Laidback Laos

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Oh how quickly time flies by when you're busy exploring ancient temples and caves, trekking through caves and waterfalls, and enjoying local culinary delights of all flavours. That, and oh yeah, also throwing up on turbulent airplanes, learning to kayak in flood-ravaged rivers, and turning 27. What a week it's been!

In Chiang Mai I met up with my Danish friend Kristian, and said goodbye to Paulo and Carlos who had been my good travel buddies for the last few days. Kristian and I caught an early afternoon flight from Chiang Mai, Thailand to the exotic and the beautiful Luang Prabang, Laos. It was only an hour flight but what a flight it was!

The weather was quite dark and cloudy and also rather windy (foreshadowing for the flooding that was soon to hit Chiang Mai) and that meant a flight full of ups and downs and lefts and rights... Oh brother... Normally I'm quite fine with flying but being on a little tiny airplane going through turbulence felt like being a jelly bean in a can and having some giant toddler shake it like a toy. Not long into the flight I started to feel sick, and not too long after that I started to make damn good use of that handy little barf bag that was tucked very conveniently into my seat's pouch. In Laos the airports (and airplanes) have no navigational equipment so all landings have to be done by sight. This means that when it's cloudy a pilot will have to circle a city endlessly (well, as long as fuel lasts) looking for a hole in the clouds before descending. So as our pilot was busy circling us round and round and round Luang Prabang in a sea of fluffy grey, I was busy blowing chunks and praying to God, Buddha, and Allah that soon we'd be on the ground. Finally, after an eternity, we descended and landed safely on the ground.

The hellish flight turned out to be worth the 'food consumption reversal' experience as Luang Prabang is a truly beautiful city. The city is believed to be the best-preserved city in all of Southeast Asia, and because of its unique collection of Lao temples and French colonial buildings, the entire town has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Luang Prabang has always had a romantic calling of its own, and to illustrate the hypnoticism this city puts its visitors under, here's how a French woman described it nearly a century ago in 1909:

"Oh! What a delightful paradise of idleness this country protects, by the fierce barrier of the stream, against progress and ambition for which it has no need! Will Luang Prabang be, in our century of exact sciences, of quick profits, of victory by money, the refuge of the last dreamers, the last lovers, the last tourbadours?"

The description still holds true. It really is hard to imagine a more peaceful corner of the globe than Luang Prabang. Surrounded on three sides by water, LP really is a small place that you can easily walk from end to end in only a few minutes, surrounded by enormous green hills cloaked in lush jungle and shrouded by silvery clouds of mist, and nestled along the banks of the mighty Mekong, an enormous and powerful river whose milk chocolate brown colour would make Cadbury jealous. It's also no wonder that people who planned on spending only a few days here often end up staying much longer.

You can't help but feel relaxed and chilled-out in Laos. Everything here moves at a lovely molasses speed and nobody seems hurried or stressed. Kristian and I had met two really nice girls from Israel - Shimrit and Chen - and spent the next week exploring Laos together. In Luang Prabang we checked our several of the city's many wats (temples), went swimming in some waterfall pools in the jungle, took a boat ride on the Mekong to explore the Pak Ou caves which are full of 2000 Buddha statues, and wandered through some traditional Lao villages where the locals live in these bamboo and thatch huts built up on stilts.

After four days in Luang Prabang we caught a seven-hour bus ride to Vang Vieng. The route linking the two cities in a narrow, twisting road that climbs up and over those giant hills that keep Luang Prabang removed from the outside world, and make for a very dizzying experience. It was easily the most harrowing bus ride of my life - switchbacks that cling to muddy hillsides hundreds of feet above the valley floor - but also the most beautiful ride you could imagine. I don't think I've ever been to a more scenic country than Laos.

Or a more rainy one! It had been raining every single day since we had left Thailand (thankfully we managed to miss the disastrous floods there by only a day or two) and the rain showed no signs of slowing down when we reached Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a hole of a town, but is famous for its spectacular karst terrain. Unfortunately we rarely saw the town's majestic mountains as we were too busy getting drowned out by the 24-hour torrential downpours. Seriously, I'd wake up every morning expecting to look out the window and see Noah's Ark floating by...

We did manage to do a few activities, including some bike riding, some exploring of local caves, and kayaking on the river. I was nervous about the latter, as I had never kayaked before, and the river was completely swollen with the rain and actually had pieces of trees floating in it. Still, our guide felt confident we'd be fine, and sure enough the three of us survived our river kayaking experience. It was actually a lot of fun and quite calm, and given the fact that all three of us were in one large kayak, I didn't actually have to paddle, so I just go to sit back and enjoy the scenery. Nice!

In the evenings the four of us would hang out at these large open-air restaurants where they show nothing but Friends episodes, one after another, all day long. They actually have several of these places in Vang Vieng, and often from where you sit you can see (and hear) two or more other restaurants either playing Friends or a movie of some sort. Kinda strange, but cool. We'd just plop ourselves down in a seat full of cushions, order some dinner or snacks, and then watch a ridiculous amount of TV. It was sooooo relaxing, and fun to just hang out with my friends and laugh at the antics of Joey, Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, and Phoebe.

We arrived in Ventiane on August 18th, my birthday, after a four-hour long cramped bus ride through the rainy countryside of Laos. We checked into this great little guesthouse that's not far from the Mekong that even came with a balcony and TV. We went out to a Mexican restaurant for my birthday dinner and then for a long walk around the sleepy capital. How odd it is (but cool) to be spending your birthday in Ventiane, Laos! There was no partying for me that night, as we were all feeling pretty tired and decided to opt for a good night's sleep instead. God, I really am getting old, aren't I? ;-)