Si Phan Don, which translates to Four Thousand Islands, is a beautiful little stretch of the Mekong, dotted with islets large and small, before it spills across into Cambodia. Our first day took us to Don Khong, by far the largest island in the river archipelago. Despite its size, it’s also much calmer than some of the islands further south, and tends to attract travelers on the older end of the spectrum. There is not a whole lot to do besides relax, though we rented bicycles for the afternoon and had a downright pleasant pedal around the southern half of Don Khong, skirting the coast and then cutting through vast expanses of rice paddy fields in the center of the island. The impossibly green stalks in the few fields still flooded stood out in striking contrast with the crisp brown of the dry, fallow fields. Water buffalo splashed around in the marshy fields, grazing languidly alongside families of ducks. Villagers around the island were busily weaving thatch roofs, preparing for the deluges of the monsoon that will break in the coming months.

Given its lethargic pace, and our ticking travel clock, we spent only one night in Don Khong before striking further south to Don Det. Accommodation is pricier and shabbier here due to the island’s greater popularity, and has a bit more of a resort-y feel than Don Khong, with any stretch of desirable coast overwhelmed with bungalows. Despite some rain in the morning, we still found the first day stinkingly hot,* and mostly just resigned ourselves to sitting in our riverside hammocks, reading. I polished off “Lila,” Pirsig’s metaphysical sequel to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” It isn’t quite as compelling a read as Zen, but is much better fleshed out philosophically, to my mind.

The 2nd day in Don Det we decided to finally make something out of ourselves, renting bikes and setting out down to the southern tip of Don Khon (connected to Don Det by an old French railway bridge) to see if we could catch sight of the Irrawaddy river dolphins. Instead of following the village roads that meandered around the perimeter of the island, we made the mistake of taking the dead-straight path that had once been the railway bed. As it turns out, that meant riding several kilometers along bumpy, jagged stones. Suffice it to say, Andy got a flat, and we pushed the bikes the last kilometer or so into town (I actually relished the opportunity to walk instead of ride, even though my bike was still intact).

We hired a boat (complete with a guide who couldn’t have been much older than 10 years old) to take us out to one of the rocky islets for some dolphin watching. While Andy tells me that compared to most whale-watching trips, our viewpoint and the activity was downright riveting, but having never watched whales, I found the whole thing a bit anticlimactic. We did spot a few of the rare freshwater dolphins, but intent squinting into the distance for an hour to catch a few fleeting glimpses of a fin or splash didn’t do much to enthrall me. There were other islets maybe a hundred meters away that would have presented us a much better view, but we couldn’t visit them because they apparently belonged to Cambodia. A shame that dolphins don’t respect national boundaries…

We ended up taking a much nicer trail through the forest on the way back. Andy was so enthused to have a good trail to ride that – in an irony of ironies – he snapped the chain on his bike. Impressively, he managed an impromptu repair by bashing the link back into place with a rock, and we were on our way again. His bodged repair actually held up until about the final kilometer, upon which he needed to ride his bike scooter-style. On the return we took a slight detour to visit yet another waterfall, Tat Somphamit, though it was well worth it – the torrential flow had carved out a deep gorge in the jagged rocks, and the dusk twilight was simply stunning. A mediocre but filling Indian feast and surprisingly upbeat night at the happenin’ reggae bar rounded out our final evening in Laos.

Bidding goodbye to one of the nicest countries I’ve yet traveled through, the next morning we began our two-day bus trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia, home to the wondrous Angkor temples…

*I never actually checked the temperature in Laos, but apparently here in Siem Reap in Cambodia, it has been in the high 30s-low 40s with near 90% humidity. Si Phan Don was probably not far off.

Note: I’ve been traveling with Andrew for most of my time in Laos, and I’ve allowed him to write about our day to day happenings. I didn’t think many people would want to read these things twice, and I didn’t really want to write something so redundant. However, I did want to write something about my time in Laos, so here goes. An overview of the trip (attempting to focus more on my thoughts and feelings than the events), and then some general comments and thoughts that have been floating around my head for the last month. If you don’t want to read it, maybe you’ll at least appreciate the pictures… maybe…

