Living it up in Laos
Trip Start
Aug 21, 2003
1
16
22
Trip End
Ongoing
Vientiane to Luang Prabang,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Monday, December 22, 2003
From Vientiane we took a bus north to the tiny town of Vang Vieng, a travelers' haven dotted with happy pizza restaurants, limestone caves high up in cliffs, turquoise streams and the Nam Song River. This place is truly a big kids' playground.
01 - Great Sacred Stupa
Our first day there we hiked 6 km down a dirt road to Phu Kham Cave, a large cavern that contains a reclining Buddha. The best part about this cave was the blue lagoon in front of it. The locals had 2 kinds of swings and a tree jump set up, and it was the perfect water in which to plunge. The next day we decided to try our luck tubing the Nam Song River. For $2 they give you a tube and drive you 3 km from town where you begin the Beer Lao run down the river. As soon as we got in that water, we were sure we would never leave Vang Vieng. This is the life, we found ourselves mumbling at various points throughout the tubing adventure. The locals have taken advantage of the tourist traffic down this particular stretch of the river - every 100 ft or so you come upon little Beer Lao bars, some set up on bamboo platforms in the middle of the river, some located on the riverbank, and 3 very smart vendors at strategic spots, i.e. at deep water jumping spots, all advertised by yellow beer lao crates. We learned after our first tubing day that these are they only 3 stops you want to make, otherwise you are too drunk to jump by the end of it all, considering it's 650 ml of beer per stop. First stop - monkey swinging beerlao (with cave). We knew this stop was a winner; as we approached we could see it was located on nice big jumping rocks above very deep water. As you float by, the man shouts beerlao!, and the wife pulls you in with a bamboo stick. Our first day we were tubing with some Danish guys, who turned out to be great company as they loved to jump.
02 - Monkey Jack
Immediately upon exiting our tubes we were hurling ourselves off the rocks, until someone noticed a tire swing hanging from a tree over the rocks. Here's how it works. You climb a tree and shimmy to the end of a branch that is parallel to the ground, grab a bamboo rope-getter, and balance at the end while you attempt to get the rope, which is made of bicycle tires tied together. Then you sit on the branch, which by the way is right above lots of jagged rock, and then you go for it. Final result - big swooping semi-circle swing into the swirling currents of the aqua blue Nam Song. It was at this stop that I (Lauren) learned something new about myself and about growing older. My mom used to always say how brave I was when it came to jumping into water. I always jumped first. Well, I can say now that I see how as you get older, you also get more afraid. I will be 26 in one week and it took me about that many minutes to work up the nerve to jump. And I couldn't even get the rope my self. I made Jack get it for me while I sat there and shook with fear. How shameful. Jack on the other hand, was all balls, and his braveness was shown in the way he perfectly executed his swings with meticulous consideration, as onlookers oohed and aahed. (He made me type that). We started too late in the day to make any more stops, but we took note of all the jumps for the next time and got all of our beers to float instead. Upon exiting the river in town, we found ourselves in a branch of the market that we had never seen before...perhaps it is hidden for the sake of tourists' stomachs? We gawked as we walked along hurriedly and wet, at tables with all sorts of various delicacies.
03 - Wat Xieng Thong
We saw women hacking up large rats and a woman plucking a mongoose looking animal. Dead snakes, bowls full of huge cockroaches, tons of squirrels, rats skinned and otherwise. We were not happy when the next day we ordered chicken fried rice and found in it chunks of skin with wiry black (rat?) hairs. Jack ate it up just the same.The next day we were more than ready to tube again and this time knew exactly where to stop. Of course we took our time at the rope swing again, and then made our way to jumps number 2 and 3, both at the same spot. The first one was a bamboo inclined ramp, suspended 25 feet above the water at a 45 degree angle. Basically you just climb up and jump. This time we were with some girls from New Zealand, and an old man who used to jump from helicopters in the North Sea. There was also a lone Korean girl who provided us all with more laughs than we've had in a while. Ask us about this story some time and we'll tell you. She had more soul and guts than anyone we've ever known....jumped but couldn't swim. The second jump was much more scary than the first. It involved a basic swing, hung from a tree on the cliff above by 2 very long ropes. The hard part was getting yourself standing on the swing. Once you did that, everyone on the beach would grab a third rope at the back of the swing, and run quickly back towards the woods until you are suspended horizontally about 50 feet above the beach. Then they let go and you fly. I could only do this swing once. It was so terrifying.
