f00: what else happened in laos

in laos, we hardly got internet connection at all. so here's the rest of what happened in laos....

we got to vientiane, it rained a whole bunch the first night and the ceiling in our guest house started leaking in the parts that looked mouldy. i guess that's why there's a mould problem. it was still raining a lot when we woke up so that was a little discouraging. we woke up early to make our first video chat date ever and that was pretty exciting though our connection there was pretty slow so there were a lot of dropped calls and delayed reactions. then we ventured next door for soup noodles that were delicious.

finally at noon, the rain stopped! we took a walk around town and bought some pretty expensive stamps then checked out the french cultural center - we heard that they screened french movies (with english subtitles) occasionally. we watched le ventre de juliette at 6.30pm.

vientiane was great for food. we had some delicious baguette sandwiches (thanks france!) with pickled vegetables and lots of fruit shakes. iced lao coffee was just delightful. i didn't know i had been missing good coffee till then.

by chance, as we were walking around town near the sketchy fountain, a boy handed us a brochure for COPE that seemed interesting so we decided to give it a shot. it's a rehabilitation center that provides prosthetic services to people that need them; with an emphasis on those injured by unexploded ordinances (UXOs). the UXOs exhibition was intense, to say the least. COPE was well worth the 30 minute walk from town.

we also ate at makphet which is a restaurant run by former street youth and their teachers. their families are given the option to make small crafts for sale at their store located in the restaurant. food was awesome (one of the best meals we had in laos), crafts were way cute and the students were way adorable.

from vientiane, we went to phonsavan in the north. it was supposed to be a long ride anyway but then our bus broke down and all of us had to wait on the side of the road. fortunately, the bus behind us stopped to help and after about 10 mins of trying to fix our broken bus, the crew on our bus decided that it was best for us to hop onto the other bus. so we did and because katherine and i were one of the last ones on the bus (china didn't train us well to be line cutting douche bags), we got plastic stools to sit on in the aisle. not stable. but 2 hours later, we arrived, mostly on time. crisis averted.

we went to phonsavan to see the plain of jars - fields of large stone jars that no one knows the origins of. this area of laos is also infamously known to have a large number of UXOs. the one site we visited had designated walk areas indicating whether an area had been cleared of UXOs or 'visually cleared' of UXOs. i was pretty excited about phonsavan not because of the UXOs or the stone jars but because we had decided that it was probably a good place to learn how to ride motorcycles as it was less populated than vientiane. we had the guesthouse boss loan us a motorcycle for the day and even though he knew that we had no experience and no bike license, he still agreed to let us take the bike. what faith. two foreign kids had just crashed their bike the day before. and the funny thing was that we met them while having breakfast the day of renting the motorcycle. i practiced riding up a little lane and got a few curious looks from the neighbours. then more curious looks when i picked up katherine to practice with a passenger. then we were off! half a day of riding around on a little scooter and no injuries.

after phonsavan, we took a pretty long bus ride to sam neua, near the lao-vietnam border. the drive was beautiful - winding through yet more mountains but also lots of rice fields and villages with houses on stilts and local women weaving textiles on their looms in the space under their houses. and lots of cute children looking on as the bus crawled past their village. some of the passengers also brought with them some fowl, and about 15 frogs. fowl went on the roof, frogs got to ride with us.

sam neua is near the pathet lao caves which was used by the pathet lao leaders and their followers when the americans bombed the shit out of that area. almost everyday for 9 nine years, the area around the caves were targeted. large bomb craters exist (one of the leaders converted a bomb crater into a swimming pool which i thought was pretty genius) alongside more UXOs. while on tour of one of the caves, we heard a low rumbling noise resembling thunder. when asked, the guide said it was just a bombie. just?! it was quite the adventure trying to get to tour the caves. the day before, we had failed because of a serious of unfortunate events. then when we finally got to the cave office, we were told that the 9am tour had to be cancelled because of a lack of tour guides. we were given a handdrawn map of the village and a mini tour we could do on our motorbikes before the 1pm tour. we grabbed breakfast then set off. katherine drove, i passenged and the frenchboy, julien, we were traveling with had his own bike. on the ride to the caves, i noticed that the brakes on the bike weren't all that responsive but they would do. plus we were in a rush and didn't really have time to turn back to get it dealt with. we should have. anyways, katheirne was driving and we all went down this pretty steep dirt path. and we started going faster and faster and she was down shifting but we weren't really slowing down. we zoomed past julien and by this time i was feeling some fear. eventually, we came to flat-ish ground and (with her feet) she managed to stop the bike. which is when i found out that the brakes had failed to operate. awesome. + panic! we spent some minutes trying to get our wits back. and some villagers came around to see what the commotion was - they probably noticed us bombing down the hill too. after some inspection, they didn't think there was much of a problem with the bike. anyways, so julien kindly offered to switch bikes with us thinking that perhaps the brakes wouldn't be as stressed if it only had to stop itself plus one person as opposed to two. so we continued the tour which was scenic. then it started to rain and we stopped under a giant rock for shelter. we continued after the rain had died down a little but not all the way and not 10 minutes later, the rain picked up again but we were convinced that town was not that far away so we trucked on. as we were going up another hill, our bike stuttered to a stop. we ran out of gas. so julien had to go get us a litre of gas from a provision store that was not too far away. after all that 'adventure', we finally made it back in time for the tour, did the tour and made it back to our guesthouse safe and sound.

