Nong Khai to Bangkok

Now, Customs & Immigration is never much fun - certainly in Africa it is a nightmare of to-ing and fro-ing, queuing, forms, and, if you're unlucky, a bit of bribery and corruption. My abiding memory of Beitbridge on the SA-Zimbabwe border is of 8-hour waits in 45° heat. Airports are, of course, marginally better - if only because of the wait time (I think a regular 8-hour wait at Heathrow would probably bring down the government) - but train borders have got to be the best. You get off the train with about 20 other people, you wander over to a counter for your stamp, and then you get back on your train, or a new one of a different nationality. Either way, it's a matter of minutes - sometimes you don't even leave your seat.

Of course, the Law of Sod dictates that should you actually express this delight, something bad will happen. And so it was that the friend I was travelling with needed a visa for Thailand, was not a seasoned traveller, didn't think to get a multiple entry visa, and on departure from Thailand was told she couldn't re-enter the country from Laos at the train station without a pre-arranged visa. As it was a weekend and we were rushing off north to Luang Prabang, and therefore had no convenient access to the Thai embassy, I agreed for ease to forgo the train and to take a bus from Vientiane (Laos) to Nong Khai (Thailand), where we would rejoin the train to Bangkok. On our return from Luang Prabang, therefore, we made our way to the main bus station to board a rather grubby commuter bus, over-grandly named the International Thailand-Laos Express. It took 20 minutes to reach the exit point; we complete Laos formalities, then approached the Friendship Bridge where we waited for the train we should have been on to cross, before driving over - barely noticing the changeover of sides, were it not for the warning sign.

On the other side of the Mekong, we stopped again for Thai immigration, and while I waited in one queue, my friend went off to arrange her Visa On Arrival. I was back on the bus when she cam across the parking lot, with, I swear it, terror hanging above her head in a black cloud. They were refusing to let her through. Our train tickets to the southern border, proof of accommodation in Malaysia, and a two-year work visa weren't enough to convince the Thais that she'd be leaving the country, and they refused her application for a visa. Obviously another Small Man in a Small Job. I got off to try to help, but the next minute, the conductress from the bus was dumping our bags on the tarmac, shouting "No waiting for visa! Only permit! You get back on bus NOW or we leave!" The first and only unpleasant Lao I have ever met in my life (and I fear that I told her as much...) Not sure what to do, I was torn between abandoning a woman who'd never really travelled before, at a remote-ish Asian border post, and abandoning my long-planned journey - we needed to get to the train station within the next hour if we were to be in Bangkok for the next train - it was a row of shaky dominoes, and I'll admit to a slight frustration that it was in jeopardy through no fault of mine.

The un-Lao lady was still speaking in capital letters, and getting shriller by the second, when a man came up and took charge. I said "She needs to be at Nong Khai train station in one hour." He said, "No problem, see you there." I allowed myself to be bundled back onto the bus with my rucksack, and the last I saw of my friend was as the bus left the carpark: hurrying around the corner of a distant building behind a large Thai man who had already taken control of her cumbersome suitcase. That was also the moment I remembered that we'd been delayed getting to the airport that morning because she'd left her bankcard in the ATM, and now had very little cash (and no Thai baht) with her. Yes, I know - I can't believe I left her there either... But it was done, and there was nothing I could change. I got to the train station and sat down to wait.

Back at the border, my friend was told she'd need to buy a plane ticket before she'd be given a a visa. The man who'd offered to help took her to a small shop about ten metres from the customs official's desk, where a woman charged her USD10 to print out a fake ticket from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur for the next day. The official barely glanced at it, stamped her passport and turned away.

Ten minutes before the train left Nong Khai Station, my friend arrived on the platform. And the line of dominoes remained standing.

The train journey itself was rather dull in comparison - just more endless beauty, small villages, wetlands and temples. Ah, the shame.

The only downer was our restaurant attendant, who was touting for business all evening. The menu had a small notice at the bottom: "If you receive overpriced or ungentle service, please call -". I didn't call, but I was tempted at 5am when he started to pace the corridors, calling out loudly in very whiny Thai, "BREAKFAST TIME!"

