Hello from laos

  Luang prabang, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, December 20, 2008

We last talked to you from the northern Thai city of Chiang Khong (Thai for "land of the horrific massage"). Chiang Khong is a popular point to enter Laos as there are very few official border crossing points. We were very much looking forward to our time in Laos.

Other travelers we've made friends with have spoken very highly of Laos. Perhaps we were hit by the curse of high expectations. It seems that some of our most favorite travel memories are of things we never expected to be impressive (such as the ocean in Mozambique or the fireworks in Iceland). Often when we get our hopes up, we end up disappointed ("Honey, this restaurant has hummus"--only to find out they make it with kidney beans and carrots or some other scary thing). We had hoped that with a bit of time, our perspective of Laos would change. Sadly, we still view our time in Laos as a bit of a disappointment. That said, we did have some experiences we won't forget.

The border crossing into Laos is made by walking down a steep mud embankment (we can only imagine what it's like in the rainy season) and hopping into a long canoe outfitted with a car or truck engine mounted at a 33 degree angle in the back. The drive-shaft from the engine is connected to a propeller that barely goes below the surface of the water.

Thai/Laos border

Once travelers get to the Laos side of the Mekong River, they typically hop immediately on a boat downstream to Luang Prabang after clearing immigration. The immigration points in Laos have a perhaps "official" shakedown of travelers by charging an "overtime" fee on weekends or during the lunch hour. Not the best first impression for a county.

There are generally two ways downstream to Luang Prabang. The first is by slow boat. The slow boat makes the trip in two days. We've been told the wooden benches are cramped and the stop that night is nothing special. The other method is a one day trip by speedboat. Our guidebook said the speedboat was equally unpleasant and somewhat dangerous. After seeing people in crash helmets crammed into these tiny speedboats with gunwales about 3 inches above the waterline, we're really glad we didn't take that route. (If you've got some time to kill, enter "speedboat" + "Luang Prabang" into Google and read some of the jaw dropping travel blogs that pop up. Here's a couple to get you started: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/82908.html OR http://withoutbaggage.com/essays/61101/

Candy found out that if we stayed in Chiang Khong for a couple of days, we could join a comfortable boat that made the trip in one day. After killing time with lots of backgammon, "interesting" Mexican food, and the last massage we've had for quite some time, we hopped onto a charter of Thai medical professionals heading to Luang Prabang on holiday. We were thrilled to be the only non-Thais traveling on the boat.

Almost as soon as we left shore, the karaoke started. While this briefly made us apprehensive about our choice, we really enjoyed the trip. Candy bonded with many of the women on the boat. She learned a lot about the foods served for lunch and we got to try some of the very interesting Thai snacks that people bring on road trips. The men weren't as outgoing. They did offer Ray beer and whiskey, confirming Ray's belief that men inherently understand each other despite language barriers (Ray would like to note that none of the men sang karaoke despite the fact that the whiskey bottles in Laos often contain a scorpion or cobra head to increase our "vigor").

boat on Mekong

boat visitors

We arrived in Luang Prabang just after sunset. As we hiked through town to find a place to stay, we saw most of the street food stalls and the night market that the guidebooks rave about. Perhaps because we spent so much time in northern Thailand, we really felt like we had done this already. To add to the disappointment, in Laos, we were doing it with other tourists instead of with locals.

One of the more interesting things about traveling in poorer countries (Laos' GDP per capita is $1900/year--about twice the level of Mozambique--the poorest country we've been in.) is how much more expensive it is for travelers. The hikes to visit mountain people were 2-3 times as much as in northern Thailand.

Monks crossing bridge

One possible explanation is that the staffers sent by charitable or multinational organizations to help poorer nations have very generous budgets (Ray's organization in Bulgaria in the 1990's certainly did) and drive the prices up. While these staffers create enough demand for hip expat hangouts (and really nice croissants and Eggs Benedict), the traveling experience is different. We found ourselves applying the Thai phrase "same-same" to Laos with the other version of the Thai phrase ("same-same, but different"). The difference seemed to be much higher prices and less authenticity.

From Luang Prabang, we traveled to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, by bus. We weren't sure how long the bus trip would take. Some agents said 8 hours, some said a few hours longer. Our trip turned out to be a lot longer. On the map, the road (we use the singular form as we think there might just be the one road in Laos) from Luang Prabang to Vientiane looks misleadingly straight. This road was extremely bad (we read that up until a few years ago most cargo traveled this route by boat along the Mekong). As all the passengers were handed an empty plastic bag at the beginning of the trip, we knew this was going to be a long day on the bus. Using our Romanian maxi-taxi index of bad transportation, this was a 0.98 "Maxi."

After we made it to Vientiane, we knew we were not going to travel by the road through Laos to Vietnam as we had planned. We spent a few days soaking up the city while consider our next steps. As we mentioned in an earlier map-pin posting, we spent Christmas in Vientiane.

Our hotel really tried to make the lobby and restaurant festive for the holiday. Candy surprised Ray with many little presents on Christmas morning.

christmas presents

The nice staff at our hotel really enjoyed watching how Candy wrapped the presents and helping her hide them. The locals seemed really excited about Christmas, but they're still not sure how it exactly works (kind of like the British were as they have tried to import America's Halloween celebrations!) Ray really liked the gifts for many reasons. First, things like gummy bears, pistachios, root beer barrels, and dried apricots are the kinds of "luxury" goods we don't always have access to. Second, it reminded Ray of stories his grandparents told him about how Christmas used to be when they would get gifts like an orange in their stockings.   Candy remembered Ray telling her these stories, so she stuffed our socks with bananas. We were able to talk with our families on Christmas. Afterwards, we went to one of the expat hangouts which made a turkey bagel sandwich (with chestnut stuffing, unfortunately) and pumpkin pie for our Christmas dinner. 

One of the major sources of tourists in Vientiane seems to be expats in Thailand making a visa run. By leaving Thailand, expats "living" in Bangkok can add at least 14 days to the time they can stay in Thailand.  As Candy and I were playing backgammon while enjoying an awesome mango smoothie with a scoop of banana sorbet/ice cream, we noticed a guy at the next table eyeing our game. Backgammon led to one of our most memorable encounters in Laos. It turned out that he (Ghir) was an Iraqi Kurd who has lived in Saudi Arabia for many years. He was visiting his daughter (Lana), who worked in Thailand to help refugees (primarily Hmong, Burmese, and Afgani). She was on a visa run. We learned a lot about the difficult refugee situation in Thailand (a relatively prosperous country surrounded by countries with very traumatic histories). As we became comfortable, we even got to talk about the Iraq war. This chance encounter was really wonderful. The conversation was so enjoyable we forgot to play backgammon with Ghir. We really hope that we will meet again someday to have that game! 

Soon after Christmas we decided to take the overnight train to Bangkok. Tune in next to hear about our second, and what turned out to be a much longer stint in Thailand (Ray refuses to leave until he sees a Siamese cat). We'll tell you about Candy's siege of the "all-day" salad bar at Sizzlers and Ray's Morgan Sperlock-esque craving for cheeseburgers.