Laos ended up being a great place to visit – I stayed at least two weeks longer than I’d planned, and I’d go back in a heartbeat. This was not how I felt at the beginning. The Thai-Laos border crossing at Chiang Khong/Houyxai involves taking a decrepit old boat across the Mekong River, and then spending over an hour jostling for position at the immigration office. Jostling might be an understatement – no one was in control of anything here. After getting nicked for the special Canadian visa fee, the highest of any country, I wished that I had been carrying a US passport. (That feeling disappeared for good when I got to eastern Laos and was able to witness the effects of the covert war there first hand. I’ll get into this later, but for now just know that Laos is the most heavily bombed country on earth, and unexploded bombs with “US NAVY” and “USAF” painted on them still kill and maim thousands of Lao each year.) Anyway, after digging through a pile of approved passports to find mine, it was time to board a slowboat to Luang Phabang. Talk about a slow and boring journey. For two 10 hour days we sat on these low wooden benches with no legroom to speak of, watching the rather boring banks of the Mekong drift by. Pakbeng, the town we stopped in overnight, was actually pretty nice except for the roach infestation in my room – I had to unpack all of my stuff in the morning to get them out of my bag. If anyone reading this ever needs to get from northern Thailand to Luang Phabang, take the bus. You’ll never really know what you missed, but that’s a good thing. Trust me.

Luang Phabang was kind of a love at first sight thing for me, maybe because it meant the boat ride was over, but more likely because it’s an awesome little city. I arrived just as the greatest night market I’ve seen in Asia was getting into full swing, and the vast array of food and fresh fruit shakes (big ones, 50 cents) filled me up within minutes. The city is a UNESCO world heritage site, and while looking at all the European influenced buildings was interesting for a bit, it soon became clear all there really was to do here was drink beer by the river and read. I did this for three days before meeting Andrew, and it never got boring. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Animal Farm got me through the days, and Andrew arrived with his stash of books just in time.

Soon after he showed up we headed north, first by bus to Nong Kwiew, and then further up the Nam Ou by boat to Muong Noi. I felt pretty bad on the trip here, and just got progressively worse for the first few days as I fell victim to something I picked up in Luang Phabang. After 4 brutal bedridden days I was almost good to go again, and we set off on a little two day trek through the mountains, spending the night homestay-style in a Khmu village. As far as raw natural beauty is concerned, this place is one of the best – that is, small pockets of the mountains are great. The rest has been slash-and-burned for rice farming, and because of the steepness of the mountains, a cleared area is only good for one season before the annual monsoon washes away whatever small amount of soil there was.

Next stop: Phonsavan. However much it pained me to witness the horrible farming practices in the mountains, coming to realize the reality of unexploded ordinance (UXO) in eastern Laos made the north seem downright utopian. Here’s the deal. Because of it’s proximity to Vietnam, it’s eastern neighbour, Laos got pretty caught up in that whole war thing, and a chunk of the Ho Chi Minh Trail actually went through the country. That said, Laos was never officially at war, didn’t participate in the fighting, and really just got overrun by the Viet Cong the same way everyone else did. The result: Laos, per capita, is the most heavily bombed country on earth, but officially not a single one of these bombs was ever dropped. Everything was covert, no one outside Laos knew what was happening, cluster bombs and other horribly inefficient weapons were used (about 1/3 of the bombs dropped did not explode – at least, not when they were supposed to), and the consequences are still being felt today. Each year, thousands of people are still killed or maimed by UXO. Sometimes the UXO takes the form of a 1000 lb bomb, but it’s the cluster bombs that are the real problem. These break up in the air, dropping hundreds of little bombs, known in Laos as “bombies”, that scatter everywhere. These are really bad at exploding when they’re supposed to, and to make things worse, they’re easily camouflaged from farmers, but look a lot like toys to kids. We watched a video at a MAG (Mines Advisory Group) office detailing the operation to make land safe again. Please, watch something similar online about demining, maybe THIS or THIS. It really makes you laugh, it’s just so slow, tedious, and expensive. Not to mention dangerous. Oh… and the countries assisting Laos with UXO clearance are primarily Japan, New Zealand, and Ireland. I guess it makes as much sense as the rest of it. I was actually pretty pissed I didn’t see Canada on the list, but now that I’m in Cambodia, it seems that Canada is taking the lead in demining this country. It’s good to see we’re doing something I guess. And it is now perfectly clear to me why so many Americans have a big ol’ Canadian flag sewn on their backpacks. It’s hard to be an American over here. It’s even harder to understand war, especially after seeing the carnage, even decades later.