Luang Prabang the Second

Luang Prabang is an odd town. Sometimes you can feel that there's nothing in it but tourists and people working for tourists. But then you wander a little, and you get off (gasp!) the Sisavangvong Road, and you stumble on a street full of Laotian boys singing karaoke...

My hotel was quite a way from the main tourist street, and the lane in front of it was occupied not by chic French cafés or backpackers wearing Phuket t-shirts, but by a couple of tiny, dark houses where the inhabitants lived towards the back of a large ground floor room and sold essentials from a glass case at the front. To buy a drink, I stood at the door and called inside "Sabaidee! Hello! Sabaidee!" for about five minutes, until the lady heard me from her bed, then came to charge me smiling for the can I already had in my hand.

While my friend did the tourist route for her first time, I simply wandered about the streets, drinking coffee, watching people, and, yes, shopping. I found one tiny shop with a cat on the doorstep and a weaver within, and couldn't resist buying my cousin's birthday present from there.

One day, I dropped into the library.I admit, my main reason was entirely selfish: I was wilting in the 32-degree heat, and there was a little cafe attached to the side of the building. But once I'd downed my cold drink, I got talking to a volunteer at the door who suggested that if I had nothing better to do, I might like to step into their back room, where at that very moment their afternoon conversation club was running. I did indeed have nothing better to do, so I let myself be guided into the room, where around 20 foreigners were chatting to Lao counterparts. I was assigned to a young monk, Phoung, which I was thrilled about. I'm not a religious person, but if I were seeking an answer to life, I think Buddhism would probably be the route I'd choose. Yet I know next to nothing about the lives of the thousands of saffron-clad men who'd populated my train window scenery since southern Thailand. 


Phoung was extremely chatty - perhaps the most driven student of English I've ever met - and so I just let him talk for the next hour about his life in the monastery. Actually a novice, he was just 16, and had come to the monastery in Luang Prabang from his rural village at just 12. So young, I though, but then I know people who went to boarding school at 5, and this seems, in many ways, quite similar to a religious school in the west. He's up at 5am for chanting, then he goes on the walk for morning alms-giving before spending time with an older monk who tutors him in religious and secular matters. Later he does chores - that morning he'd been painting the temple, and then, because it was a full moon, he'd been called to shave the abbot's hair off - he would have his own head shaved later that afternoon. After that it's lunchtime, and then he's free for 2 hours - this is the time everyday when he comes to the library to practise his English with tourists. When that's over, he returns to the temple to carry out religious duties and to wash before the evening chanting. Later in the evening there's time to attend his English course with an American volunteer before bed at 11:30. Replace the chants with mass or chapel, and it's very close to any Christian boarding school in the west. At 18, they are given the choice of taking vows and becoming full monks, or making their way into the world. Phoung wanted to be an IT technician.

After a while, we were all evicted from the library but outside I sat a little longer to chat with the librarian, Phoung and his friend, and a Swiss woman, Jutta, who recently left her job and instead of finding a new one packed up and moved to Laos, intending to start up English classes for women (boy, do I wish I was her.) She's ended up having a lot to do with the temples, though, and knew Phoung well. She invited me to visit one of the temples she works with, explaining on the way that today was a full moon. That meant shaved heads, but also some rather special drumming. We sat with a novice called Keo just outside a small pavilion on the temple grounds. Other novices came jogging up, some running hands over heads shaved moments ago. They gathered inside the pavilion and one started the beat with the huge, hanging drum. Others joined in at the sides with smaller drums and cymbals. 

The afternoon heat - even at 4pm - meant that every minute or so, sweat streaming off his head, the drumming novice would make eye contact with another novice who would take up the mallet and continue, without missing a beat. It was pretty hypnotic stuff, and before I realised it, 20 minutes had gone by and the novices were slowing down, pausing, stopping for good.

Or at least until the next special day - a full moon, half moon, new moon, old moon, time for blessing... the novice sitting with us said with a laugh, "Many festival days for Buddhists!"

