Travels in Laos

Looking a map of Cambodia, it is easy to identify the major countries that reside across its borders. Vietnam engulfs the entire eastern front, rising up from the gulf of Thailand and ending in the northeastern corridor along the province of Ratanakiri. The border with Thailand is even more massive, stretching from Koh Kong around Banteay Meanchey to the eastern area near Preah Vihear. Both of these countries are key players in the political realm of the region, and their influence upon Cambodia is clearly defined. A majority of manufactured goods in local markets in Cambodia come from Thailand, and a substantial amount of fruit and agricultural products come Vietnam. The occasional tension rises with Thailand, which is referred to in my village as a “country of thieves,” and during the harvest season huge trucks of rice can be seen heading for Vietnam. Given the impact that these two countries have upon Cambodia, one would almost forget that a third country borders Cambodia. Sitting quietly above the border crossing near Stung Treng is the country of Laos.

Landlocked and mostly mountainous, this country of 6.2 million people is diverse in its landscape as it is with its people. Its territory begins in the highlands of the north, and widens from the border with China and Myanmar towards the Plain of Jars and the capital city of Vientiane. It then narrows into a space along the Mekong River sandwiched by Vietnam and Thailand, and is mostly flat along the river’s banks. Although Lowland Lao (Lao Loum) make up seventy percent of the population, there are many different hill-tribes, such as the Hmong, and other minority groups who live in different parts of the country.

Like Cambodia, Laos had a reluctant role during the second Indochinese War, and suffered a bombing campaign that is still taking its toll on civilians today. During the war, the American government dropped nearly two millions tons of bombs on Laos in an effort to destroy elements of the North Vietnamese army and the Pathet Laos. The latter was a communist guerrilla movement that acted in conjunction with the Vietnamese, who later came to power in 1975 in a bloodless coup. As a result of the war, the xenophobic government was heavily dependent on Soviet aid until 1990 when it started to ease diplomatic relations with the west. The country is one of the few remaining communist states in the world, although one would never know it just from being there.

I first thought of traveling to Laos about a year ago. Jason Park, now an RPCV, was telling a bunch of trainees and I about his upcoming plans to visit Laos. He listed a bunch of names of places I had never heard of, and then stated the peculiar phrase, “Laos is going to blow up soon.” There was talk of communism and regional stability in the conversation as well, but for some reason that one phrase put the thought of the northern country in the back of my head. Slowly over the year I began to read more about the country from history books by Milton Osborne, the International Herald Tribune, and an entertaining series of detective novels by Colin Cotteril. So when Anthony called me up in July and asked me if I was interested in traveling to Laos in September, I jumped at the chance.

The plan for the trip was to essentially to go in a big circle around central Indochina. Taking a bus from across the border to the Bangkok airport in Thailand, we were to fly on Air Asia to a city in the north named Chiang Rai. From there, we were to cross the border at Chiang Khong, and take a two-day boat trip down to Luang Pahbang. From there it was onto the Plain of Jars, Vientiane, and then heading back to Phnom Penh via Pakse and Tad Lo in the south. It involved a lot of time sitting on busses and boats, but we figured that a book and the surrounding scenery would be enough to keep us entertained. It was a little grueling at times, but the things that we did largely made up for that.

When we left Siem Reap we got off to a bit of a rough start. Matt and I arranged for a bus to take us to Bangkok, stopping at Sisophon to pick up Dan and Anthony. This was unfortunate mistake, for bus we took was very slow and stopped several times before reaching the border. We arranged the bus through our guesthouse, The Mandalay Inn, but we realized too late that this was an obvious scam. If it took this long to get to the border crossing at Poipet, what guarantee did we have that it would arrive in Bangkok at a reasonable time? The driver could very well have stopped at a guesthouse along the way and claimed Bangkok could not be reached that day because of engine trouble or some other excuse. The guesthouse would also happen to belong to someone in the family. It sounds paranoid and cynical, but it was a real fear of ours. After we crossed the border, we were worried that we might miss our flight. We decided to pay a taxi a hefty sum of money to take us directly to Bangkok airport itself. This was actually not a bad deal, since we would have had to pay a taxi anyway when we got into Bangkok. Despite what people had told me, crossing the border into Thailand was pretty easy. I think coming back is much harder, but fortunately we did not have to do that on this trip. Getting a taxi was a bit of a hassle, but it was probably worth it.