Oh yeah.. the reason for going to Phonsavan – the Plain of Jars. This is basically a collection of ancient stone jars, 4 or 5 feet around, equally tall, scattered throughout the fields. They were probably burial vessels at one point, and their size and age were quite impressive. Getting around here was an adventure too – well marked trails connected the jar sites, and for the first time in living memory, all the tourists respected the signs and did not dare stray from the paths. UXO is just that scary. I really have never been so aware of my surroundings.

Next stop, Vang Viang. This is the Laos mecca for younger tourists, and it was just brutal. Basically, we went rock climbing one day (far inferior to Chiang Mai), went tubing down the river the next day, and got the hell out of there the morning after. To be fair, tubing was a drunken good time, and huge waterslides and rope swings are pretty entertaining. The waterslide launches you a fair ways though, and one of my runs ended with a backflop I could still feel days later. So it goes…

The capital, Vientiene, ended up being a nice little place despite the common advice to spend as little time here as possible. There was nothing really special here, just a slow paced , well functioning city. One thing that really got me thinking is that Vientiene is by far the biggest city in Laos, with a population of 200,000. Laos has 5.6 million people. This is still a very rural, subsistence-based country.

A pseudo—airconditioned overnight bus took us from Vientiene to Pakxe, the biggest city in southern Laos, but unfortunately pretty much a dump of a town. Unlike everywhere else we’d been in Laos, all the big trees here had been cut and garbage piles and dusty roads dominated the city - it really made me not care for Pakxe at all. After spending an afternoon here, we rented a pair of motorbikes and prepared for the 200km roundtrip ride to Tad Lo, a small village known mostly for being close to a big chain of waterfalls.

The plan was to spend a night there, maybe two if we could find a good trek to occupy a day. We ended up spending three, and I easily could have spent many more. Everything here was just so laid back, cheap, and gorgeous – the pinnacle of easy living. A pretty nice bungalow cost us a dollar each per night, the cheapest place either of us has found so far, and far from the worst. The bike ride here was nothing too special – one nice enough waterfall stop, and a near accident as I almost ate it pretty hard after my rear tire went flat. All was well though, I just limped the bike a couple kilometers to the nearest bike repair place (they’re EVERYWHERE in SE Asia, as everyone rides crappy bikes that must constantly need work), and in a bit the mechanic, this really tough, wiry, hardened-looking dude, had the bike good as new. Being a falang, I was expecting to pay some outrageous amount for the repair. When he told me that his half hour of work came to 5000 kip (around 50 cents), I was dumbfounded. It was just so nice to be off the tourist trail and to be treated like anyone else, not seen as a target for exploitation.

Trekking around Tad Lo was great – our guide, Hat, was able to fight through the language barrier and explain a good amount about the surrounding countryside. Unlike our other trek in Laos, where we saw slash and burn rice fields, agriculture here seemed much more sustainable. Huge varieties of crops, including corn, rice, potatoes, tobacco, squash, peppers, onions, cotton, thatch, and bananas were planted in carefully terraced fields – fields that won’t lose their soil to erosion during the monsoon season. It struck me as really interesting how one “traditional” method of farming could be so destructive, while another “traditional” method could be so sustainable. It really goes to show how useless terms like “traditional” are – old ways aren’t necessarily better or worse. Each system needs to be judged for itself. (As an aside, it’s pretty interesting to witness how the economy changes and is structured by the seasons. For example, at this time of year the thatch harvest is coming in, and women all across rural Laos are spending their days hand weaving panels to reroof virtually all the thatch roofs across the country. As you move from rural areas, where every house has a pile of newly woven panels in front, you get to small towns where the thatch panels are collected and readied for transport, and then in the major cities all of the construction centers have huge piles of thousands of these roofing panels. I’ve never really been able to witness the manufacturing process in its entirety so clearly before.)