Jutta and I went into the temple next, where, thanks to the full moon again, buckets of water had been brought by villagers to be blessed. The hall was full of women sitting on their heels, soles of their feet carefully pointing away from the golden Buddha statues at the front. The monks came in - not the novices this time - and sat in a semi-circle at the front just before a line of the only four men in the hall. They held a piece of string as they chanted; my eyes naturally followed the string along its course, through the clasped hands of the monks, around the buckets of water, through a small circlet of marigolds, and out through the window, where it was looped around a brand new pick-up and motorbike - obviously two of the men had been doing well recently... The chanting rose and fell, and as I sat on my heels I quickly learnt to do as the other women did, leaning forward and swiftly slipping my feet from side to side. Several times I wasn't fast enough and my feet fell heavily asleep. The chanting was faintly soporific and went on for nearly 90 minutes (to Jutta's surprise, who attends it regularly, despite being an atheist) but the women certainly didn't just sit in reverence; they joined in from time to time, quietly spoke to neighbours, placated children, and came and went from the hall as needed. Towards the end a teenage boy came in on his knees and handed out cups of sweet, icy tamarind juice, and my neighbour, who had been grinning at me and Jutta and setting us right when our hands drooped or we didn't move in time, forced one into my hands, saying "You welcome! Drink!" The men started to pass forward gifts to the monks - banana leaves wrapped into cones and decorated with marigolds and cash. With more novices and monks owning mobile phones, apparently, money is becoming a more welcome gift than the traditional food and clothing. 

Right at the end, a monk gathered together all the buckets of water - they would remain in the temple overnight and during the morning chanting, then the villagers would be taking them home to sprinkle around their houses and thus keep their families safe from spirits a little longer.

Outside the temple I said goodbye to Jutta, but with every intention of seeing her again here before she leaves - each day I spend in this little town makes me love it more. It's terrible that so many people never see past the shiny veneer of tourism; Jutta and I were the only foreigners in the temple, and although there were a few other tourists at the drumming, they didn't hang around, just got up close, took their photos and left. I asked Jutta and Keo what they thought of all these tourists; Jutta told me that they're mostly intensely shy young men, embarrassed by attentive paparazzi. Keo said he'd had tourists at the almsgiving pushing their cameras into the line of monks and using the flash; the day before, a woman had said loudly, "Well, I think they all look like beggars - they don't even have the respect to wear shoes." He told me that he and many others don't like non-Buddhist foreigners to take part in the almsgiving, although discreet photos are okay, and  I promised to pass it on, while flushing at the memory of my last trip to Luang Prabang, when I allowed myself to be easily bullied into offering food. So this is me passing it on: should you ever go to Laos, watch the almsgiving, and enjoy an ancient cultural tradition, but don't treat them like they're in a petting zoo, and there for your entertainment. Okay. Lecture over. Learn from my mistakes.

So the next morning, I was woken at 5:45am as on every other day, by the temple bells. When I lived in Coimbra, Portugal, my house was opposite a Catholic cathedral that tolled the bells early every morning - I have to say, I do kind of prefer the Buddhist version. I blearily came out onto the balcony, and down below me saw the women waiting to offer rice from their traditional baskets. 

Bearing in mind the friendly pleas of the novice, I didn't join the hotel staff who were also making offerings, but I did crouch next to the gate (being careful to keep my head below theirs) and take a few photos. I was rewarded by a big smile from one of the monks (they are the ones with both shoulders covered), and was left feeling slightly less of a sponging tourist! 

It was on my last evening, the night of the full moon drumming, that I went for a walk through the town at 10pm, unable to sleep. Probably because of the 11:30 curfew, there was barely a soul out. The full moon made it all a bit eerie and I was turning back for the hotel, and that was when I passed the street full of karaoke singers. It's a remarkable town, this Luang Prabang of mine.

Bangkok to Thanaleng (Laos)

We boarded our train at 8pm, about 30 minutes after a foot massage which at first made me feel like I'd just undergone major surgery, but by the time I reached our platform had me walking on air and looking forward to my cocoon.

Train from Bangkok to Nong Khai. Obviously.

