Kylajane37's travel blogs:
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Leaving Laos
Entry 12 of 21 | show all | print this entry |
So I'm writing during our last few hours here in Laos. At 3:30 we're being picked up and taken across the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge where we'll catch an overnight train back to Bangkok. Abby leaves on Tuesday so it's time to head back.
After volunteering at the English class in Vang Vieng we caught the VIP bus (ooh la la)south to Vientiane. The English class was a great experience. It was really cool to see kids who were incredibly polite and excited to learn. The younger kids were a little rambunction, but amazingly sweet and grateful to have your help. The older kids were even more impressive. Many of them were done with any formal Lao schooling they might get, and were just excited to have the opportunity to study English. Many said they came every evening without fail. We worked on countable and uncountable nouns - a fascinating subject. But, the kids spoke really well given their limited access to education.
Vientiane is one of the strangest capital cities I can imagine. It is right on bank of the Mekong and is pretty small. It lacks the charm of Luang Prabang, but you get the feeling that this is really the center of Lao life -- if you don't live in the provinces, you live in Vientiane. Today we saw a communist flag flying and there are a myriad of official looking buildings. In conjunction with this visit, I've been reading Another Quiet American (which has made the rounds in our group.) It is the account of a young American who comes to Vientiane after college to work for the Laos National Tourism Association. He gives a lot of insight into Lao life and government, and the whole book centers around Vientiane. Cool to read it in conjunction with the visit. It is easy to be a tourist here and not think about the political or development situation.
So - as for what we've done here. We took in a couple of incredible sunsets, heard some great soft rock tunes at a bar on Friday night. Yesterday, we'd had enought of the city (especially with heading back to Bangkok) so we headed out of town. First we went to Buddha Park which is a strange surreal place about 25 km out of the city where some crazy guru yogi guy put up all these stone statues of Buddhist and Hindu dieties. It was funny. I'll try to post pictures soon.
From there we headed out on our adventure to reach Ban Pako, supposedly a village/eco-lodge about 30 km from the city. All in all we were in a tuk-tuk for a long time yesterday. We finally got dumped on the side of a dusty road where we negotiated a boat ride a further 30 minutes down the river. The boat was pretty rickety and I think we all felt sure we were headed for disaster. We couldn't imagine that what lay at the end of this journey would be anything good. We were pleasantly surprised by Ban Pako where we spent the afternoon lounging about in oh so comfortable hammocks on the porch of a nice little bunglow over looking the river. It was a very peaceful way to end our time in Laos. (for me at least -- Amanda and Abby were attacked by biting red ants which invaded their bed in the middle of the night.) I guess those are the contradictions of life in Laos.
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