The highlight of Tad Lo had to be the buffalo party, which is what got us to stay another day – there were hangovers to be nursed. The buffalo party is an annual celebration, taking place during the March full moon, where the villages spend a day and night singing and dancing and drinking to give thanks for the year’s harvest and ask for more good luck the next year. The centerpiece of the festival is the sacrificing of a buffalo, which then provides a huge feast for the entire town. On our trek we walked through 4 or 5 small towns near Tad Lo, and the center of each one was always the Spirit House. This is an ornate building that apparently is used only once per year, during the buffalo party. They’re a pretty big deal around here. Anyway, we showed up around 10 pm, just in time to catch a rather large (50-70) villagers dressed up in red and orange costumes moving in a line around the festival grounds engaged in what appeared to be a war dance. The atmosphere was electric, and everyone wanted to party. It seemed virtually every local had a huge jug, bucket, jerry can, or something of lao-lao (the home made rice whisky that everyone drinks around here), and they passed it around with great pleasure to other locals and tourists (there were maybe 8 of us there, mixed among several thousand locals). After getting quite smashed, the traditional celebration wound down and everyone broke for the stage/dance floor, a dusty field in the middle of town. Here, the beer and lao-lao continued flowing freely late into the night, and everyone danced to some pretty horrible Lao and Thai pop songs. As you all know, I have no clue how to dance – I took to skankin’ full time, and hilariously by the end of the night some of the locals were doing the same. Now they just need to get their hands on some ska….

Our last stop in Laos was down in Si Phan Don, literally translated as the 4000 Islands. The first day/night was spent biking around the rice paddies of Don Khong, the next days were spent down on Don Det. The highlight here was definitely a trip out on the Mekong to spot some of the famous freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins. Our guide couldn’t have been more than 10 or 12, but he guided our little motor boat expertly through some tricky channels, and had a great eye for the dolphins. We never got too close (the dolphins chose to be in the Cambodian part of the river that day), but it was fun nonetheless. The other highlight was the bike trip home. I got a flat on the way down to the dolphins, about 8km from where we were staying, but got it fixed no problem. On the way back though, about 3-4 km into the trip, I snapped my chain on an uphill. It became a question of walking pretty far either way, in what was now almost the dark, or trying to fix it. I guess I’m just pretty proud of myself for this, because I was able to improvise a chain tool out of some rocks, pop a chain link back together, and bash a rivet good and hard until it would stay. It lasted almost all the way back.

So, what’s the deal with Laos? This country is undergoing a construction boom like I never thought possible. Piles of sand, gravel, and bricks fill the streets, and the drone of cement mixers is endless. It seems every third building is currently under construction. This is true everywhere, from the cities to tiny towns of less than a hundred people. Roads are getting paved at a staggering rate. In the north, all the money is coming from China – in exchange, China gets to devour Laos’ gorgeous jungles. I have no idea where the south is getting the money. Hopefully tourism is playing a pretty big role though. While it’s easy to bemoan the huge numbers of Westerners going through here, especially in places like Vang Viang, I really do think that tourism offers Laos one of its brightest futures. For people living on less than a dollar a day, the forests and rivers present themselves as an unmissable opportunity. The choice then becomes how the natural resources are exploited. Will it be by chopping down hundred year old trees for China, or will it be saving the forests so rich white people can go romping through them. As much as the latter option sucks, it’s much better than the former. This is what I especially loved about seeing the Irrawaddy dolphins. These guys are almost extinct now (less than 100 left, probably), but for the first time locals are seeing a benefit to keeping them alive. Many riverfront towns are now bustling tourist destinations for people who are willing to pay good money to see dolphins alive. Restaurants, bike rental places, guest houses, guides, and every other tourist industry benefits. I absolutely hate it, but the dolphins (and the forests, reefs, lakes, prairies, all our “wild” things) are only going to be saved by commercializing them. It sucks, but I guess that’s how it’s gotta be. I’m willing to bet living on a dollar a day also sucks.

One of my biggest disappointments throughout SE Asia, especially Laos, is just how dramatic the language barrier is. Sure, most locals know a few words – sandwich, rice, room, tuktuk, etc – but having even one meaningful conversation with a local was an unrealized goal. The closest I got happened over a bottle of lao lao shared with a trekking guide. I tried to ask him about the government of Laos, as few people have any idea it’s there, and while he seemed to understand what I was getting at, the answer just couldn’t come. I ended up being regaled with tales of how there’s never been a communist country that wants war and there’s never been a capitalist country that wanted peace. Trying to argue got me nowhere – his vocabulary just wasn’t there. Anyway, my point is that I will not embark on another long trip without learning languages first – this is really hard in SE Asia where any trip inevitably involves many close together countries speaking different languages though. However, I will not leave for my next great trip, hopefully bringing me from Machu Picchu and the Peruvian Amazon down to Patagonia, without learning Spanish beforehand. It’s just too frustrating to not be able to communicate – you really feel left out from learning the culture and prevailing attitudes. Without a doubt this has been the single greatest disappointment of my travels so far.

