Laos: The SE Asia ‘Can’t Leave Your Self Behind’ Guide

From A to B – Getting Around

We were in a bus crash in Laos, which rather put us off travelling in buses.  But there’s not much choice in Laos.  There are no trains as far as I’m aware.  The simple truth of the matter is that sometimes you get unlucky, and often there’s very little or nothing you can do to reduce risks.

Please don’t let this put you off.  Laos is an incredible place.  Buses crash everywhere.

Virtually all guesthouses will help you book transport.

Scooters are more expensive to rent in Laos than in Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia, but still make for a good way to get around towns such as Luang Prabang.  As do bicycles, which are much cheaper.

We flew from Luang Prabang to Hanoi in Vietnam to avoid the 24 hour bus ride.  We bought our tickets from a travel agent a few days before travel and they cost us $150 USD each, including a tuk tuk transfer from our guesthouse to the airport.  Surprisingly, it was cheaper to book the ticket via a travel agent than online.   

Where the Magic Probably Won’t Happen - Sleeping

Big white new hotel next to waterfront restaurant, Huay Xai: there are plenty of guesthouses in Huay Xai and they are marginally more expensive than in the rest of Laos.  We stumbled over this place which was new and although slightly more expensive than the other guesthouses was well worth it.  Sadly, I can't remember the name, nor can I find it on the internet.  You can find it by turning right at the top of the hill from the border post, and walking 100 metres, it's on your right.  Comfortable beds, nicely decorated rooms with wooden floorboards, a big bathroom with hot shower, and powerful air conditioning.

Zuela Guesthouse, Luang Nam Tha: Nicely designed wooden building, very near the night market.  Cheap and comfortable rooms.  We had a fan room, rather than AC, and sweated our way through the night.

Nmm nmm nmm – Eating and Drinking

Generally the food in Laos was less impressive than the rest of SE Asia, with the notable exception of bread products.  The colonial French influence is remembered in baguettes that do not suffer from the over-sweet preparation method common to the rest of SE Asia, particularly Thailand.

Le Banneton Cafe, Luang Prabang: A charming colonial-style café serving good salads, great coffee, and even better lemon tarts.

Swedish Bakery, Luang Prabang: I particularly liked place for its excellent sandwiches and pizzas, and its friendly staff.  I also have a great fondness for Sweden and the Swedes generally, and it was a nostalgic surprise to see Snus in the refrigerator, nestled besides cans of Coke and bottled water.

Fruit shakes, Night Market, Luang Prabang: Small stalls selling good-value fruit shakes abound in SE Asia, so this recommendation could apply to the whole region.  Lemon and mint was our favourite.

Beer Lao is, for my money, the best beer in the region.  Cheap and cold it often works out better value to drink beer than soda which is surely the key indicator of a civilised society.    

Night market, Luang Nam Tha: a small night market focused predominantly on food.  Great for carnivores, and you can buy barbecued meat by the pound, or by the bird.  We also had some excellent banana bread.

Writing about the night market reminds me of the incredibly obnoxious traveller we experienced there, a cliché that would make baby boomers choke on their scotch (which they were drinking in the drawing room of their mortgage free houses – thanks very much you lot!).  So cartoon-ish was he in his pronouncements and lack of self-awareness that I was certain we were being filmed by some art students for their project ‘Wanker around the World’.  He was a Brit, decked out with the mandatory linen trousers, bandanna and wooden beads, and was travelling alone. Inviting himself to sit at a table with two other couples he proceeded to talk at them, nonstop, for half an hour.  Helen and I looked at each other from across our food-splattered table, fatty fingers raised halfway to our lips, and simultaneously raised our eyebrows.  Is it me, I said, or is that guy the most gigantic arsehole you’ve ever heard?  He really is, she replied. And remember – she’s the nice one.  Here’s a sample of some of his pronouncements to the dumbstruck and overly polite group he’d just interrupted: Yeh, I’ve just been chillin’ with the hill tribes man, I just rock up and sometimes they want money but sometimes they share some smoke with me, and it’s just awesome (LOAD), You guys should get off the trail, start travelling for real (LOCK), so this guy says to me you’re in a drug farm, you better get out of here before they come for you, it was like The Beach dude (FIRE!).  So obnoxious was he that his presence came up, without prompting, in a conversation we were having with a great couple – Jos and Maria – 200 miles down the round in Luang Prabang.  These poor souls had the misfortune to have a room above his and they recounted how he would sit outside his room and just invite passers-by to sit with him, and then talk at them until they managed to escape.  The fire with which the normally gentle Jos told this story suggested that maybe there’s a shallow grave with a bandanna sticking out of the earth in Luang Nam Tha.

Other stuff

The Gibbon Experience is awesome.

