Well, my guess is that most readers of our blog are likely wondering when I, Clement, would contribute to our stories. As Chief Editor (which has been an easy job as you can imagine), it’s time for me to begin typing. There’s no better time than now after our experiences in Laos. Julia strongly disliked the country…I will do my best to describe our experiences with as much of a positive twist as possible.
We reluctantly left Chiang Mai to head to the Thai border town of Chiang Khong. We truly had an amazing experience in Thailand and we aren’t sure any other country can beat it (although we’ve heard the best is yet to come!). We knew that we had three travel days ahead of us to get to Luang Prabang, our first stop in Laos, but had no idea it would be as painful as it was. After a six hour drive we landed in Chiang Khong where we stayed the night at a sketchy guesthouse. We could see through the wooden planks in the cracking weak floor. The creatures were literally crawling out of the woodwork so our mosquito net was our saving grace. An early morning followed as we hopped on a small boat to take us from Thailand to the Laos border where we picked up our passports with Laos visas and were on our way. You have three options to get from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang; either by bus, speedboat or slow boat. We heard that the bus was brutally long and uncomfortable and people die on a monthly basis on the speedboat so we opted for the third choice, the 2 day slow boat ride down the Mekong River. Floating down the Mekong River for a couple of chilled out days sounds pretty cool right? WRONG!
A slow boat it was. Let me first set the scene. There are no safety regulations on anything in Laos. In fact, Laos Airlines doesn’t even release their safety reports. The boat was way over capacity with at least 80 people crammed into a boat that has a capacity of about 50, and let’s not forget everyone’s luggage. We had to sit on wooden benches that were constructed at less than a 90 degree angle, meaning that we were essentially leaning forward for a total of 17 hours!! These wooden benches made church pews look and feel luxurious! The first day was an 8 hour ride. Thankfully, there was a bit of a breeze which helped to maintain our sanity. On the second day (9 hours) we weren’t so lucky….it was at least 45 degrees and there was no breeze whatsoever. Our bodies cooking under the tin roof of the boat, the little shade we had was not near enough to keep us cool. We have never had our patience and our sanity tested to that extreme before. We are really surprised that nobody went mental and jumped overboard…the stinky dead water buffalo floating down the murky brown river may have deterred them. Having said all this, we met some great people onboard and enjoyed a few warm BeerLao with them to make the time pass.
We were more than happy to have arrived in Luang Prabang and spent a relaxing three days there enjoying some beautiful waterfalls, markets and even the curfew. Lao people are so laidback (some would label them as lazy) that they have a law in LP stating that everything must be closed by 11:30pm. Even before that, the streets empty out and there is no one around except for the odd traveler wondering what the heck is going on. We left LP to head for Vang Vieng, which is famous for tubing down the river. We knew that we couldn’t go to Laos and not make a quick stop here, so we continued on with the group of people from the slow boat (about 10 of us) and spent a couple of nights there. Our group was comprised of 2 Dutchies, 2 Scotts, 3 Germans, 1 Canadian and us. We all became quite close and will continue our travels with some and others we will keep in touch with I’m sure. We all spent one day tubing which was really fun. At the same time it was also sad to see, as many young travelers party hard with no regard or respect for the Laos people, their culture or their land. Although drugs are illegal in Laos, they are available everywhere. You can order a “Happy Pizza” in most restaurants and instead of getting normal mushrooms on it they use magic mushrooms. Needless to say everywhere we went there were numerous travelers tripping out on mushrooms and/or opium. Not really our idea of travelling in SE Asia but we put up with it for a day and managed to have our own fun. Each bar you go to as you make your way down the river has a swing, a waterslide, or a zip-line and in some cases all three. I can’t imagine some of the injuries that occur along this part of the river as people stretch their limits of consumption making them feel invisible.
As we left Vang Vieng headed for Vientiane, we jumped on yet another bus for the 6 hour trip. It was quite uneventful for a change until we arrived in the capital city. We struggled to find accommodation and the heat was getting to us on that scorching afternoon. We finally settled in a hotel that we later found out charged us too much. Yet again, we were looking forward to getting out of there. We didn’t take in many sites in Vientiane as we were getting tired of the bad vibes passed on by the locals. We arranged for our Cambodian Visas and booked our “VIP sleeper bus” tickets to Pakse in Southern Laos…a ten hour trip overnight. We arrived to the bus station to have our tickets switched before we even knew what was happening and ended up on a shitty bus. This bus certainly didn’t look like the pictures we were showed during our booking. We had paid a premium for this “VIP sleeper bus”, another event adding to our frustrations. We woke up at 6 in the morning in Pakse to tuk tuk drivers shaking our feet on the bus to get our attention. At this stop, only the white people were made to get off as the locals watched us with grins on their faces. Our luggage had been put in a separate compartment and was out of the bus before we could wipe the sleep out of our eyes. At this point, we were forced to make a quick decision to go to either Tad Lo or 4000 Islands. We chose 4000 Islands, which proved to be a bad move. I could see how 3-5 years ago this place would have been lovely, but frankly, the locals have let it go to shit!! We were dropped off by the mini bus close to the Mekong River as the Islands are located near the south of Laos. This is where we caught the small boats to take us to the Islands and this little town literally looked like a DUMP…we’ve never seen so much garbage and the foul smells were enough to make your stomach turn. I must mention that by now, Julia had been violently ill for 4 days and her patience was short to say the least. I felt her pain as she struggled to find a toilet as the locals laughed at her. It must have been a nightmare for Jules and I’m so glad that she’s now back to normal.
I hope that I am not sounding too negative throughout this Laos blog. I suppose that we can sum it up to an overall bad experience in a place for which we had very high hopes. It is my belief that if the Laos people do not get their act together soon, they will lose one of their largest industries; tourism. In talking to other travelers, we certainly weren’t the only people who struggled to find the positives within our Laos visit. The Laos people have no concept of the long-term opportunities that tourism presents to its younger generations. Instead, we found the people to be very short sighted and out for personal gain. To top it all off, they almost didn’t let us out of their country because we didn’t have enough kip left to pay off the customs officers (they tried to tell us we owed them more money because it was Saturday and they were working “overtime”). After much arguing and trying to give them whatever we could (we would have given the shirts off our back at this point), they let us through and into Cambodia where we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves! Our blog from Cambodia will follow shortly!
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