Vienne Viang

Wednesday 13th May
We had set the alarms for 5.00am not believing that we could wake at that time. Due to our disturbed sleeping patterns we were both awake at 4.45am. Linda jumped in the shower I gradually got myself awake and started to pack away the last things. We got out of the hostel for 5.25am in order to see the procession of monks. As we came out of the hostel we were offered alms ( chicken in banana leaves ) to give to the monks by someone selling it. This seemed like a bit commercial, but we felt that as a sign of respect for the monks we should follow the custom. We noticed a younger English guy, who was with a local and clearly wanting to support the monks. Turned out he was a Buddhist from Manchester who'd visited Laos before and was very fond of the place. His mum, who'd done various retreats in India, is going to visit the area with him next year. Brent shared with him our thoughts on Buddhism and he was in no doubt that it was a religion and that the West had adopted meditation as a way of life. We were kindly offered matting to sit on and waited for the monks to arrive. We soon spotted a few saffron robes coming towards us. The monks were mostly young and carried stainless steel drums with lids. As they approached they would lift the lids and supplicants ( those by the side of the road ) would drop in a small handful of rice or a stuffed banana leaf.
We waited for a while and it wasn't long before there was a whole procession of monks coming down the road. We were amazed at how young the monks were and how quiet the majority seemed. The ritual was quite amazing: young men from around 10 years of age get up every morning at 5am to pray / chant together before proceeding in procession around the town. We've heard that it is compulsory for young men to spend a minimum of one month as a monk and have had many interesting conversations about it: what wonderful training in meditation, but how restricting. As teachers we both noticed the small groups of less compliant young men, who were chatting as they followed the procession and wondered as to their commitment to the religion. We decided to walk down to the main street and lo and behold, bumped into Claudia, the US girl from yesterday, who was well pissed off having been the victim of a scam: she'd given a local 10000 kip ( £1) for some rice, and as more and more monks appeared had taken more and more rice to offer, only to discover that she owed 80000 kip. Have to say whilst feeling some sympathy for her we were also quite amused as she hadn't endeared herself to us. By 6.15am we were enjoying a good breakfast and we then picked up a tuk tuk to take us to the bus station: we arrived just before 7am... what an experience! Once again several touts rushed at us as we got out of the tuk tuk offering us tickets to our destination: Vang Vieng. Brent was Mr Cool again and walked through them to the ticket counter. Unfortunately several of them followed and were clearly calling out to the locals at the ticket counter: when we asked how much the bus was we were rushed into buying a ticket at 95000 kip each and both felt that some sort of back handers had taken place between the touts and the counter assistant. Oh well! The bus left at 7am prompt and we had a moment of thinking we'd done ok, saving at least 50 000 kip ( £5) a ticket. I was a bit saddened to realise that somewhere along the way I'd lost my Tongan fan, which had stood my in such good stead in the high temperatures and humidity that we have been experiencing. It had also been much commented on by both Thai and Lao local women, who seemed very impressed by the workmanship in it – It was made from dried coconut palm leaf intricatly woven and very beautiful. I just hope that whoever finds it enjoys it half as much as I did! We soon changed our minds about getting a good deal: the bus was full of locals, many carrying young children. As we began the steep climb along windy mountain roads several of the kids, including one right in front of me began to vomit...this one straight out of the window!! I was just relieved that it didn't come back in at my window!! Then several local men began to cough and spit.... we do find this custom quite disgusting and I decided the only way I'd cope was to get into a semi meditative state ie: sleep!! Thankfully this worked most of the time. The express bus continued to disappoint us: it stopped at every village, either to drop someone off, pick someone up or allow passengers to pee or pick up food and drink! One particular stop was very popular and a couple of passengers seemed delighted to buy what looked like bamboo shoots and various herbs. It was well after 10am before the first VIP bus passed us and we noticed that it was almost empty. All very bizarre. As we continued to rise the views became just splendid – lush, green hills were replaced by stark, limestone karstzs.. beside the road we saw several villages built on stilts, with some quite beautiful buildings. Around 1pm school was clearly out and large numbers of uniformed children sauntered down steep hills onto the roadside..... with coaches and trucks passing close to each other, it was a wonder none of them was knocked down. As we continued we saw several toddlers playing near the roadside on hillsides of soil.... it really made us question the over protective nature of parenthood back home..

