Travel Log 17

After a 24 hours bus journey where we stopped at the border for 4 hours waiting for it to open I arrived in Vientiane, Laos. Here I stayed with Guy an American-Laos that now resides in Vientiane. Vientiane is a quiet, sleepy capital where we spent most of the time in cafés and bars, eating and sleeping. We also visited a few night clubs where the local ladyboys play (Guy is gay and so quite a few of his friends are ladyboys).  Unfortunately during this time my cut that I got when I fell off my bicycle in Saigon got infected and I had to visit the Australian embassy clinic for the doctor to prescribe some antibiotics – unfortunately I had to fork out a fair sum for the consultation and had I asked beforehand I may have gone to the cheaper clinic. Hey ho hopefully I can claim it back on my insurance.

So after I got my visa for China I took the bus to Luang Prabang a beautiful French colonial town, porbably the best preserved town I have visited on all of my travels. Here at 6:30 every morning people gather to give alms to the monks and snap them parading in the morning sun. The town is bordered by two rivers, one of which is the Mekong. Every evening a market blocks the road and the women from surrounding villages come to sell scarves, jewellery, umbrellas and other bits and bobs. After spending a few nights in Luang Prabang I took a bus to Nong Khiew on the Nam Ou river. Here I caught the boat to Muang Ngoi a quiet carless village which can only be accessed by river.

In the evening I joined some Australian travellers that were with a Lao fella that was offering every passerby Lao Lao – a homemade spirit drunk by most locals some of which is ok some of which is foul. We also joined the restaurant’s owners for dinner where “King Lao Lao” as he calls himself fried up some wonderful fish that he had caught earlier that day.

The following morning I joined other travellers as we waited for the boat upstream to fill up and once it did off we went through some amazing mountain landscapes and past some villages with people fishing, picking river weed, swimming, bathing and using the river for many other things. The boat arrived after four hours in Muang Khua. Here we saw the locals sort the grass they use to make brooms and play bamboo foot volleyball which they were amazingly good at with martial art like skills. In this town there was also a scary suspension bridge that had unattached metal sheets to walk across at a height of about 20 metres above ground.

Then the next morning I took a bus to Udom Xai. There isn’t really much to do in Udom Xai but I stayed a couple of nights to figure out what to do next whether to go straight into China on the bus to Kunming or to see a few more places in Laos. Having found out that my couchsurfing host in Chengdu, China would be on holiday until a few after I had planned to get to Chengdu I decided to stay a little longer in Laos. So I took the bus to Luang Namtha where I hired a motorbike straight away and rode the 2 hour drive through the mountains to Muang Sing. The drive was wonderful as there were hardly any traffic and every child I past waved and said hello. Just outside Muang Sing there are large watermelon farms and the workers were packing boxes due to be send to China by the side of the road. The tractors the farmers use to cart the watermelons around are strange contraptions – they are like a cross between a lawnmower and a small tractor.

In Muang Sing I met a Swedish fella and two Polish girls.  The Swedish guy had bought a Russian Minsk (a Russian motorbike) in Hanoi and was going to travel across SE Asia on it. The day after I arrived I, the Swede and one of the polish sisters went for a motorbike ride across dirt tracks and small streams to the Chinese border. The 2 hour ride took us through ethnic villages and fields and through some pretty landscapes. At one point one of the stream stopped us in our tracks as it seemed to be quite deep. Ladislav (the Swede) went first and got through with ease, so I backed up a bit to allow some momentum to get through the stream. However although I made it through without falling over by scooter was much lower to the ground than Ladislav’s Minsk and I got a little wet. Luckily it was the middle of the day and I dried off pretty quickly. The next morning I had a few hours before I had to ride back to Luang Namtha to return the bike so Ladislav and I took a ride through different ethnic villages. These were pretty interesting and some of the older locals still wore there traditional dress. Unfortunately as soon as you stop they rush up to you to try and sell you various bits and bobs that they had made. The route we had planned was supposed to take me to the road I had to be on to get back to Luang Namtha, however since we were effectively riding through fields and there of course weren’t any signs we ended up going around in a circle so I had to zoom back through the mountains to get the bike back in time.

Then the next morning I took the bus to China.