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| The Beauty of Laos |
Laos ( pronounced Low - like "wow") was never on my radar as a
place to go. I did not know much about
the country and the only mention I remember of it was during the Viet Nam war
during the 70’s. Why it is not big in
people’s minds, I don’t know. It is an
amazing country. It is mountainous and
covered in jungle and absolutely gorgeous.
If you come to Southeast Asia you have to come to Laos.
It has one dubious distinction,
however.
It is the most bombed country in the
world. When I say bombed I mean bombs as in those exploding thingys the
military types throw around in contrast to the states of inebriation the
military types tend to be in. Apparently
during the Vietnam crisis the US dropped an incredible number of bombs on Laos
to the tune of one B52 bomber every 8 minutes for 4 years. About 30% of those bombs did not explode and
are unaccounted for. It makes walking
around the countryside a little like telling your wife that you fancy her best
friend.
On our journey down the Mekong River
we stopped at a Hmong village where they live pretty much as they have for
hundreds of years. It is an agrarian
culture where they grow, harvest and consume everything on site. They pull fish out of the river, vegetables
out of the ground and homes out of the forest.
This village has not seen westerners for a long time, if at all. When
some of the young girls saw us coming they ran off and put on their good
clothes. I thought that was very cute. We toured their school and visited their
village. They were quite shy but allowed
us to take some photos. The children
were so beautiful but it was hard to get good shots of them because they were wary. When you showed them the photo, though, they
were quite thrilled.
They were intensely curious and stood
and stared at us from a distance. A
couple of the young Brits in our group spotted a soccer ball and pretty soon a
match broke out with two of the Hmong boys vs. three of the Brits. That broke the ice a little. They were not a tourist attraction – they did
not really know who we were or what we were doing there but they did not ask
anything of us. I am not sure who was
more curious. There was none of this “exit through the gift shop” atmosphere.
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| A Hmong lady washing the sweet potatoes |
Seeing the Hmong people living their
simple existence made me feel a bit sad.
Perhaps “sad” is not the right word.
They have few possessions and seem to be fine without it and Bangkok,
which is not that far away, has everything and wants more and more. Granted the Hmong work very hard to live as
they do yet they are subject to what we would consider misfortunes but which
they would consider catastrophes. I
would not want to live like that. On the
other hand I don’t want to be constantly grubbing after more and more things at
the expense of less fortunate people. I
am not sure where I am going with that thought – but I thought I would put it
out there. Perhaps they have realized
that taking care of each other is the important thing in life – not the
collection of more and more stuff.
After two days of rollin’ down the
Mighty Mekong we found ourselves in the town of Luang Prabang. Laos has a population of only about six
million people. A great deal of the countryside empty of people and is
populated by jungle and mountains. Luang
Prabang is right in the middle of that.
There are still wild elephants and tigers out there in that jungle- that
is, assuming the bombs have not wiped them out.
We stayed in Luang Prabang for a few
days and on one of those days we went to the Kuang Sii waterfall. It is an incredibly beautiful waterfall and
we all went swimming in the pools. In
Laos, which is a Buddhist country, you should dress modestly – no bikinis, or
skimpy bathing suits – the shoulders should be covered. It’s a pity no one told the other people who
were at the waterfall that. All our
girls were all covered up but the girls from the other tours that were there
did not get the memo. I thought it was
singularly inappropriate considering the monks that walked by on a regular
basis.
The next day we went elephant riding
at the All-Laos Elephant Rescue Centre.
We fed the Elephants, took a ride for about an hour, fed the elephants
again and then rode them down to the river to give them a bath. Actually the elephants bathed themselves. And us.
We rode them into the river and, since they love the water, everyone got
excessively damp. Telen was very nervous
and her elephant was sensitive to that and was very gentle. She got soaked but in a gentle way. My elephant – not so gentle. I was up to my neck in the water at times and
was drenched repeatedly. What a hoot! On the ride back into town our van had a bit
of an elephanty, wet touristy kind of smell.
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| riding and bathing with the elephants |
From Luang Prabang we drove to Vang
Vieng. This was a seven-hour ride
through mountainous terrain on Laos maintained roads. Which leads me to this: Telen and her acupuncture have cured me of my
fear of heights. All right, I am not
ready to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon on one leg in the middle of the
night but I don’t seem to have that paralyzing fear anymore. The road from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng
would normally have driven me snaky but it was no problem. We stopped along the way at a restaurant on
the top of the mountain for lunch and I stood on the edge of the precipice with
no sweat. I noticed it earlier on the
trip when I climbed a Stupa to the top and turned and looked at the
landscape. It is not like I am able to
control the fear – it is just gone.
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| Living life on the Edge |
Today we rode bicycles to a swimming
hole and then went kayaking down the river.
These sound like typical tourist activities – which they are - but they
are still fun! Vang Vieng has had a
reputation of a party town with lots of tourist coming here to drink themselves
into intolerability, engage in projectile vomiting and offending the
locals. The government shut down a large
number of the bars and so the atmosphere has changed for the better. They still run touristy things here and it
still feels like a tourist town but at least you aren’t stepping over insensible
Australians and the air is free of the reek of regurgitated beer.
Telen writes:
Laos is indeed a beautiful
country. The people suffered greatly
when intense bombing from the US destroyed a large portion of its
infrastructures. According to Wikipedia,
250 millions B-52 bombs were dropped during a 10 year period from 1967 to
1974. Yet, the people here seem to be
gentle and laid back. Even the traffic
here is a lot friendlier. The economy
here is struggling. 75% of the land is
mountainous. Fortunately tourism is
growing and with the abundance of rivers, hydroelectric production and sale to
neighboring countries i.e. Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia are generating a fair
portion of the GNP.
My highlight so far is visiting the
elephant conservation camp in Luang Prabang. I have always wanted to touch an elephant and
now I have done more than that. Rand and
I rode one elephant named Kampo through the forest. Later, I rode an elephant named “Chocolate”
to the river for bathing. It was certainly
an experience of a lifetime. I was
scared and thrilled at the same time. Apparently
I screamed when Chocolate submerged herself and me into the water the first
time. There are about 10 elephants in
the camp ranging from 11 to 54 years old.
These elephants were initially brought to the camp because they were
orphaned or in poor health in the wild from loss of habitats.
The national food here is sticky
rice. It is eaten at every meal. The food is very tasty. It generally does not have the hot spicy
flavor of Thai dishes and shares some flavours with Vietnamese foods such as
the liberal use of basil and cilantro.
Our tummy problems are now over and our appetite is BACK! Tonight, we could not resistant in buying
some banana pancakes cooked in one of the street stalls for dessert. They were delicious.
