Northern Laos: Vientiane, Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang

Wat Xiengthong in Luang Prabang. The Bhudda and the Tree of Life (left).

Sunset over the mountains and development of Vang Vieng.

Monks playing in the blue lagoon near the sacred cave.

Nam Song and the mountains of Vang Vieng. Did I mention it's very smoggy all over the region due to Slash and Burn agriculture and the dry season?

That Luang in Vientiane, the most sacred place in Laos.

Greetings from Luang Prabang, ancient capital of Laos. It's a temple-studded town on the banks of the Mekong River. It's the second largest town in Laos after Vientiane, the capital. The entire population of this land-locked country is about six million. About a week ago, I crossed the Mekong via the Thai-Australian Friendship Bridge to Vientiane. (No, that's not a typo - the Australians probably helped fund the project.) I was originally going to bypass the capital totally, but I met an American at the border while we were waiting for our visas on arrival (35 USD). We got to talking and he lives in Vientiane, working for a non-profit that provides small amounts of capital to fund Laotian businesses (like textiles, traditional medicine, etc.). His descriptions of the city inspired me to change my plans and spend a couple of days checking out the capital.

I'm glad I did, because it really is a very laid-back city with great Lao-French architecture and temples. I even went to the Lao National Museum, which used to house just communist propaganda. Many of the rooms are still just that, but there are several updated wings on archeology and lao culture that I found interesting. In terms of archeology, much of Laos is largely unsurveyed because of unexploded bombs or UXOs that litter the countryside from American military action in the Cold War era. Visitors to the Plain of Jars, perhaps the country's best known archeological site, is warned to stay strictly on worn trails because the region is covered with UXO. Straying off path could mean your life. I'm still debating on whether I want to make a visit there or not. The Plain of Jars is comprised of many different sites where huge jars carved out of solid stone are arranged in some symbolic fashion. Some people say these jars were used to store human remains, but this is an unproven hypothesis.

I ended up playing a little badminton with Alex, the American, in Vientiane in a small outdoor court tucked away in a residential neighborhood. Turns out he went to Los Altos High School and played a couple of years of badminton there. He laughed when I told him I used to take the sport pretty seriously and indeed started running cross-country to stay in shape in the off season, he said he and his buddies used to drink and then go to badminton practice. Well, there's something to be said for diversity of experience, I guess. :)

From Vientiane, I took a local bus to Vang Vieng. I met an English-Australian couple on the bus and all was well until the guy started talking about the incentives the Australian government were giving people to promote the birth rate. Apparently if you have a baby in Australia, you get three thousand dollars courtesy of the government. This meshes with the impression I got when I was in the country - the belief that a stronger economy could be obtained by increasing the population. This is why immigration policies in Australia have been relaxed in the past few decades. But this Australian dude on the bus started ranting about how the uneducated (i.e. immigrant) people on welfare were the ones having babies and getting this "birth bonus", and they'll just keep propagating the uneducated masses, etc, etc. I started to jump in, but he had no interest in listening. Australian cities are incredibly diverse and all seems to be well, at least at a glance. But much publicised while I was there was several racially motivated attacks on Indians. I think just under the shimmer is a chaotic boil about to erupt - as tends to happen when things change "too fast" - when more and more different looking people try to mix into society.

Vang Vieng is one of the most beautiful places I have seen. Huge limestone mountains rise up dramatically across the Nam Song (river) and provide the backdrop for the town. I was happier yet to discover that a modest room at my guesthouse sets me back only 40,000 kips/night, that's less than five dollars! There's a nice little balconey overlooking the town and the mountains too. One day I rented a mountain bike for 20,000 kips for the day and biked across the river to the mountains where there are sacred caves. I visited the most famous one, which is comprised of several HUGE caverns; the biggest one at the front houses the reclining Bhudda. I wondered if the Mammoth Caves in our own country could compare to this level of "mammoth-ness". I passed several Hmong villages on my bike ride, and the farther out I rode, the nicer the kids became, until soon they were yelling "sabaidee!" (hello) enthusiastically when I rode by. The bike ride was definitely a highlight, as was having a Beerlao while watching the sun set over the Mekong that evening. Speaking of the Beerlao, this lager is a source of national pride for a country that doesn't really have any industry to speak of, and a large bottle will set you back 10,000 kips, just a little over a dollar.

Vang Vieng has another side though, when you take a little closer look. It's known for its tubing down the river and getting drunk on bars riverside. I biked down to the Organic Farm a few km outside of town to check it out, and the whole time I sat there enjoying my mulberry shake, loud music was blaring and the vibration got to be too much. I walked to the river and found that about 200 ft away was one of these riverside bars, with people partying. Back in town, many restaurants have "happy" menus where the drug of your choice (mostly marijuana and opium) can be added to fruitshakes or anything of your fancy, and you can lounge around watching endless re-runs of Friends or The Simpsons. The locals just sit back and watch all this craziness. While some of them are getting ridiculously wealthy off of the farangs, many more are living right next to them in shacks.

I find a similar disparity of wealth and poverty here in Luang Prabang today walking along the Mekong. Some people have found a way to market themselves and are doing really well, while others (notably the Hmong) are very poor. At the morning market today, which is one of the best I've seen in southeast Asia, there was an old woman telling three things on her little mat, two of which were a little dead squirrel, and a dead coiled snake. Another woman was selling several groupings of beetles.