It seems obvious to say that a basic education, elementary school level even, is of huge benefit, but being in Laos has really driven this home for me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – high school math (trig and calculus and the like) really has no function in everyday life, but basic arithmetic is really useful (duh!), and lacking all through Laos. Making change, converting currencies, easy enough operations that I can do mentally in a few seconds, take shopkeepers and travel agents many frustrating attempts with a calculator to get right. You don’t realize how important a basic education is, even just up to grade 5 or so, until you’re in a society without it.

I’m sure I have more to say that I just can’t think of right now, but rest assured, it will make it’s way into other posts as my traveling continues. I’m off for a holiday in Cambodia.

After our sleeper bus to Pakse in southern Laos, we arrived early in the morning, slightly disheveled and tired. Overnight travel always seems like such a brilliant idea, since you can save a night’s accommodation and use the downtime to get somewhere else, but – at least in SE Asia – there’s never enough room to get comfortable, so you often end up with a long, boring, anxious ride in the dark where you can neither read nor stare out the window to pass the time.

Not surprising, then, that our day in Pakse was somewhat less than productive. The baking heat stunted our motivations to really do anything except laze about, sweating, reading, and taking cold showers (this is growing to be a recurring theme, it seems). I started and finished Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book, “Outliers,” which held few truly dramatic revelations, but was an easy, interesting read anyway. I didn’t feel too bad for squandering the afternoon, though; as we discovered, Pakse’s only real virtue is as a base for exploring the nearby Bolaven Plateau, or as a stopover en route to the Si Phan Don. It’s a sprawling, dusty, ugly town with something of a Wild West aesthetic, enhanced by the harsh overexposure and dun tones rendered by the hot season’s mid-day sun.

The next morning we set our Bolaven adventure into action. We’d been debating the best way to explore the area – motorbikes, or trekking on foot? – before striking upon the obvious solution of doing both, making a concise 3-day loop of the plateau. The familiar cheap, Chinese 4-speed, clutchless 100 cc scooters would become our noble steeds for the next few days, and we set out northeast, towards the village of Tad Lo. On the way, just under half-way to Tad Lo, we stopped at Tad Paxuam, a verdant oasis of a waterfall, built-up with an upscale eco-restaurant, resort, and ethnic village museum. The place bristled with Asian tourists arriving on chartered luxury buses for package tours. While the falls were nice enough, they paled in comparison to the others that dot the Bolaven, but luckily enough this was our first stop, so we didn’t know that yet.

On the trail out of the park, Andy got a flat in his rear tire. We limped it back to the village at the turnoff from the main road, where a lean, white-haired Lao man promptly fixed it for just 5,000 kip ($0.75 CDN)! Back on the road, there were few sights to distract for the remaining 50 km between Tad Paxuam and Tad Lo, and the roads were largely straight and decidedly less interesting than the more sinuous highlands outside of Phonsavan.

Tad Lo is a small village straddling the river that flows down from another pair of nearby waterfalls. While it receives its fair share of tourists – and is currently undergoing the same construction boom that has been in evidence throughout Laos – the influx of foreigners can’t overwhelm its rustic simplicity. Our spartan, but clean, bungalow cost just 20,000 kip between the two of us! The afternoon in Tad Lo brought the first rain I’ve seen in two months in SE Asia, and the way it broke the heat was just heavenly. That night, some girls had bought a bootleg copy of “Slumdog Millionaire” and played it on the small TV in the guesthouse restaurant – great movie, though reading the occasional sub-titles was a frustratingly futile.

The next morning we went for a day trek through the neighbouring countryside. Our guide, Hat, was a tiny, wizened old Lao (variously giving his age as somewhere between 72 and 85 years), answering English questions he didn’t understand with a healthy chuckle. As it turns out, he ended up doing a fair amount of good-natured laughing given his limited command of English, but he certainly knew his stuff, and was able to point out the local crops and indigenous plants. Our walk took us past the waterfalls, through charred fields where the villagers plant coffee, peanuts, pumpkins, corn, soy, bananas, chillies, onions, tobacco, and other herbs. We passed through several ethnic villages, stopping in one Ta-oy town to buy a big, delicious papaya for 2000 kip. While Hat chopped up our snack, the elderly woman we bought it from sat and smoked a shisha-like mixture of tobacco and sugar from a truly enormous bamboo water pipe (called a “kog deuh” in Lao), affectionately patting a pig. At one point she stood up and gave a trilling call (“dooo doo doo do do do…”) at which dozens of chickens and chicks from all around rushed to converge on her for feeding.

