June 1st - 15th, 2009

Two weeks in Laos - the last new country for us on our trip, one of the most beautiful and relaxing: it became one of our favourites, and there we will surely return. (Well, we do want to return to most of the countries we have visited…). Our first destination was the laid-back capital Vientiane, the next one the party mecca Vang Vieng. In the fascinating Luang Prabang we stayed a week, making also a three-day trek to the mountains and hill-tribe villages from there. We finished our stay in Laos with a two-day cruise up Mekong.

From Bangkok we took the night train to Nong Khai near the Lao border. We had beds in second class a/c - they are not in compartments, but in a long row along both sides of the carriage, almost like in Some Like it Hot. Difficult to decide, if we felt more like Marilyn Monroe or Jack Lemmon;-).

Crossing the border to Laos is not difficult, but it is done in many phases, at least in the way we did. Tuktuk from the train station to the border, Thai passport control, local bus over the Friendship Bridge, applying for Lao visas, (not a long wait), a sawngthaew to the centre of Vientiane. This time we had not booked ahead, but found easily a decent hotel (Soukchaleun) for 15 dollars.

Vientiane

Vientiane is surely one of the most laid-back capitals of the world - it felt like a big village. Sure, there are broad green boulevards with some grand government and business buildings, but most of the centre is a friendly mixture of houses of different styles in different phases of renovation or deterioration. Mekong flows beside the centre, and the whole riverfront is filled up with cosy, rather simple restaurants. We tasted their excellent Lao food (in many ways quite similar to Thai) and Beerlao on our both evenings, once in an almost vertical position on the sand near the river, once with two new Lao friends in a normal table. According to the rains, the river gets broader and narrower - that is probably why the riverfront has not been built as a boulevard and remains in a beautiful natural state, perfect to enjoy a sunset.

In this phase of our trip, we have already grown a bit slow - not many sights in a row, no hurry. On our second day we hired bikes and went to see the golden stupa of Pha That Luang, said to be the national symbol of Laos. On the way back we climbed to the top of Patuxai, the Lao version of Arc de Triomphe. It was built in the 60´s from concrete originally meant for a new airport. Along with nice views over the town from the top, there are lots of opportunities to buy souvenirs and t-shirts - we started to learn that the Lao vendors´ style suits us much better than that of most of their Asian colleagues: they don´t sell their ware aggressively, and even let the customer have a look without interfering.

After lunch, our third stop was a herbal sauna in the outskirts of the town. Without the recommendations of our guidebook, we would perhaps not have ventured to climb the stairs of this
grey building in the middle of a wild garden. We were glad we did, it was a haven of relaxation: we visited the sauna three times, the steam scented of a mixture of herbs - we had a very good one-hour massage, and during the long pauses between made friends with local people when sipping herbal tea. All this for 50.000 kip (4,2e) per person.

Vang Vieng

We pondered quite long if we should visit Vang Vieng, a backpacker partying and tubing mecca on the river of Nam Song, or if we should travel directly to Luang Prabang. Breaking the long bus trip part into two parts was one of the reasons, curiosity the bigger one. It was a good decision: although the centre is not at all beautiful, but filled with simple restaurants and pubs showing Friends (and luckily also Simpsons;-), a little walk out of town, and you are in the middle of stunning limestone scenery.

Tubing means floating down the river sitting in an inner tire of a tractor. This is the easy and mellow part of it - the hardcore one would be stopping at every bar along the tubing route and jumping into the water in all imaginable ways, the higher the better. We were no cowards; we used both a huge slide which threw us a long way and a big sling with which we could swing like Tarzans, before deciding when to jump. Two bars were enough, though, and we only drank two beers and a little of Lao-Lao whisky, not making use of the “happy” special offers of the Last Bar.

Staying only one day in Vang Vieng, we had taken an organised trip, complete with a nice guide and a tasty lunch. The first part of the trip was two caves, one with Buddhas and mermaids, the other, a long one, had to be entered floating in a tube - this was nice when safely in a group. By the way, after meeting so few Finns in these 10 months, in this trip we accidentally met five of them. Laos seems to be a new favourite destination of our countrymen - also in Luang Prabang we heard Finnish more than once.

The other Finns went kayaking, and when tubing, we had a private guide called Khuy. He took our things in the kayak, showed us round and took pictures of us, and during our beer stops we also had nice talks with him, learning again a little bit more of Lao life - not in a normal Lao town, though.

What does one do in the evenings in Vang Vieng? Apart from beer you can also drink buckets, which, made from Lao-Lao are probably the cheapest drink option we have ever met. A cheerful one, and even quite tasty one, best enjoyed in a hammock, watching other people dancing in swimming trunks in the rain.

