Through Laos to the south

Oh dear I've left it too long without emailing again. This email is gonna be huge. The last month has been a little mad.

Last time I was in Luang Prabang waiting for the lens to turn up. I clicked send, walked next door and a big package was sitting on the counter with my name on it. Thank goodness!!! Mr. Bee had sent a bike to pick it up from the airport which was very nice. After a day with nothing to do but relax and get cleaned up I was now back in moving mode again and I contemplated the late bus which left in an hour.... it was now about 7pm. The bus runs through the night along the infamous route 13 and arrives in Vang Vieng at 3am. It was an unsavoury thought so I got in bed and decided to go for the 6.30 am bus instead the next morning.

The next morning I got up at 5 and headed for the bus station in the dark of morning. I was just in time as there was a husstle going on at the ticket office for the last tickets between a few travellers and some strange competition for tickets between some locals who were buying bulk tickets for other buses? Never worked that out, but they were irritating the man in the office. Anyway I got one of the last 5 tickets which meant a ride on the dreaded back seat. The back seat is the worst as it suffers the most from the bumpy roads, twists and bends. We pulled out early. The bus was a bigger long distance bus. It was fast too and the driver really got a move on. Again he was an excellent driver. Route 13 is notoious and regarded as the most dangerous journey in Laos amongst travellers thanks to Lonely Planets relentless promotion of attacks on vehicles by Mong bandits. In 2003 a few Swiss tourists were killed when the bus was ambushed and a number of passngers were shot. There were many attacks like this but Lonely Planet have over publicised this and travellers have over romanticised about it I think. The government have stamped these attacks out pretty much and we have a guard with a Kalashnikov on the bus as do all buses on this route. He's very relaxed dressed in civilian clothes with the gun hanging from his index finger as he merrily helps people with their bags using the other hand. It is a genuine risk though. The Mong are very anti government and generally live in villages in the hills where it has been very difficult to govern them. They are also famed for being the same tribe recruited by the CIA during Americas secret war on Laos to fight the cummunist Pathet Lao and the Vietnamese coming across the border. Many of these people are still hiding in the hills in the north near China and have been hunted for 40 years by the Lao government because of this.

Previously I hadn't described the landscape of northern Laos very much as I hadn't found good words. Basically if you imagine the harsh mountainous hills of Afganistan notorious for their difficulty. Now take the densest most beautiful Thai jungle and rice paddies and drop it onto the mountainous landscape and you're getting close and this is why the bus rides in the north had been so harsh. To take a picture that shows the beauty of Laos is very difficult. I have poured over any photographic book I can find while here and very few images really capture it. Many are very good but you have to be here. It's beauty isn't merely visual. It's harshness adds something that you can't capture in an image. The only images have seen that really get it are the portraits of the people in the fields taken by my good friend 'Cheeseburger'. Going south now, I expected the landscape to flatten fairly quickly as I thought the difficulty associated with route 13 was the banditry but the landscape gets even more mountainous and harsh. The road follows the land faithfully and this makes for a rough ride. Along the road there are many stilted villages perched precariously on the hillside. The scene is extraordinarily beautiful. After some time we pass a wrecked bus the same as ours. It has been at the layby for sometime. The small gathering of houses and huts around it have also been abandoned and the damage to the bus looks like that caused by gun fire. I wonder if it is the notorious bus from 2003??? I never find out but after a short while we pass several very young civilian clothed men carrying Kalashnikovs and as we stop for a pee break, more pass the bus, some uniformed some not so. Any ambush on a vehicle in these hills would impossible to escape from. The road is too difficult to make a hasty get away and the dangers feel very real when in such close proximity to these weapons, but this is exagerated in the mind by the Lonely Planet stories which amount to 1 attack 2 years ago. I have gotten used to seeing the home made hunting rifles Lao people often carry but these are a very different kind of gun.

Later we pass an overturned truck full of motorbikes and guarded by more men with guns and I become relaxed. It appears to just be how things are. The road begins to relent a little and after what seems like far too long and an unexpected food break we get to Vang Vieng. The journey took it's toll on me a little as I had been sat next to an American journalist intent on talking politics and as with all Asian busses the driver had played dreadful Asian pop music as load as possible the whole way. After 7 hours we pull into Vang Vieng and it's not what I had expected and is basically an abandoned American airstrip, quite a large one, surrounded by a small town next to the river on a flat plane between limestone hills. I eventually met up with Anett and Craig who had been tubing all day. This is a famed local attraction and involves sitting in truck tyre inner tube and flowing down river stopping every once in a while to drink beer or smoke yourself stupid on Opium or weed served from the river bank. Whilst waiting for them to arrive one man stands in the river giggling insanely at the water and making strange noises. He does this for a good half hour whilst elephants cross the river and backpackers sunbathe. Basically Vang Vieng is Laos trying to be Thailand and I instantly want to leave. Tubing for 4 hours is too boring for me and it also seems to be a little too long for Anett.

As the evening goes on Craig makes it known that he is coming all the way with us. For me however the old saying 'two's company, three's a crowd' couldn't be more true. Anett and myself have developed a travelling system which works so well and which suits what we want very well but Craig's presence just throws it off balance. He has no real plan or idea and is very happy to just get stuck in places. We decide to go to Vientiane the next morning very early at 6 and he expresses his dislike but I want to get a move on and we know the advantages of getting the 1st bus. Not sure how Anett feels I ask later and she too is not happy with him tagging on.