I was suddenly awoken at around 2pm when we arrived in Vang Vieng; we shunned the tuk tuk drivers and headed for a cafe with loo. After a pepsi and a look at our rough guide we ventured into town. After a look at a grotty room we were approached by a tuk tuk driver who took us to some chalets further out of town by the river. The atmosphere here was calm and we could opt for air con for an extra 20000 kip (£2). We're now back in town organising the next 2 days over a few pints of beer.... very happy.

Thursday 14th May
Well after 6 pints of ale we managed to book ourselves on a trip today. We were picked up around 9.30 and after a Thai tourist joined us in the tuk tuk, we headed off to pick up the rest of the group. We were certainly a mixed group: there was a very interesting couple: Poky and Chidi– he was Austrian and must have been in his late 40s with a typical middle age beer belly, while she was maybe early 30s, and a beautiful Thai woman. They seemed very close and were quite overt in this...which seemed odd as we'd been very careful to do no more than hold hands in public since coming into SE Asia. I asked if he spoke Thai and he told me that they communicated in English. We struggled to understand this relationship, as both had limited English, but have to say that they seemed very together and laughed a lot! Our Thai young man spoke quite good English and explained that he wasn't actually from Thailand but worked in Bangkok as and electrician. A group of 4 Chinese tourists then joined us and proved to be very up for a good time. The oldest guy was very extrovert, singing loudly and making the others howl with laughter. A younger guy was clearly tickled pink by him, as were 2 very attractive young women, one of whom wore a headscarf tied around her lower face. We couldn't decide if she was ill, or if it was a precaution or simply a fashion accessory! The last member of the group was an Italian guy, who is a freelance graphic designer. He came from central Italy, but had worked in Madrid and currently works in Amsterdam. He was fairly quiet, but pleasant enough. Our first stop was to visit a cave: we walked through a village and came to the cave, where we were handed head lights and rubber tyres, ready for some tubing through the caves. This took some time, particularly as the loud Chinese guy had rushed straight into the caves, with no light and had persuaded the other Chinese to join him. much hooting and laughter came echoing out of the caves. Anyway the lot of them took quite lot of persuading to come out and get their headlights! Exploring the caves was quite an adventure: we basically sat / lay in the tyres and at first held on to a rope which lead under an overhang into the first cave. At the rear of the cave we had to get out of our tyres and walk, somewhat bent over into the next cave. Our guide pointed out a spider, which fortunately I couldn't see as I'd taken off my specs as quite lot of splashing was going on and I didn't want them damaged in he caves. Brent only saw 2 red eyes, but that would have been enough for me to have a heart attack! Anyway we then formed a line back in our tyres, supporting the following tyre by tucking our feed under it. We then used our arms to pull ourselves through the water. Initially we were in 2 groups, with the Chinese group together. As we moved through the caves they began to sing, so we then did the same...it almost became a contest and was a lot of fun, reminiscent of my nephew's wedding reception in France!! We were in the caves for around 50 minutes and saw some quite beautiful caves, with fantastic stalactites and rock formations. At one point the ceiling looked like the inside of a whale... amazing. We were a bit sad to climb out of the tyres, but ready for the next adventure!! This had to wait until after lunch though and lunch was quite a big affair: fried rice and veges with kebabs and bananas.
After lunch we walked back across the paddy fields to the see what was known as the elephant cave. The cave had been turned into a shrine with a huge reclining plaster buddha along one side. In the centre was a huge sitting buddha.The guide started to explain about the history of the cave. He explained that Laos had been known as the country of elephants but many had been killed in the American War, The cave used to have a huge bathing pool at the rear which was deep enough for elephants to cool off in after work. Since the demise of the elephants though the local village had thought that this wasn't safe and had decided to fill it in. They had placed the concrete buddha over the hole to the water cave. The guide then went on to explain about the practice of buddhism and the 7 positions of the buddha one for each day of the week. Unfortunately his English wasn't good enough to be able to cross examine him in detail. One thing that clearly emerged though was that we together with the Italian were the only people listening as he showed us around. It made one think about the benefits of being able to speak English. As we left the cave our guide mentioned that in Laos there were 3 levels of people – this seemed to be similar to the caste system in India. He is in the lowest level. Brent asked how the level was determined, but didn't really get a reply.