During our tubing trip we had really good luck with the weather: it was sunny all the day, and the heavy rains came only in the evening. The next day was much worse, but luckily we were already sitting in the bus to Luang Prabang. (well, why had there to be a hole in the roof of the bus, and just where we sat?). In this bus, there was not one inch too much room for our legs, and the road was slow, hilly and windy - it was a pleasure finally to come to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang was a pleasure in many ways - I must say it grew one of my all-time favourites. It is green, it lies between two rivers, it has a hill in the middle and others around, it is full of beautiful temples and early-20th-century buildings, it is small enough to walk (or cycle) around, it is full of beautiful cafés, restaurants and shops.

A great destination for travellers of all ages, and also a one where there are many choices of sustainable tourism, many of them collected in the booklet Stay Another Day. (The same organisation exists, by the way, also in Cambodia and Vietnam, see www.stay-another-day.org ).
In fact, you wouldn´t need to look for extra reasons for staying another day in Luang Prabang - just lingering around would do - but those listed in the booklet include fine fairtrade shops, tradiotional Lao restaurants, Red Cross herbal sauna & massage (we tried it twice - great) and cultural organisations.

Big Brother Mouse publishes inexpensive books for children, youth and adults. It was here we bought our presents for our trip to the hill-tribe villages - sets of books we gave to the local schools. Children’s Cultural Centre is a place where children and youth can spend free time after school, in the same time learning traditional Lao culture. Unfortunately, they were just in the middle of moving, and of the cultural programme we saw only a group af children playing in the courtyard. Anyway, we met a bunch of lively children who were very eager to get into contact with us. In Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre we learned a lot of valuable information concerning the hill-tribe villages we were going to visit.

The Royal Ballet is a partly professional, partly amateur group which practices and performs regularly traditional dance drama in the theatre of the Royal Palace. Ramayana is common for many Asian countries, and we were familiar with the story they performed from Bali. Among the dancers there were also children, performing as monkey boys and court maids. The instruments played by a little sleepy band were very much the same we had seen in Laos.

Of course, we also visited the Royal Palace - after the communist revolution in 1975 there has been no royalty in Laos. The throne hall was grand, but the reception rooms quite cosy, and nowhere have we seen such simple private royal rooms - rooms we could have moved in immediately.

The Wats, the temples, are something Luang Prabang is famous for. We left visiting some of them also for the next time - alone the very beautiful Wat Xieng Thong would have been enough. The monks living at these temples can be seen everywhere in town also during the daytime; quite special is the daily almsgiving ceremony every morning at six. We did not take part - we tried just to be invisible spectators when local people gave sticky rice and fruit to a long row of orange-clad, mainly quite young monks. For the monks this is a one of the only ways to gain food, for the people giving it is a way of adding their karma.

We also took a half-day trip to an elephant camp. Before, these strong and wise animals were
needed for transport and working in the forest. Now most of them have become unemployed, and in order to get the tons of food they eat every week, they have to be supported e.g. by tourists visiting these camps. We chose a camp which takes specially good care of their animals - just the way their biographies were written showed the respect for them. We took only a one-hour trek on a bench on the back of an elehant - the next step would have been learning some commands and riding the elephants ourselves - of course along with their own mahouts, their long-time companions.

Of course, we took (almost) enough time to the most important in Luang Prabang, just enjoying the atmosphere, walking, sitting in cafés and restaurants. Our hotel was a nice and comfortable one, Thatsaphone Villa - mot only the usual comforts, but also nice wooden furnishing and friendly personnel. Our favourite restaurants were again on the Mekong riverfront - food surely as good as in those in the main street, but for perhaps half of the price. All bars close at half past eleven - also the stylish one, Khob Chai; which we fequented, actually not because of the sports screen, but anyway we found ourselves watching there last set of the men’s final of the French Open.

Trek to hill-tribe villages

We took a three-days trip to the mountains, and this time our goal was not only to see nature, but also to learn how the hill tribes live. Perhaps our worst fears of entering a folklore theme park or a handicraft market would have got real in northern Vietnam or Thailand - this was surely not the case with this fair trek, organised by Tiger Trail. It is guaranteed that a part of the trek fee is given to the villagers.

Our guide on this trek was Somekhid, a 26-year-old lad originating from a khamu village in the nort-east of Laos He has spent eight years as a monk in Luang Prabang. After these years of peace and study, he chose to come back to the normal life of a young man, having gained a knowledge of English that made it possible for him to apply for jobs his village background would not have done. For the future, Somekhid is full of new plans - he is a vivid example of an optimism possible in the Laos of today.

