Laos: Part 1

So Laos was pretty crazy. I rode on a mini-bus From Chiang Mai to the Thailand-Laos border where we stayed for the night. I was with an American and a group of Europeans, we met on the ride. We were in a tiny town and decided to walk down to the river to see what we could find. Ended up at a restaurant on the river and sat down to have a few beers, ended up mostly discussing football (soccer) which was great to me! All while staring across the river at Laos, our destination for the next morning.

We ended up playing beer pong all night which was a great experience. “Team America” dominated the Dutch and English boys obviously. Haha! Then woke up early and boarded our little water taxi to cross into Laos, the second you step foot in Laos you know you are somewhere...different. It was like stepping back in time 30 years even though we had only traveled about a mile. (Quick reference: Laos, pronounced Lao, is a poor communist nation bordering Thailand, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Everything there is either made there or imported, not much selection in anything, also 11pm curfew for all.) So as son as we step off the boat a small man (like most of them) directs us to the passport checkpoint and takes our passports. A feeling of helplessness sets in, I now have no passport and am in a foreign country...after waiting awhile I receive my passport and am instructed to walk alone and not to act like I am with my friends down the road with little vague direction. Luckily we all met up at the right place. We get our tickets to the “slow boat”, our 2 day cruise dwon the Mae Khong river. Walking by piles of trash and human feces (no joke) we board the neat looking covered wooden boat that we will now be on for 7 hours. We sit on small wooden benches with a thin pillow provided. Luckily the boat is only halfway full and we are able to stretch out and talk/relax. We eventually get to a small town and can't even get off of the boat before being swarmed by people begging us to stay at their guesthouses or offering their assistance with luggage. We weave our way through and decide we needed to just sit down at a restaurant and calm down before we all lost it. We met up with 3 guys who had the same idea as us, 2 English and 1 Swiss. Eventually, one of the english guy's, Si, volunteers to go check out a guesthouse and let us know how it appeared. He came back and we all walked down to the guesthouse which was quite nice with the exception of no Air-con. Since the town had no internet and it seemed nobody had the Man. U vs. Liverpool game, and there was only one bar...we played beer pong and got the staff to join us. Pretty cool. Si, “Dutchie,” and I ended the night grilling fish on the river bank at 3am with the owner of our guesthouse.

Unfortunately we had to wake up the next morning and get back on the boat, this day we were not as lucky, instead of being halfway full, it was overflowing with people, fish, chickens, and dogs. Wow. 9 terrible hours later we arrived in Luang Probang. An actual city! We did the guesthouse tango again riding to about 7 before picking a decent one. We had quite a bit of bargaining power considering we had 11 people at this point. Got settled in and went to grab dinner...and so began the Legend of Blao! Beer Lao is the only beer in Laos, luckily its also the best beer in Southeast Asia. We were too lazy to say Beer Lao so we decided to just call it BLAO. “Blao me” or “9 Blaos please” were the first thing the servers heard when we entered any establishment. Another note: In many towns beer was cheaper than water. The local Laos food was pretty good, especially the pork laap.

In Luang Probang the were quite a few decent restaurants to chose from which was much welcomed. Also a few cool bars but the 11pm curfew kind of hurt that...except for the discotheque a night club that had paid the police off enough to stay open until 2am at least some nights. They would play Thai and Korean pop music and western pop/rap as well. It was usually pretty fun and there was a noodle shop just across the street that had massive bowls off beef/noodle soup. The best part about Luang Probang was the natural beauty, there were plenty of waterfalls and mountains to check out. I always joke that all I did there was eat and swim. The first waterfall that we went to was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, it was crystal clear and flowed down it seemed like forever. The area had plenty of nature trails and even a Black bear reserve. My favorite part was definitely the rope swing, I'll also never forget Dutchie hitting the tree after waiting too long to release the rope. Too bad we didn't get a picture of that! We also went to another waterfall that was less spectacular but had plenty of swimming holes around plus elephants were roaming the park.

My favorite Laos memory though was the annual boat racing festival! Myself and the other two Americans, Vincent and Sara, plus our Danish friend joined 4 Laos guys and as we were about to leave 2 Australian girls jumped in as well. We drove for 40 minutes or so and all of a sudden there were people everywhere! There were food stalls and carnival games lining the dirt paths down to the river. When we finally got down to the river there were people everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. It was also insanely hot...so our Laos buddies found a table on the hillside under a tree. (the only table under any tree, I think having a crew of white folks helped out) We ordered a few Blaos, grilled fish, and boiled goose eggs. The eggs were a little more mature than we were used too. :) Anyway The races were really cool, they were in wooden row boats pretty much like crew, except cooler. Every time the boats would near the finish line the crowd would erupt, people were waving flags and spinning noise makers, yelling...its was awesome! This went on for quite a while and eventually the guys asked if we wanted to go somewhere else with more beer and even dancing. So we went. We sat under massive tents with tons of small tables and listened to some live Laos bands. I decided to sit with the four Laos guys at the end of our table. One of them kept eyeing the girls at the table behind us so I told him to go talk to her, he did. Later he comes back and says “dance” and points to the two girls. So I go dance with them. Just so you know...this was traditional Laos dancing and music, quite awkward for me.  It was one of those truly surreal moments in life that I will never forget.

More to come!