Our train carried us north through the bulk of Thailand to the border with Laos - a 12-hour journey, according to my ticket; but the minute the train left the station an emissary from the restaurant car told us it would be at least 14, and would we like breakfast at our seats at 8am? Although she'd charge us a little more than we'd pay if we walked down to the restaurant, we both thought it would be worth it, and so it was. At 8am she peeked around the curtain and interrupted my scenery viewing to say she would serve breakfast now. She'd set it up at a couple of spare seats at the end of our carriage, and as we ate, another attendant removed our bedding and turned our beds back into seats. Certainly the most efficient attendants we'd had on the journey so far.

We rolled into Nong Khai nearly 3 hours late, but as it was 3 extra hours of daylight to window-gaze by, the tourists weren't complaining, and I assume the locals were used to it as they were quiet too.

The sleeper train waiting to return to Bangkok

At Nong Khai, we officially left Thailand, the exit stamp filling up the last space of the first passport page to be used up by this trip - the Lao visa would complete the second. From the passport booth we were granted access to the end of the main platform, where a short train waited - just two carriages of simple, suburban train seats and slot-down, wood-framed windows. 

Train to Thanaleng on the left, the sleeper from Bangkok
on the right.

It didn't look much like a grown-up, worldly, border-crossing train at all, but that's what it was. It's a great, big, new train, just three years old, that twice daily makes the 3.5km journey across the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge over the Mekong River, and back. On this Friday morning it was almost empty - perhaps around 20 passengers, mostly foreign, spread out over the carriages. I sat right behind the driver, giving me a good view of the tracks, which ran down the centre of the empty road.

At the other end of the bridge, about 40 cars and trucks waited behind a guardpost for us to pass. Just a couple of minutes later we pulled into Thanaleng Station - there are plans to extend the line further to Vientiane, the capital city, but for now the tracks we've been travelling for nearly 2,200km end in an unceremonious bit of scrub bush. Which I didn't take a photo of. Yes, I was a little exhausted by the journey, and I thought we'd have another chance later on the return trip. But here's the view looking back to Thailand:

Laos immigration was pretty down to earth - despite lots of forms to complete, and a process which is fast becoming rare these days: hand over your photo, passport, forms and money, plonk yourself down on your bags and get your books out, and when a pile of mixed-up passports are shoved back through a separate window, rush over before someone else with the same nationality as you nicks your little maroon identity. Then you just walk out the station into town, like any other city railway station.

Hah, yeah, right.

No, there was once a railway in Laos, a short section of tracks down in the south used by the French to transport lumber between two rivers, but other than that defunct stretch, these three-and-a-half kilometres from Thailand constitute the only railway in Laos and they're still getting the hang of it. Thanaleng sits in the middle of an expanse of carpark, upon which three minivan taxis await the morning influx of passengers. It took 45 minutes and 400 baht to reach the central market.

From there, there being no more railway to carry us onwards, we boarded a plane for Luang Prabang. Same as my last trip, this was a small turbo-prop plane, and we were barely up in the air before we were descending again.

Buddhas in repose

I went to Xiang Khuane, about 25km outside of Vientiane. I thought about catching a tuk-tuk, but in the end was so glad I didn't. It was a fifteenth of the price to walk to the bus station behind the Morning Market and get on a waiting bus. It was a shabby one, full of Lao people travelling to outlying villages. It stopped on the way at the Thai border, then carried on down the Mekong through small villages almost back to back. Through gaps I could see Thailand over the river. I couldn't work out what was bothering me about the scene and I kept glancing back at the wide green river, the hotels and temples on the other side, the fishermen's boats... Then I realised. There was no security. No ten-foot fences, no guardposts protecting men with guns, not even cameras as far as I could see. It was a peaceful river between two friendly nations. Korea has obviously jaded me.

