Cambodia Diaries - 31 March 2011

Laos – From the Latin verb to completely relax

Someone once said to me that the Laotians are so laid back; they make your average hippy seem stressed!
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Having just come back from there I don’t think I have returned from anywhere more relaxing, so peaceful and in places, so beautiful. In fact, I have turned the country’s name into an acronym: Lounge And/Or Sleep.
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And I suspect now is as good a time as any to introduce Catherine, the, ahem feisty little French Canadian squeeze of the last eight months. I took to calling her my Quebecoise Petit Rocket only for the practice to cease after the football season started and her realisation that QPR actually meant something completely different.
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Anyway, off we flew to Vientiane, the capital of Laos and arguably running the capital of Brunei close for the mantle of ‘the sleepiest capital city in the world’. The first hint of which you get when changing money at the airport into the local currency, the wonderfully named Kip! Whereupon you also become a multi-millionaire after $300 filled my pockets with 2,400,000 sleepy Kips in return.
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However, I am not sure what the lad dispatched by the hotel to convey us from the airport thought about us when our opening gambits were:

1. Look how clean the place is! – This being reference to the fact that PP can sometimes look like a bit shabby and,

2. My God, they actually stop at traffic lights! – Coming from a city where such things are decorations and where road sense much less manners are minimal, it was with incredulity that we observed people driving in a sane, law abiding fashion and where being overtaken on both sides of your vehicle, sometimes in the opposite direction, is not on. You can say what you like about communist states, but you got to admire their highway collectivism.

That said, our third comment of “It’s a bit quiet” seemed to illicit no odd glances as I am sure he has heard it all before.

But if you are going to take it easy, then you’ll struggle to do so in a better place than the Big V and Laos in general. In fact you’ll struggle to do much in the Big V beyond indulging in the local medicine, the ubiquitous staple liquid of the country, Beer Lao. In fact, I don’t know why the government and the brewer don’t be done with it and just rename the country the Democratic People’s Republic of Beer Laos. It is a tremendous drop and is my preferred tipple this side of the Mekong as well and being ridiculously cheap in the homeland ($1 per litre), not to drink it would be an insult to the locals and so in a show of unity, we consumed as much of the stuff as we could.

When in Beer Lao, drink what the locals do!

The Lao people struck me as just being the loveliest people I have met in years. Always smiling and honest, and with a level of service that well, to put it bluntly, I am not so used to these days. Nowhere have I seen such honesty displayed than at the one and only monument of note in the Big V, the Victory Arch. Which if you read the picture below is described In Prince Charlesesque terms as a ‘concrete monster’.

Telling it like it is (Monster of concrete).

However, rather annoyingly, just as we were leaving Phnom Penh, my back went ‘ping’ as I lifted up my bag to head to the airport and so by the time we flew into Luang Namtha, a little town some 20 miles or so from the Chinese border a few days later, I was knackered.  The reason we came this far north was to do some trekking, which alas, we had to cancel and if to compound matters, my legendary ability to acquire injuries from the most ridiculous situations struck again. Gripping the armrest so hard during bouts of turbulence on the flight up, I pulled a muscle in my wrist.

Ever the warrior, we nonetheless instructed a young guide and tuk-tuk driver to take us into the hills and show us round the remote villages.  Although remote these days often means a bloody huge satellite dish present to capture those all important Korean soaps and Thai karaoke.

Just your average NASA satellite in your average mountain village

It was however, fascinating stuff. Although after the fourth village, it became a bit samey if truth be told.  But what I found incredible was his insight into the lives of the ‘village people’ of which he was one himself: on the one hand, so close to the might of China and then on the other, to the little town of Namtha, some people may only trek the few miles to Namtha a few times a year, if that.  Each village has its own dialect and in some of the villages we visited, the guide didn’t have a clue what the locals were saying despite the fact we had merely gone round a hill!

Two things I don’t do in PP is firstly, eat street food and secondly, have any patience with moto and tuk-tuk drivers. As we went deep into the hills up near the border with China, the tuk broke down and whereas in PP I would likely sound off, here it seemed only natural to sit at the side of the road and have an impromptu picnic. Where the fare had been bought from local markets and where I had already become captivated by the many ways the Laotians cook bamboo to such an extent, I was polishing off more than your average panda.

Little Bamboo Chef.

It’s a feature of the developing world that the influence of China is so obvious. Neat roads being built so as to allow the resources of neighbouring and far flung trading partners have easy access to the Middle Kingdom. There were plenty of Han faces putting in a road to Luang Prabang (LP) which left you wondering, if we’re heading south, what’s heading north.

