Land of the Beautiful Smiles

Hi Dave The Gull,

Just thought I'd add a comment here as it was I who brought Lao PDR and Cuba into the conversation purely as a response the the suggestion that Korea DPR was the only Communist country left in the world. It is generally considered that both Lao PDR and Cuba (along with China and Viet Nam) are still under communist Government.

I've been to both Lao PDR and Viet Nam. While the latter is a fine country although they do ensure that all tourists/foreigners follow rather rigidly set paths through the tourist attractions from North to South, the former is one of the most wonderful places I've ever visited.

I spent about three weeks there in 2000, when it was still a relatively closed country, tourism only having been allowed to westerners for less than 10 years at that point. This is what I wrote about it just after I moved on into Viet Nam:

"Say what you like about the French, they know how to make a decent stick of bread. And although their methods of colonisation were a bit, well, French I suppose, one thing that they have left in Indochina is a decent baguette for breakfast.

There's a great story which I fully intend to believe that President Kennedy (I think, or was it Johnson?) decided to refer to it as Lay-oss because he didn't think the people of America would accept the Govenrnment supporting a country called Louse. As it happens, the locals refer to it as Laow (as in loud without the d). Although the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic is still coming to terms with its role in the global village since opening its doors to tourists in the early 90's it's handling the transition well. Most of the bits that comprise the well-worn path of tourism in Lao tends to be along the Mekong River (read Lao High Road) with Thailand visible on the other bank but the difference in the two countries is quite refreshing. Although the country is unspoilt at the moment there are already signs that it won't remain that way for very much longer along the main tourist route.

I started in Houay Xai which is a small town across the Mekong from Chiang Khong and one of the `land' border entry points to Lao. It is right on the Mekong and a starting point for most travellers' trips either around the Northern part of the country or the river cruise down to Luang Prabang. I decided to stay there for a day and find out what it was like. I got a room at a recommended guest house which is called either the Arimid or the Alimit depending on which side of the sign you read. I took a walk down to the river and sat at a cafe watching the boats load and unload their cargo. One small boat was carrying four large pigs that were trussed up by the feet. They were unloaded, squealing away with one bloke holding the back legs, one the front legs and another the ears. They were dragged into a waiting tuk-tuk and whisked away to goodness knows where, but I think the bacon butties were fresh that day.

I went for a walk in the evening and for a while thought that some insensitive person had their stereo on too loud as I could hear music all along the main street. I found the culprit to be loudspeakers mounted on the telegraph poles at regular intervals along the road, which the local authority use presumably to play suitable music of an evening and no doubt for other purposes as well.

The slow boat ride to Luang Prabang is just one of those things that will no doubt disappear in the future. It's just a cargo boat with some matting placed on the bare boards for passengers to sit on in the space where there isn't any cargo. In about five years it will be a luxury tourist boat with padded seats, a bar and accompanying commentary. There were only about 350 crates of empty BeerLao bottles (well, there wasn't very much to do so I had plenty of time to count them) which left room for about 60-70 passengers. We were on the Mekong for about 8 hours before we arrived at a river-side village called Pakbeng for the overnight stop.

It's small and only has one street with a market half-way up it and a limited amount of beds for the night. So all the `falang' (as they call us) collected their rucsacs and started the mad rush to find a bed. It looked like a old peoples jumble sale with friendships forged over that day being instantly forgotten in the fight for a spare bed. My small, balsa-wood walled room is difficult to describe seeing as I didn't really see it. It was candle-lit when I first saw it (lucky it was a bit damp or the entire building would have gone up in flames) and torch-lit for the rest of the time I was there. By the time I left daylight still hadn't penetrated the, er, well, there actually weren't any windows so no wonder it was so dark. But it had a mozzie net, and any other insects got stood on or lay on.

Pakbeng is one of those places where the us and them situation is clearly visible. Us being the tourist industry and them being the rest of the country. There's nothing different between it and other villages along the Mekong except that they have about 2.5 million kip (say 12,000 Thai Baht or 200 quid) coming into the village every day). That may not sound like much but it's considerably more than similar fishing villages away from the falang trail are receiving. You can tell it by the clothes, the motorbikes and the attitudes of the people: they are going to get rather richer as more foreigners make the trip south. Some of the guest houses even had china/porcelain toilets rather than the basic hole in the ground...

I woke up early the next morning. Not by choice but thanks to the village roosters. Every home seemed to have at lest one and we think that one in the village had a bad dream, crowed in fright and all the others thought they'd overslept and began crowing to catch up; because it certainly wasn't dawn at 4am when the noise started. It was still dark when I made my way out onto the street and there was a light river mist in the air. The boat was due to leave at 8am, 8.30am, 9am or 9.30am depending on which member of the crew you listened to. And there were only three crew...

It was another pleasant, slow chug down the river to Louang Prabang and we got there at about 6pm. We'd stopped on the way to pick up some locals who eyed us all with about as much suspicion as we eyed them. One of them was carrying a rooster which was all trussed up either for the market or the fighting ring. He had to keep a close eye on it as there were quite a few falang willing to get their revenge for its cousin's poor timekeeping that morning.

Luang Prabang is a lovely little town - a UNESCO World Heritage Site and packed full of French buildings, bakeries and bottles of BeerLao. We discovered how life becomes so much better with a Fruit Shake, although opinions were divided as to whether the Banana, Papaya, Mixed Fruit, or Lemon Shake was the best. So we tried them all.