I dedicated most of a previous posting to it, so shall only include the logistical information here.  It’s expensive at $270 USD per person for a 3 day, 2 night, trip.  Worth it though. 

A three hour ride up the road from Huay Xai takes you to the jungle entrance before a very short trek to waiting 4x4s ferry you further into the jungle, weather permitting.  Then you hike for about an hour, picking up harnesses along the way. 

There are several tree-houses scattered around the jungle, not that close to each other.  Most tree-houses sleep between 6 and 8.  We had one to ourselves and although this ‘honeymoon’ treatment was nice we also regretted not having the chance to socialise with the others in the group, for this is a sociable experience.  You get to see most of the other tree-houses as you trek and zip through the jungle.  The trekking requires a moderate level of fitness, but the guides are accommodating to this.  Needless to say, you need to have a stomach for heights, or at least the conviction to overcome any vertigo.  There are leeches in the jungle, but nothing that a pair of socks worn over your trousers won’t fix.

The tree-houses have mattresses on the floor for sleeping, blankets, and a black out mosquito net.  There is a rainwater shower.  The jungle chorus can be loud so a pair of earplugs may be helpful, as will bug dope. 

Food (breakfast, lunch and dinner) is zipped in by the guides to your tree-house.  It wouldn’t win any Michelin stars but considering the location it’s pretty good.  We had plenty of food but the tree-houses with more guests commented that they felt short-changed by the amount of food they received.   Take a water bottle in – the rainwater from the taps is fine to drink, and dehydration is a serious risk in the humidity.  There is also a cool-box in each tree-house that holds snacks and a bottle of Lao wine.  Never realised Laos produced wine? There’s a reason for this.

View from a zip line to one of the tree houses

Kouang Si Waterfalls, near Luang Prabang

These waterfalls were a very pleasant surprise.  Beautiful blue water to swim in and rope-swings to get the adrenaline pumping.

We hired a scooter to get there and back ($25 USD per day), but it is more common to share a tuk-tuk.  It is also possible to bicycle there if you’re feeling fit.  We regretted not doing this, and there’ll always be a tuk tuk driver willing to take you and your bike home should the return trip be too daunting.

There’s also a bear sanctuary there which is an interesting diversion. Go early in the day to avoid the crowds.

Kayaking, Luang Nam Tha

We had a great day paddling down the river, notwithstanding the near constant arguments about who was steering in our two person kayak.  It’s easy going, and there’s plenty of opportunity to enjoy the scenery. It cost us about $30 USD per person for a one day trip.

Included in the trip is stop offs in minority villages.  This is also common in the hiking options.  I find these stop-offs excruciatingly uncomfortable; and they make me feel like a transient and nosy voyeur, not least because I’m the umpteenth tourist to have stumbled into a community and poked my camera into someone’s home.  I know some people love this type of thing, and I’m not making a value judgement; it’s just not my cup of tea.

Activities organised out of Luang Nam Tha are priced based on the number of participants, normally to a maximum group size of 8.  The more people, the cheaper the per person price.  Noticeboards outside the tour offices tell you which activities have people already signed up. 

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Risks worth taking

Laos, Huay Xai

There are some risks one can choose to take, calculated risks, risks that you feel you understand the potential consequences of and choose to take anyway.  And there are other risks that one takes every day – crossing the road, plugging in a kettle, getting on a bus – that through repetition cease to be perceived as risks, and become normalised. And a bloody good job too because a life lived at the beck and call of risk is not a life, but an ordeal.  Living a life devoid of risk is not living.  However, taking one of these normalised risks and this risk resulting in the silent plea of I want to live, does rather make one re-evaluate the risk-reward calculation.  It was this plea that crossed my mind, surprisingly slowly and serenely, as the bus we were on spun in two full circles on a greasy mountain road between Huay Xai and Lung Nam Tha in northern Laos.  Time really does slow down in moments such as these, and watching the green Lao countryside spin past me, desperately trying to lock eye contact with Helen, there was time to compile a list of possible outcomes; (a) we grind to a halt, (b) we flip over, (c) we spin off the edge, or (d) we flip then we go off the edge.  A macabre version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Needless to say, none of these outcomes were really part of my mental risk-assessment process when I booked the bus tickets, or got on the rickety public bus, or silently assessed the driver’s skills as we sped round sharp corners.  Maybe these potential outcomes will be more prominent in my mind next time I get on a bus.

