Stunning French colonial architecture, thirty temples, excellent patisseries, and one great bar. Brilliant times in Luang Prabang. Laos is so quiet, peaceful and charming I am completely bowled over by the place. And although the country is slowly detaching itself from communism, I still haven't seen a billboard advertising Coke or McDonalds. Just great. Hired a bicycle and explored the area. I climbed up Pousey Mountain (stop laughing at the back!) to the temple and saw what has to be one of my favourite views of all time... miles upon miles of green mountains, kastes and undeveloped land... the Mekong twisting its way south... and the calm town beneath us. Why has it taken me so long to visit Laos?..
Not a great many people know that Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of modern warfare. During the Vietnam war the USA secretly carpet-bombed the north eastern part of the country - more bombs fell on Laos than fell on the whole of Europe during World War II. It is said that two million tons of bombs fell on Laos between 1964 and 1973, more than half a ton for every man, woman and child. In fact the war on Laos was such a secret that the country's name was never included in any of the original US records. I heard that some parts of the country were so heavily bombed that they now resemble a lunar landscape. There are still a vast amount of bombs lying around Laos, and many of them failed to explode when dropped initially. So even thirty three years after the war, people are still being maimed and killed by unexploded bombs and landmines. Laos declared itself neutral during the US-Vietnam conflict.
The town of
Vang Vieng by contrast was just dreadful. It was like Las Vegas, a neon nightmare dumped in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place where seemingly every family has opened up their homes to tourists to earn some money, and where tourists wander around half sloshed and half dressed. Restaurants offer egg and chips and many of them loudly play entire series of
Friends around the clock to entice trade. So you can actually sit in a cafe having breakfast and hear several different episodes of
Friends booming through the walls
at the same time. Having said all of this about Vang Vieng I enjoyed myself here - the surrounding area is just incredible. It is surrounded by kastes and rivers and there are freshwater lagoons to swim in and jump into from high branches of overhanging trees. You can sit in a giant inflatable tractor tube and float downriver and even pick up a beer or two along the way from a makeshift bar. You can have a great deal of fun in Vang Vieng. A few late nights by the campfire with excellent people having a lot of laughs. Two new additions to our circle of friends; Naveh and Nir. Two new akshellis from Israel!
They say that in Vietnam they grow rice. In Cambodia, they watch the rice grow. In Laos, they listen to the rice grow...
A five hour minivan journey takes me to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It is the quietest capital city I have visited. My room, costing five dollars a night, is up on the fourth floor of a dingy hotel. It is quite grubby and dull, with cold running water, a flaking ceiling and a stained bedsheet resembling the Turin Shroud. I spent a couple of good nights out with the crowd at some very strange Laos nightclubs, including one named The Dungeon on the third floor of a riverfront high rise hotel (I recently read John Simpson and he notes that communist hotel foyers are enormous and full of wasted space - he is quite correct) where they played a very odd mix of tunes which included Madonna, the Byrds, the Village People and Blur...
On the journey south from Vientiane we shared a long and dusty tuk tuk ride with a German guy who was telling me how he was on his way to Burma. He had been before and we discussed the situation there and he kept saying "you cannot go to Burma without supporting the regime... but it is so cheap and so untouched... I don't think it matters... there is corruption and human rights violations all over the world." I think he is correct in saying that there is corruption and human rights problems everywhere but I'm not sure that I could sleep well in my Burmese hotel knowing that the very room I was sleeping in was built with the hands of a political prisoner under forced labour. Aung San Suu Kyi asks tourists not to come to Burma until it is a free country with a democratically elected government. I hear there are ways of travelling in Burma without neccesarilly having to support the junta and I think if you do not go, you cannot see, therefore you can't create awareness. I would like to visit Burma but I have a lot of thinking to do first. In the meantime I have joined the Burma Campaign UK which is an excellent charity which puts pressure on politicians within the UK and the EU to do more about Burma. On December 16th the first UN Security Council debate about Burma took place. I find it astounding that with knowledge of the human rights record and the nature of internal politics within Burma, that this was only the first time such a discussion has taken place within the UN.
I've been reflecting lately on how fortunate I am to be travelling with such a great group of people. We all are. These people have been a shot in the arm and seem to have caught me just at the right time. Those who spent time around me during the summertime in England will remember that I was on a complete health kick regarding eating, drinking and attempting to make up for twenty-eight years of inactivity over a period of three months... they will be pleased to hear, for I was perhaps a little preachy about my healthy living, that I have been eating terribly on a daily basis, smoking too many ciggies and drinking nightly (beerlao is the greatest beer in the world) - in fact I have never felt better.
Ah, Bangkok. I quite like it really. Though in general Thailand bores me, I am growing to like it little by little. The mass frenzy of consumerism is quite full-on when you enter from Laos. I find the Thais quite nationalistic - nothing wrong with that of course - but I intuit that it almost borders on the xenophobic. And I find that quite dreadful.