I’ve been to the Bangkok airport a few times now, and every time I go I marvel at its massive size and gleaming white architecture. When we got there, we checked in and made our way to the food court to have an early dinner at the Burger King. It was everything that I imagined it would be and more. From there we flew into Chiang Rai, and stayed at a dingy guesthouse near the bus station. It happened to be my birthday that day, so we went out to an ex-pat bar that night owned by an Englishman dressed in white linen. We were looking over the drink menu under the watchful gaze of some cat-like waitresses when the owner came out suddenly. “Girls! You’ll scare them away!” he called out, and invited us in for a drink. We spent most of the evening around the pool table and the dartboard in the back.

The next day we found a bus going to the border town of Chiang Khong, and boarded it just after the sun came up around six. From the bus station, we crossed through rice fields, hills, and passed giant rock formations that seemed to have just sprung up out of the ground. The air was noticeably cooler. When we got to the bus station on the border, we took a tuk-tuk to the river and crossed the Mekong on a thin wooden boat towards the town on the Laos side named Houyxai. When we passed through customs on the other side, we arranged to take a passenger boat at 11:00 down to Luang Prabang through a local travel agent. We went down to docks for a bit of lunch, and waited for our boat to depart.

It was while waiting for the boat that we had an introduction to the Laotian sandwich. Stuffed with tuna, chicken, ham, vegetables, or all of these ingredients, a sandwich in Laos is a treat not to be missed by the weary traveler. Of course Cambodia has its own version of the lunchtime staple, but the ones in Laos were far more delicious. A lot of it has to do with the bread, which is soft, white, and chewy. This is unlike its crusty, oily, and hardened Cambodian cousin. The reasons for this difference are a mystery, but I would venture a guess that Laotian people use yeast in the production process because the slightly cooler climate allows for it.

The boat we took to Luang Prabang was a small converted cargo ship, which was about six to nine feet wide and perhaps fifty or sixty feet long. A roof covered the wooden deck, and luggage was stored underneath our feet in the hold. The pilot sat at the very front and steered the ship with a wheel that looked like it was out of another age. Passengers sat on wooden seats, concerted car seats, or mats on the floor. A toilet in the cabin near the engine room provided relief, if a little noisy. The further back you went towards the end of the boat, the louder the noise came from the engine. Given this, it was a pretty good idea to come early and get a good seat while you could.

Two days on a boat sounds like an awful bore, but it was actually quite the opposite. We made a few friends with other travelers on board, played cards, looked at the scenery, and read our books while the boat continued on downstream. Among the people we met were Ai, a bearded fellow from Israel with a straw hat and a bamboo walking stick, Réné, a Danish man who had previously come from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Liz, an American woman who was working in a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand. Liz happened to be from the same city as me, and we talked for a while about and favorite places to eat back home. Réné told me stories about fighting the Taliban. Most of the passengers were foreigners heading to Luang Prabang, but there were a few Laotian travelers scattered here and there amongst the throngs of white faces. There was one local couple that we kept trying to chat with, but it was with limited success. I did notice from glancing at them that they were able to hold hands and display small signs of affection. This would never happen in Cambodia.