Xiang Khuane is an oddity, the dream of a Lao artist in the 1960s who mixed Hinduism and Buddhism and from the stew in his head created hundreds of concrete statues of gods and Buddhas and fantastically intricate beasts. At the entrance is a huge pumpkin-shaped construction. I've met a Chinese girl on the bus who's also travelling alone. She has no English, but we stick together taking photos of each other and laughing at the impossibly small spaces we have to scramble through. The pumpkin is meant to represent the realms of hell, earth and heaven as you climb. Somehow we get into the centre of earth where dusty statues of soldiers and broken body parts lurk in the gloom. My partner has a torch, thank god, as otherwise I don't think we'd find the stairs upwards. I say stairs, but really they were uneven ridges not wide enough for a foot. We squeeze through a narrow opening into daylight and find ourselves in heaven with a view of the whole park.




Going back down again, we discover actual steps which lead to an outer corridor circling the rooms we stumbled into - but I still think ours was the more interesting route.

The main attraction of the park is a massive reclining Buddha; I'm smaller than his feet!


Some of the statues I'm not entirely sure of, but they're a creative use of concrete - much worthier than Patuxai for instance...


I have a feeling the one above is a god eating the sun, perhaps from Indian mythology, but my shallow knowledge fails me.

When the park is exhausted, and it doesn't take too long, I pay a smiley child for the use of a mosquito-haunted pit latrine and head back on the bus into town. The driver stops on the way to pick up his lunch from his daughter in one of the villages, and we have to pause for the little girl to climb on and give her dad a hug. He smiles apologetically at the Chinese girl and I, the only foreigners, lifting his hands, but I'm not bothered - it's just another perk of being in Laos.


Everywhere in Laos, homes have small shrines in the corner of the gardens, intricate, coloured, or plain wooden mini houses, with steps and chairs and ornate rooves. I'd thought these were a Hindu method of worship but apparently Buddhists use them too. Every morning offerings are left, and it's something I love about Eastern gods. Beside the marigolds (in the sacred orange colours) are laid sweets and lao-lao and cigarettes and beer, as if the gods are just like us in their pursuit of pleasure!















Finally, because all good things must end, my last day arrives. I do some last-minute shopping at Talat Sao, have coffee and a baguette at a French cafe, and sit and read in the garden, waiting to catch a tuk-tuk to the airport. On the way back to the hotel, though, I catch sight of an advert for an English teaching job in the window of a cafe. So who knows, Laos, I may be back...

City life

An innocent question of mine on the Lonely Planet online forum had unexpectedly sparked off a heated debate over the qualities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang, one camp claiming the beauty of Luang Prabang and the big-city unfriendliness of Vientiane, the other telling me that Luang Prabang isn't "real" Laos, but a Disneyfied theme park, while Vientiane is a charming laidback city. I can now see both sides of the argument; I was still pleasantly surprised by Vientiane, though. With wide boulevards and French restaurants in some parts, other neighbourhoods boast narrow lanes filled with temples, street hawkers and (still French) cafes. The centre is easily walkable in a couple of hours.

At sunset I find myself sitting on the banks of the Mekong, 390km from where I was that morning. The scene has changed dramatically. Vientiane eschews the deep calm banks of the northern town, and instead I'm sitting in a large carpark with my beer, looking over a scene of carnage. Great machines are carving out the wide shore. Mining, perhaps, or building a new road. The carpark I sit in is an expanse of grey dust, a busy road running alongside. It's home to a few makeshift, open-air bar-restaurants and a legion of colourful tables and chairs. From where I sit I can see two temples, gold pillars glinting in the setting sun. It's not a peaceful riverside town, but it does have its own manic charm.

The sun disappears into the haze a finger's width above the Thai shore, and I retreat to my hotel.


After breakfast the next day, I hurry out into the stiff winter cold (it's probably about 25 degrees, but everyone's in jackets) and take a 15-minute walk up a wide street that bisects Vientiane. It's apparently sometimes called the Champs Elysees of the East, but I can't imagine by whom. I guess it's mainly because of what's been built at the far end. At 45m of grim concrete, Patuxai doesn't loom so much as lurk. It's based on the Arc de Triomphe. I think it's the ugliest thing on four legs I've ever seen.


As instructed by the guidebook, I climb up through the 5 floors, dark rooms filled with mass-made, shrink-wrapped souvenirs, to the viewpoint. I look down the Champs Elysees to the Presidential Palace. I look the other way to the Communist headquarters (I presume). I climb a circular staircase to the very top where I look at the graffiti and note that S.K. Was Here. I climb down again.
