From the cave we took a short drive to the start of our kayaking trip down the river. The boats were launched from a small beach. The guides were very good and handed out life jackets. Once again we had to wait for our Chinese companion to get out of the boat before one of the guides could give us some basic instruction. Have to mention here that we have been very impressed by the safety levels on the trips we've done. The 3 guides accompanying this trip had clearly got the group sussed: they put the extrovert Chinese guy in a boat with one of the guides, rather than leave him with the other chinese! As we set off we had to manoevre some quite lively rapids, and the Italian guy, who was on his own in a boat, didn't manage them and capsized. In the course of the afternoon he had to be rescued a few times, but he hadn't kayaked before and said it was harder than he'd expected. He wasnt the only one to capsize and Brent and I were very pleased with ourselves and how we managed our boat. Half way back we came to the tubing area: we realised we were approaching it from some way off when we heard the sound of loud disco type music. Then one bar after another appeared, At the far end of the course 2 bars were heaving with backpacker type young people. There was a zip wire swing and it was fun watching some of them jumping into the water from the wire. We'd heard about this tubing experience... in fact been warned that there were regular casualties of young people who worked their way down stream, stopping off at each bar for whisky bucket!! When we actually saw it we were surprised by how few people were in the water tubing! We only saw a handful of folk. Either they were all leaving it til late evening to return or they were just visiting the bars!! Our group stopped off further downstream, where we had a zip wire, slide and bar area to ourselves. The music was great and Brent and I immediately started to dance...much to the amusement of the rest of the group. It seemed that no one was going to venture onto the zip wire/slide but after a beer or two the Austrian guy took the lead and came rushing down the slide, beer belly and all. Then the Thai lad had a go, followed by one of the Chinese girls. It was a bit scary watching her drop into the water, as she went under and had to be pulled out by several of our guides, who had been very closely following the process. I asked if she was ok and she was absolutely freezing and still in shock a few minutes after landing. As the fun continued Brent decided he wanted to have a go on the swing. Brent continuing here....
The platform you took off from was about 30 ft high and the line suspended from a crane like structure over the water. Someone placed the bar in your hand and you launched yourself into space. Having watched people do it before me I realised it was better to complete one swing back to the platform before dropping into the water. I did the old tarzan cry as I swung down and out over the water. Dropping into the water was murky and I felt as if I was sinking down and down. I eventually emerged feeling energised by the adrenalin rush.

Back to Linda here...
After Brent had had his turn the 2nd Chinese girl decided to go up..and as soon as she started to swing she started squeeling and kicking her legs up and down, a bit like a 2 year old having a tantrum. We all found this hilarious at first, but after 3 swings realised that she was actually petrified and didn't want to let go! We shouted out encouragingly and eventually she dropped into the water. She immediately sank and I was really afraid for her Our 3 guides once again rushed to the rescue as she appeared to be having a fit.. it took some time for her to recover from the ordeal but once she had I wandered over to see how she was feeling. Her friend then explained that it was hard for them both, especially as they couldn't swim!! I couldn't believe it... Were they completely mad or brave... well I can tell you I reckon they were very naive.

We soon continued our journey down the river. I have to say that Linda and I have definitely mastered the art of double kayaking and put a lot of the younger paddlers in the shade as we navigated our way through the rapids. In due course we sadly came to the end of our trek down the river – pretending to carry on as our guides called us back.
In the evening we went back to the Irish bar and had some traditional English food ( sometimes you just have to do it ) Delicious chicken and mushroom pie with chips – all very surreal in the heart of Laos.

