Laos PDR

Laos PDR.  PDR stands for ‘Peoples Democratic Republic’, however around here they say it means ‘Laos - Please Don’t Rush’.  In order to adopt this approach we decided to start our journey across country with the appropriately named ‘Slow Boat’.

First up was a relatively straight forward border cross.  A short five minute trip across the Mekong River and we were in Laos.  We got our visas here at the border and didn’t have to pay the obligatory one dollar passport stamp ‘fee’.  This put us in the small town of Huay Xai.  There’s really not much here, but it was a chance for us to stock up on some supplies for our two day slow boat trip down river to the city of Luang Prabang.  This sounds a lot harder than it is, although at the time it did feel a bit torturous every now and again.  The boat is not dissimilar in size to a canal boat, but is fitted with rows of minibus seats for comfort, and like the canal boats the family live on board at the back.  Day one took about six hours and day two around seven hours, we stopped at a tiny village to sleep overnight.  The boat itself affords not much in terms of entertainment except for the Mekong itself, local riverboats and fisherman and some smiling waving Laos children.  Two days is probably enough though before everything starts to look the same, it would quite literally be hours between seeing the slightest form of civilization, which at best would attend to a small selection of wooden shacks.

At around 4pm on the second day however we arrived at the city of Luang Prabang, the former capital of Laos, Unesco world heritage site and a town heavily influenced by the French Indochine occupation.  After two days on a boat and two nights spent at small sleepy riverside towns this was our first real taste of Laos living.  The town itself is centred around a daily night market which sells all manner of wares and has food stalls where you can pile up your plate with as much as you can carry/eat for just 10,000 KIP (80p) or enjoy some grilled Mekong fish and other local delicacies.  Although around here local delicacies can include a skewer of barbequed frogs.  Whilst in town we decided to check out the other local traditions.  This included a visit to a local Laos silk weaving centre, a skill which looks almost impossible to master yet they accomplish with such guile and accuracy.  We followed this up with a visit to the local evening herbal sauna where we found ourselves crammed in a 90⁰c shoebox sized sauna with a dozen Lao.  This was a very interesting experience to say the least, but was especially nice to cool off outside in the rains whilst sipping on the local tea.

From here we made our way south along an almost impassable route through the mountains to the very small town of Vang Vieng.  Although very small it’s very much on the circuit here as it plays host to the infamous tubing.  Take a big rubber tube and float down the river stopping at whichever bar you wish whilst consuming the relatively safe option of BeerLao, or the not so safe choice of anything served in a bucket.  Local spirits are cheaper than the mixer so whatever they put in there serves a means to an end.  If you’re not feeling entertained enough or have overdone it with the Dutch courage there’s plenty of rope swings where you launch yourself into the murky depths  and whatever may lie beneath.  We won’t go into much detail, partly as it has been lost to inebriation, but the sun shone, we met some awesome people and survived (just).  The town itself is a little unique in that it is geared up to deal with hungover backpackers so all the bars play Friends or Family Guy on loop all through the day.

We left Vang Vieng and continued south several hours to the capital of Laos, Vientiane.  This could quite possibly be the smallest capital city on the planet, but it was a pleasant enough place for us to spend a couple of nights.  Like most places in Laos the city is situated on the banks of the Mekong.  The more we see of Laos, the more we see of the Mekong.  It’s like the heart of the country running from top to bottom and provides food, irrigation and transport in a country where not many sealed roads exist.  Vientiane is home to some impressive temples and for something a little bit different we visited one which is home to the largest collection of Buddha statues in Laos.  It claims to be home to over two thousand, we didn’t hang around to count but there was definitely a lot.

Laos is a country which has taken its fair share of bruising in recent history and none so much as the recent Vietnam War.  Laos is the most bombed country per capita in the world.  Over a nine year period the US ran 580,000 bombing missions over Laos a country they were not even at war with. Thirty percent of the bombs dropped in this time failed to explode and still litter the countryside today.  We visited an organisation called COPE who help the locals (most of whom are children) that have been harmed by these explosives in whatever way they can.  We met a young Lao guy there who had lost his sight and both hands, he is now volunteering at the organisation and learning English from talking to visitors.  The way in which he can try to carve himself a new life after having had so much taken away from him for what are essentially war crimes committed before he was even born is a truly courageous and brave story.  For anyone whose interested there’s a very informative and moving documentary you can find online called ‘Bomb Harvest’ which follows the struggle between the fight to educate versus the value of the bombs as scrap metal, whilst struggling against a lack of trained personnel in the country.

To continue our route further south we took an overnight sleeper bus 600km further down the Mekong.  This was a new form of travel for us as the bus is equipped with no chairs just beds, and you’re provided with a pillow and blanket for you to try and get a good night’s sleep.  A pretty novel idea but the beds are very much ‘Asian size’ so you don’t exactly get ample amounts of space.

It did however serve its purpose and has got us down to Si Phan Don, where the Mekong stretches to over 14km wide.  This stretch of the river however is full of islands of varying size, so many so that Si Phan Don quite literally translates as ‘Four Thousand Islands’.  We’ve made a little home on one of the islands where we are staying in a bungalow with a couple of hammocks out front.  It’s a beautifully local place where we share the surroundings with a few roaming cattle, plenty of little roaming chicks, cats, dogs and little Lao children running around chasing all of the above and plenty of rice fields.  There’s not much to do but watch the real Laos world go by.  We’ve been adventurous enough to venture around some of the islands by bike including crossing the old Pont Francais. 

 
However for now we are happy to embrace the culture enough not to rush, to just put our feet up, and watch the sun go down over the Mekong, before we make our way across the border and into Cambodia.