Day Eighteen - Fly

Back to LP's tiny airport to begin our journey back to Bangkok.  Since our visit to Laos was a spur of the moment decision, we had to fly back to Chiang Mai before using the other half of our return flight from Bangkok, where we were met by our friends Wiew and Noi. A couple of days recharging our batteries, doing our laundry, and we'll be all set for our trip down into Phetchaburi province to the seaside resort of Cha-am. So rather than describe the wash-cycle features of Nhong's washing machine, I'll just post some photos of the local flora and fauna encountered in Thailand and Laos so far. Apologies for the fuzzies!

Day Seventeen - Old Bamboo Bridge

Another Maggie Post

Day 17 was a lazy day - we wandered about and chilled out, for tomorrow we are flying out of LP and back to the Bangkok Maelstrom. Walking down to the Nam Khan river, John took this great photo of the celebrated old bamboo bridge with the Luang Prabang Range of mountains in the background.

The bamboo bridge is built across the river once a year by one family, who charge a few pence for every crossing.  In the wet season, the bridge is washed away and the crossing is made by boat.  When the waters go down, they build the bridge again.

John was keen to try it out, so I selflessly agreed not to cross in order to photograph his great adventure.

Children selling trinkets are a common sight in Luang Prabang and with my usual flair, I managed to get involved with 4 little girls, oldest one about eight, whose knowledge of English and exchange rates quickly got us into a discussion about the value of Laotian Kips, Thai Bahts, US Dollars, and UK Pounds.  Of course I knew what I was doing, and only paid about 10 times too much for four little doll keyrings that I didn't want.

Towards evening, looking for a restaurant for dinner, we came upon a little kitten, too small be on its own, but no sign of its mother.  We walked up the hill and bought some fried chicken which we took back and which kitty ate with great gusto.  It was hard to leave the little thing on its own, but the logistics of doing anything else were too great.  As we left, another couple came along and picked it up.  We can only hope ...

Day Sixteen - Kuang Si Waterfalls

The minivan pulled up outside our hotel at the crack of dawn (11:30) for our trip to the Kuang Si Waterfalls. It's a thirty or forty minute bumpy drive into the hills before arriving at the gates of the park.

A village has sprung up at the gates to feed and water the large numbers of tourists arriving at midday.  It was frustrating that we could not find a tour agency willing to schedule trips earlier in the day, as you feltl as if you were part of a rent-a-mob as you wound your way along the paths.  The local people also tend to visit at the weekends to take a picnic and play cards on the grassier spots.

Once through the gates, you are directed to a bear sanctuary, run by an Australian charity (link) with more than 20 Asiatic black bears, also known as Moon bears for their crescent markings.  The enclosures are adequately sized and a lot of thought goes into making their life in captivity comfortable and stimulating.  Most of the bears have been confiscated by the Lao government from poachers and traders intending to sell them onto the bile farms in neighbouring countries.

Bear relaxing in a hammock.

The trail continues from the bear rescue centre to the waterfalls which, it has to be said, are well worth the inconvenience of the crowds. First of all, you come to the bathing pools where if you have the cojones, you can brave the iced water.

Last time I went swimming in a tropical waterfall pool in India, I spent twenty-four hours in the bathroom, so this time I declared myself cojone-light.

For some of the younger visitors, the rope-swing from the tree overhanging the pool was irresistible. Others even younger were happy to paddle in the shallows.

Brothers

At the top of the trail, the largest of the waterfalls provides a spectacular finale to the trip.

On our way home, we stopped at a Hmong village, talking to the young children who were manning the first stalls. I'd lost my enthusiasm for shopping by this time and was quite content to wait for my fellow tourists to return, after what was described as a ten-minute stop. After ten minutes, the kids had badgered me into buying a few bracelets but there was still no sign of the others returning.

Eventually, Maggie came running towards me, shouting to tell me that the minivan was waiting for me a hundred metres down the road. Embarrassingly, I'd not realised that the path through the Hmong village took a semi-circular route. Red-faced, I rejoined the trip.

Day Fifteen - UXO Lao Visitors' Centre

Today, we visited the UXO Lao Visitors' Centre on the outskirts of Luang Prabang. It is primarily a field office for the organisation but there is a small room set aside as a museum of sorts.  It was a moving and sobering visit, so without apology from me, this blog entry is purely information on the work of UXO Lao.

UXO stands for Unexploded Ordinance.

This is what they look like:

A cluster bomb with its payload of "bombies"

Between 1964 and 1973, an estimated two million tons of ordinance was dropped by US forces on Laos, making it the most heavily bombed nation per capita in history. That figure included some 260 million anti-personnel "bombies" of which perhaps a third (78 million) failed to explode. The bombies and other small pieces of ordinance are, of course, very attractive to inquisitive children and, of the more than three hundred deaths from exploding ordinance in the Lao PDR each year (roughly one person a day), most involve bombies.

Most bombs were dropped in the poorest eastern provinces of Laos and, although the Laos government programme is painstakingly removing UXO as fast as its meagre funding allows, poverty and the search for scrap metal by local people constantly puts adults and children in harm's way.

A scrap metal hunter and his son

Although international agencies like the UN and individual governments, including the USA and the European Union, are helping the Lao government with their programme, the contributions are small and the UXO project remains  massively underfunded.

If you feel you can help financially with this vital work, you can learn about how to donate by visiting their website.

Day Fourteen - Rain

Torrents of it, tipping off the roof, followed by the sight of clouds of mist rolling down the sides of the nearby mountains.  Not much to do, then, but to do the laundry and hope that the humidity sinks below 80% before the clothes begin to sport mildew growths.