Hmm. A brutally honest sign at the entrance notes that the monument "from a closer distance appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete." I have to agree...

Back down the avenue, I come to Talat Sao, the morning market. This is much more interesting, with traditional medicine sellers and silk weavers jostling for space with refrigerator stalls and cellphone stands. Sadly they're in the process of building a Malaysian-funded building next door for the market to move into. Big rooms and well-lit corridors will be on offer. Boooo-ring.... :D


At the end of the road, next to the Palace, is Wat Si Saket, a beautiful Provence-like terracotta-coloured temple set in a courtyard surrounded by what in Christendom would be called cloisters. When Laos was still Lan Xang, the Land of a Million Elephants, Vientiane was razed to the ground by invading Siamese armies, and Wat Si Saket was the only building left standing (some say this is because it was in the Bangkok style.) When the French arrived in the 1900s, they found it derelict and lonely on an empty riverside plain, and it was one of the first buildings to be restored by them during their reconstruction of the city.


Thousands of Buddhas rest in the cloistered silence - big ones sitting on the floor, tiny ones occupying niches up the wall.


The central temple also has arched cubbyholes cut high into the walls with yet more golden statues. A sign from the curator says there are more than ten thousand. Around the outside perimeter there are monks' quarters, old cottages with dragons curled around the stairs. A young novice is brushing his teeth on a balcony. I feel a little like I'm back at the English Village with the roles reversed - so I don't take a photo. The poor monks must feel just like I do, living in a human zoo. Although they do have the comfort of being enlightened. I just eat a lot.


I have breakfast at a shack on the sand by the Mekong. More building works. A woman passes by carting eggs somewhere, but the eggs here are dangerous - in line with the rest of Laotian eating habits, many of them are fertilized duck eggs and unwary travellers are surprised by the little bird inside...

Spiritual tourism

On my last morning in Luang Prabang I woke up at 6am and walked down to feed the monks. Yes, I know, sounds like a zoo, doesn't it? It's actually a very old tradition. As I walked down towards the temples, women passed me at a trot, long bamboo sticks over their shoulders with baskets at either end. As they slowed next to me, I could see the banana leaf packages inside holding rice, and the women held these out to me, calling "Feed monk? Good karma, lucky. Only 5,000 kip!" I felt a little nervous of pretending to join in on this spiritual journey, but when I got to the main street I saw quite a few tourists kneeling on grass mats among the Lao, so I let a seller persuade me to buy a plate of bananas, and knelt in the dust. The dawn was only just breaking when the first sunrise-coloured robes appeared at the corner. Each monk carried an ornate silver bowl around his neck, and as he moved down the waiting line of devotees he paused long enough for each woman - for they were mostly women - to place a food offering in the bowl.

My bananas weren't as popular as the sweets the next lady offered - at least with the younger monks - but they went quickly enough, and I straightened up to watch the rest of the procession pass by. It was fascinating to see the long line of monks, not looking at the people and especially avoiding any physical contact with women.

Although, once again, I felt like I was taking part in a Disney play specially put on for me, when I left and walked down a side street, all the women offering food were Laotian, and it does strike me as a good way to feed those in the temples while spreading the burden of support over many shoulders. For the monks, it constitutes their only meal of the day, eaten at lunchtime after chores, and often shared with an attached orphanage or school. Some of the women were Hmong and likely to be Christian, so perhaps this is seen as more of a cultural tradition than a religious one.

Anyway. Suitably reassured, I walked down to the food market nearby. The food market is two or three streets, quite narrow, lined in the mornings by sellers from the surrounding province. The narrowness of the lanes does not, however, prevent scooters from entering; add in the surprising amount of live produce, the chatter and the loud bartering and it makes for a noisy experience.


Welcoming though - every time I requested a photograph I was answered with a smile. I felt something bang into my hip once - it was a basket being carried by a grey-haired lady with a deeply lined face. She held up her hands and smiled in apology and as I smiled in return she grasped my arm and patted my face, laughing to the other women.