Friday 15th May
Today was our moving on day. There are always mixed emotions going through our heads when this happens. Should we have stayed longer? What will the next destination be like? How easy will it be to find accommodation? We had enjoyed the laid back feel of Van Vieng and thought about another day. We had booked our ticket on the bus though so had committed. Herein lies another funny tale.
When finding transport there are two main considerations – cost and comfort. Our journey to VV had certainly not been comfortable (see earlier blog ) and although we went through all the right channels to make it cheaper we had definitely paid ' foreigner' prices. So this time we had decided to opt for a VIP bus. We enquired about the price in the guesthouse and whether it had air con. The price was 60000 kip but she informed us that the bus had no AC. We decided to look in the town for a better bus and cheaper price. On our second enquiry we found one at 50,000 and were shown a picture of the bus and assured it had AC. We decided to go for it. We were offered the choice of being picked up at our hotel, or meeting the bus in town. As we were so far out we decided it would be safer to get on the bus in town. As we weren't leaving untll 1pm we packed up and then went on a really nice walk from the chalet: we crossed several rickety bridges to get to the other side, where we followed a path to a laid back cafe, with a raised platform with cushions and a low table, overlooking the river. After a cold drink we headed back to the chalet, noting on route a cafe showing Friends, where we decided to spend the time before the bus arrived. Back at the chalet we picked up our bags and walked the 15 minutes to town. It was boiling hot and I was tempted to go for a tuk tuk ( please note I've now realised that I was confusing tuc tuc biscuits with the tuk tuk vehicle before...those close to me will know that biscuits have always been my downfall!!) . Anyway we chose once again to keep fit by walking downtown in the heat and were pleased to drop off the bags at the travel agency and move on to watch friends with a cold coke nearby. Shortly before 1pm a tuk tuk arrived and we joined a young guy and his guitar and ....guess what? You'll never believe it..... were taken back to our guest house, where the cranky bus, with no air con awaited us!!! You have to laugh eh? After that we had almost an hour to wait for various tuk tuks to bring other unsuspecting back packers to join us. You live and learn. We now know that nothing is as it seems in SE Asia and it's best to take everything you're told with a pinch of salt. It's clear to us now that all the travel companies work together to fill buses and the bus you get largely depends on numbers of travellers. ( we later met up with the Brit couple who'd taken the local (spitting) bus with us...they'd also booked a VIP bus from VV only to end up in a mini bus...thus confirming this theory!)

The bus journey was ok... at least there was no spitting and vomitting to cope with, but when we arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, the heavens opened and it absolutely threw it down with rain. During the journey we'd earmarked a couple of places we might stay, and although we knew they weren't far away, we took a tuk tuk ( good phrase eh?) to the top of our list. This proved too expensive and our lovely driver was very patient with us and found us another place, still pretty central and a lot cheaper. He even waited while Brent struggled into our rain cape and went and looked at the room ...great tuk tuk service at under £2.

After settling into our room, which was quite big with aircon, we took a walk to the main square, where there are some very smart and pretty expensive French restaurants. We continued past them and found an indian restaurant, where we had Western food and a few Laos beers. I've decided I prefer the Laos dark beer, which comes in small bottles, which I manage to finish in time with Brent and his larger lager beer! The restaurant had a stage, which seemed set up for a band. However communication was difficult here, as the staff had very little English. It was great when a 4 piece band suddenly appeared and began to play Western songs.... the lead guitarist was an older guy, who was really talented. We reckon he may have been the dad. His 'son' had a lovely voice and a good range and we really enjoyed listening to them. They had heavily accented English and after a few beers we had trouble keeping straight faces when the 'daughter' sang the Karen Carpenter chorus: 'Every sha la la la, every who, oa, oa, oa, still shines.... ' Her version was: ' Every sha ra, ra, ra, ' you get the gist? We would have liked to hear them sing something traditional, but they stuck with old favourites, which was still great.

