travel

The rhythms of life are gentle in this town, and not much different from that observed in smaller places across northern Laos. There is a rush hour of sorts from 7am to 8.30am, when scooters scoot and cars rumble through town as people go into their day. Walking around town after this you see families taking breakfast at the table outside their house: a group affair usually of sticky rice and some condiments, or perhaps a simple soup of flat rice noodles, bean sprouts, leafy greens and a few shreds of meat. I have made this last my breakfast the past few days, and it’s a good way to start the day.

I don’t know where most people go during the day, but there is little commerce in our normal sense to talk of. No factories or offices nearby, even the shops are mostly idle though they’re open from morning to night. More than once I’ve had to stir someone from a nap to buy a drink, or a meal, or soap. In fact many of the public buildings and structures are provided by foreign aid, and a sign next to each edifice proclaims its donor (usually a government, but sometimes and NGO or individual). In the villages you can assume people are in the fields, tending crops or gathering firewood, and whether townfolk do this too I cannot say. But during the day the town is populated mostly by older women and kids, or young guys endlessly tinkering with their motorbikes. At my hotel, after an early flurry of cleaning, the staff – all part of the same family – sit in the foyer doing homework, watching TV, reading, sewing or dozing.

Late afternoon and the first wisps of wood smoke waft past as fires are lit in preparation for the evening meal. Everything is cooked over fire, sometimes in a stove but mostly over an open three-pronged stone brazier. There are restaurants here but they’re not dedicated businesses as you find elsewhere, rather they’re more like homes that also offer to cook for others on request. I’ve been the only customer for some meals, as the locals don’t appear to eat out at all except on special occasions, and there are few travellers. Quality varies immensely, and in this town at least the best food is had in Chinese restaurants. Night falls sharly at 6pm, and by 8pm the streets are quiet apart from occasional youths on scooters wandering around and the distant din of music. By 10pm all are asleep.

I’ve done little here but rest and read, and it’s time to move on. Phongsali is a little disappointing but I can’t really place why…. though people can be friendly there is a soft sullenness about them, a vague air of resignation (desparation?) that subtlely infuses everything. This town is surrounded by lovely hills but it lacks the beauty and serenity of, say, Nong Khiaw which is rapidly becoming my favourite part of Laos so far. Tomorrow is an early start to get to Hat Sa, 21 kms away, where I will take a boat downriver to Muang Khua for a few days. I had to pick the dates for my visa to Vietnam well in advance, and it doesn’t start until Friday so I have no need to rush to the border. But hopefully Muang Khua will be a little more lively and interesting a place to wait it out.

Phongsali is in the remote far north of Laos and it feels like one of the ends of the Earth. It’s so close to the Chinese border that it’s actually easier to supply it from China than from Laos, and the Chinese influence is evident in everything from the food to cigarettes in shop windows to the voices on the street.

Getting here was quite an effort, and in hindsight I really wish I’d organised my cash properly so I could have taken the boat all the way from Nong Khiaw! But it’s another story to tell about new places and routes, so it’s not all bad… internet access has been quite limited in recent days so rather than do a separate post about the various stages I’ll summarise the lot here to bring this up to date:

Nong Khiaw was such a delighful place that I stayed two nights, using my extra day to finally pick up the phrasebook and learn some of the Lao language. I got lucky in that the host of the place I was staying was very keen to help me practice, so my pronounciation has been correct from the start. When I woke that day I knew only three words of Lao and by the end of it between 30 and 40, so I was very pleased with my progress. That night I had dinner with five of the other people from my boat ride from Luang Prabang, and the next day two more from that trip were on my minibus to Oudomxay. The more remote you get here the fewer travellers there are, and seeing the same faces on the street becomes more common.

