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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Pleasures
and dangers At the start of my 12 month round the world trip with my husband Stewart in 2004/2005, we hadn't decided whether to visit Laos while we were in South East Asia. However, as we travelled through Vietnam, we met a lot of people who had been in Laos. They had all loved their time there and found the people very friendly and laidback. We therefore decided to pass through Laos on our way to northern Thailand. Before we went we took at look at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (www.fco.gov.uk) which offers a lot of helpful advice in its "Travel Advice by Country" section. This gave us an insight into the difficulties we might encounter in moving around Laos, of which more later. Our arrival into the capital, Vientiane, was on a flight from Hanoi in Vietnam, as we had heard the journey by bus was horrendous and the flight wasn't very expensive. The immigration process was one of the easiest we could imagine - so relaxed and very quick. We walked into the arrivals area of the airport expecting to be greeted by noise and chaos which our time in Bangkok and Vietnam had led us to expect. Instead, the people waiting at arrivals were all standing behind yellow lines marked on the floor and we were not accosted by anyone trying to persuade us to stay in their hotel or take a ride in their taxi. The contrast to the bedlam of Bangkok airport was stark. We strolled over to a desk selling taxi tickets, paid for our journey and wandered out to the taxi rank where the first cab in the queue took us to our hotel. All very civilised! Later, as we wandered along the Mekong River, this pleasant chilled out experience was repeated, as we found we were not hassled by any of the people running the outdoor restaurants on the banks of the river. Our time in South East Asia had led us to expect people following us with menus in hand, hassling us to choose their restaurant. It was wonderful just to enjoy the walk and then choose where to eat at leisure. Actually, restaurant is probably not the right term to use as these were little more than different sets of tables and chairs set up on the riverbank. The laidback atmosphere continued at dinner - when the spring rolls Stewart had ordered were slow in coming, I turned round and saw the reason - they were being made from scratch. It was nice to be able to cross roads on the way back to our hotel without taking our lives in our hands. There were hardly any vehicles of any kind on the roads. Such a contrast to the Vietnam experience where you just have to grit your teeth, take your life in your hands and step out into the endless stream of bicycles, cyclos and motorbikes, which weave their way around you as you walk slowly across. In this scenario don't stop for goodness sake as the locals will assume you will continue walking at the same speed and trajectory and are much more likely to hit you if you stop or hesitate. Some of the current advice on the FCO website is as follows: Prospective
air travellers should be aware of doubts about the maintenance procedures
of internal flights. Travel by Lao Airlines is strongly discouraged except
on the ATR 72 aircraft and the Airbus 320. Yuen-7 and Yuen-12 aircraft
should be avoided whenever possible. Since 2000, there have been several
deaths as a result of domestic air accidents on Yuen-12 aircraft in Laos. A number of fatal armed bus attacks have occurred on Route 13, which links Vientiane to the north of Laos through Luang Prabang .... In February 2003, two foreign tourists were killed in a bus attack on Route 13 .... You should be particularly vigilant when travelling by road on Route 13 from Vangviang north through Phou Khoun, to south of Luang Prabang. The majority of roads in Laos are in a poor condition. Travel should only be undertaken during daylight hours. Travel after dark significantly increases the risk of an accident and vehicles often do not have lights. Livestock often stray on to the roads causing accidents. We had no choice but to travel along Route 13, as we were going from Vientiane, through Vangviang and on to Luang Prabang. We did however decide to do part of the initial journey from Vientiane to Vangviang by river kayak, as we had thoroughly enjoyed our first experience of kayaking, in Halong Bay in north Vietnam. When we arrived at the tour office their car didn't show up so we were put into a tuk tuk which brought us to the local bus station. There we were put on some local transport (a pick up truck with seats and a roof) - no mini bus owned by the tour company here! We were dropped off at the Nam Lik bridge after a dusty 2 hour ride accompanied by an assortment of locals, including a man with a chicken under his jacket (after many similar journeys in different countries, we decided that a local bus is not a local bus unless there is a man with a chicken under his jacket). At one point I undid my pony tail and let down my long blonde hair, only to have my hair stroked by the girl sitting beside me. When I turned around I found she and her mother beaming huge smiles at me, at which I could only smile back. We waited at the bridge for a nervous 30 minutes before a truck came along with kayaks on its roof - phew! We headed off to the river where we were given a two person inflatable kayak. Rule number one we were told was "Don't lose your paddle". We had 3 sets of little rapids to go through and 1 big set. Almost everyone bar us and the guides turned turtle in the big set of rapids. We had problems of our own. As we went through and a big wave of cold water washed over us, the lid of the ice box (holding lunch, the first aid kit and the guide's personal belongings) came off and the box headed for the side. Stewart instinctively (and with a loud “aagh” which made me think he had fallen out) dropped his paddle and grabbed the box, thereby saving lunch. The waves gave us a good soaking but we managed to get through upright. After a little lunch, a swim for Stewart and a bit more kayaking we were brought to Vangviang in another pickup truck. Our guide Hoi asked if we had booked anywhere to stay. We hadn't so we asked him if he had a friend who could help us (whatever you require from a bed to a meal to a ball gown anyone you meet in Asia always seems to have a "friend" who can provide