The food on sale was mostly vegetables, many of which I couldn't recognise, green leaves and flowers, alongside deep purple eggplant and the pink dragonfruit I'd come to recognise in the fruit smoothies I had every morning on the side of the road.


Some of the fishermen's wives were selling balls of river weed from wicker baskets, eaten much like seaweed is elsewhere in Asia; it looks just like the weed I used to drag out of the pond as a kid and dry in strips, and probably tastes much the same, too (as a kid, I was smart enough not to eat these things - as an adult, not so much.)


There were stalls selling dried strips of pale meat - less like biltong than leather straps. The small meat section had anonymous cuts of meat sharing space with such joys of the meat-eater's world as pigs' ears and testicles; hordes of flies were kept away - though only just - by women waving plastic bags tied to sticks. I hurried past. I paused to watch two women squeezing honey from a comb into a bucket.


As I was crouching to photograph the scene, something in the foreground caught my eye, which I'd only heard of till now: two splayed and roasted rats!


Laos is well known among conservationists for its fervent consumption of anything that swims, walks, slithers or flies, regardless of the animal's position on the endangered list. It's why generally I haven't seen much wildlife here, apart from the Rivertime Lodge where the land is protected. Although the authorities are clamping down in an effort to make Laos an eco-friendly county (eco-tourism is big business here), it's still possible to see, in certain markets, monkeys, spiders and snakes sold as meat. The rats I saw were probably just common field rats though. There were also grass snakes and little piles of beetles neatly laid out on mats.


Apparently not too long ago some wildlife experts discovered a species of rat thought to be extinct before they saw it roasted at a market. It hasn't been seen since, either...



I caught the midday plane back to Vientiane, where I was treating myself with a stay at the Vayakorn Inn. All hardwood floors and dark Laotian furniture, it's not a five-star soulless hotel, but it's pure luxury for me after sharing a bathroom with 5 boys for four days! The view from my balcony takes in the magnificently ugly Cultural Hall which was built, clearly, by a big fan of gold kitsch. It's very central, so I take a walk around town as soon as I'm settled in.

Books and the art of kayaking

On Tuesday, I've booked to go on a two-day trek, spending a night in a Hmong village. On enquiring at the tour office, I find that this has now turned into a one-day trek and kayak due to market forces beyond their control. I'm a little worried about the strength (or lack of it) in my arms, but the guy assures me it's only an hour or so of kayaking, and the river current does most of the work.

Tuesday dawns, and I'm at the tour office bright and early to meet up with the other travellers - a Brit, two Canadians, and three Spanish girls. I'm already wary as the tour company promises a maximum of six on a tour. We set off in the back of a truck, kayaks strapped to the roof. The truck sets us down after 40 minutes at the end of a dusty road - very dusty, as it's the dry cold season season in Laos, though you wouldn't know it from the oppressive heat. From there we walk to a nearby school. I've brought some books in town from Big Brother Mouse, a charity that could have been set up just for me, it's so perfect: they write and publish bilingual children's books which they try to distribute to kids who have sometimes never seen a book before. I've chosen a Lao fairytale, a collection of Aesop's Fables and an English picture dictionary, which all cost me about £3 in total, and now I hand them over to the headmaster, who tells us he's trying to start a library for the use of the whole village. Great! Literacy and a bit of English in one dedicated push.

The trek leads us up over a hill through fields and rubber tree plots, and then down into the luxurious caller where a wide river winds all the way to Luang Prabang. And that's the trek over. Mis-selling? I think so! The kayaks are waiting on the beach; I share with Nicola, a British girl teaching in Thailand. We set off onto the river, which turns out to be so placid and calm that we are in fact doing all the work. We break for lunch half an hour in, but other than that it's three and a half hours of constant paddling. Despite the dull ache in my arms, I find myself enjoying it. We're low on the water looking up at cliffs and mountains and mostly the only sounds are our paddles hitting the water, and the snorts of the water buffalo. As usual there are thousands of butterflies on the shores and a few fishermen beating the water with long sticks to flush the fish into the waiting nets.