Sadly Oudomxay is a necessary shithole that is redeemed by just two features: it is the main transport hub for northern Laos, and it has an ATM. The air is thick with such acrid road dust that it stings the eyes and burns the throat, and I was well-glad to be out of there the next day. The ATM mission (my entire reason for being there) was only half successful: I managed to withdraw money on arrival, but you are limited to just 700,000 kip per day (about A$100). I went back to it the next morning before my bus left, but it was “out of order”. I was leaving with enough money to get me out of Laos the following week if necessary, but it would be very tight…

Journeying from Oudomxay to Phongsali by bus is an experience, not always a pleasant one but definitely memorable! It was a gloriously local affair: out of thirty-odd passengers I was the only westerner on it going all the way to Phongsali, sharing the cabin with Lao folks of various hue, coils of steel reinforcing cable, several bags of food and – yes – even live chickens. It started smoothly enough, and we covered the first 64 kms in un-Lao-like haste. Then we turned off the main highway towards Phongsali and The Dust Storm began. The horror, the horror… I have never experienced anything like it. The road is so dry that a monstrous cloud of yellow-brown dust is thrown up by the bus, and it seeps inside through every crevice even if the windows are closed (which not all were). And the road was so bumpy that it Never. Stopped. Clattering. I was seated in the back row which seemed like a good idea at the start, as it gave me huge legroom. But the dust accumulation is worst back there, and by our first pitstop I was thoroughly over it. I mentioned to an American-Lao woman that I wished I’d brought a face mask with me, and she promptly got one out of her bag and passed it to me. What a treasure: it sure made a difference 🙂

The dusty hell lasted for 100 kms, and it took us over five hours to cover the distance. Then suddenly, like a gift from God, the road was sealed again and from there it was a breeze to the end. We arrived a little after 6pm (we left at 9am), and I was forced to walk the final three kilometres from the bus station to town to find a room for the night. It was good to move again. The hotel was crappy, but this morning I scoped the town out and found much better digs across the road for the same price (A$11 a night). After all the movement of the past few days I’m quite content just to hang up my boots for a while and relax in this small but rather pleasant northern outpost.

The slow boat to Nong Khiaw is an enchanting journey, offering just the right combination of sensational scenery, worthy discomfort, local colour and serenity. It’s probably one of the nicest river trips you can do in Laos, at least at this time of year.

When I booked the ticket I asked how many people the boat could hold at most and was told “15”. This pleased me, because I have read blog posts about the much more popular boat from the Thai border to Luang Prabang and heard some horror stories. Packed in 70 to 100 per boat, that journey takes two days with an overnight stop in the traveller hell of Pak Beng where ripping off the tourists is apparently a local sport. Some say it’s pleasant enough, others hated it, very few say it was a highlight of their trip.

The contrast with the boat to Nong Khiaw could not be greater. In fact our boat could take only 10 people, but in this case our group of 12 was split into two very small boats so we all had ample room to relax in. Such a small craft is necessary because at this time of year the river level is quite low, and anything larger would probably have got stuck on a rock somewhere (or worse). Being on a small boat gave a very intimate connection with the surroundings and people we passed, and it was such a thoroughly peaceful journey that the seven hours passed quite quickly.

I don’t mean it was peaceful in a literal sense, of course. The constant clatter of the engine made conversation very difficult, but in every other respect it was totally relaxing. Not that it was luxurious, either: the low wooden stools (very similar to those you would have sat on in kindergarten) we could sit on were so hard that it was actually much more comfortable sitting on the floor, and nearly all of us rotated between stool and floor as necessary. We only had a couple of pit stops to take a pee behind a bush on a riverbank – not once did we pass a village where we could stop for a meal, drink or proper toilet.

The scenery ranged from merely pretty to spectacular, with some magnificent high cliffs passed on several occasions. The terrain was almost entirely forested, though from time to time a riverside village could be seen high on the banks, with children playing on the shore and men fishing in the water. A couple of large bamboo barges floated by, as did a number of fishing skiffs and other small passenger boats heading south. Our pilot was expert at guiding us through constant hazards such as submerged rocks, floating trees and even up some rough rapids, and never once did I feel like we were in any danger. Even though the six initial passengers were all western tourists it had a genuinely local feel, a fact confirmed when a man hailed us from the river’s edge at one point and got on board with his baby daughter and a sack of food. I had brought a book along as I feared it would be a dull journey otherwise, but I spent far more time simply admiring the view and taking shirtloads of photos (which I’ve edited down to fifteen highlights – check my Photo Gallery in a couple of days if you want to see them all).

