Sleepy sleepy Laos

Sleepy Laos

"The Thais plant the rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Laos people listen to it grow". (quoter unknown). After months of full-on Bangkok, militant Thais, active volcanoes, Bangsal Harbour's mafia, Timor, Komodo dragons, 33-hour long bus journeys, a couple of motorbike accidents, no cheese, landmine victims and genocide sites, Laos sounds like a perfect place to pause.
Laos is one of the lesser known of the 11 countries with four lettered names, and is landlocked between Vietnam and Burma, China and Thailand. Pronounced, "Lao" (silent 's' added by French colonialists), it sounds more like a Lancashire pub name than an Asian country; I can imagine Peter Kay announcing in Chorley speak he's, "Just off down to't Lao's Head for a few pints". Or The Cow and Lao, The Old Nag's Lao, Lao and Pigeons.
But best of all, soporific Laos and its people are undoubtedly the most relaxed in Asia.

Arriving into Vientiane city I found myself beaming at its placidness: near-empty streets, every second car an old style VW Beetle, temples adorned with gold, crumbling French colonial buildings with wooden verandahs, no traffic, no din. If this is the capital, how laid back are the rural villages going to be? And when the tuk tuk drivers do raise their heads above their hammock rims to enquire if you need a ride, they take your head shake for an answer the first time! And their list of services is more interesting and extensive than other nations’ taxi-drivers: "You want transport? ….. Smoke? ….. Boom boom? ….. Opium? ….. Something?" Most buildings proudly display the Laos flag by the entrance, alongside a Soviet flag of hammer and sickle. Communism sort of rules here.

Temple and tuk tuk

After gorging on Asia's best sandwich in PVO Vietnamese cafe: a foot long hot toasted ‘Everything Baguette’ stuffed with lashings and lashings of pate, pork, chilli, coriander leaves and salad, came D'Tech for some Communist-style nightclubbing. The crowd of early twenties Laotians, looking prim and proper in pink skirts and smart shirts weren't really jumping, but who could to Laos R'n'B? A few denim-wearing and spiky-haired radicals jerked to Laos grunge and loved The Cranberries' 'Zombie'. I was the tallest there and most of the petite Laotians were fascinated and confused at our size, necking of beers, head moshing, and piss-take Scottish jigging to Laos Techno Volume 3. By midnight closing time most of the teenyboppers had piled onto motorbikes, taking the litter from the dancefloor with them, while some of those remaining helped to sweep and clean the already spotless toilets.

Vientiane seems like the perfect city to settle down in, what with its ultra-calm vibe and many conveniences of modern Western living: ambient coffee shops, creperies, outdoor swimming pools. A typical exchange of greetings with a stranger goes:

"Sabaidee" - Hello
"Sabaidee" - Hello
"Sabaidee bor?" - How are you?
"Sabaideeee. Sabaidee bor?" - Fine. How are you?
"Sabaideeee" – Fine.
Then smiles and nods all round, before continuing on one’s way.

However, Vientiane’s ugly side revealed itself to 2 friends of mine as they were walking home from a Mekong Riverside bar after a World Cup footie game. Drunk men with machine guns had them dash into a side street, where prostitutes trotted between black cars with black-tinted windows. As an old woman questioned what the hell they were doing walking on the streets at night, a prostitute had them jump on her motorbike and she drove them away to safety. Taking a stroll with a Laos girl by the river after dusk can have you arrested, passport confiscated, then deported, and her fired from her job. But most dangerous of all is walking back to your guesthouse drunk. In the gaping holes left by crumbled-away paving stones lies festering sewer porridge that you wouldn't wish your worst enemy to stumble into, and by Sod's Law is always situated at the furthest points between dim street lamps.