From Houyxai, we traveled downstream through the hills towards the town of Pakbeng. The Mekong had a strong current, with bubbling ripples arising from bottom everywhere one looked. At this point of the river, the soil it has collected from its path in the Tibetan plateau turns the water a rusty brown color. The mountains cut up steeply from the riverbanks along the way, and the pilot had to carefully navigate between the rapids and the sharp rocks that stuck up just above the water. The boat stopped here and there to let people off and on, as well as for schoolboys and girls to come on board selling candy, chips, pineapple slices, and the ubiquitous large bottles of Beer Laos from woven baskets. Along certain sections of the river, one could clearly see how slash and burn agriculture had made its mark upon the landscape. Huge patches of land were stripped away from the forest, presumably used for growing crops. Occasionally, someone would shout and point to something they saw on shore. Once we saw a cargo ship loading crates onto the shore with the help of an elephant escort. Another time we saw a backpack circling the drain of a whirlpool, and someone exclaimed that it was “backpacker’s worst nightmare.”

When we reached Pakbeng, it was around five o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was making lines on the water behind us. After unloading our bags, we walked up the hill from the docks and quickly found a guesthouse. The owner was a single mother, and we were happy to stay at her place for the night. There was hot water in a shared bathroom, and a restaurant across the street from where we ate dinner that night.

The next day was cloudy and foggy. Then monks were out collecting alms when we walked out to find breakfast at six thirty that morning, and the woman who ran the guesthouse made us breakfast and sandwiches for the coming day. When our boat left the dock that morning, the clouds shielded the tops of the hills from view and formed a misty barrier between the jungle and us. The river snaked around the hills throughout the day, until at last we reached our destination.

Louang Prabang is one of the most enchanting towns in all of Indochina. Destroyed by Haw invaders in 1887, the city was rebuilt with money from France and labor from Vietnam. The result of all this is a town that resembles a small alpine village tucked away somewhere in Switzerland. European style houses, brick walkways, and iron lampposts dot the streets in Old Luang Prabang, mixed in with Buddhist Wats and UNESCO buildings. From just taking a walk around the area, you can see a lot of really nice old houses. Expensive boutique shops and coffee houses are also abundant along the main streets, with much of the town’s services geared towards the tourist trade. At night, a large Hmong market is set up under tents in the middle of a street. It offers textiles, handbags, old French coins, and other sorts of souvenir items.

While there are a great many restaurants and cafés in Loung Prabang, there are a few that we liked. Saffron is a café facing the Mekong that has good coffee, best if ordered in a French press, as well as good pastries and breakfast items. The café is also part of an NGO, which promotes coffee grown by the Hmong people as a cash crop substitute for opium. The Scandinavian Bakery also offers good breakfasts, and the sandwiches made by people in the market and street vendors are exceptional.

For dinner, our favorite thing to do was to go to a food stall at the far end of the Hmong market. One can purchase grilled fish, chicken, buffalo, or beef on a bamboo stick, and then order a plate of vegetarian food for nearly 5,000 kip (roughly 2,500 riel or $0.75) at a nearby stall. Finding an inexpensive place to eat in Luang Pahbang was a little difficult, but this seemed like a pretty good option.

For two days after our arrival, we walked around the town to see all that we could. Having lived in Cambodia for over year at that point, we strayed far from the tourist sites and saw the local markets and shops to see how they were different from Cambodian ones. Passing by a local high school, I noticed that the student’s uniforms were different. They all wore shoes, and the girls had a kind of striped pattern at the ends of their skirts. Some of the boys we saw had kind of red kerchiefs around their necks. We also visited the royal palace, which was a nice old wooden building from the 19th century. It had some interesting artwork and decoration inside, and included gifts to the king from various governments around the world. These included a table ware set from Charles de Gaulle, a tea set from the USSR, and some moon rocks given by President Nixon. We also found a bowling alley that night that resembled in all aspects one in America. It was fun to play a few games there, even though we were the only ones there.

We also went into the hills a bit to visit the Koung Si falls to cool off a bit. This was probably one of the nicer waterfalls that I have ever seen. The water flowed down from a tall cliff into many different pools along the way into the forest. The water had a kind of turquoise color, and was very cold. One of them had a rope swing suspended from a tree, and we spent a good couple of hours there swinging off of it.

