Feb 29 – March 2: Vientiane (pronounced Ven-chang)
Perhaps because we are square, we really liked Vientiane. It is the very sleepy capitol of a very sleepy country. We rented bicycles and toured the whole city in a couple of days. The highlight for me was what we dubbed “the dancing fountain.” A gift from China (a fellow communist country), this little guy (actually there are two, straddling Laos’ own version of the Arc de Triomphe) puts on a nightly display of dancing jets of water, spot-lit with colored lights and coordinated with a soundtrack. Families stood round and watched for hours. It was really very sweet. Our first night there we walked through the park, watched the fountain, made it down to a riverside restaurant (on the side of the Mekong! Where doesn’t this river go?) and got very tipsy with a Filipino brother-sister pair, Susan & Richie.
We met them when our favorite John Denver song, Country Roads, came over the sound system and we all sang along. We good beer – beer Lao – and fantastic Laab – minced pork that was HEAVILY spiced with fresh herbs – served to us on a table made of an old tire.
On the way home, our tuk-tuk driver had us wait a moment while he made a quick pot deal. Very casually. “Sorry,” he said. “Guys need their pot.” Indeed. Drugs seemed pretty widely available in Vientiane, as almost every driver we passed said, “Tuk-tuk? No? You like…(smile)…something?” As I said though, we are square, and we didn’t take anyone up on their offer.
The next day we did a wat tour – there are many beautiful ones in Vientiane to choose from, including those with a truly psychedelic flair. One had a brilliantly-colored, comic-book-style ceiling, while another blared pumping psychedelic electro-sitar with a backbeat throughout its otherwise extremely peaceful compound. They actually put speakers on the stoop in front of the temple and pumped the music – at top volume – outside. Inside, behind the altar, was an electronic mandela, just like you’d see in a sixties rock video – or a spoof of one. It glowed. It twirled. It was triangular, with an eye in the center, brilliant tie-dye colors swirling all around. Laos-style Buddhism is interesting.
We went to the Vientiane food market, which is much like the many amazing food markets we saw throughout Southeast Asia. Incredible variety of fresh produce and meats, as well as the biggest bugs I have ever seen anyone attempt to eat.
For our own lunch, we stopped at a really inspiring place called Makphet. It’s a non-profit restaurant that provides vocational training to street children. The students work, earning money and learning the service industry. Once they pass a certain level, they become teachers. The food was really good, the setting excellent, and the organization was very successful. It’s part of a network, Friends International, that operates a similar restaurant in Phnom Penh. It was one of the most successful (from the outside, anyway) non-profit job training programs I’ve seen. I was so impressed, I began to wonder about starting a similar operation in Philadelphia. There are some that operate successfully in Philly – Manna is a great example, but others exist solely on the charity/cooperation of other non-profits who use their services. The outfits in SE Asia specifically target tourists – people who are already out, planning to spend money – and there are certainly plenty of those in Philly.
Anyhoo – sorry. I often find myself dreaming about what I’m going to do when we get back to Philly…
From Vientiane we went to Vang Vieng . We had the good foresight to not stay in V-V proper, as we had heard it was rather like a large frat party, and in fact it far exceeded our worst imaginings. We went instead to the Organic Mulberry Farm just outside of Vang Vieng. It was wonderful. We fed the baby goats, slopped the baby pigs, I worked in the vegetable garden, Ramon helped build a mud house, and we had fresh, organic, amazing food. Granted, each time you ordered, it took about an hour to get your food, and as often as not it was not at all what you had ordered. Overall, though, a great experience. I got to hang out in the local community center and learn Laos dance from the village teenagers. A hoot!
After several days there, we caved to the main draw for Vang Vieng – the tubing. In one (seriously outdated) guidebook, the tubing was described as peaceful trip down the river, set at the base of incredibly beautiful limestone karsts.
The likely sights, the book said, would be local women washing and gathering river water. Perhaps there would be an older man with a bucket, selling you a beer. Ha! What we found was a nightmare. It was like Delaware Avenue on Saturday at 2 am, except in the most beautiful setting you can imagine and all the action is outdoors. We got on the tube (why? why??? we are still wondering too) and set off down the river. Six hours later we had gone about 1 1/2 km through mostly knee-deep water, past an uninterrupted stream of bars teeming with drunk white 20 year olds. The music was BLARING and from the middle of the river you could often hear 3 or 4 stereos at the same time. This nightmare was compounded by the fact that it was freezing and that my butt was sore from the constant kicking myself for even thinking of doing this. What is even weirder is that the guidebook in which we read about the trip was from 2005. Not that old to be that out of date. It’s pretty shocking how little time it takes to destroy a place. Go whitey. Go.
After we recovered from this trip, we decided to take a beautiful bike ride in the countryside and explore the local caves. This was well worth it. The ride & the scenery were amazing, and the cave we explored went 3 km into the side of the mountain. Once we reached the back, there was a cold, clear pool to swim in. It was incredibly dark and humid. You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face! Our flashlights burned out about 50 feet from the entrance on the way back, so we felt very fortunate to make it out alive.
From here, we moved on to the historic town of Luang Prabang (pronounced Loo-ong Prah -bong, not Loo-ang Pruh-bang, as we said it many times before we were corrected). This is a truly beautiful town, recently declared a World Historic Site by UNESCO. It is, however, a *very* touristic town. Unfortunately, Ramon got very sick on the morning we left Vang Vieng so the first day or two I explored mostly by myself. There were tons of handicrafts markets and a really impressive new museum about the local hilltribes, where I bought a cool CD of Laos folk music that I look forward to hearing when we get back. Again, we had incredible food – especially an in-table charcoal fired barbecue of buffalo, vegetables, chicken and pork and some incredible jujubee-coconut drink with a side of toasted riverweed at a wonderful little restaurant called Tamarind.
The riverweed is their version of Nori. It’s exactly what it sounds like, weed from the river, dried and toasted with slivers of garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and sesame seeds. It was fantastic. Our guest house was an old, wooden-style Lao home, the Thaelinh Guest House, up above one of the main wats.
There were many beautiful, very old wats in Luang Prabang, and one of the most impressive parts of the stay there was what has become known to tourists as the “Saffron Circuit.” At dawn every morning, monks from aroundthe town gather for a procession in which they receive alms, in the form of food, from the the townsfolk. The alms are mostly small handfuls of sticky rice colected in the monks alms bowl. The monks is Laos are allowed only 7 (or 8?) possessions, so their lives are fairly spartan, and this procession is one of the main ways they are able to eat! It is a beautiful sight, the long line of orange robes in the early morning light. It is also quite a tourist spectacle, people stepping up and snapping photos rather disrespectfully. We tried to stay a bit at a distance, but of course, we really wanted to see, too.
In all, I loved Laos. I really want to take a month, go back and explore all that beautiful, rugged, remote countryside. I’m sorry that i cannot post more of the beautiful pictures that we have, but I’m writing this from Kampala right now, where it is dusty, polluted and the internet connection is TERRIBLE. I almost tore my own head off today. I will try to update with more photos later on. A month in Laos might be quite refreshing about now….Ramon? Shall we?