Arriving in Nong Khiaw was something of an anticlimax. It’s much smaller than I expected, and more rustic too with rocky unpaved streets and a small selection of somewhat over-priced guesthouses. I’ve found a riverside bungalow with great shared balcony that overlooks the town, and though it’s comfortable enough with private hot water bathroom and western throne I’ve gotten much better rooms for the same money elsewhere in Laos.

A final drawback of Nong Khiaw, and much more serious, is that there is no ATM or bank here – not even a money changer. This has caused me to alter my route a bit, as I don’t have enough local currency on hand to get me through the next two days, let alone the next two weeks (I do have US dollars as a backup, of course, but not enough for my needs). It seems that outside the tourist triangle things really are less developed than I’d come to believe, and I simply can’t go further north without an adequate supply of cash. The nearest place where I know for sure there is an ATM and other banking facilities is Oudomxai, about four hours west by bus. I had intended to skip it entirely but will now have to visit there because I can’t risk running out of money! It doesn’t matter too much, and in fact it allows me to see more of Laos than I intended which is really a positive in the end, isn’t it?

My first impression of Luang Prabang is that it’s nothing like the rest of Laos, rather it’s like most westerners imagine or want it to be. It’s well and truly on the world tourist circuit (it even has an international airport, the only other one in the country apart from the capital), and a huge number of businesses exist solely to service that market. But despite the consequent hordes of tourists it’s definitely a great place to relax and rest up for a while…

The tourist heart of town is a small finger of land – almost a peninsula – surrounded on three sides by two languid rivers. The streets are very different from what I’ve seen elsewhere in Laos: for a start they’ve got kerbs and gutters running down both sides, and they’re very clean. It seems like almost every building is a guesthouse, restaurant or traditional massage place and they’re mostly housed in beautifully restored houses in French or Lao style. The main roads are narrow and the lanes narrower, and in between it all are more than a few temples large and small. It’s an extremely peaceful place, too, with no traffic at night and nearly everything closing by 11pm.

Outside the centre it’s much more like the rest of the country: busy, dusty, few gutters on the streets, shopfronts open to the street, roadside stalls. The countryside is particularly beautiful, with small crop fields nestled wherever possible on flat land beside the rivers. However because I will be seeing a lot more of rural areas shortly I’ve stayed almost entirely in the old town, where my well-appointed guesthouse is located in a quiet alley near the working temple of Wat Nong. Yesterday morning I was awoken gently at 4am by the first bells that rouse the monks for their day, and I contemplated the complete stillness of this place at that time… before going back to sleep to wake later at a more sensible hour.

My first full day was spent wandering around, trying to take some nice photos and finding a working internet connection to keep in touch with the world. I also made some inquiries about further travel north, as I really want to take a boat for my next journey to Nong Khiaw. Happily this option is more common than than it was a few years ago, and I’m now booked on Monday’s slow boat north. I also picked up a new book to read on the journey (Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) and succeeded in finding a cooking course that appealed, which I attended last night and which I’ll post about separately soon. It was good fun and very useful: if you want to experience a bit of a Lao feast, get in touch with me when I return and I’ll see what I can do 😉

