It’s night-time again and we’ve just had dinner, so here’s a quick update.
Incidentally, if some of the words in this e-mail have too many e’s in them, it’s because my keyboard has a dodgy ‘e’ key that keeps sticking.
Yesterday, we went on a couple of excursions, first to the Pak Ou caves and then to the Kuang Si waterfalls. Both were well worth the effort.
We chartered a local bloke and his jumbo (which is a larger version of the Thai tuk-tuk) and endured a noisy and bumpy ride about 27 km north of Luang Prabang. There, we took a ferry across to the caves, where many statues and other images of Budda have been placed there over the centuries. Very impressive.
After some lunch, our jumbo driver took us back along the road we had previously travelled, continuing past Luang Prabang until we were about 32 km south of the city. There, we visited the waterfalls, which were also very beautiful.
The bumpy and seemingly interminable ride made Sarah travelsick, but she felt better once we got out and after she had taken some ginger tablets.
Back in town, we went for dinner and called it a day. Our jumbo driver had driven us around the entire day, waiting for us wherever we got out to look around. The total cost of this day-long taxi service was $15, which is very little to us, but more than a month’s salary to the average Lao.
Today, we decided to spend the day walking around Luang Prabang in the scorching, searing heat of the cool season (hmm; cool, yeah, right). We visited a whole string of temples (known here as ‘wats’), went shopping at the town market (where my haggling skills came in very useful again), visited temples, temples and yet more temples, including one at the top of a steep flight of stairs, that afforded us a fantastic view of the city and the Mekong.
Lunch for me was fried Giant Mekong Catfish with garlic, an interesting dish, but not one I’d particularly feel inclined to order again.
We actually managed to find a sumptuous Lao restaurant this evening, with all the trappings one might expect in the west. Consequently, it was hugely expensive by Lao standards, so we ended up paying $5 for two main dishes, a starter and three drinks. That’s about twice what you’d normally expect to pay out here.
Tomorrow, we’re going to do some more shopping and looking around town, but then we’re off to the airport for our 17:00 flight to the capital, Vientiane (pronounced more like Wieng Chan — try saying Vientiane with a French accent and you’ll get an idea of where the Romanised spelling came from).
Fortune would have it that we’ll be arriving in Vientiane during Bun Pha That Luang, which is a festival that takes place annually. There should be lots of fireworks and music.
Nevertheless, the reports we’ve been hearing suggest that we won’t want to spend all that long in the city, so we have to decide what our next move will be. We’ll either book an onward flight to Hanoi, Vietnam or possibly book a domestic flight to Phonsavan, as we’d both really like to see the enigmatic Plain of Jars.
Phonsavan was incredibly heavily bombed by the US during the ‘Secret War’ of the late 60s and early 70s. The Lao PDR is so poor, that people have — quite incredibly — used the fallen ordnance to build homes, repair fences, etc. As such, that part of the country boasts a whole architecture of bomb material, that I think would be fascinating to see.
Apparently, it’s not uncommon for people to use entire unexploded bombs as girders, rafters, fenceposts, etc. in their home! Nothing is wasted in this country, not even instruments of death.
As you might expect, unexploded bombs account for countless casualties among the Lao every year, most of them children, who pick up the remnants of cluster bombs, because they look like tennis balls.
If we go to Phonsavan, the trick is to try and leave enough time to see Vietnam reasonably well. In reality, a month is way too short to cover the intinerary that we had envisaged. In hindsight, it would probably have been better to confine this trip to just Thailand and Laos, and see Vietnam on another trip. In fact, I could quite happily spend the whole month in just Laos, as the place is absolutely fascinating and huge areas of it have barely been touched by tourists. I already find myself trying to figure out how long it will be before I can engineer our return, as the Lao people are the friendliest, nicest people I have ever met and Luang Prabang is a wonderful town with a fascinating mix of native Lao and French influences.
The street-stall food treats continue to entice. Deep-fried chicken heads and chicken feet are the latest things to make it into my digital camera; I just can’t imagine how to eat something as hard and crunchy as a chicken’s head, but I don’t think I’d sample one even if I could. They simply don’t look appetising.
Anyway, I suspect we’ll write more from Vientiane, once we’ve found somewhere to stay and oriented ourselves a little. If not, the next message will either be from Phonsavan or Hanoi, assuming we can find Internet access there. So far, finding Net access hasn’t been a problem at all; only the speed in Laos leaves much to be desired.