I had my haircut in a small room off the main street with the most basic of implements and a barber who looked a bit concerned with what he was going to do with a falang's hair, straightforward though mine was. I was more concerned by the enormous Chelsea team poster from the Ruud Gullit era on the back wall behind me: these Chelsea fans have a reputation for spontaneous violence.

We spent a day looking at the Wat's until we were so Wat-ed out that we couldn't face going to Wat That (which was a bit of a shame as I'd thought of a few good jokes based on it's name). We took a slightly faster boat about 10km back up the Mekong to the Pac Ou caves which are right on the river and were intended as a rubbish dump for all the old and broken Buddha images from the Wats until someone realised that people actually wanted to see them and it became a bit of a selling point. We also went to the Kouang Si Water Fall, climbed goodness knows how far up a muddy, rocky path and were rewarded with finding a deep, clear pool right under the falls that we could swim in and jump into. Fantastic!

On to Vang Viang, this time by bus taking a beautiful route up through the mountains, down through the valleys, up through the mountains again and down through the valleys - a real switchback ride and you'd have thought that us falang confined to sitting in the aisle on small plastic stools would have felt the effects of the journey; but, no - it was the locals who were making mad lunges at the window to deposit their breakfasts onto the road and the side of the bus. It's their own fault; they know it's a long distance and they should have eased off on the sticky rice and hens feet that are poked through the windows for sale at every single stop.

Vang Viang is another peaceful, beautiful village on the river but without the modernity of Luang Phabang. For example, none of the roads are named. What it does have is plenty of things for travellers to do. On one day we hired bikes and cycled 6km to Poukhart cave which is set about 60m up the cliff and has a statue of a reclinging Buddha inside. More to the point it has a beautiful, deep, turquoise river running past the foot of the cliff with a tree hanging over the water and a rope hanging from the main branch. Swinging jumps into the river? It would be rude not to! There was an organic vegetarian restaurant in the town which was the scene for breakfast and most dinners, not including the evening we went to the Pizza restaurant (owned by a falang) and had fantastic pizzas while listening to the first Natacha Atlas album.

Another day we walked 3km east of the town and into a small village. We bought the entire stock of the drinks vendor - two 7-ups and a Sprite - and sat down to drink them. We bacame aware of about 50 children staring at us through a fence, so we said "sabai-di!" (hello) and they all scarpered. They returned shortly afterwards and then proceeded to follow us from a safe distance as we walked round the village. On the edge of the village as we all said "sabai-di!" (goodbye) to them, they stayed and cheerily waved back at us. This went on for as long as it took us to walk out of sight (about 5 minutes and a few hundred metres). Turning round, waving and shouting sabai-di would elicit a bunch of scraggy little village kids waving and shouting sabai-di back at us. It was a heartwarming encounter.

However, the best bit of the whole few days we stayed there, and without a doubt a highlight of my trip so far, was tubing. You go to one of the many shops in the town providing such a service and lay down your 5000 kip (about 40 pence). In return you get an inner tube of a tractor tyre, a tuk-tuk drive 2km up the road and a drop-off next to the river. Then you sit in your tube and float back into town. The river is fairly shallow and fairly slow. In fact, I reckon it took us about 2 hours to to the route and I know your maths can calculate the speed. To be sat in a gargantuan rubber ring, under a sunny blue sky and drifting down stream at a very leisurely pace has got to be a good thing!

From there it was on to the capital Vientiane. There's not much to tell of Vientiane apart from that it is packed with Toyota Land Cruisers all sporting the logo of a different United Nations NGO's. We had a sightseeing day touring round the Wats and other attractions. The find of the city was a small, open-air bar selling litres of draft BeerLao (a truly wonderful drink) at a mind-boggling 5000 kip - 40 pence of real money and the same as a tube down the river in Vang Viang except that it doesn't last anywhere near as long. Many hours were spent in that particular bar (the name of which escapes me) and many 5000 kips handed over, especially as every meal seemed to cost 5000 kip as well.

We also found a big wad of cash on the street simply by tripping over it. The notes were wrapped into a block about 30cm deep. We eagerly took it to the bank to make sure we wouldn't be arrested for keeping it and they said it was ours to do what we wanted with it. Unfortunately it was a pile of 500 kip notes (each worth about 4 pence) but it still added up to 60 US Dollars worth of free cash! Paid for my BeerLao t-shirt anyway, with change to spare for more than a few litres of the stuff!

With a few days left before my flight to Vietnam, I decided to nip down to the far south of Lao and see if I could get to the Wat Phu Khmer ruins at Champasak. Time was against me and so I had to take a bus all the way to Pakse. I got on it at 8.30am and I got off it at 3.30am the following morning. It was just my luck that the roads that far aren't very good. Well, they are, but they're still being completed so the buses drive to the side of these wonderful flat tarmaced highways, in the bumpy, dusty tracks alongside them. Add in poor suspension, open or ill-fitting windows and gaping holes in the floor of the bus and its no wonder I was orange and sore when I got there. Now, it just so happens that the transport system in Lao insn't really geared up to travellers on a strict time-budget. There are three buses from Pakse to Champasak for the ruins. They all leave in the morning. There are three buses back. They also all leave in the morning. So the only way I could have got to see them was to stay overnight at Champasak and I didn't have time. So I got back on the bus and returned to Vientiane. This time it wasn't so bad as all the windows on the return bus were in one piece and there weren't any rust holes in the floor so I didn't get orange again.

From there I headed out to the airport and placed my trust and safety in the hands of Lao Aviation and their flight to Hanoi..."

I don't know about dictatorship, Dave, but it was a wonderful country to visit. If I can drag out any old photos I'll extend the length of this posting even more...