urbaneer: Laid back Laos – beware of the bombies!

Laos: 2 July - 18 July 2014

We managed to do an incredible amount in our short time in Laos and we feel that we were really able to soak up the Laotian spirit. The lonely planet references a comment made by the French during their period of rule over Indochina, saying that ‘the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians tend the rice and the Laotians listen to it grow’ in referring to the laid back attitude of the country. In fact Lonely Planet also mentions an important aspect of Laotion Culture – that of avoiding any undue psychological stress and everything needing to have a little ‘mooan’ aka fun. This definitely shines through to this day and one has to just go along with things, despite the fact that it can get a little frustrating at times.

Laos, about the size of Britain with only around 7 million inhabitants, is the only landlocked country in South East Asia. To this day it is wholly dependent on foreign aid. The country suffered from its unfortunate geographical location next to Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. Around the time of the Vietnam War America waged a secret war against Laos. Some 580,000 bombing missions were flown littering the countryside with clusterbombs. An estimated 1/3^rd of these ‘bombies’ as they are locally referred to, never exploded and are still to this day posing a major threat to people’s daily lives in remote rural areas. It is not uncommon that farmers accidentally hit one when ploughing their fields or planting their rice. The CIA had kept this was secret from Congress and the American people for almost 12 years until the 1970’s. It was also 'easier' to drop any excess bombs on Laos than to try land bombers with any remaining payload when returning from missions.

Our itinerary in Laos consisted of:

3 days in a jungle tree-house 'zipping' on zip-wires high (up to 100m) in the jungle canopy and observing black crested gibbons. We were lucky to see them once on our first day of arrival at the tree-house. To get to this remote part of the world we drove 1hr out of Huay Xai and then another hour through a river and up/down a dirt track past three villages and numerous slash and burn jungle valleys, before trekking for another 2hrs to our ‘open air’ accommodation. Whilst it was immensely exciting to sleep under just a mosquito sheet in a tree-house surrounded by jungle noises, it was also slightly scary as once the guide had left us there was no way to communicate to the outside world. Zipping around was great and a lot of fun, the food was remarkably good, the water was drinkable in the tree house thanks to filtering and the outdoor shower/toilet an open-air experience, as were the spiders and critters scouring around the tree-house at night. On the final day the tropical rain was torrential and so we trekked back in the mud, got soaked through to our underpants; Astrid’s fancy high tech ultralight weight waterproof rain jacket didn't even remotely pass the tropical rain test, failing miserably and disappointingly within the first 30min, as did the waterproof trousers we had been carrying around for 5 years in their one moment of glory. Once we arrived back on the main road we were wet and cold and still had another hour to drive back to Huay Xai. The first hot shower in days back that Daauw home (a social project in Huay Xai) felt like the best shower ever. It has taken three weeks for our boots to dry out completely! Getting to the Gibbon Experience was also an adventure in itself as Laos airlines had cancelled our direct flight to Huay Xai and instead rerouted us to Luang Nahmta, some 5hrs drive away. They agreed to organise transport for us from there to our original destination. We expected a car would take us, instead we were stuffed onto an already overcrowded local minibus where we sat for the next 4+hrs staring at the countryside with the locals seemingly very bemused by our presence.
2 days of cruising down theMekong on a long-tail slow-boat is probably one of the most relaxing things you can do in life. The passing scenery is beautiful, lush verdant green rolling hills, the occasional village on the river banks, rocks and rapids in the brown murky waters of the Mekong. We loved it – even though we were on the boat for 8+ hours both days we were surprised every time when we had to get off ‘already’ at the end of the day. On the second day we stopped by the Pak Au caves, a hide out for a king during a war. Compared to similar cave temples in Sri Lanka (Dambulla) and Burma (Pho Win Tau), the Laotion caves were a little underwhelming.
4 days in Luang Prabang where the French influence on the country is hard to miss and very welcome. Picturesque tree-lined leafy lanes with quaint colonial buildings full of boutique café’s and eateries and according to a friend’s recommendation, and verified by us, the best croissants in all of Asia. Luang Prabang is also home of the daily Buddhist ritual Tak Bat or alms-giving. Every morning at dawn a procession of monks walk through Luang Prabang with their begging bowls begging food from the villagers – in return the monks bless the alms-givers. This meaningful quiet daily ritual is a joy to watch.
1 day on a 10hr bus ride to Phonsavan and then 1 day in Phonsavan to marvel at the ‘plain of jars’. Despite having booked a group tour the previous day on arrival, the following morning saw us presented with a ‘problem with your tour’, the other people on our tour had withdrawn the previous evening after we had signed up resulting in the operator cancelling the tour, but neglecting to tell us until 8.30am the following morning, with us getting ready to be collected at 9.00am. We were presented with a neat ‘fait accomplit’ from the tour agents of Phonsavan and shoved onto the ‘private’ tour of the French family we met on the 10hr bus-ride, much to their fairly obvious displeasure, our general bemusement and shared resignation. Comme ci, comme ca. The tour took us to the 3 jar sites and the old provincial capital abandoned during the secret war. There are over 90 known jar sites according to wikipedia and only 7 have been cleared of UXO’s and are open to the public. Sites 1,2 and 3 are most ‘popular’ as they are relatively close together and usually visited together. The stone jars themselves are a mystery to everyone. It is estimated that they are ¬2000 years old, but no one knows who created them and for what purpose. The most likely explanation is that they were burial jars. In any event they are incredibly beautiful and evocative as they stand in clusters strewn across the landscape. Site one has hundreds of stone jars and the biggest weighing several tons! Site 2&3 are smaller on a hill side setting. We really only came to see the jars, so the extended trip to the old capital was an added bonus as requested by the French family, albeit not a particularly special one as there only was ‘yet another’ Buddha and stupa to see. Laos is and was great, but for Ian after three months travelling in Asia, temple fatigue had become chronic.
3 days in Vientiane were spent enjoying great local Lao food, a cycle tour a la Ian with the help of Lonely Planet (including the Victory monument' which was built with concrete donated from the US and intended for a new runway), a traditional Lao massage and some free open air aerobics on the banks of Mekong, and reach 2, 3, 4!