Week One - Into Northern Laos

We are in deepest, darkest northern Lao. The government is firmly communist, there is a midnight curfew that applies to all persons, you cannot sleep with a local unless you marry them, the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Youth League is up the road, and street commerce is alive and well. But getting here took some time so the journey needs some explanation.

As we discovered, the beauty of Thailand is that if someone told you what you would see or do in three hours time, you would never believe them. They take their temples seriously, and each new King or “Rama” has a new temple built in his honour at the major Bangkok palace. The temples are intricate affairs, which also offer some insight into how local regimes work and have worked in the past. In recent centuries, the Thai kingdom exported food and gold to China, which in return gave porcelain. The porcelain tended to break in transit, so the temples are adorned by millions of tiny shards of shattered porcelain which glimmer in the sunlight. The porcelain was also very light, so the Chinese placed large blocks of stone as ballast. Not wanting to be wasteful, those ballast stones were carved into statues which adorn the palace.

After Bangkok we took a sleeper train to Chiang Mai, the main northern city of Thailand. It is really a tourist transit fight, specialising in factory-produced textiles sold at open air markets, Thai kickboxing and elephant riding.

We then took a bus North towards the only Thai-Lao border crossing, which is very close to the (closed) Burmese border. Next to the truckstop halfway up was a singularly amazing white temple (proving that you will never guess what you will see next). A young artist decided he wanted to create an attraction, so he had this monstrosity built. It glimmers because of the millions of shards of broken glass scattered along it. In the middle is a wax figure of a monk in prayer, and if you turn around there are stylised paintings of nuclear Armageddon, including F-16s, ICBMs and 9/11 images. The curry across the road was the highlight of this Dali-meets-the-orient experience.

We eventually crossed the Lao border by boat, and after accidentally bribing the visa official (Matt’s fault), we began our journey through Laos. We spent the evening wandering around town eating very reasonably priced bananas and drinking Lao beer in a riverside bar.

That night we enjoyed “Saldith”, which is a Lao hotpot. The waiter brings out a cauldron of hot coals, with a metal lid shaped like an orange juice squeezer. You rub a hunk of pig fat around the “mountain” and cook thin strips of beef or chicken on that part, while chicken stock is poured into the “moat” to cook chillies, carrot, “morning glory” (local vegetables, believe it or not) and various greens. Washed down with excessive amounts of Beer Lao and “Spy” (a sprizy wine cooler) it is quite nice indeed.

We then spent two days cruising down the Mekong in a slow boat. The Mekong would be a mighty beast in the wet season. It begins in Tibet and is fast flowing even this time of year. You can clearly make out the wet season height and width of the river (enormous) and the banks are strewn with boulders the size of small trucks and cars and huge sand banks and dunes. The villages are perched high above the river on the top of the sandy banks.

Halfway down we stopped overnight at a purpose-built guest-house village. Young boys offered to carry our bags up the steep river bank for $2 each way. Matt’s porter was smaller than his bag.

As is fitting, we dined on Fish Marsala at an Indian restaurant (rebuilt on the other side of the road after the earlier version washed away in a recent flood) and played with the locals.

So far Luang Prabang (a UNESCO listed town) has been busy. Lots of “jumbo” (tuk – tuk) rides around town. We went for a 3 hour hike through the jungle on Tuesday morning to a large waterfall, had one-hour massages for $8 and Matt had a buffalo burger with cheese, fries and the obligatory Beer Lao for dinner. There is a bear sanctuary run by Australians at the foot of the waterfall for young bears orphaned by the bear bile trade.

So, one week down, still married, no diarrhoea yet, but that is probably thanks to the constipation.