Today was meant to be relaxing, with the simple goals of getting a massage (for A$6 an hour) and practicing some Lao. It turned out to be even more sedate: after waking late and finally getting the guesthouse’s wifi to work, I had a late breakfast then wandered to an open-air restaurant around the corner that perches prettily on the banks of the Mekong. I took a book and picked a table with a fine view several kilometres north up the river and settled in for three hours of reading (Stieg Larsson is brilliant), munching on my favourite local dish of oh laam pa (a fragrant hot-bitter stew of eggplant, basil, galangal, chilli, beans, chicken and a local herb which gives it a slight medicinal quality) with sticky rice at some point. Then back to the room for a nap, then off to a high-speed internet cafe to do some skyping. Then back to the guesthouse for a short while, and now in the evening to a lovely French brasserie with wifi that’s also very close to my guesthouse. I’ll do this post then keep reading, then have a good French meal before heading back to pack for tomorrow. I’m so mellow that a massage would be redundant today 🙂

In Luang Prabang I’ve followed my usual pattern when I arrive in a new town with the aim of doing not much. The first day is spent wandering around, perhaps doing some necessary shopping and chores (eg. deodorant, laundry, decent internet connection) and seeing a sight or two. After I’ve got my bearings I tend to stay very close to my guesthouse if it’s a nice area, which this part of town certainly is. Over the past two days I’ve started to notice the local families who live amongst the guesthouses and restaurants, who go about their lives quite publicly in the front section of their house that is usually open to the street during the day. As today’s a Sunday virtually everyone’s been relaxing as well, lazing on the porch chatting, playing with pets, or dozing. By doing next to nothing I’ve picked up a little extra flavour of this place without any effort, and I’ll have fond memories from here in the future. That’s the real joy of extended travel like this: you can take the time to chill out whenever you want, and there’s no pressure to keep moving or tick off sights mechanically. And I’m only just into week three – there’s still another three and half months to go!

Well that was the most memorable bus trip I’ve ever taken. It’s 230 kms by road from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang, and the journey is scheduled to take about seven hours. Do the math: that’s just over 30 kilometres an hour. The guide book recommends travellers prone to motion sickness take appropriate precautions. I can now see why…

It started quite amiably, with mostly flat roads and modest traffic for the first 56 kms to Kasi. After quite a long pit stop we board again for the long, steep, twisting, bumpy journey through some of the most spectacular highlands scenery I’ve ever witnessed. We slog upwards for over two hours, including one stretch grinding uphill in second gear continuously FOR AN ENTIRE HOUR. Can you imagine what that’s like? It’s bone-jarring, brain-numbing, and ear-rattling too if you’re right above the engine like I was. It gives a whole new dimension of meaning to the phrase “are we there yet?”.

All the way up we pass hillside villages, furiously poor places where most homes are single-room affairs with the walls made of overlapping leaves and the roof of thatch, though some also sprout satellite dishes. Where countless kids play on the road while trucks and buses pass, where parents wait behind roadside stalls trying to sell carefully gathered bounty from the hills. Everywhere are trays of tiny red chillies and mats of grain by the road to dry in the sun, and picking up a lovely patina of road dust and fumes in the process. After three and a half hours of this… we’ve come halfway.

The next section is less scenic but still rugged and winding, and my head lolled from left to right so much that I forgot what felt like to travel in a straight line. Conversation was futile above the engine’s constant growl, and sleep impossible for all but the most experienced or knackered. All we could do was stare out the window at the wild hills of northern Laos. Unless you’re me, who started typing this on the bus one-handed (because I needed the other to stop my laptop flying across the aisle). Eventually I got tired and started to doze, when suddenly we stopped for another break at a clifftop roadhouse of sorts. Just enough time for the vibrations to leave the body, then back on the bus for a rapid but still twisting descent to the lowlands. Once on the river delta villages become prosperous again, with markets, restaurants and solid houses of brick and tile, and small crops growing where they can, then finally to Luang Prabang itself.

Memorable but arduous, and this was a relatively comfortable journey in a full-sized touring bus with reclining seats (though it was forty years old if it was a day), on paved roads in good weather. Much more extreme travel lies ahead: bumpy dirt roads over the hills to the north, probably in a saeung-thaew (a pickup truck with two bench seats running the length of the tray – usually covered). I may look back on today’s journey wistfully in the weeks to come!