Haphazard Reflections on Laos

I’ve been in Laos (Lao to everyone else) for several weeks, but have held off on posting much of a description because the towns and villages I’ve visited have been so drastically different. It’s also difficult to identify a unique Lao culture as many characteristics are drawn from neighboring Thailand and Vietnam. There are several things that are fascinating about this country, like 8 year olds driving motorbikes and the occasional cow-meet-chainsaw roadside part auctions, but these are not uniquely Lao – they’re SE Asian. A distinctive Lao culture certainly exists – modern tourism distractions and international influences just have to be filtered out to experience it authentically.

Riverside villages in the north, including Muang Khua and Nong Khiaw, are the closest I’ve come to authentic Lao. Villagers are as friendly as the Thai and even more easy-going, if that’s possible. There is no electricity except for a few hours of generator-powered juice in the evening; lao-lao (sticky rice whiskey) is dished out to the masses in used water bottles; and without motorbikes and cars, alarm clock duties are passed on to the hundreds of roosters that must be directly outside your bungalow. These villages are accessible by road, but boating down the Nam Ou (River Ou) takes half the time and is much more enjoyable. I’ve learned to seize any opportunity to avoid the bus and the complementary smell of vomit.

From Nong Khiaw, I continued by boat to Luang Prabang, and this is where the mass tourism began. Awarded World Heritage Site status in 1995 for the many temples and historical architecture harbored within its border, Luang Prabang has become a highlight on old people tour package itineraries. Herds of old, fat Americans and swarms of frantic Japanese women crowd the streets while tour guides use megaphones to be heard over the noise and regain their attention. (Ehh… maybe I shouldn’t work in the travel industry after all.) This is the only place in Lao that they’ll see, and it’s therefore the only place in Lao that I don’t care to stay. The sites I visited here were nice, but certainly not worth the inflated expense or headaches.

Next up was Vang Vieng… oh boy. Not sure if I should start with the “special” restaurant menus, tubing with back flips, non-stop episodes of ‘Friends,’ or the all night Phish jam sessions. Vang Vieng is a lot like Luang Prabang, but for hippies instead of old people. Drugs are illegal in Lao, but the police have better things to do than concern themselves with drug use. There are a couple dozen bamboo lounge restaurants that dominate the center of the small town and the food menu is generally followed by a drug menu with a heading that reads some variation of “Happy Menu For Happiness!” [Disclaimer: I was a non-participating observer of any and all drug-related activity.] The drug menus have weed, mushroom, and opium sections, each with various teas, joints, shakes, pizzas, and baggies. Incredibly organized and inventive. The funniest part is that most of these lounges play non-stop reruns of ‘Friends’ episodes. Yep, that one, with Rachael and Ross. How completely random and ridiculous. So you’ve got all these zoned out guys and girls with hazy eyes and half-open mouths watching episode after episode of Friends. A few of the lounges show Family Guy or European soccer, but a dire few.

Tubing in Vang Vieng was a lot like tubing at home, but with sweet back flips. Dozens of bars lined the river and dudes would hook your tube with long poles to bring you over to their bar. Along with the blaring Bob Marley, most bars had some sort of rope swing or zip-wire for patron entertainment. Even though many people experienced minor injuries from rocks in the shallow water, drunk tubers were a dime a dozen to impress the crowd with back flips and swan dives into the river. “Oohhs,” “Aahhs,” and Beerlao’s a plenty.Vang Vieng is certainly a party town, but after a few days of that, I went to investigate the famed climbing scene. And oh Christ-in-flight, the climbing here is awesome. Perfect limestone roofs and canyons packed with routes. A German dude was bolting fresh routes along a pristine and untouched face when we first got there. Had an excellent first day getting my climbing face back, then learned lead climbing from a local guide. Scared the crap out of me at first, but got comfortable when I didn’t die after a day of leads.

Currently in Vientiane, the capital of Lao. This place is so laid back and low key that it reminds me of Greenville, South Carolina. Yep, that slow. At least the tourism here is integrated into the city and doesn’t shamelessly clash with the surroundings like in Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng. It’s nice here. I think I’ll stay for a little while before heading to the less traveled south.

Vietnam Top Ten Experiences List

I’ve been out of Vietnam and in Laos for several days now, but just recently got internet access – spent the last 4 days boating down a river and staying at various villages in northern Laos.

6 weeks and 12 towns have delivered many memories and excellent experiences from Vietnam. Here are some that top the list:

· Navigating through the floating markets in the Mekong Delta.· Crawling through the Cu Chi Tunnel network just north of Ho Chi Minh City.
· Experiencing Tet in Hanoi. From fireworks to acrobatics to dragon shows to free-flowing marijuana to mouse vendors these guys know how to party. Keeping the party going for a week with the backpackers I met in Hanoi was also excellent.

· Walking around small untouristed towns with all the little kids hollering “hello!” and all the gumpy old men glaring at me. The kids seem as excited as can be because they’re thinking “Whoa! White people do exist!” The older people seem more bewildered than excited, but a smile tends to avert their gaze and replace it with a smile of their own. The small towns are fun – I kind of feel like a rock star in them.

· Caffeinating up with the best coffee I’ve ever had. Vietnam is the 2nd leading producer of coffee worldwide and this stuff is good – strong, rich, and grown in the coffee plantation 20 feet away. Ditto for the peppercorn – excellent.

· Hiking and motorbiking around Dalat. What a sweet mountain town.
· Swallowing a snake’s beating heart, drinking it’s blood and venom mixed with rice wine, and chowing down on the rest of the serpent’s body. Really quite good.