The landscapes we encountered were not pretty in the traditional sense, but held a fascinating, ugly beauty nevertheless. Large swathes of forest were burned out, littered with large, random piles of rock, and fringed with lush banana forests, contrasting with the blackened earth. Occasionally, huge trees had been spared, standing out as solitary survivors in the desolation.

Many of the villages featured a prominent spirit temple in the center of town, surrounding by several posts where water buffalo and cattle are tied up before their sacrifice in an annual rite at the full moon in March. Our timing turned out to be impeccable, because completely unbeknownst to us before our arrival in Tad Lo, the sacrifice happened to be the very next day, and the celebratory buffalo party was that night!

Our guesthouse owner arranged a sawngthaew to take just over a dozen of us interloping falang to join in the festivities. The village was crowded with people, and the locals had set up plenty of stalls to provide for merry imbibers. The water buffalo was sleeping rather peacefully at its post, unconcerned by its fate, but one of the two cattle was clearly freaked out by her inability to flee from the noise and confusion of onlookers. Villagers in traditional costumes danced in the spirit temple, while everyone else consumed traditional quantities of beer and lao-lao (including some homebrews served gratis from giant plastic jugs). At one point, a very drunken Lao man got a hold of me and led me along at the back of a parade of costumed, sword-wielding dancers. After the ritual part of the evening had concluded, the revelers turned to some decidedly less-than-traditional dancing while a DJ spun Asian pop tunes on stage. An eventful evening found me in bed some time after 4:30, and up before 9:00, again cursing over a lao-lao headache. If you ever have a chance to attend a buffalo party, don’t think twice, just do it.

We had decided to extend our stay in Tad Lo another day to see if we could attend the actual buffalo sacrifice, but it turns out that it had happened early that morning, so the day was instead spent relaxing and rock-hopping up the river to the second falls at sunset. Not that I’d have wanted to spend the day on a motorcycle, anyway…

The next day, the longer southern leg of our Bolaven loop took us along more interesting roads, through Pakxong, and past three waterfalls that impressed by varying degrees. Inasmuch as they’re all relatively close to each other on the same geological formation, it was surprising how diverse they were. Tad Yuang was the prettiest, with cascading falls in an impossibly lush gorge; Tad Fane was the most spectacular – the falls are so precipitous that unless you brave a treacherous climb down to a lower vantage (which we, of course, did), the bottom is hidden from view by the sheer walls; Tad Champee was anticlimactic at first, but even it had its charm, thanks to a scooped out grotto that allowed you to look out from behind the falls.

I’ve noticed that as I build up more and more of a backlog in writing these posts, they become less and less interesting, since the little thoughts and feelings of the moment I usually like to include tend to disappear with time, and it starts to sound like a laundry list of “and-then-we-went-heres.” So it goes, I suppose.

Our next and final stop in Laos was Si Phan Don, the 4000 Islands.

I grabbed the overnight to Chiang Mai, and arrived nice and early. Spent the day wandering, booking activities, eating (had some really horrible Indian food), got a massage…Pavel’s wrong on this one I think – I’ve gotten a massage almost every day, including in some sketchy Bangkok neighbourhoods, and not a single time has a “happy ending” been offered. It just doesn’t work like that, man.
Got up early the next morning to go climbing at the Crazy Horse Buttress.. I was the only one who had booked lessons, and so I got two climbing instructors to myself. They had both been teaching climbing for over 5 years, and blew me away with their knowledge of the sport. My only previous experiences have been at Toronto climbing gyms, Joe Rockheads and the like, and these Thai instructors (I never did learn their names) put them to shame. The equipment was better, they were more comfortable with it, and they were incredibly helpful teaching me body positioning, strengths of different holds, and whatever else I needed to know.