it). True to form he had a friend who ran a guesthouse and he brought us there on foot. We were a bit dubious for a while as he was leading us through what seemed like a bad area (it turned out to be the remains of the old town market, which had moved out of town but the old site hadn't been cleared up). When we got to our destination we found a brand new, sparkling clean guesthouse with a friendly English speaking owner. Here we got a large en suite double room with a big balcony with a fabulous view over the river and the karst hills beyond - all for the sum of $7. FCO website: You should be aware of the dangers of unexploded ordnance, particularly in Xieng Khouang Province (Plain of Jars), increasingly in Luang Prabang Province (as a result of scrap metal collection) and areas of the Lao-Vietnamese border, which were formerly traversed by the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Mined areas are frequently unmarked. You should therefore not stray off main routes in rural areas. When we left Vangviang after a pleasant few days caving, tubing, sightseeing and relaxing we had an interesting time getting to Luang Prabang. We had learned never to expect a bus to leave or arrive on time but this journey took the biscuit. We were collected from our guesthouse by tuk tuk and brought to a café to wait for the minibus to pick us up. The minibus arrived and picked up 5 people at the café. It then set off around the town to pick up other people. With a full load (or so we thought!) we headed to the bus station where the driver did something or other, then to the garage to fill up with fuel (why do it before the journey in your own time when you can make a minibus full of passengers wait for you? This seemed to happen on most bus journeys in Asia). Then we headed back to the bus station where the driver was told something or other. Then it was back into town but instead of heading for the hills it was back to the café again. So an hour after leaving the café we were back where we started, to pick up another passenger. But guess what? There was no spare seat. At least none of the passengers thought there was a spare seat. The driver and another person from the minibus company disagreed with that though. They were firmly of the belief that the armrest in the first row behind the driver was a seat. When all of the passengers disagreed with this view we were told that we were in Laos and in Laos this was a seat. The entire minibus had a rather heated and animated discussion about health and safety and the fact that if the driver braked suddenly the new passenger sitting on the armrest would be catapulted through the windscreen. The response to all arguments was that "It's Laos - we do things differently here". After a bit of a stand off where the driver cut the engine and tried to force some of the passengers (who were the main arguers) to leave the minibus we told the new passenger (Michael from Germany) to climb in and try it if he was happy to risk it, though we feared for both his safety and comfort. As he really had to get to Luang Prabang and didn't think he could get another minibus he decided to get on board. So an hour and a half late we finally left with Michael sitting rather uncomfortably on the armrest. We still weren't quite ready to start on our journey though. Just before we left town the driver stopped again at a garage and proceeded to change one of the wheels .... while we all sat inside with the luggage still on top! Finally we drove off. It was actually a beautiful drive. Most of the road winds itself round the tops of various hills and there were some rather alarming sheer drops. At one point the road follows the ridge and there were sheer drops on both sides. The driver was actually very good apart from one time when we approached a herd of cows and, without braking, he veered in, out and through the herd - we seriously thought he would hit one. It was on this journey that Stewart saw no less than 3 groups of people armed with machine guns - two of these were military but one was a group of young men who were not in uniform. Understandably, given the warnings of armed bus attacks, this made him rather nervous. I wasn't nervous, as I slept through this and he kindly didn't wake me up. After six hours of winding roads and queasy feelings we finally arrived in Luang Prabang, which is a lovely town. The highlight of our visit here (apart from Stewart getting to drink very cheap Lao whisky distilled in an oil drum on a river beach) was the very impressive sight of a long line of Buddhist monks receiving alms from the local population at dawn. FCO website: Travel on the Mekong River by speedboat is dangerous, particularly in the dry season, November to April. Medical care in Vientiane is extremely basic and outside the capital there are no reliable facilities to deal with medical emergencies. Medical evacuation is difficult to organise and very expensive. We were there during the dry season in December and had no intention of risking our lives on a speedboat, especially as we had heard that accidents were by no means infrequent and fatalities had occurred. Instead we spent 2½ days by slow boat travelling from Luang Prabang to the Thai border. En route we spent 1 night in a village called Pak Beng where we stayed in the cheapest accommodation of our entire 12 month trip - a bamboo walled, candlelit room (electricity was only available here for 3 hours per day, between 6 and 9pm) which cost the princely sum of $2.50. It was an interesting experience trying to split a restaurant bill between 4 people, 2 of whom were travelling in the opposite direction to us, in 3 different currencies, by candle light, when the lights went out a bit earlier than expected. The next day we arrived after the border had closed (surprise surprise) so we had to find somewhere to stay the night before crossing the river by long-tailed boat the next morning to finally enter Thailand. We enjoyed our time in Laos and had more than one reason to be thankful that we decided to visit this wonderful country. If we had not done so we would have followed our original plan and spent Christmas 2004 in Phuket. We booked New Year instead but never got there as the tsunami hit on 26 December 2004. So for all its dangers and difficulties, travelling in Laos saved our lives. First published in VISA issue 69A (October 2006) |