There are also lots of semi-submerged bamboo baskets, cleverly disguised with river weed and baited with food. When a fish bites, a trapdoor is released, holding the fish until it can be collected.

Sometimes we pass men panning for gold... The shores are shiny with fools' gold (I assume... unless I made a terrible mistake spending my holiday kayaking instead of collecting my fortune...)

There are rapids to break up the heavy paddling; the first lulls us into a false sense of calm but they get more and more difficult (and proportionately more fun) until we reach one where the Canadians, their centre of gravity slightly askew, Nicola supposes, flip over. From there on, every tumbling stretch of white water plunges them into the wet. Nicola and I, evenly matched in weight, coast over, shrieking with laughter and crying like kids "Again! Again!" We're almost a little jealous of the Canadians cooling off from the heat... until the last one drags them for almost 30 metres, banging them against rocks and leaving them with bruised limbs and small cuts. Luckily it's almost the end though. Nicola and I have visions of easily coasting onto a sandy beach and flinging our oars down in triumph, but we're grounded in the shallow waters and have to climb out and scramble over rocks and pebbles, dragging our kayak behind us.

It's a triumphant ending, nevertheless. Back in town, I fling myself onto my bed for a second and only open my eyes hours later in the dark when my arms ache me awake. That's when I discover the two blisters on the inside of my thumbs from the oars, one open and bleeding. The Laotian Injury List just passed the Balinese one.

The rest of my time I spend walking, endlessly. Luang Prabang is a small town but it's quite easy to while away a few hours without realising in its narrow back streets full of laundry and bougainvillea and boys playing khataw, a kind of mix between football and volleyball.


It's played with a hollow rattan ball, the players seeming to compete with each other for title of most impressive move. Their legs are amazingly strong and they fly through the air executing high kicks. In one game I watched, two players aimed at the net at the same time, grazing each other's thighs and coming perilously close to depriving Laos of future generations. It caused an outburst of raucous laughter among the spectators as the players, pale but smiling, grabbed at their crotches.

Sometimes I see older men playing petanque, the pitch boundary made of bamboo pipes so that the sandy thunk of the boules is often followed by a hollow 'tok!' as they hit the bamboo. I told one man that we play the same game at home in my family and was rewarded with a surprised smile and an invitation to join in their game. As my family knows, I'm no expert, but the two other players were very kind to me and applauded my weak attempts!

My wanderings were punctuated with cups of thick dark coffee in a thousand different cafes where I sat and wrote and watched the streetlife pass by.


It was in one of these cafes in a back street shaded by frangipanis that I met Martin, a German man working as an engineer in China, who spent a few years in the Limpopo valley, and lived in a commune in East Berlin as a university student. He was interested in my childhood in Zimbabwe, as I was in his experiences of communist Germany so we walked and talked together for a while. We crossed yet another rickety bamboo bridge to the opposite bank, paying 20p towards its upkeep to an elderly woman spinning thread in a hut.


On the other side we found the village empty, the occupants presumably enjoying a siesta in the midday heat, so we slipped down a path littered with the bones of old boats to the banks of the Mekong, where a hut, perched directly above the meeting of the Nam Khan and the Mekong, offered fresh coconuts and cold beers.


As we sat there discussing the similar confluence of communism and capitalism across Asia, an old man dressed in his underpants and an open shirt, his wide smile betraying toothless gums, climbed up from where he'd been washing to offer us a boat to the bars on the far bank. But I was flushed from the heat, and tired, so I decided to mimic the villagers and head back to the hostel for a siesta in the hammock. The blisters on my thumbs from holding the oars the previous day had split so I needed to tend to them and my various other injuries as well. I really don't know how I've turned into such a clumsy traveller - no one else I know ever returns from holiays as battered and bruised as I do.

Refreshed, I went at sunset to meet Martin and Nicola for drinks at a bar where the evening's entertainment was a catwalk to showcase traditional clothing from some of the 40-odd Laotian tribes. The variety that has developed in such a small country is amazing - I'm always a little embarrassed when people ask about the traditional clothes of Britain or Zimbabwe - neither show anything near the imagination Asians put into the way they dress.