The last few days: Passed through immigration and crossed the border into Laos with surprisingly little hassle...just pay Laos immigration $35 US and you're as good as gold. For being a border town, Huay Xai struck me as a pretty nice place, and I immediately noticed that everything was a little more chilled out than on the Thai side. There were still people trying to get you into their restaurants or offering you a ride, but here you get the impression that they are just offering...which is a breath of fresh air. The following morning I boarded the "Slow Boat" (they weren't lyin') for Pak Beng, stayed a night, and continued on the even slower slow boat trip to Luang Prabang. The boat experience was interesting...really long, narrow river boats with rows and rows of car seats bolted to the floor. The scenery along the way was awesome for the first couple of hours. Ultimately it was a good choice because they kept cold beer on board and it was just as long as the bus would have been...and the bus doesn't have cold beer! The long trip gave me a chance to get to know a couple of pretty cool people, and two Australians (one actual Australian, one pseudo Australian)...we all whiled away the long hours with card games and cold Beer Lao. Beer Lao, by the way, is a very respectable beer, especially compared to what I have been drinking in Thailand, and is Laos' #1 export. Coming in at $1 for a 32 ounc-er, it's a smart choice!
Arriving finally in Luang Prabang after two days on the river, I was happy to find it to be a pretty unique place. Left over from the French Colonial period, it seems a bit out of place in the middle of the jungle. It has been pretty well preserved through the world heritage program, and the streets are lined with period buildings and houses. Alongside the Lao food fare, there are vendors selling crepes and fresh baguettes...a strange mix, and not really good to be eaten together. After 2 days of looking around, I decided to keep going. It was a good base to do trekking to waterfalls and such, but given the amount of jungle I have seen, I am not too keen to be paying anyone to walk me around in it at this point. Also I am now in the double red malaria zone, so I am playing it a little extra careful!
After the bumpiest, most scenic, most nerve racking, craziest 7 hours of my life bus ride I have ever been on, I arrived in what I was fairly warned would be the armpit of Laos, and boy were they right. This place is a stinking, rotten cesspool that is tourism at it's worst. There is not a shred of culture left here...it has become a stop off on the way to the capital city where all of the sort of backpackers I have been avoiding have descended in droves to indulge in buckets of alcohol, cheap food, and American sitcoms. If I here the into song to "Friends" one more time I might cry. Needless to say, I am only staying one night. If the weather holds, I think I am going to skip the bus ride to Vientiane and Kayak there instead! I am pretty excited about this...so I hope it works out. That should be my last stop in Laos, and then I'll be headed to Vietnam...
Arriving finally in Luang Prabang after two days on the river, I was happy to find it to be a pretty unique place. Left over from the French Colonial period, it seems a bit out of place in the middle of the jungle. It has been pretty well preserved through the world heritage program, and the streets are lined with period buildings and houses. Alongside the Lao food fare, there are vendors selling crepes and fresh baguettes...a strange mix, and not really good to be eaten together. After 2 days of looking around, I decided to keep going. It was a good base to do trekking to waterfalls and such, but given the amount of jungle I have seen, I am not too keen to be paying anyone to walk me around in it at this point. Also I am now in the double red malaria zone, so I am playing it a little extra careful!
After the bumpiest, most scenic, most nerve racking, craziest 7 hours of my life bus ride I have ever been on, I arrived in what I was fairly warned would be the armpit of Laos, and boy were they right. This place is a stinking, rotten cesspool that is tourism at it's worst. There is not a shred of culture left here...it has become a stop off on the way to the capital city where all of the sort of backpackers I have been avoiding have descended in droves to indulge in buckets of alcohol, cheap food, and American sitcoms. If I here the into song to "Friends" one more time I might cry. Needless to say, I am only staying one night. If the weather holds, I think I am going to skip the bus ride to Vientiane and Kayak there instead! I am pretty excited about this...so I hope it works out. That should be my last stop in Laos, and then I'll be headed to Vietnam...
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