from sam neua, we went to nong khiaw which was a little overrun with tourists then to oudomxay where we caught a bus to mengla, china. back to china!

into laos on july 14

we stayed a night in chiang khong, thailand, before crossing over to laos. we found a cute little hostel run by a thai woman who had a retired american boyfriend named don. the town was small and the restaurant had mediocre food, but there was this cute old lady across the street selling food. she sold us banana wrapped in sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf. it was delicious. she also sold us something we couldn't identify but it had fruit in it i think. also it had a couple bugs on top. i'm becoming quite tough. i picked off the bugs and ate it anyway. it wasn't that good though.

the next morning we went to the border in the bed of the thai woman's pickup, the thai border is on one side of the mekong river, the lao border is on the other side. we got stamped out of thailand and then took a boat across the river into laos. i had to apply for a visa at the laos border. it took 15 minutes or so and cost $35. foo didn't need a visa. so it took her like 5 minutes and cost nothing. i'm always so expensive! so we were with 4 european guys and were going to take a tuktuk (like a taxi) to the bus station and a bus to a city called luang namtha. but we decided to hire a van instead which is a bit more expensive but much faster. so we get in the van, and turns out it's a karaoke van. so there are mirrors on the ceiling and walls with little led lights in them, and a tv playing karaoke music videos really loud, and huge speakers everywhere. it was kind of funny. til we started driving. the roads in laos are really winding. and there's construction in lots of places and potholes and gravel. and the driver was driving really fast (for a road like that) and there was a polish boy named kasper who was a bit loud and obnoxious. he asked if we could stop for food along the way because he was sooo hungry, so we stopped at one place and they brought out instant noodles and he was like 'oh i don't eat noodles. can we go someplace else?' mind you that this is rural laos. next place to eat is in an hour. so we go to the next place and there was no menu, but there were eggs, and of course noodles, and some rice. but the polish guy kept asking for salad. in his polish accent "i want a salad. do they have something like lettuce and some vegetable, like a tomato?" seriously? of course they're not going to have salad. anyway, he was loud and rude to the driver who didn't speak english that well, but kasper kept asking for other things. finally we got to luang namtha, and foo and i quickly departed from the group of boys. we found a guesthouse called khamking and stayed there for a night. we went to the night market to eat and got fried rice, some coconut noodle soup, a little waffle, and some crepes with deliciousness inside. the town has exactly one atm, which wasn't working, so we paid in thai baht for an exchange right slightly in the guesthouse's favor. we looked at trekking options (trekking, it turns out, basically means walk into the jungle/rural area and look at staged sights of local life/culture) , because it's supposed to be good around there, but the 'responsible trekking' was pretty expensive and didn't give much money to the hill tribes that we would visit. so the next day we went to muang sing, a town an hour north. we rode in an 11 passenger van with a vomiting child. i tried to give the mom some wet wipes we had with us, but i think that wet wipes don't exist in laos, because she didn't use them, but also didn't give them back. oh well. we got there and found a guesthouse, went to check out the trekking that was supposed to be the most responsible in southeast asia. it was wayyy more expensive, like 300,000 kip per person per day. that's like $35. and something like only 8% of it went to the tribes, and a huge chunk went to the government. and we read about all the different treks we could do, but decided that trekking is perhaps not a responsible method of tourism at all. no matter what, having all these relatively wealthy foreigners coming to a village to watch people do their normal daily tasks and taking photos and gawking is very strange. imagine if some rich foreigners came everyday to st charles MO to watch anne and mick zerr cutting their grass, going to work, washing the dishes. and they took pictures and talked about you in a language you didn't understand. it just doesn't seem right. so much exposure to tourists will change the culture. the highlight of muang sing was the chinese restaurant we ate at. ha. way to dive right into the lao culture, right?