Your intrepid reporter

Your reporter's cake

Of course, it brightened up later and we were able to make the trip into town for a coffee and a slice of cake. Then a late lunch down by the Mekong. God! We are going to be so fat by the end of this trip.


In a fit of remorse, we have booked a trip for later this week up to the Kuang Si Waterfalls, which will at least involve some walking up hill.

Tonight, we will go and see of we can find some cheap T-shirts for me in the night market.  Look, they've swapped a lifetime of poverty and subsistence farming for a market stall that gives them a good grasp of Chinese and most European languages, plus mobile phones, food and clothing. Just don't start on at me again, right? I can get really angry, you know.

A bug from our hotel.

Day Thirteen - Bang! Luang Prabang Prang!

One of the Hotel Vangsavath's amenities was the free loan of bicycles. We thought it would be a good idea so set off into LP on this pair of single-geared behemoths.

The important thing to know about LP and Laos as a nation is that the French ruled it for some 65 years until the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1953. This accounts for the hordes of French tourists and the "cafe and croissants" ambience of the old quarter. Why they come in such numbers when hardly anyone here speaks French is a mystery to me but maybe it's much like us Brits thinking we have a special affinity with our former subjects in India.  So, coffee and cake it was then.

Caffeine itch scratched, we cycled along to the Royal Palace, which these days of course is a museum. Opposite is a set of three or four hundred steps leading to a small but spectacularly situated temple called Wat Chom Si, from where you can see the town stretched out two rivers of LP, the Mekong and the Nam Khan.

Royal Chapel

We decided against visiting the museum today and against climbing up to Wat Chom Si because we needed to conserve our energy in the heat and we also really wanted to get to the Wat Xieng Thong, one of the major reasons why LP is designated by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.

The Palace grounds are attractive though and we had time to admire the Royal Chapel which is a bit different to our own Queen's private place of worship at Windsor Castle.


The temple complex of Wat Xieng Thong marks the end of the old town where the Nam Khan flows into the Mekong. It was built in the sixteenth century and, despite being the place where the kings of Laos were crowned, had fallen into a state of disrepair by the last century. Today, when we visited, you could see monks in their saffron robes up on ladders and scaffolding, carrying out important repair work. Part of the restoration programme has focused on giving the monks the necessary skills to do this.

Inside one of the small Buddha chapels

The Royal Funerary Carriage

It was a hugely impressive place to visit.  The journey home, therefore, by bike through the mundane side of town was something of an anti-climax, which probably accounts for my decision to start filming with my mobile phone whilst steering the bike one-handed. Check out the masterly video below.

 

As Maggie rode on, I holstered my phone back into its case, and set off again, only for a passing truck to hit me. It struck my handlebars a glancing blow, then my elbow a split-second later. As the tailgate shaved a layer of skin off my elbow, there was an audible gasp of horror from the Laotian ladies in the back of the pickup.  I was okay but I made a good show of rolling up my sleeve to staunch the blood (there wasn't any!) as they rounded the corner, all goggle-eyed.   I'd wanted to capture on film the chaotic nature of the traffic in LP but the best demonstration happened after the camera was turned off.

Anyway, back to town later for the consolation of a vegetarian buffet meal from a street stall for just 10,000 Laotian Kip - there are over 12,000 Kip to the British pound  so pretty cheap. Pretty decent food too.

Day Twelve - Hotel Vangsavath

Today, we jumped on our short flight from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang.  Our aircraft was a petite turbo-prop number, carrying some fifty souls.  Despite the flight only lasting an hour, the indefatigable cabin crew still managed to load us, stow us, instruct us on aircraft safety, water us, feed us a sumptuous banquet (see below), offer us dazzling trinkets from duty-free and offload us, all in that short time. I think they do two or three return flights a day, so they must be knackered at the end of their shifts.

My sumptuous meal.

Laos is a single-party socialist republic (hammer and sickle flags aplenty), following a long civil war ending in victory for the Pathet Lao in 1975. It is a mountainous land, bordered by Vietnam to the East, Thailand to the West, Cambodia to the South and Burma and China to the North-West. Much of its income is derived from hydro-electric schemes on its many rivers, selling power to its neighbours.

Its people are a mix of ethnic groups with the Lao people forming a 60% majority and other tribal communities like the Hmong  and various Mon-Khmer people forming the remainder. 

Luang Prabang (LP hereafter) is the old capital, replaced by Vientiane in 1520 to avoid a Burmese invasion. We'd decided to visit after friends had said that, if they could revisit just one of their previous holiday destination, it would be LP. Our taxi drive from the little airport revealed none of its charms, just dusty roads with loads of Lao people on motorbikes, tin-roofed shops and street vendors selling nameless fruit and vegetables.  Our Hotel Vangsavath was quite nice though - a mother and son operation, in an old teak-built mansion with our room having its own verandah overlooking a stagnant pond. We'd started the Malarone tablets, however, as a prophylactic against malarial infections so we weren't too bothered.

Hotel Vangsavath at night

We caught the hotel's motorised tuk-tuk (a sort of larger rickshaw with four rows of bench seats and open sides, all the better for you to leap from if the local helter-skelter traffic got too terrifying) into town which was about a mile and a half away. The main street is transformed at dusk each evening into one large night market selling local wares, some food but mostly garments. Beyond the market - and it seems huge on first sight - the road opens up into a parade of restaurants, currency exchanges and trip/trek vendors. Then you can turn left down into the historic district that stretches out along the Mekong's banks, or you can turn right to find the trendier bars down by LP's other river, the Nam Khan.  We settled for a fairly brief outing and promised ourselves a fuller exploration of the town's attractions tomorrow.

Lao beer is very good by the way. Here is one I spotted earlier this evening. Maybe I will try one before the end of our week here.