Ok.. good instuctions and whatever… The climbing site was beyond belief. (NB After climbing in Vang Viang, Laos, later in the trip, I stand behind the greatness of Crazy Horse even more) We drove about 45 minutes outside the city, into the middle of jungle and nothingness, and arrived at a mammoth tower of limestone. It had to have been at least 60 meters tall and 100 wide (I’m trying really hard here to control my well known penchant for exaggeration). The rock just rose vertically from the jungle floor, and seemed to have absolutely no business there. Countless caves, ledges, and crags were apparent, and the top did indeed look very much like a horse’s head. There must have been 40-50 established routes scattered all around, ranging from beginner’s 5Cs through hard 8C+s (If you’re like me, that doesn’t mean much to you.. pretty much, climbs ranging from what any fit person could do first try through to ridiculously hard climbs that even the uber experienced and serious climbers there scoffed at). And there were lots of hardcore climbers around, most on climbing vacations in SE Asia.. I had no idea the sport was so popular. But it really deserves to be. The highlight had t to be rappelling 70 or so meters (said the guide, not even my estimate) through a small opening in the rock into a huge cavern that we then spent 30 minutes hiking out of. had an amazing time, got 6 climbs in, conquered a route that contained a reasonable stretch of overhanging rock, and now I have no skin on the inside joints of any of my fingers, save for my left ring one for some reason. Even opening a waterbottle will probably hurt for the next few days, but it was definitely well worth it, and the somewhat steep cost (2000 baht, or around 130 CDN, from 8:30 to 6:00) . Ate at the night market tonight, and then I’m gonna pack it in early. Over 2 km of ziplining through the treetops awaits me tomorrow….

This was going to be a separate post, but it has been edited and will continue to tell my Chiang Mai story:

The ziplining was a big disappointment. It was really fun at first, but each line was so short (50-100m or so, compared to the 800m ziplines elsewhere in SE Asia) that completing the course became more of a chore than an experience. The big surprise at the end was a 30m rappel down from the last platform, but considering my previous day’s adventure, combined with the fact that here you weren’t even in control of your own descent, made it pretty boring. Not recommended.

A flurry of stops came between Chiang Mai and the Laos border, including Chiang Rai to check out the White Temple that Andrew wrote about previously (I smuggled out some photographs of the art inside here), and Chiang Khong, a crappy little town where I got feasted upon by fleas as I slept. Better than bedbugs I guess.

Off to Laos…

(I promise I will get the pictures of the inside of the White Temple online in the near future. They’re too good to be missed)

Note: I wrote this, and the following Chaing Mai entry, more than a month ago. Various factors prevented me from posting them, number one on the list being that I can’t get computers here to work with my photos, so I’ve held off. I’ve gotten to the point now, though, where I don’t care anymore, and I’ll post them just as text. Photos will hopefully come later. I am now in Cambodia, after spending over a month in Laos, and it’s time to get the Thailand bits online. Considering Andrew has been keeping everyone up to date with day to day Laos happenings, I will have a general post about my feelings towards the country coming soon. Stay tuned.

I was expecting that dealing with culture shock would be the order of the day upon arrival in Bangkok, but the airport was as modern as Pearson or Hong Kong and Khao San Rd, the overhyped, overpriced, gaudy tourist asshole of Bangkok , was really not that much different than crowded markets or festivals in other cities. I’m not saying it wasn’t different – Bangkok is definitely uniquely Bangkok – but the differences are far more subtle than I was expecting.

Ok… Khao San… The night market was actually pretty fun. (For everyone who hasn’t been to Asia before, night markets are a nightly occurrence pretty much everywhere, from small towns to the big cities. Hundreds of vendors of all kinds, selling food, textiles, fake electronics, massages, kitsch, everything, begin to fill the streets around 6-7pm, and go until somewhere between 11 and 2.) Also, I guess because this area is full of hippie tourists, finding vegetarian options during this leg was easy. We’ll see how long this lasts… There was also lots of stuff on Khao San that makes you cringe… beggars, prostitutes, ladyboy prostitutes, opium pushers (with hindsight, this was the only place in Thailand where I was offered drugs – Laos is a whole different story), and what really pissed me off, baby elephants being paraded around with lights and glowsticks and stuff taped to them. The handlers sell peanuts for tourists to feed to them. I’m actually going to try to make the trip to an elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai, where some of these elephants go when they grow up – the ones that aren’t just killed when they reach an unmanageable size. These elephants are never trained, just manhandled as babies – when they get bigger they become uncontrollable, and are then “rescued” or killed. The other thing about elephants is that they’re smart, and they hold grudges – just google “rogue elephants” in Africa – basically these are young male elephants that go on killing rampages, massacring humans until they are shot. The leading theory is that these rogues were babies when they watched their mothers get killed by poachers. I have to say though, tourists for the most part were pretty good about ignoring these elephants. Especially Germans, it seemed. I don’t know why, but they especially loved to heckle the handlers.