LP is simply stunning! It is hard to describe the place without using words like: stunning, beautiful, picturesque and all closed up by 11pm! The town at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers is a UNESCO heritage site and long may that continue and long may they continue to preserve it by refusing permission to those who would seek to build trash and crap! The architecture is French colonial, the people so ridiculously lovely, the place so relaxed and tranquil, that the only traders required are those businesses that sell, food, drink, arty boutique stuff and spas to sooth you after a hard day’s chilling.

I actually think it’s possibly one of the most relaxing places I have ever been to. It is damn nigh impossible to get worked up and if you can’t wind down here, then you have issues. So much so that a trip planned to see some waterfalls and caves blissfully passed us by as we sat taking breakfast by the Mekong. When we eventually rocked up an hour late only to be told that the tour had gone, we merely shrugged, went ‘Oh well’ and duly repaired for more coffee and chocolate cake without a merde or a tantrum from either of us.

We did however; manage to make a ritual that LP is noted for: monks seeking alms.

Every morning around sunrise, young Buddhist monks from the countless pagodas in LP walk the early morning streets seeking alms. And from what I could see, alms meant only one thing, rice. The long lines of young monks dressed only in rich orange cloths, meander their way through the narrow streets carrying an urn to fill and bring back to their pagoda, where doubtlessly older and more wizened monks remain tucked up in bed. It was a soothing spectacle marred only by tourists snapping away on cameras or in my case, standing there gawping at this event with an early morning latte and chocolate cookie, before going back to bed for an hour or so before waking up to bacon and eggs alms myself.

Early morning alms in Luang Prabang.

So relaxed and wonderfully settled after four days, I freely admit to not wanting to leave LP more than most places I have ever been to and if you are in the parish and want no more than to relax, then LP is most definitely your kind of town.

There were plans to head south to the 4,000 Islands but the back and the early onset of gout from the many fine dining experiences offered in LP meant that I was confined to barracks or as was the case, Pakse. Everywhere you go has to have a khasi and Pakse was such a place and when we finally got to leave the place, it was with relief.

Instead of the islands, we found an ecolodge about half way from Pakse and took up residency there. My first and arguably most challenging task of the day was to wrestle myself off a hammock to announce to Catherine that an elephant was passing by the veranda.

Laos is the land of a million elephants, it even says so on a bottle of Beer Lao but alas, the days of a million elephants is, the lodge told us, now of a world of around 30,000. My back rallied and there was talk of mountain biking which due to a lack of bikes gave way to an elephant trek.

We both thought this meant walking with the elephants but when we arrived at the marshalling enclosure, it was with utter horror that I learned I was required to sit on one. All those beer Laos, bamboo dinners and what not had plumped out the Honney and I felt rude getting on to the back of the thing.

When I eventually dismounted the beast three hours later, I was utterly crippled. They are not comfortable and not meant for riding on and how the hell you went on a shoot riding one back in the day I will never know.

One of us is smiling and if the other looks 'uncomfortable' it's because I was!

But when we headed back to the lodge I declined to remount my trusty steed mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t and also, because we wanted to walk with them mahout style. During the walk back I learned that one of the reasons elephant numbers are declining in captivity, is due to the fact that projects such as the one we were at, will only allow the elephants to mate with virgin males!

It seems that once the young buck has a taste for it, he can become a tad aggressive next time round and he can dislocate the female’s hip, with disastrous consequences for mum and her offspring. If you have ever seen an elephant up close, then I shuddered at what I had heard from the mahout. That said, I thought he might be talking utter crap, the point was confirmed by Catherine the amateur elephant expert herself.

So, next time you watch the film Dumbo, think on!

Laos is a lovely place so worth a visit that I am almost itching to go back. It’s a country that has had a turbulent history acted out in the shadow of events in Cambodia and Viet Nam. Prior to arriving in the Big V, a friend was working in the land mine clearance game here and she told me to visit a museum which I didn’t. If I had, then I would have learned that more tonnage was dropped on Laos during the Viet Nam war than on the whole of Germany during WW2 and it also endured a civil war for nigh on 20 years.

And yet it seems much more progressed that it is odd that Laos is considered a ‘developing’ nation. Fact is, like the beer, it’s genuinely hospitable, unpretentious and lures you in for another tasty drop and don’t feel the need to rush here, they have no intention of mucking it up either.

Cheers

JHx