The Road South

After some 3 hours crammed onto a local bus with various people, bags of rice, boxes, etc we finally arrived in Udomxai where we hang out for a few hours at the bus station for our next 4-5 hour 'bus' trip to the Northern riverside town of Muang Khua. We got to this picturesque little town nestled between the confluence of two rivers in a limestone valley at dusk and had a quick scramble to find some accommodation. My travel book warned that some Chinese-run guest houses in the Northern towns, due to the proximity to the Chinese border, sometimes quoted exaggerated prices to non-Chinese visitors. With this in mind we checked the first guesthouse which, although shit, was all of $3USD per night. We then went back to look at a nicer looking Chinese run place where the proprietor (admittedly after being disturbed from her shower) decided her rooms where worth $150USD. We politely declined after lifting our jaws from the floor.

The next day saw another round of 'rape-the-tourist' where the four of us (Marcelle, myself and an English couple we met on the bus, James and Anky) along with some German tourists from the guesthouse tried to 'charter' a boat downstream. Now, the going rate is suppose to be $70USD for a boat. What this means in actuality is the boat operators state whatever price they want per-person in remarkably good English and when questioned about group discounts and the like suddenly understand very little English. In addition to this, a group of local Laos people congregate on the dock (bank, see fig 1.1) about the time the tourist boats go and simply jump in the boat as it leaves. Anyway, on the upside the German tourist all thought I was a bit of legend/wanker (it's had to tell with Germans) because to the authentic German military jacket I had been forced to purchase at the last town.* Additionally, the actual trip down the river was very beautiful as seen below.

(Fig 1.1) The First Village, whilst pretty, wasn't very friendly.

Mountains, river, trees; you get the picture.

Local fisher-people.

We reached Muang Ngoi, a village accessible only by boat, after a 3 hour trip along the river. There were quite a few tourists around but due to the inaccessibility of the place it was still quite lovely and the locals didn't seem too jaded. The second day we set of on a 'hike' to a cave and then onward to a local village. The village was about an 1 1/2 hours away but we noticed several kids walking home from school along the same trail; and I used to bitch about the 1 hour bus trip to school. The cave was fun to scramble around as it was quite deep and isolated. We have a sauna when we got back which was an experience I was not expecting to have in S.E. Asia. Good but.

T'was cold. We had no shoes.

The cave.

There is a very limited supply of sweet food in the North of Loas and I was starting to get ansy. I did notice however that biscuits and condensed milk were very common and decided to make a Loas version of a chocolate roll. I mixed several ingredients in a plastic bag in the guesthouse including kitkat, chocolate biscuits, condensed milk, coconut powder and made a roll that looked a lot like sausage meat. The next day on the boat and bus I couldn't understand why nobody wanted any.

The LOG.

One hour further down stream we exchanged the arse-numbing wooden planks of our boat for the arse-numbing 'padded' seats of our 'bus'** for a further 4 hour transit to Luang Prabang.
Luang Prabang is a UNESCO world heritage listed site for the wealth of colonial French and traditional Loas architecture and it really is very relaxed and beautiful. It also has cheese and pastries*** of which I over-indulged. Apart from the atmosphere and the shit-load of temples in the town there really isn't a great deal to do so we spent a quite a bit of time just hanging out. We did go to a waterfall and some caves which, while nice, are nothing to write home about.****

Picture of a Wat with a flower in the way.

Next stop: Vientiane.

* It was bloody cold and my 'I'm-not-going-to-plan-or-read-anything-about-our-destination' attitude left me with only t-shirts in approx 5 degree nights. Nothing else in the market fit as I'm a touch larger than the average Laos national.

** A bus in Laos can be anything from a double decker luxury(ish) bus to a ute with a semi-enclosed canopy. We got the latter.

*** See? The French culture IS good for something. #

**** And hence I haven't.

# I manged to insult 2 separate countries in one post, a new record for me!