Flowing by Vang Vieng town is the tonic to any uneasiness generated by the subtle iron fist rule of Laos (people are still sent to 're-education' camps by the government if their ideas aren’t deemed suitable by the Party). The Nam Xong River meanders by some world-class karst mountain scenery, and one can float along on a truck inner tube and marvel of what rain can carve out of limestone. Every few hundred metres are riverbank bars of bamboo (or teenage entrepreneurs waving a bottle of lager at you, “MISTERRRR! BEERLAAAAO!”) and giant rope swings and slides. A wave of the hand and they'll haul you in, pop a mighty bottle of Beerlao, undoubtably Asia's best lager, into your hand and put on the chill-out CD of your request. Before you know it everyone's kamikaziing from the highest point of rope swing trajectories into crisp, clean water, splashing about, getting tipsy. There are grottoes chock full of mega-stalactites to bicycle to and caves containing subterranean turquoise lakes.
In confusing contrast to the sublime sunsets behind the row of Sugar Loaf Mountain-like domes are the restaurants on Vang Vieng high street. They screen either Friends, The Simpsons or lame Hollywood flopbusters all day long to crowds of mesmerised Westerners. Outside is one of the most spectacular mountain vistas I've ever seen (think Guilin, Halong Bay, Ko Phi Phi), and most other tourists are too zombified by 'happy pizzas' or personality dysfunctions to look out the windows or even smirk at Bart's or Chandler's 'wisecracks'. I’m not going to express my thoughts?

Vang Vieng

The ancient city of Luang Prabang is infinitely better for the soul. This old capital and UNESCO world heritage city has only a few streets, lined with exquisite temples and palaces of gold and red, between beautifully restored French colonial buildings. The little cobbled alleyways are lined with stalls heaped with tropical fruits: pink and spiky dragon fruit, heaps of honey-sweet mangosteens, huge orange mangoes so juicy it dribbles stickily all down your forearms. The night market blocks the main street with women in traditional ethnic costumes peddling their hand-stitched duvets of a thousand colours and patterns, antique opium pipes, jade ornaments. And at the end of the lanes rushes the mighty, caramel-coloured Mekong River, hurrying its Himalayan load to the South China Sea.

Evening market hand-made goodies

Oh! and Laos has ladyboys. They're not as feminine as Thailand's, as without the surgery they're just lads with make-up on and salon hairstyles, white vests and Adam's apples. Some are as young as ten (what are the fathers thinking?). Behaviourwise, they are neither male nor female. They don't do any heavy lifting or carrying or toiling for 18 hours a day as Lao women do, but do sit doing bugger-all like a typical male. However, rather than squat on the kerb, chain-smoke and gaze into space as most men do, they pout, flick their hair and file their nails all day. The manager of Hive Bar perfectly demonstrated the ladyboy attitude. When I asked him to put some alcohol into the glass of milk he'd sold me as a White Russian, he screamed and shrieked like a young girl having her hair yanked out in a catfight, then threw the glass at the wall. Demanding I fight him, I couldn't block all the slaps as I was laughing too hard to let go of my stomach.

Our gang (Andy the ex- elf rollercoaster operator at Camelot, indie Heather, arian Brigette, the so chilled Orie and giddy Kelly) bartered a jumbo tuktuk ride to Kuang Xi waterfalls: a cascade of turquoise water tumbling from travertine pool to pool. As the calc-rich water roars through rainforest it coats fallen trees with a limestone skin; dried-up water routes can be traced where mini-stalactites hang from protruding roots and branches of trees on steep slopes. And by one lush, aquamarine natural swimming pool is the tiger. She was apparently rescued from a poacher when a cub, and now has a ‘better' life in this cage and outdoor enclosure. She seemed sedated, even when I sat just half a metre from her head (on the opposite side of the bars, of course). Would an alert tiger have ignored my close presence? The keeper joked the tiger was sad because she didn't have a boyfriend. But my! She perked up when Heather held a chunk of raw meat on a stick above head height; the cat stood way over 2 metres tall to snatch the steak with a bbbbiiiigggg and toothy mouth.
In the next enclosure are 8 'moon' bears: black Asiatic bears with a white crescent of fur on their chests. I'd once been told these rare bears only lived in the no-man's-land between the 2 Koreas, so I was happy to see them here. Except the parents were segregated from juveniles pacing frantically in mental torment. Though I guess it’s better than them ornamenting someone's fireplace, or being a jar of bear bile Chinese medicine?

