When Sara and I were boarding our bus from Laos to the Thai border, we encountered the Asian way of reserving seats. Namely that if your butt is on a seat, that seat is yours. Sara and I realised this and planted on two seats but three other westerners did not and spent a long while stood outside the bus angrily declaring how they had reserved seats while a steady stream of Laos walked past onto the bus. Only one of them made it on in the end...
Cows are remarkably road safety conscious in Laos. You hoot and they all hurry to the side of the road to carry on walking single file to wherever it is they are headed.
We spent our first evening in Laos wandering around Luang Namtha. This was the town we were using as a brief stop before heading onto Thailand. I say town but if I use that word I now feel obliged to describe Kirby Muxloe as a global megalopolis. Only about half the roads were concrete and the rest were dirt and stones, which made them rather uncomfortable to ride over. The houses were generally wooden huts scattered around with the odd smart brick house or shop. In between grew various leafy plants and trees so the whole place felt strangely rural for a town. We stayed at the Manychan guesthouse, which was rather nice after China! I judge a country by it's public toilets and Laos was clean and had loo roll! Although normally you had to flush it by pouring water yourself...
It was fairly easy to see that the vast majority of Laotians live by farming alone as there were so few businesses in town other than the food market. There were the usual motorbike and mobile phone shops but otherwise capitalism has yet to arrive. Except, that is, for the abundance of small hotels and restaurants aimed at westerners and Chinese... Speaking of the Chinese, we came across several signs that meant that they are around in Laos investing and developing. Some Greater Mekong Region Development Programme or similar shifty sounding scheme. The EU does not appear to be far behind either, judging by the number of primary schools with their name on it. This annoyed me slightly as I feel that it is clearly better for a country to develop in its own way, at its own pace. Sure it sounds better for them to learn from our superior knowhow but I think it's better for them to make their own mistakes else how will they learn? Plus if they do it themselves they get all the benefit whereas at the moment, China is the one making all the money!
Luang Namtha has an annoying habit of broadcasting over loudspeakers at 7am. I don't know what they were saying, but I'm sure it's nothing that couldn't have waited...
On our one full day in Laos we hired two bikes and set off exploring. We had got up pretty early, partly due to the bloody loudspeakers and partly due to the fact that we wanted to miss the midday heat, and hired two basic sit up bikes with no gears. They were much better than mountain bikes though as they were lovely and light so easy to peddle over long distances. They had baskets on the front and I felt very old-fashioned on them! Laos before 10:30am was very misty and chilly so as we cycled to the bus station for tickets the next day we actually got a bit cold. One eery feeling we got was that with all the dew soaked vegetation and flat fields, it felt bizarrely like Fenland in the UK... cue a joke about similar levels of technological advancement:p
We got some tickets at the bus station and then headed off down some tracks to various villages. The villages were small and again just huts amongst the jungle. Old women would be preparing vegetables while the men repaired buildings or motorbikes. The children were running around with the chickens, dogs and piglets and occasionally ran up to us yelling hello, or sabaidee. I'd reply with a sabaidee and they'd yell happily at a westerner using Lao. The fields were mostly rice paddies with the odd water buffalo having a wallow. The main thing I noticed, however, was the noise. A continual cacophony of shouting, barking, hammering and birdsong. All of this, of course, made more obvious by the complete lack of any traffic or machinery. Strange.
At half ten the mist just suddenly cleared and it began to heat up. Sara and I eventually, after a bumpy and sweaty slog, arrived at a waterfall. We paid the laotian who had been enterprising enough to realise sitting near a stream taking entrance fees was preferable to working in a field, and headed up. It wasn't a very impressive waterfall but we sat down and ate our lunch in its shadow. Eventually three young boys appeared with baskets and little spear throwers to hunt fish. First they spent a little while sharpening their metal tipped arrows on rocks and then one of them put on his diving goggles and peered into the water. With his long legs he looked like a little frog bending over. Eventually he came back up with a tiny fish speared on his arrow, which he put in his basket. Success. The boys carried on looking like they were having a great time splashing around.
After a brief foray higher upstream, and a sit down which I used to murder any bugs that came near me, we headed back to town.
That evening we had dinner at a special minority restaurant. Whereas Chinese food consists of scraps of stuff stir fried, Laos food is all mashed up into a paste. It's rather good, especially the fish and salad, but it often gets served with clear, gelatinous noodles made from starch. These are not pleasant to eat...
The chef had studied western food for three years apparently. Does one need that long to know how to make burger and chips?
That evening we went to the river and sat on the bank people-watching. We were near a ford so at one point a Laos teenager was transferring heavy looking sacks from side to side and later on, a father crossed with two small daughters hanging off him. He dropped them off opposite and left them scraping something while he disappeared. They kept glancing shyly at us and saying hello. A few old ladies washed clothes and some small boys splashed around. One had a toy gun and shot at us. I pretended to surrender.
If you ever get tired of life, I would recommend Luang Namtha. It is a very peaceful place. The inhabitants have got lovely weather, beautiful surroundings and a good supply of food and drink, judging by the number of raucous family parties. If all you need in life are these basics, you would be very happy in Laos. Until China's Greater Mekong Development Committee turn up...
The next day we rose early and headed to the bus station. A rather touching moment occurred while we were waiting to board as four grandmothers dressed in traditional Black Thai clothes beckoned us over and started feeding us sticky rice, which was not only tasty but needed as we had not got enough kip, laos money, to buy breakfast. (we since discovered we had been trying to live on less than half the recommended daily budget for one person, let alone 2... Jones family genes coming through there!). Sara gave them some chocolate as thanks which they regarded as suspicious before trying and being pleasantly surprised. Then aboard. With us were the grannies (one with a fake Louis Vuitton bag lol), uni students with funky hairdos, two monks and another disgruntled westerner who was unfortunately slightly too big for Laos seats... After a 5 hour bus ride through the mountain forests we reached the flat valley of the Mekong river at Huay Xai. I always feel the Mekong should be prefixed with "the once mighty" as it is obviously much diminished from former days. The original high water mark is just visible through terraces that have crept down. The Chinese have dammed it upriver for electricity, you see...
We dropped the monks off at a village and the driver drove off without realising the younger monk had climbed up to retrieve his luggage. Probably the only time I will ever say "stop! There's a monk on the roof!"
Women aren't allowed to touch monks. If they do, the monk has to do several days of ritual cleansing.
At Huay Xai, Sara and I boarded a thin, narrow boat and, after a few minutes afloat, we were treading gingerly on ex-riverbed into Thailand...
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