High-Lao

Louang Prabang, Laos

 

A few weeks ago, on the way to Cambodia, I said that was going to be last new country to visit.  Of course in the last few days I've been in 3 different countries, so I guess I lied. 

 

I made my way to northern Laos via north central Thailand and the Chiang Rai area, almost entirely by bus.  While the bus system in Thailand is short on legroom, as most thais are short on legs, it works pretty well.  Thais are easygoing in general but the people who operate the bus stations are busybodies who make it their personal duty to get you on the right bus at the right time (and they always wear denim shirts or jackets - it's like the universal bus operator outfit here, strange) and are very helpful in general (and they don't expect baksheeh either).  The buses themselves are clean and efficient and usually air conditioned.  After enduring the hell that is the Indian bus system for a few months it's kind of awesome in a way.

 

As far as going to Laos, I can't say I've harbored a burning desire to ever go there, but I do have to leave Thailand and not cross back till the 15th so as not to overstay my visa, and I was in the neighborhood.  Also, I wanted to see if Lao lived up to the hype - it's gotten lots of coverage as a vacation stop and the euro/aussie backpacker circuit acts like it's the greatest thing since cheap weed.  I've seen smelly Aussies get wistful and teary eyed at the mere mention of Lao.  I crossed over to Laos around the town of Chiang Khong by taking a ferry across the Mekong.  The Lao town on the other side, Houayxai, could be described as a one stoplight, one horse town, but that would be an exaggeration as there is nothing as remotely interesting as a horse or stoplight would be there.  (nb: I'm going to say "Lao" as an adjective and not "Laotian", which is a dumb word that the French made up.  Saying Laotian to a Lao is like saying "Thailandic" or "Thailandish" to a Thai - it's just stupid.  Oh, and if you're reading along in your head, nobody ever pronounces the "s" in Laos, everybody just says Lao, no 's'.).

 

After an extremely uneventful evening there, I showed up at the speedboat pier the next day to go down  the Mekong to Louang Prabang.  Now, over the past 5 months, I have done a lot of traveling, via foot, bike, motorcycle, train, tuktuk, autorickshaw, cycle rickshaw, Air India, bus, taxi, minibus, bas-mini, longboat, junk, bamboo train, etc etc etc.   But when it comes to "most ill-advised travel experiences", the speedboat to Louang Prabang easily takes the prize.  

 

Picture yourself wedged (along with 8 others plus luggage) into a space on a wooden boat about 14 inches long by 16 inches wide, sitting on your ass with your knees held to your chest and your feet crammed into the board in front of you, and a board jammed into your back behind you.  Now, imagine a very, very, very loud outboard diesel engine (they give you helmets to protect against the noise) running right behind you.  Now do this bumping along the Mekong in the sun at about 30 or 40 mph for 6 hours.  

 

Not fun. The river was nice (and very sparsely populated, there's only a few million Lao anyway), but it was hard to appreciate when you're just praying you'll someday regain feeling in your toes. It wasn't cheap either, about 30 bucks, which is a fortune in Lao terms.  Laos overall hasn't been that cheap.  It's not expensive, it's just that the only people who can afford things (like Cambodia) are tourists, so prices are artificially high.

 

Louang Prabang itself is OK.  It's the cultural and spiritual heart of Laos (the actual capital is downriver in Vientane) and has wats, wats, and more wats, and a palace or two, though my tolerance for wats and palaces after 150 days as a tourist in Asia has diminished somewhat.  Otherwise it's your standard french colonial architecture with chinese influences, not unlike northern vietnam.  Nice, but I'm not sure if it lives up to the hype, plus I've already seen this stuff in the rest of Indochina so it's hard for me to see why Mickey Melbourne and Sherry Sydney get so hot about it. Lao food is pretty decent, sort of like Northern Thai with obvious vietnamese influences and a lot of Mekong fish mixed in. The weather's nice, and there's no pollution as Lao hasn't a lot of people or industrial areas (and sometimes no electricity as a consequence)

 

Overall though, there's not much to do here except sit around and have a drink. Beer Lao has a reported 99% of market share here, so your choices are a bit limited but it's good beer.  Southeast Asia as a whole is a pretty good beer making region.  Each country has its own national brew: here it's beer Lao, Cambodia has Angkor Beer (although Anchor Beer is also widely sold there, so whenever you order one, you almost inevitably receive the other, unless you're a wussy brit who says "An-chore, please"), Myanmar has Myanmar Beer, and Vietnam has a regional brewery in each city, while Malaysia/Singapore are dominated by Tiger.   Every one of these beers claims to be the winner of some sort of international beer contest of some sort.  But they are all pretty good.  Also available everywhere, much to my dismay, is Heineken.  Why people drink that shit, when it is both: 1. worse and 2. more expensive than the local brews is absolutely beyond my comprehension. 

 

The last person I saw drinking one was an obnoxious sounding German girl last night who, on observing and visibly disdaining an Australia/England rugby match on TV, pronounced with apparent seriousness,  that "We Germans don't play rugby, we are too civilized!" I almost fell out of my chair.  I thought people like that only existed in movies.  Germans don't play rugby because they're afraid that if they do, they'll enjoy hurting people too much, and they'll seem like a bunch of assholes.  So instead, they are just mind-numbingly boring (civilized), which is a safer alternative.

 

Tomorrow is a 10 hour bus ride to Vientane. That sounds like a long time, but the alternative is a speedboat.