04 - Royal Palace Wat Luang Prabang
Of course Jack did it about 20 times and nearly sank some tubers. The third stop on the Nam Song was called Jumping BeerLao, and was a simple one. It had a concrete platform on a cliff about 40 feet above the water. You just run and jump and hit the water pretty damn hard. After 2 days in a row of tubing this river, you wouldn't believe how sore we were, especially me. We could barely get out of bed. So we spent one more day lounging around town, and decided to leave for Luang Prabang the next morning. Morning came, and we found that we couldn't leave without tubing that river one more time. So we did.
The next day we took a bus to Luang Prabang, the premier tourist destination in Laos. It is a beautiful place that makes you feel like you are in a small provincial town in France, despite all of the Buddhist temples, palm trees, and orange-robed monks strolling the streets. There are 33 of 66 original temples remaining in existence; the rest were destroyed by invasions and bombings. (Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world, mostly due to the secret war waged by the USA and CIA during the Vietnam War. You often see parts of bombs used as flower pots, ash trays, fence posts, structural reinforcement of houses, etc). The city has been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, as it is considered to be the best preserved city in SE Asia. It is very charming and atmospheric, and is located on a peninsula between the Mekong and Khan Rivers. Very soon after our arrival Jack came down with some kind of stomach bug and I feared he might be dying of malaria. Of course these fears were intensified by the fact that there is absolutely no modern healthcare to be found in this country and if we were to get sick, would have to fly to Thailand. This is, of course, why we got travel insurance. Anyway, he was very sick, you know the kind of sick where stuff is coming out of both ends as soon as you even think about drinking a sip of water. This lasted for a little over a day, whereupon he recovered and we both came down with nasty colds. This combined with a poignant case of holiday homesickness kept us in our room for 4 days straight. We didn't do much but take care of one another, but we are almost totally healthy again, and have spent the last few days enjoying our time here in this lovely city. We have visited most of the temple sites, and also the Royal Palace Museum, which was interesting only for the history behind it becoming a museum. When the Communist revolution occurred in the 70s and the monarchy was abolished, the Communists sent King Sisavang Vatthana and his family to a cave in northern Laos, in which they were locked and were denied food until each of them died. They turned the Royal Palace into a museum and called it a gift from the king. Crazy, huh?
Today we did a little organized tour; we are still a little too tired to arrange things ourselves. First we visited the famous Pak Ou Caves, which are two caves crammed full of little Buddhas. Little Buddhas everywhere. After that we visited the most beautiful waterfall we have ever seen, Kuang Si Falls. It is actually a succession of several waterfalls, level after level of them, with beautiful, unbelievably clear water swimming holes between them. Unfortunately, we have no pictures of any of these places, as our portable hard drive just crapped out on us. Luckily, we backed up all of our pictures from the last 4 months just yesterday on CD, but we have lost about 60 pictures from yesterday and today. Apparently the file system was corrupted when we hooked it up to this computer we're currently on. We want to throw it on the ground and smash it, we are so pissed. We're going to hold on to it for now and see if there is anything we can do to fix it. We know we just have to reformat the drive, but that will mean losing everything, including music and travel recordings, that was on it. Dick, if you're reading this, do you have any advice for us? What do you know about Checkdisk and Recovery Pro? Email me please. Anyway, we were planning on leaving this town tomorrow to enter the depths of Laos, but will probably stay one more day to get this thing resolved.
