Took a mini-bus to Louang Prabang up Route 13, a section of road which the FCO suggests you avoid because of banditry. (FCO approved travel options in Laos are limited: flying not recommended because of doddery old Chinese aircraft; Route 13 not recommended because of bandits; speedboat up the Mekong not recommended because of accidents when negotiating the rapids). After coming across the second accident of the day I stopped worrying about bandits and started worring about RTAs. (Besides it was raining hard and I figured any self-respecting bandit would be tucked up in his mountain hideaway). Final tally was three which would be astonishing on any 8 hour trip but when you consider the road is so little used that you only pass another car about once every 15 minutes it's completely off the scale. Anyway, we arrived safely and the scenery on the way up was unbelievably good when the clouds lifted enough for us to see it.
Louang Prabang is Laos' third largest city with a population of 30,000. (That is the correct number of noughts). The old section - on a slim peninsula with the Mekong on one side and the River Khan on the other - is a UNESCO heritage site because of it's old French colonial architecture and masses of wats (Buddhist temples). The whole peninsular is only four streets wide: we found a guesthouse overlooking the Mekong and settled down for four days of being utterly charmed.
We visited the royal palace on the second day. The king is missing: he and the rest of the royal family disappeared into a cave shortly after the Communist takeover in 1975 and haven't been heard of since. The guidebook does a bit of gushing about how the palace demonstrates the prestiege of Laos and it does indeed - it is the most low-key palace I have ever seen, the palace of the king of a country that isn't, wasn't and won't ever be of any significance at all.
One room displays gifts given by other countries to Laos. The gifts precisely calibrate the power and influence of the donor vis a vis Laos, ranging from some really quite nice inlaid silver from Cambodia to what can only be described as a pile of tat from the US, including - unbelievably - a gift set of a little piece of moonrock, a Laos flag that visited the moon and a card wishing them peace, happiness and fraternal greetings, signed by Richard Nixon. I wonder if every country got one?
We also did a couple of day trips: one to an extremely spectacular waterfall, although unfortunately it was too cold to swim. On the way back we were taken to a Hmong village. The Hmong are an ethnic tribe who, having picked the wrong side in the Second Indochina War, have fallen on hard(er) times. Lots refugeed to Thailand, where some were given US passports as a kind of thank you present, a few lurk up in the hills runnng an insurgency which, in true Laos fashion, they pursue in a somewhat lackadaisical fashion and the rest subsistance farm on bits of land no-one else wants and rent themselves out as a tourist attraction. I am not a big fan of these sorts of trips. You could, I suppose, argue that the Hmong get income they otherwise would not receive - but you can make the same argument about prostitution. Certainly, I wanted to shower after this tawdry, voyeuristic encounter.
We also did a boat trip up the Mekong to a cave, the main point of the trip being the Mekong. What is it about the world's great rivers, that they sound so romantic? Mekong, Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, Danube? Mind you, all the rivers in Laos are very rivery rivers - from little mountain streams to the lazy, brown magnificence of the Mekong.
Again, we stopped at a village, although this was less tawdry, partly because the villagers were flogging stuff you might conceivably want to buy - lao lao (local firewater) and woven silk (Lao weaving is absolutely outstanding - we have bought a small rucksack full of silk wallhangings at various price points). It has to be said, though, it did remind me of the Asterix story where the Romans try and corrupt the village with capitalism and everybody turns themselves into a fishmonger or an antique dealer.
Most of the time we hung out in Louang Prabang and let the whole soporific style of the place carry us away. Laos is like the country in Sleeping Beauty before the prince; there is virtually no economic activity and almost no other kind of activity at all. People hang out and chat; there is the occasional flurry of movement as the women prepare yet another delicious and gargantuum snackette, and then things subside back into stupor. Imagine the antithesis of New York and you are there.
We spent a lot of time listing people we know who would like Laos. Actually I don't know anyone who wouldn't like Laos but: Clare, Jiro, all Tillbrooks, you especially spring to mind. Laos contains some of the most extensive virgin forest in Asia, although illegal logging has certainly got a foot-hold. The patches of forest which have been scalped look awful, like a cat who has been shaved for an operation, and the effects are clear from the large number of landslides on the roads. That said...
As Paul points out: what is not to like about Laos? The cleanest people on Earth and rice at every meal. Indeed, the cleanliness thing is something else. If you get up at dawn in Louang Prabang, you will witness a 500-strong line of monks in bright saffron robes swaying through the mist and collecting alms. You will also witness everyone else, in a rare burst of activity, cleaning not only their front porch but their section of street. The man who ran our guesthouse would be called a wide boy back home: nevertheless he was a wide boy who cleaned. Visit any bus station toilet in Laos and it will be immaculate. Use any peasent's hut and you will find a scrubbed concrete floor and a pristine white squat toilet (just as well as you usually have to remove your shoes first).
And: I think I said it before, one of the world's great - and undiscovered - cuisines.
Enough already. If you're interested, you can now fly direct from Bangkok to Louang Prabang. Don't get freaked out by the FCO travel warnings. We can't recommend it enough.
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