Thursday 13 June 2013

Livin' la vida Laos!

'All you've got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over. So go!' (Tony Wheeler, Cofounder- Lonely Planet)

Hello all! How’ve you been? Glad to see the UK has had some decent weather recently – about bloody time. Everyone’s happier in the sun, right? Well, something needs to be attributed to the hordes of engagement, wedding and baby news that have reached my tanned ears over the past month! CONGRATULATIONS to everyone involved, 2014 is going to be a momentous year! Anyway, back to Gibbo’s travel news. In just a few short months, we will finally grace Australia with our presence; the travelling dream will be (almost) over as we will have to hunt for something completely foreign to us… employment. In the meantime, thankfully, we still have a few more countries to tick off the list. This stop: Laos.

Now, I admit, I'm not the most cultured sweet in the tin, and all I knew of Laos was that it was home to the infamous ‘Tubing’ frenzy, a ‘must-see’ on the backpacker route. After spending almost a month here, I can vouch that Laos is so much more than this. It’s a country bursting with history and a culture so rich it’s hard not to take an interest. You can imagine my surprise, and delight, when strolling around the streets of Luang Prabang I came across so many signs in French. Yep, so, apparently the French have been to Laos and made quite an impact! This is obvious when you notice the quaint, colonial-style buildings that dominate the city and it was refreshing to read information guides in something other than badly-translated English (although, je regrette, my French isn't what it once was).

Did you know that Laos is the most heavily bombed country, by capita, in the world? I certainly didn't. It was on a visit to the COPE visitor centre in Vientiane, a hidden gem that I really recommend all backpackers visit, that my eyes were truly opened as to what Laos has been through throughout history. COPE is a non-profit organisation that provides rehabilitation and prosthetic limbs, particularly for those affected by land mines. Laos was used as a dumping ground in the seventies for all of the USA’s unused bombs, originally intended for Vietnam. As a result of this, many of these cluster bombs remain undetected due to the sheer volumes that were dispersed, providing a daily threat for those living in rural areas. The people here are so poor that farming is a way of life; they do it to survive, not for financial gain. If detonated, these bombs can cause catastrophic injuries and tear apart whole families. COPE aims to educate those in rural areas about the dangers of foraging for metal, as many still do this to earn extra money to feed their families. It’s saddening to think that the country is still affected by something that happened over forty years ago; I can’t even imagine living somewhere that I’d be in constant fear for my life and that of my family.

I know you all love hearing about my transport escapades, so get ready to feast your eyes on this corker. We decided to shun the ‘bog standard’ coach as our entry into Laos from Thailand, in favour of a two day ‘Slow Boat’ journey along the Mekong River. Hint: the key is the name… SLOW. A journey that would take a matter of hours by road is extended out over forty eight hours on a long boat. ‘It’s such a great experience’, ‘the view is amazing’, were some of the benefits sold to us by the ticket vendors; oh, go on then, it can’t be that bad... So, we found ourselves squashed into rows of disused coach seats laid out on this tail boat (not nailed to the floor I might add) to begin this epic journey. As you can imagine, you are restricted as to what you can do in such a confined space and many passengers turned to drinking to pass the time. One such backpacker decided to do just this and, bless her, in true ‘booze cruise’ style, decided to try and match some Aussie lads ‘can for can’ on local beer. This resulted in her chucking her insides up into the river a while later, in plain view of the entire boat. Nice one, love, you've DEFO impressed them now!

To break up the journey, the ticket included a night stopover in a small town named Pakbeng; this place has literally been thrown together to house slow boat guests for the night and is one of the weirdest places I've ever set foot in. Within minutes of setting foot on dry land, I was offered marijuana, opium… To be honest, I probably should've taken up this offer to numb my senses as the accommodation here leaves something to be desired. We did A LOT of searching until we found a place that was half decent; half decent, as in, this place didn't have bed bugs. Thankfully, it was only for one night and we resumed our voyage early the next morning. All in all, the experience wasn't that breathtaking and, in hindsight, the bus would've been just as viable an option. But, hey, this is what travelling’s all about, interesting experiences to relay to you people!

