean reject from the 80’s. It was supposed to come complete with a free lunch (which didn’t happen), free drinks (that didn’t exist), have an inside toilet (that didn’t work) and air conditioning (what do you thing?). The drive took us around every mountain in the North of Laos, with a quick detour through a theme park specialising in vomit inducing roller-coasters, with a quick nip across the Atlantic ocean to add a bit of spice. For the first few hours we used every bit of muscle that our rear-ends could muster just to try and stop us thwaking back and forth from the sides of the bus. For the last two hours our bodies failed us and we surrendered to the lowly existence of a gold-fish being flushed down the toilet.

We staggered off the bus looking as green as the jungle around us and over-paid a Jumbo to get us to our hostels. We got there, sweaty and tired after our voyage up and down the pot-holes, and got ourselves refreshed and ready for exploration. Luang Prabang sports a population of 22,000. Making it a mid-sized town by our standards, but a bustling city by Laos’ flexible terminology. It also turned out to be a tourist-orientated city, where the main streets were dominated by French and American back-packers. It also turned out to be quiet expensive. This super-cheap county, with an exchange rate of 1 euro to 12,000 kip (the currency name aptly describes the state and value of the notes) and one of the poorest populations in Asia was turning out to be the most expensive destination so far. In between dashing out of frequent rain storms (the monsoon had found us, crafty beggar!) and groping for torches during the blackouts, we managed escape joining JaYeon on her latest temple-hunt and rented a couple of bicycles. They were the really old school kind (taken straight out of the Wonderyears era) and we had great fun moving about the town slowly, arms locks straight, chins in the air, releasing the occasional French WHONH HONH HONH! (it had to be done) as we passed the faded colonial shop-fronts.

Another distressing bus ride to Vientiane and we were ready to leave. After our wonderful experiences in Thailand we began to wax nostalgic. Oh it’s so cheap in Thailand! Oh it’s so easy to travel! Oh the people are so nice! Oh the food is so good! Lets go back!

So we did.

We’re now back in the mighty city of Bangkok. Once again. Just can’t seem to get away from this place, it’s almost Western comforts hold strong appeal for these weary travellers. We managed only a week in Laos before scampering back, begging for the welcoming smiles of our familiar hostel owners.

Man oh man, we’re really getting soft. But seriously, Bangkok is just so flippin’ GREAT!

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