Kuang Xi waterfalls

One rainy 5am, we got up to give alms to the many novice monks of the city's temples. Most Lao men do monk service, usually as teenagers. Older monks are often convicted criminals opting to serve Buddha rather than a prison sentence. Although all monks have a shaved head, orange robes and a food jar, ex-criminal ones are distinguished by their forearm tattoos, permanent frowns and often sneaking a cigarette when they think no-one can see.
Every dawn, the hundreds of monks file along the streets to receive food from the city's mostly elderly residents and early-bird tourists. Wanting to provide the monks with some dietary variation beyond the scrunched fistfuls of sticky rice given by everyone else, I handed out bananas to each robed chap. Heather went one better, trying to present the kilo of pre-peeled, sliced, and cellophane-wrapped papaya to each young lad who walked a curve into the road to avoid her token; it wouldn't fit in their hip-held food pots.

Novice monks collecting food at dawn

To experience real rural Laos, among people who maintained traditional costumes and lived by jungle in wooden huts without the luxury of electricity or sanitation, I took a 2-day ride on the back of a pick-up truck bus, a 'sawngtheaw', to the Laos-Burma-China border region. My fellow passengers were a few old women, some in colourful costume and all spitting, and a boy holding the neck of a twitchy cockerel to prevent it wandering. Along the tarmac strip, women and kids walked buckled under the weight of enormous baskets on their backs. 5pm must be washing time, as where gushing waterfalls met the road groups of women stood showering with sarongs on. Rickety bamboo huts lined the road and market stalls boasted a few piles of cucumbers or green oranges. What is it with rural Asians, all standing together and selling exactly the same product and wondering why none make a decent income?

From Muang Sing border town I pottered along little tracks between paddy fields, relaxed by wafts of something coriander-like, to traditional hamlets. Between the stilt houses were few signs of modern technology, no electricity cables or satellite dishes, though I did see a rusting motorbike. Under the stilts, cows, water buffalo, black pigs, dogs, cats, roosters, ducks and geese sheltered from the oppressive sun. Disappointingly, most of the traditionally dressed women were hidden, so I only met men dressed in rags and insolent kids demanding money and trying to sneak their mucky paws into my bag. There are so many young kids here, a post-war baby boom maybe. One 5-year-old urchin had her teething baby brother strapped to her back. German Uncle Klaus had them all enthralled with his impossible, ‘catch the $10 note and it’s yours’ trick.

Village urchin

In each village I was offered a sample of the cash crop, opium, by the old women. Opium is an accepted part of daily life for the elderly of this region, but, worryingly, many teenage boys are smoking it to look cool in the eyes of foreigners, with disastrous results to village work practises, families, harvests and economies. Exiting a village we took care not to walk through the ancient gateway, designed barbarically to keep out the evil spirits who roam the forest.

Evil forest spirits not welcome

Back on the tarmac road into Muang Sing town I got a snapshot of rural China, the country 5km to the north. The roadside was lined with piles of Chinese lager bottles and instant noodles’ E-number sachets scribed with Chinese characters (is Chinese waste management simply to empty the garbage truck just over the Laos border?). Spluttering trucks and tractors bore unfamiliar brand names FAW and Chuang Li on their grills. Unsurprisingly, the only non-Chinese vehicles were Toyota Land Cruisers tattooed with the motifs of OXFAM, UNICEF and other major aid agencies, surprisingly using charity donations for shiny, white, top-of-the-range vehicles for their field workers to travel in luxury to villages with malnourished and begging kids. Every cafe in Muang Sing town had Chinese karaoke blasting out and the people were surly, quick to grab money, and showed no interest in returning a, "Sabaidee": so unlike the typical Laotians. In our cafe, the owner was scoffing rice as the TV advert for skin-bleaching cream insisted, "White is right". The waitress/cleaner/dogsbody/ yelling target is chunkier than most Lao lasses and has a false eye. The 1/2 Vietnamese owner exploits her to the full. The pity-inducing lass earns $13 a month working 16 hours every day, and must forfeit a month's pay to leave to visit her parents (the bus ticket is another month's salary). What chance has she of getting a husband and ticket out of her slavery in this society?
"Laos people pity folk who think too much" (source unknown), so I'll stop there.

Phonsovan region next for mysterious ancient monuments, the place also disturbingly titled, ‘Most bombed place on Earth’...