The fact that I am writing this sat outside a book store in the delightful royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang, and not from a hospital bed or from beyond the grave (m-hah, m-hah, m-hah), suffering from no more than some volatile bowels and a mild hangover will tell you that the eventual outcome was, in fact, (a), final answer.  We ground to a halt on a patch of gravel by the side of the road, the friction stopping our slide towards the mountain edge, the only real damage done to the serenity of us and our Lao travelling companions.  Given that I’ve only just mastered the Lao for ‘thank you’ I figured it pointless to engage the driver in a lecture on the correct way to drive down wet mountain roads, limiting myself to a sigh and the plea, translated with conviction by the other Lao passengers, to ‘bloody well slow down’.  I’m not sure if they also translated my muttered rejoinder of ‘you fucking idiot’, but a look can tell a thousand words and from the daggers being pointed at the driver from everyone on the bus it was abundantly clear that a tip was out of the question.  I even broke my rule of ‘always say thank you to the driver when getting off a bus’, a rule that even the sink-hole of rudeness, London, hadn’t previously shaken me from.

The irony of this incident is that for the previous three days we had been engaged in an activity that posed far more of a visceral and immediate risk than catching a bus ever could.  We had been deep in the jungle, fighting off leeches, living in a tree house twenty metres off the ground, and zip-lining through the jungle canopy.  The Gibbon Experience is a popular activity on the South East Asia traveller circuit, situated just over the Thai-Laos border in the northwest of Laos, which despite the $270 USD per person price tag is booked virtually year round.  We hadn’t booked it, of course - we’re flexible, just going with the flow man, letting each country tell us what we should do, not some traveller’s bible guide book.  I jest, of course - to put it another, more honest and less pretentious way, we’re disorganised.  But, bus journeys notwithstanding, we’re also quite lucky.  We managed to secure the last couple of places on a trip leaving two days after we had crossed from Thailand into Laos, in a fun group of sixteen.  Well, mainly fun.  I didn’t take too kindly to being told off by a young Sloanie girl for supposedly killing an ant, when (1) I hadn’t, and (2) it’s a bloody ant, not a puppy.  This is the same girl who had just made a fuss about the fact that none of the baguettes we had been provided with for lunch were vegetarian, but instead of removing the chicken like the other vegetarians in the group had eaten it anyway.  Perhaps the principles of vegetarianism don’t apply in the jungle. I have no idea given that I grew up a long time ago made the lifestyle choice to be a carnivore.  I’m joking! A cheap joke at that. You can wipe the pieces of tofu burger you indignantly spat out off your computer screen.  I said none of this to our sloanie friend, of course, choosing diplomacy over conflict.  My response of cutting her safety rope was, I think, a far more effective approach.  Still joking.   

               

Lunch completed, we trekked on through the jungle, sweating more than I ever have before as the jungle wrapped its humid sleeping bag around my body, stopping eventually at a wooden platform surrounded by trees.  Waiting my turn I checked and double-checked the fit of my harness then meticulously attached my roller and safety line to the steel zip line.  Now, I’ve zip lined before, and it’s fun, but this was something else.  Shooting out from the trees I was suddenly suspended 100ft from the jungle floor, the rolling landscape all around me, the wind buffeting my face as I sped across the valley and onto the platform on the other side. Some shout ‘woo-hoo’ at times like these.  I don’t, I’m rendered dumb.  Getting back my power of speech I turned to Helen and muttered the phrase that hitherto has driven me nuts for its lazy and inarticulate over-use; ‘that was awesome’.  But this really was awesome.  Most things aren’t (well, unless you’re a complete simpleton who is genuinely awe-inspired by the minutiae of everyday life), but zip-ling across a forest canopy is.

Sleeping in a tree-house that you enter via a zip-line is pretty good too.  Certainly a step up from Premier Inn.  But I really shouldn’t be too dismissive about the over-use of the word ‘awesome’, brandishing its proponents as simpletons.  For this was the conversation Helen and I had when we awoke after our first night sleeping in the din of the jungle chorus, high up above the ground: 

   

Helen: How did you sleep?

Me: Not great, it was pretty loud, some of those insects sound like zombies.  I spent most of the night devising defence strategies for how we could repel a zombie attack on the tree house.  We’d be pretty screwed I concluded - I’ve only got a Swiss army pen knife, and if they are like those zombies from 28 Days Later then they’d be close enough to spit blood on you before you could effectively use the blade anyway.

Helen: Uh-huh, that’s not very realistic. I slept pretty well, although I did convince myself that one of the noises was a tiger, and it was laying outside the mosquito net.  But then I told myself it was probably a friendly tiger and that helped me get back to sleep.

Who’s the simpleton now?

 

So, what’s the moral to this story?  Do you take risks to experience something that is genuinely awesome? Do you think more carefully before taking a normalised risk, knowing that one day that risk may end your life? Do you live in fear, or do you live more freely in blissful ignorance? Jeez, I don’t know, I’m a simpleton.  Maybe you just live, and every so often say a silent thank you that you, and those you love, are alive and that there are moments in life that can, just sometimes, be awesome.

Left: One of the tree houses.  Right: Dawn breaks over the jungle.

Laos public buses - scary.