Laos is really a green country - at keast the north of the country consists mostly of hills covered by forests and ricefields. Just now, the ricefields gained from forest by slashing and burning look alarmingly brown and desolate, but in a few months they will be covered by rice plants, the main source of nutrition for the people living in the mountains. All this greenness provided a really beautiful setting for a trek, the most of which was on paths well trodden by the people living there. Fortunately so - it would have been too hot to find our way on more difficult paths. It was also really fortunate that it was not raining - then the muddy paths would have been awfully slippery, and there would have been hordes of leeches.

The life in the villages is very poor, but somehow the people belong there and don´t look unhappy (well, we do hope we could see it right). They don’t suffer from hunger (except perhaps when the rice stock of last year is finished too early) - but there are no luxuries like electricity or running water. Washing (of people, clothes and dishes) is made in little rivers or wells connected to a spring - and cleanliness is something that is respected as much as possible in these often muddy conditions.

Most exciting what we saw was a medicine man of a hmong village chasing away the bad spirits from a sick man. He sang, howled, grunted and danced on a bench in front of the family altar - this took the whole night, and continued even in the morning.

We spent the first night with a khamu family - they provided us three an almost luxurious accommodation: a room of our own in the second floor, mattresses and blankets. The second night was on one of the three bamboo beds of a hmong family - it was warm enough, so the blankets provided could be used as mattresses, and our silk sleeping bags were enough to cover us (also from the few mosquitoes). Our dinners were prepared by Somekhid - this meant we did not have to face the awkward situation of refusing the offer of a delicious lizard soup our hmong family had for dinner.

If you take a photo, please ask for a permission - this is a good lesson we had learned. The next lesson was: please make copies to the people of whom you take the photos - for many of them this is an unique chance. The serene faces of a family living in an almost empty village cannot easily be forgotten, nor can the eagerness with which the stylish grandmother of our hmong family prepared herself and her grandchildren for the photo. Somekhid will take the photos on his next trek to the villages.

The Lao government keeps giving orders: the people from the most remote villages have to move to larger ones, to nearer to the the roads, schools and shops, to where they can also be better controlled. Slashing-and-burning and hunting are not appreciated, not to speak about opium planting (totally forbidden since some years). A difficult question: is it better that the hill tribes stay in their original villages, perhaps without schools, or that they move to a village with a little easier life, but away from their homes, and far away from their rice plantations?

On the way back from our trek, our sawngthaew was stopped by a car of an UXO group - there are still lots of unexploded ammunition in the grounds of Laos - the American bombings in the 60´s and 70´s were generous. Most of the landmines were (and are) found in the neighbourhood of the North Vietnam border, on the former Ho Chi Minh trail.

Mekong boat trip

After spending two more nights in Luang Prabang, we took a two-day boat trip up the river Mekong. We had good luck: the boat was not full, there were also comfortable seats to sit on, and the weather was fine - with too little room, or only wooden benches, these two times eight hours could have been a nightmare. Now, it was pure bliss: beautiful scenery just flowing by, the only marks of civilization being some small villages scattered on the shores. Also two elephants could be seen, followed by their mahouts on foot.

Between the boat rides we stayed overnight in Pak Beng, a small village living mostly to cater for boat travellers - they have electricity only from 6 p.m till 10 p.m, produced by generators. The second day brought us to Huay Xai on the Lao side of the river - nothing much to experience there either: a visit to the Red Cross herbal sauna and a dinner in a riverside restaurant were a pleasant finale to our stay in Laos.

Next morning, we took a small boat to Chiang Khong in Thailand, and from there a minibus to our last but one destination before flying back home, Chiang Mai. The minibus ride was nice, too - most of the people on it had travelled on the same boat with us from Luang Prabang, among them a very nice Japanese girl Sue who was heading for a massage study in Chiang Mai, and the French Boris, who had spent 4 months of his one year in South-East Asia working as a volunteer on a Burmese refugee camp in northern Thailand.

Why did Laos become such a favourite of us? Of course, the beauty of the nature and the towns was a great asset, as well as the friendliness of most of the people. We do know that the country is poor and that the bureaucracy of the communist regime makes many things difficult for the locals. However, for the foreigner it is somehow easier to cope with these facts - you don’t have to have bad conscience, as so often in Cambodia. Laos is opening up, its economy is growing - and all this can be felt as a kind of optimism, in its very laid-back Lao form. As the old saying goes: “Vietnamese grow the rice, Cambodians watch it grow, Laotians listen how it grows.”