· Boating around the fantastic rock formations in Halong Bay. Video here.
· Enduring the bus rides and violating all the senses: feeling no less than four bodies pushed up against me as the bus violently swerves from side to side, hearing blaring horns and my fellow passengers puke into baggies, seeing motorbikes veer away and pedestrians cower in our wake; all while smelling cigarette smoke, vomit, and fear. These rides were no joke and totally sweet.

· Experiencing the resilience of the Vietnamese. If I had to describe the Vietnamese in a single word, it would be (you guessed it!) resilient. Likely forged by their violent past, they are relentless in every way. Persistent in selling trinkets and motorbike rides, indifferent to personal pain and anguish, and unaffected by endless back-breaking work. Bleeding victims of street accidents are treated in the “walk if off” mentality. Homelessness and poverty are unacceptable and considered the individual’s fault – they must work at something, anything to survive on their own. Fruit vendors will stalk you for a kilometer, and they’re not begging – they’re selling. The infrastructure is piss poor, but they’re working to improve buildings and roadways everywhere you look. Vietnam is a fascinating and beautiful country that is inevitably on the rise, and it’s because of the resilience of the people. During what the Vietnamese call the “American War,” General Giap told the Americans “You can kill 10 of my men for every one of yours… even at those odds I will win and you will lose.” This is their unflinching and steadfast nature, and it’s certainly an experience to witness.

Tet and Halong Bay

Holy crap – they’re attacking! Oh wait, never mind, they’re just celebrating. Tet in Hanoi was sheer madness. The crowd was as dense as I would imagine Times Square is on New Years and just as crazy. Various acrobatic performances, dragon costume shows, concerts, dudes smoking weed, women selling mice (for the Year of the Rat), kids running amok and tossing M-80s at each other… all quite exciting. The fireworks show was one of the best I’ve seen just because of its massive scale. No messing around with choreography or cutesy little shapes (although I think I saw one that looked like a cowboy hat). The entire show was essentially a huge 20 minute finale – throwing it all up as fast and furious as possible in several locations around the city. And to make it even better, there was significant crowd participation. Not “oohhhs” and “aahhs,” but additional firecrackers, screamers, fire balloons, and mortars. Totally sweet. The year of the Rat has begun.Tet builds up until midnight on Tet Eve and then everyone shuts their doors and closes their businesses for a few days of family time. Some tourist services were still up and running, however, so I hopped over to Halong Bay to boat around. The rock formations in this area are absolutely fantastic. I didn’t know anything this awesome existed, let alone right here in North-East Vietnam. There are just under 2000 limestone islands and a few dozen are inhabited. We stayed over night on Cat Ba Island and it looked to be straight out of JurassicPark – we kept expecting to see Pterodactyls flying around between the peaks. Now off to Sapa, which will be the last stop before crossing the border into Laos.

Now You Eat the Snake’s Beating Heart

I’m in Hanoi and the guide book told me I could go to Le Mat, right outside the city center, and eat a snake (traditionally eaten by men to increase virility). I thought that could be a pretty sweet experience, so I motorbiked over and holy crap – it was sweet indeed. I rolled into this restaurant and two dudes grabbed a live cobra out of a cage and swung it around a bit. Then they cut down its neck to spill its blood into a glass, sliced its stomach and poured green venom into another glass, then removed the still-beating heart and put that in a shot glass. Rice wine was added to each cocktail and I was encouraged to quickly down the heart while it was still kicking. It was kinda gross. The blood and venom were equally disagreeable, but not nearly as bad as they looked. (Rice wine, which tastes pretty bad on its own, is strong enough to assume the dominate flavor.) The snake itself was actually quite pleasant. I didn’t have a preferred serpent variation, so the cook chopped it up into several sections and served fried, grilled, boiled, and uncooked dishes. Most were pretty good, but I couldn’t get over the taste of the raw skin, even when accompanied by several hot peppers. But all in all, pretty freakin awesome. Video here.







Since my last update post I’ve traveled up to Northern Vietnam from Dalat to Buon Ma Thout to Da Nang to Hue and finally to Hanoi. Buon Ma Thout is a quaint little town surrounded by coffee plantations. Da Nang is a very industrial city, but in the midst of a beautiful countryside. Hue is considered the culinary capital of Vietnam and had all kinds of weird but excellent food. Hue is also a former capital of the country and holds an Imperial City and the royal tombs of the Nguyen Dynasty. Pretty cool looking.
My first impressions of Hanoi are bone-numbing cold, confusing streets, and cheap beer. While traveling up the country the weather went from super hot to super nice and now it’s straight cold, wet, and windy. I’m starting to get used to it, but still in “burr” mode. The narrow streets in the Old Quarter are crazy because they’re all named after the merchandise sold on that street (they literally translate to “Shoe Street,” “Rice Street,” “Pots and Pans Street,” etc). As the goods change from block to block, the street names change, too: “Where the hell am I? Oh, ‘Banana Street,’ great, uh, where am I?” On a happy note, while the street names change a dozen times over half a kilometer, I’ve come across several “Bia Hoi” stands that sell keg beer for 15 cents. It may not be too bad if I get stuck here over Tet!
On a side note, Vietnam is big time exercising the literal notion of a “developing country.” Every single city, town, and road I’ve traveled is under development. They’re experiencing an economic boom and putting it to maximum use: constructing new buildings, improving existing structures, and expanding roadways. A French guy who lives here told me that Vietnam is about 30 years behind Thailand and 40 to 50 years behind Europe in the development arena, but they’re working full steam ahead to catch up on the physical infrastructure just as the economy is pushing the boundaries on remaining communist restrictions. There’s certainly an air of optimism in Vietnam and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the country emerge as a major world player in the near future.