Saturday 16th – Monday 18th May
On Saturday we tried to book our flight out of Laos: we'd decided we needed break from the hot buses and found reasonale flights on Air Asia (ie Ryan Air). We would fly first to Kuala Lumpur(KL) in Malaysia and from there to Siem Reap in Cambodia, which is near to Angkor Watt, where all the Khmer temples are found. We shall spend a few days there before heading back to KL and on to the Perhentian islands, probably via the Cameron Highlands ( see prev. blog). Unfortunately no flight is available on Monday so we'll have another day here and leave on Tues morning. We've enjoyed Vientiane, especially the unassuming, humble and warm hearted local people....BUT... the humidity and high temperatures have rendered us almost unable to function effectively. After an hour or so of walking / sightseeing, we rush to an air conditioned cafe ( fortunately these are plentiful) to recover, or alternately back to our room, where we glaze over in front of the TV. Actually it really is difficult. Having spoken to my sisters last night, who had no pity as it's grey and rainy back home, we know we shouldn't complain, but it's hard to stay lucid when you have sweat running down your body all the time.

We have managed to see the oldest and most interesting temple here, Wat Sisaket. It has lovely cloisters and is very peaceful. Each area had both huge buddhas and tiny ones in small alcoves set into the walls. We liked it here, particularly as it was less gaudy and had a cool, contemplative ambiance. We've also seen the National Museum, which didn't have air con and, although informative about the history of Laos, was pretty boring, with too many photos and information not clearly put together. We also walked up the Vientiane equivalent of the Champs Elysees, called Lane Xang Avenue, which has it 's own incomplete Arc de Triomphe, the Patouxai. We quite liked the monument, although others had been derisory about it: it was unpainted concrete, but had lovely carvings, especially on the ceiliing. It was also the start of a lovely park area, where lots of people were hanging out as it was the weekend when we visited.

As we walked around we spotted a library and decided to have a look. This proved very interesting: there was a good children's section, with multi lingual books in French, Lao and English. It was great to see plenty of kids using it too. There were also lots of other books in English, including travel books. However there were lots of shelves with no books at all and many of the books were very out of date: eg ITC books with old fashioned programmes.

One morning we chose to eat in a nearby restaurant, which turned out to be run by a lovely Japanese hotelier, You_ skate is his email address and is the pronunciation of his name too! Over breakfast we had a long conversation with him: turns out he's the same age as us, and is divorced with 3 children. We really enjoyed his company and ended up spending all morning with him and learning about his life.

We've enjoyed eating here: one night we ate in a restaurant run by a charity called Friends....? It was partly funded by UNICEF and it's aim was to get street chilldren off the street and support them and their families by developing their skills. The food here was excellent and we were delighted to see them present the food with the same rose tomato decoration that we had been taught in Thailand! It was interesting to see how many young people were involved... we even had one girl who's job was to keep our table clean in between courses.

On our last night we ate in a pool bar, called the Red Mekong. The food was ok but the beer was good and Brent got invited to play pool, which was fun. There was an older English guy in there, who lost the game before Brent's, so I got chatting to him. Turned out he'd been in hospital management back in the UK. He was originally from the Black country and had one son in Manchester and a daughter in Surrey. He said he'd been a millionaire twice back home: once through owning race horses and the other from his antiques business. Anyway he'd lived all over SE Asia and chosen Laos, where he hopes to see out his days. He runs a pet shop here and employs several locals to manage and run it with him. He was really interesting and looking for a stress free retirement, whilst enjoying the attention of lots of young Laos women! He'd made lots of friends and when he left was off Lao dancing!!

One thing that has disappointed us here in the PDR of Laos is the number of disabled people we've seen, who seem completely marginalised here: for example last night we saw a man with amputated legs, crawling along the floor on his hands and knees...it was shocking, especially considering the attributes the Lao people have. We have also seen disabled people in converted tricycles, able to use his arms to power the vehicle. Our 'friend' Youskate was also clearly disappointed in this aspect of the culture here and told us that in Japan you wouldn't see this.

Before moving into our next country we want to note down some of the wonderful mottoes we've come across:
From Sang in Thailand:
No jokes, no fun.......no fun, no babies
From You skate in Laos:
No money, no honey! ( in relation to his chances of finding a soul mate, who wasn't after his money