Sure enough, the next morning Craig oversleeps and we are left waiting. He then produces Thai baht at the bus station having had 2 days to change money so I am left paying for his food and bus ticket. I then find out that he owes Anett money too which is just not on. It is important that you travel with people who you an understanding with and it's clear that Craig wants to travel with us to save money rather than because we get on well so we decide that we will have to leave him in Vientiane.

The journey to Vientiane is very different, for a start it's only 3-4 hours. We are on the local bus rather than the Express I was on the previous day and I feel much more comfortable even though there is a motorbike filling the ayle along with the now standard sacks of rice. The road is also flatter and straighter and the scenery as usual is very good. I am also happier as I missed Anett's company the day before (Having a travel buddy has many hidden benefits. You don't have to talk to the person next to you if you don't want but if you do you can). As we pull into Vientiane I am surprised to find a very visually interesting town it is the most westernised part of Laos we have been to... well being the capital it is the most westerised part of Laos period. The town is very relaxed and has a really nice feel. It has visual aspects of Saigon, Hanoi and Phnom Phen but with a very relaxed Laos atmosphere. There is also a hint of the middle east about it???. A very nice tuk tuk driver takes us to a guest house and we check in before taking a look at the town. In order to press on and to shake off Craig myself and Anett book a VIP night bus to Pakse in the south for the following evening but are left wondering if we will want more time here.

By day Vientiane is very nice with a great climate, lovely food and friendly relaxed people. The Mekong river is also very pretty in the warm red sunset and on the other side Thailand is almost close enough to touch, this being a border point with crossings being made on the friendship bridge over the river. At night the town changes very much and there is very little to do... well not much anyway. This is when the NGO population are very visible. They drive around in $50,000 Land Cruisers and sip cool Beer Lao in bars whilst doted on by very pretty local dirls eger to hook a Farang man. Relations out of marriage with a foreigner are illegal in Laos but this seems to be overlooked here. NGO's apparently earn huge salaries to do very little from what I hear. I had experienced them further north. When waiting for my boats to leave they would pull up in a 4x4 dressed like jungle Jim in matching Kaki and smuggly charter a whole boat for 4 people whilst looking on at us with smugg smerks. I don't like what the NGO's are doing here. While the Laos people have so little and don't even have pens for schools, NGO's prance around earning 6 figure salaries to take surveys on how many children go to school or... what people thing of sanitation... or something rubbish like that.

Anyway after we spend 1 night and 2 days in Vientiane we are satisfied that we have seen enough. Another day would be ok but not necessary. A tuk tuk picks us up from the guest house and after saying goodbye to Craig, we are taken to a small bus by the river... is this a VIP bus!!?? Thankfully no. This bus takes us to the bus terminal where we board a very nice coach. The bigger towns in Laos all operate like this with a north and south bus station and tuk tuks shuttling you between them. The bus heads out of town and we settle down to try and sleep. 30 mins later the pop music starts and a large number of baby faced 18 year old spotty backpackers in the back, resite very boring travel stories largely consisting of the words 'maaaannn', 'ya know', 'like' and 'yeaaahhhh' with so few other words being used that I can't establish if any information is actually being exchanged. So not much sleep for me. I find the drive amazing though as the driver is very good and very fast, apexing corners on the wrong side of the road. He is on a real mission and after a couple of hours it's clear why. We stop to deliver parts and fix another VIP bus. We make many stops in the night including 1 at Savanakhet, a large town half way down.

After 10 hours and some very flat rural landscapes we pull into Pakse. As soon as the door opens a tuk tuk driver gets on and starst harassing me! I ask him to get off and I'll think about it when I get off so he waits by the door and as soon as my foot touches the ground he starts again!!! Oh god. Our proximity to Cambodia is all of a sudden all to obvious and the relaxed Laoness as I call it has gone. Anett negotiates a tuk tuk and we take off. On the way the police pull all the tuk tuks over to do a license check and ours is the only one with no papers! Great. Eventually we give and jump into another. He then gets stopped by a bus going to Si Pan Don, trying to poach passengers before they get to the station. We turn him down as it seem a little suspect and get to the station where the 1st bus going appears to be pickup for the same price as the nice bus we turned down....DAMN!! Ah well. We get on, but the legit bus behind is really pissed off as the pickup has poached all his passengers. We don't want to wait for that bus though as we want to get a room but the bus driver attempts to ram us and then to cut us off but we make a quick get away...phew! 3 hours later we are chucked out and told to walk down to the boat pier. There is a road but he won't go down it.... this is a real nonsense and irritates as we are tired and have big packs. At the pier we have another haggle on our hands. Me and Anett want to go to the smaller quieter island but they won't take us unless we charter a whole boat.. although he doesn't tell us this and it gets very confusing. In the end it works out and we just pay up and go.

This is where the Mekong river seperates into an archipelago forming 'Si pan don' or '4000 islands'. It's very shallow and we bottom out the tiny wooden long tail boat frequently. Bit scarey!!! Arriving I just give in to the first guest house we find and we have a bamboo hut on the river. And so we crash with exhaustion. Whilst the river is beautiful here we are left feeling uninspired as it does not hold the same magic as the north. On further inspection there is little to do and the place is full of backpacker types who are only interested in smoking themselves silly including an English guy who arrived 6 months ago and decided this was the place to start a guest house. Since then he has been making a lot of plans. This seems to involve waking up, smoking, havinjg a nap, smoking, walking around, smoking, having another smoke and then...... smoking! A unanimous decision is made that we will leave the next day... despite the huge effort made to get here we have had enough and will head to Thailand.

That was nearly a month ago and will have to carry on in another email as my eyes are too tired.

Missing you all a lot.

Love, Kaveh