While we’re on the subject of weird and wacky transport options, let me tell you about our first ‘Sleeper Bus’ experience. Yeah, we've done overnight buses before where your seat reclines, but this one had actual beds. Or so it claimed. We were travelling from Vientiane, the capital, to the lesser-known island of Don Dhet. The beds themselves are like little bunks, two people in each, laid out in place of seats. This would've been fine, but only as we boarded the bus we detected a slight issue. We’d been assigned different beds. I'm a friendly person, but really didn't fancy snuggling up to a random Laotian guy for the next twelve hours. I asked if he minded swapping beds so the Mac and I could share the same bunk. He said no. What an idiot. He was on his own, so who did it matter who he slept next to?! Anyway, the guy next to Stevie was more compliant and moved, so ‘The Flash-packers’ were reunited once again and slept soundly all the way to Don Dhet.

The island itself is pretty basic – there’s no ATM, the electricity cuts out at some point every day – yet despite this, we found some great accommodation and spent a few days just ‘doing nothing’, which is fast becoming one of my favourite past-times. It was here we experienced a TRULY awkward moment, proper ‘cringe’ factor. We were the only ones eating breakfast in the restaurant one day and the Belgian owner and his Laotian wife seemed to be having a disagreement over something or other. This quickly escalated into her bursting into tears and shouting comments like ‘Your drinking is a problem’, ‘You don’t love the children any more , ‘Why do you make me feel like this?’ You could cut the tension with a knife; I was frightened to chew my muesli in case it made a sound. Did they not realise we were there?! We couldn't just get up and leave, it was too obvious. So we just had to sit it out until there was an opportunity to bail. I've never been so interested in the bottom of a bowl before… Anyway, the guy did apologise to us later, saying ‘you shouldn't have had to hear that’. Er, yes mate, we shouldn't. Save it for Jeremy Kyle! Just shows, no matter where you are in the world, everybody loves a bit of drama!

I'm going to end with my experience of tubing. Deemed ‘the craziest party of your life’ on one website, you only have to type it into Google to get a general gist of the carnage. The concept is, basically, renting an inner tyre ring and letting the current take you down the Nam Song River. Along the way, you encounter the infamous bars, zip-lines and rope-swings and copious amounts of alcohol. Recipe for disaster? Not so much, according to the thousands of backpackers who used to congregate to the small Laotian town all year round. Many of my friends had been over the past few years, saying it was ‘insane’ and I ‘HAD to go’. Well, let me tell you folks, it’s NOTHING compared to what is used to be. Late last year, the Laos Government carried out a crackdown on the tubing industry, pulling down all but two of the riverside bars. This was as a result of the death of twenty two tourists in the river in 2011 and an unconfirmed number as of yet for last year. Nowadays, the experience is quite relaxed, but you can’t help but think you’re floating through a ghost town. Remnants of bar shacks line the banks, slides remain unused… I predict Vang Vieng will close its tubing doors for good in the next few years and suffer massively as a result. At the end of the day, nobody forces you to drink alcohol, so your decision to dive head first into the river or swing off a zip-line is your choice, albeit inebriated. Having said that, the bars were obviously not Health and Safety approved (where is, though, in these types of places?) and have to take some of the blame. I'm glad I did it, but, in the wise words of my cousin, ‘Go Tubing, get your T shirt, and get out!’


And that’s it, Laos in a nutshell. I’d regale you with tales for hours, but I'm slightly preoccupied with dusting off my bikinis for our next destination… Cambodia! I haven’t set foot on a beach since Thailand so you can imagine my excitement to get a tan again. Yes, I know there’s more to Cambodia than the beaches; just a small matter of a temple called Angkor Wat that’s kind of a big deal, apparently. So, see you next time – over and out!