6-18 July 2008 - Laos

The moment we stepped foot in Laos the rain was never far away. It rained every afternoon and was torrential and sometimes stayed around for a good couple of hours (but thankfully this meant the temp was much cooler than Vietnam which was a relief to everyone). Keeping this in mind, and the fact we were driving across a mountain, we had to stop due to 3 very large landslides covering the road. The sort that can't be driven around, or over and being in Laos, it could be hours before it's cleared away. As Soon and the Laos guide were wondering what to do, they realised another Intrepid trip was coming up the other way. What luck we had in being able to 'swap' minivans on either side of the landslides. Of course that meant we had to get from one minivan to the other....

We put on our backpacks, grabbed any other bags and headed for the first landslide. Not only was it extremely muddy, it was raining still and the gradient was steep going up and then down the other side. Most of us needed help from each other due to the precarious nature of balancing 15+kg on your back and numerous other bags and walking up and down a very muddy slope...which 2 people found went up to your thigh if you stepped in the wrong place!! Lets just the next hotel had a large amount of very muddy clothes to wash (and the poor minivan driver had a very muddy minivan to wash). But everyone got through safely except for a flipflop still MIA!

Laos food is very much like Thai and a hell of a lot spicier than Vietnamese! We found that out the hard way on one of the nights as the cook forgot to put the chilli on the side and put it in the meal...there were a good few tears, and not many people could finish their meal. But the food is delicious and the coffee is as good as Vietnam.

Vang Vieng is famous for its tubing. In fact this town is only here for this one purpose only. You can either do the 4km in 1hr (just sitting on the river), or 6 hours if you want to do a tubing pub crawl! The pubs (and I use this term loosely) have people to pull you in from the river and try to get you before you float past them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The river is called Nam Song and as it is the 'rainy season' it is very high, very fast and very dirty. But oh so much fun!

We then headed of for another 8hr travel day to get to Luang Prabang. It is a lovely place to chill out – very much geared to westerners with its own coffee houses and western pubs. There is a lot of French architecture, a fab night market and gorgeous view point over the city if you want to climb over 300 steps We also got up at 5am to see the monks collecting alms – ie. their food for the day. Locals will come out and sit in the street waiting for them to pass by – about 60 of them in total.

After Luang we boarded our boat for a 2-day journey (and I do have to put my hand up and admit it was pretty boring) down the Mekong River to Pak Beng and then on to Huay Xai. In the evening, we docked at the small town of Pak Beng to spend the night (all electricity is turned off by about 11pm).

After this we had a border crossing back into Thailand which ended our trip!

I do like Laos, and it is very similar to Thailand. The scenery is very lush and absolutely stunning in Vang Vieng, but it is not as cheap as we imagined (except for Beer Lao which is usually the cheapest thing on any menu (660ml for 10,000 kip (c. US$1.20)). Most of us have also discovered the 'towers' you can buy that holds 3 litres of Beer Lao...amazing good value.

A collection of my favourite photos from Laos (top to bottom, left to right):
- Monks collecting their alms
- Preying on good fortune
- Even the young are taken to the temples to prey
- A monk and his 'Beer Laos' umbrella!
- Monks are allowed mobiles and obviously know how to take pictures with them!
- An evening by the Mekong River
- Bringing in the rice (a very dirty job)
- Collecting alms