Has it really been 7 days since I last wrote something? Doesn’t feel like it but hey ho, suppose anybody who is still reading this deserves something to brighten their day. Luang Prabang was pleasant enough, went out to a waterfall one day which was nice or would have been if it wasn’t for the pouring rain. The best part of the 4 days I spent there was getting up just before 6am to see the monks walking down the road receiving alms from the local people. Other than that it was a fairly relaxing few days, without embarking on a tour and I haven’t got the money left for those kind of extravagances, it was pretty hard to get out of town and into the hills.
I left Luang Prabang for Vang Vieng. For those of you who don’t know Vang Vieng has become a kind of backpackers mecca over the past few years…and not particularly in a good way in my opinion. It is the essentially the center for adventure sports in Laos so there are some great opportunities for kayaking, caving and all that jazz. At the same time is also has a huge drug problem and I do mean big. Not in the way of one of London’s tougher neighborhoods but in that there are countless cafes/restaurants/bars that just play endless repeats of Friends on the TV for the doped out masses. I’ve got nothing against the people who do it…..actually I do but let’s disregard that…but it just ruins the place. Young travelers drinking opium spiked tea, eating ‘space’ pizzas or whatever else the chef has decided to spike don’t exactly make the place appealing. Tubing down the river complete with bars on the side is one of SE Asia’s ‘rites of passage’ but both the girl I met up with again in Vientiane from Luang Prabang and I didn’t bother. Mostly because doing it by yourself would suck but for a couple of other reasons as well. I only ended up going to Vang Vieng to break up the journey down to Vientiane and for that it was worth it but other than that it was a pointless stopover.
Vientiane is the capital of Laos and you would hardly call it bustling with life. A population of just over 200,000 people in a fairly big area gives the impression that the city is empty most of the time. Vientiane is the one city where the French influence on Laos is nearly impossible to escape from. From the street names to bakeries, the language to the impossibly ugly rip off of the Arc De Triomophe, French influence can be seen everywhere. Not that that is a bad thing of course…especially in terms of food. Last night I found a restaurant in what appeared to be a wine cellar taken straight out of Provence complete with aging overweight French chef who did nothing but walk around talking obnoxiously to his customers whilst chain smoking filter less cigarettes. But I did have a 3 course meal for a fiver consisting of french onion soup, a superbly cooked steak with 3 different sauces and a fruit salad……Poirot I salute you.
Other than eating rather better than I am used to I visited the Buddha Staue Park for a couple of hours yesterday. This place is basically the result of some crazy man who decided that his mission in life would be to create religious statues out of concrete and plonk them all in a field. Pretty cool actually for the most part but you couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something just a little but ‘wrong’ about the whole thing. The guy got chucked out of Laos a number of years back and did the same thing just across the river in Nong Khai (Thailand) so I might check out that one in a few days as well.
I think I’ll spend another day or two here finishing things off and then head across the river back into Thailand. My plan to go to Angkor Wat for a couple of days was scuppered when I realised how expensive it would be to get to Siam Reap and then fly back to Bangkok in time for my flight to Hong Kong. Not to mention the $30 dollar per day entrance fee, so I have put that one aside for the future. I don’t want to spend 5 days in Bangkok so will probably get there, dump all my stuff in storage and then leave for 2 or 3 days with just a day pack to explore Ayutthaya the old capital, the floating markets and maybe depending on if I have time the infamous Bridge Over the River Kwai. So I should be keeping busy.
Will let you all know how it goes!
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Chris's Travels 2008 