From Louang Prabang, we took a bus over the mountains to the town of Phounsavan. From the many switchbacks and curves that the road took, it was far from a smooth ride. However, the scenery was breathtaking and what a delight it was to see an elevated landscape instead of rice fields for a change. We passed through mountainous towns with houses made from woven strips of wood, and banana tree orchards on green vertical hills. Electrical lines followed us the whole way, and the road was in remarkably good condition. From the tall mountains, we came down into low lying green hills with pine trees and scattered clumps of forest. This was our introduction to the plain of jars.

The eerie thing about Phounsavan is that there are remnants of the American bombing campaign against Laos everywhere you go. When we arrived, we went to the Kong Keo Guesthouse near the old airstrip for dinner. The owner, who is named Kong and uses the word “bollacks” frequently to the amusement of onlookers, helped us organize a tour for the next day, and showed a documentary about the bombing of Laos during the war. It was pretty sad to watch, but also very informative. The documentary showed exactly what a cluster bomb casing looked like, as well as what an individual “bombee” (a small object about the size of a small baseball designed to kill individual people from the air) looked like. When we got up to leave, we noticed that Kong had lit a fire in an elongated boat-shaped object. Then there was the slow realization that this was the casing from a cluster bomb.

The next day we saw more evidence of the war. After a tour of some bomb craters, we passed by villages using bomb remnants for structural supports, and a cave at Thom Piu where several hundred civilians were killed. According to the documentary and local information, the cave was being used as a makeshift hospital. During a bombing run, an American fighter plane fired a rocket into the back of the cave and killed everyone inside. Today, a memorial and an information center sit at the base of the cave. A path leads up to the entrance, and you can go inside. It goes back pretty far. At the entrance, people have piled stones as memorials for the dead. It is an eerie place to visit, to say the least.

Afterwards, we finally got to see one of the jar sites that the Plane of Jars is so famously named after. These large stone jars are scattered across different sites, and mysterious in origin. Although some speculate that they were used as ancient funerary urns, no one quite knows what they were used for. Our best guesses were that they were put there by aliens, that the pitch resonating in them from one’s voice made them ideal for tuning, that they were originally ancient sea sponges, or that they were used to raise guppy fish (my favorite idea). However, they will forever remain a mystery.

After Phounsavan, we made our way down to Vientiane across the mountains and through the town of Vang Vieng. Although, we did not stop there at Vang Vieng the area around there was quite beautiful. The sawtooth-like Mountains rise up sharply from the river that runs through the town, and form knob tops at their summit.

Vientiane was like a smaller version of Phnom Penh, with fewer redeeming qualities. There were the usual tourist restaurants and Mekong river views, but with a prostitute on every corner and a karaoke bar always near, I was pretty disgusted with this place after coming from Luang Prabang. We saw a structure that resembled the L’Arc de Triomphe but more gaudy, as well as the golden pagoda that is one of their national symbols. After seeing a western man take a well dressed male prostitute back to his room, I was pretty happy that I only had to spend one night there.

From Vientiane, we took a night bus to Pakse in the southern tip of Laos. Taking a night bus sounds pretty uncomfortable idea, but it was quite pleasant. Instead of seats, this bus was equipped with bunk beds, pillows, and blankets.

We left Vientiane at eight o’clock that evening and arrived at six in Pakse. From there we found a bus running to Tad Lo, and booked a room that evening in a wooden bungalow. We rode elephants through the jungle that afternoon, and relaxed before the next day.

From there on we trucked onwards to Phnom Penh, with a brief stopover in Stung Treng. The only memorable part was the border crossing. We had read in our guidebook that the border guards in Cambodia would demand a bribe, but would back down if we asked for their name and a receipt. Sure enough, the health quarantine inspector asked us for one dollar each. When I tried to write down his name in my notebook, he grabbed it, threw it at me, and told us to move along.

Then, and only then, did we come back into Cambodia