Other minor observations: Traffic here is absolutely nuts. Lanes are just guidelines, oncoming traffic is just another hazard to be avoided, pedestrians get as much respect as the garbage that blows around everywhere, and smooth acceleration is unheard of. If a car/bike/tuktuk doesn’t hammer on the gas at a green and gives up a foot of room ahead, someone will cut in to take the gap. Braking is just as sudden. It’s kinda fun at first, then becomes hilarious, then just frustrating. Oh well. The funniest thing I have noticed so far is that one of the hottest fashion trends among hip young Thai girls is wearing New York Dolls shirts. However, something got lost in the cultural conversion, and no one has any idea that the New York Dolls were a band – the translation is much more literal, and these are now taken to represent the superstar New York elite. I laughed every time I saw one. Last little thing – for being such an ugly city, Bangkok has a lot of over the top monuments – amazing temples and palaces, elaborate gates and arches spanning roadways in random places,

My last stop in Bangkok was the Chao Mae Tubtim Shrine, a monument to the ancient fertility spirit CMT. This is an odd little place, partly because it occupies the corner of a 5-star hotel’s parking lot, but mostly because it is just a pile of carved phalluses. Thousands of them, every size, colour, and material. Ceramic, wood, metal, bamboo, stone, it’s all been used. Unfortunately my photos aren’t too great, I just had a little point and shoot that insisted on needing a flash despite my noon hour visit, but hopefully you believe me that this place was truly awesome. (Hopefully I can actually get these crappy photos online at some point)

I checked my email before boarding the train to Chiang Mai, and Kevin had sent me two songs from the new Propagandhi album. I love Coach’s Corner. Thanks man.

Home to just over 200,000 people, the Lao capital of Vientiane is its most populous city; given the country’s 6.5 million people, this is a testament to how overwhelmingly rural it still remains. While several travelers had dismissed the city as deserving only a day’s visit – if that – I found myself thoroughly charmed by its character, and could easily have spent more than the two days we were able to allot it. From the stately colonial architecture, to its eminently walkable core, to its glut of bookshops, galleries, cafes, and deliciously varied restaurants, it struck me – more than any other city I have yet visited in Asia – as a place I could actually live. There are plenty of foreigners, but tourism here is infinitely more low-key than many other cities in Laos or Thailand, complementing rather than dominating its flavour.

The first night we arrived, we had a devil of a time finding accommodation, and ended up having to splurge on an air-conditioned room. While the extra luxury had seemed like a last-ditch necessity at the time, the heat in Asia is definitely on, and after our second, unpleasantly sweaty, night in cheaper digs, we were ruing moving out.

We had planned to visit the Buddha Park on the outskirts of town our first morning, but air-conditioned comfort combined with a windowless room conspired to keep us sleeping until noon, so we resigned ourselves to a laid back day of taking in the city. I had to drop off my passport at the immigration office to get a five day extension on my Laos visa – I was hoping they could do it on the spot, but apparently the smaller the country, the pettier the bureaucracy, so I still had to return the next day to pick it up.

We also visited Vientiane’s knock-off of the Arc de Triomphe. Built using cement donated by the USA for the construction of a new airport in the late 60’s, the nationalist monument is an amusing middle finger to the capitalist dogs; or rather, it would have been, were it ever finished. Its imposing grandeur falls apart on closer inspection, as its shoddy, incomplete construction becomes more apparent (the official plaque actually refers to it as a ‘concrete monstrosity!’) Bits of rebar jut from the concrete in places, piles of construction materials rust in corners, and the interior space is dominated by kitschy souvenir shops.

Next up was an old wat, recommended in Andy’s Rough Guide as housing a must-see collection of fascinating historical pieces. It was supremely underwhelming – I had wondered why it wasn’t even mentioned in the Lonely Planet – though the 16th century temple itself maintained a degree of elegant splendour (complete with a painfully slapdash-looking electrical box mounted on the side, with no attempt at concealment).

Undoubtedly the most frustrating part of our stay in Vientiane was the discovery of four titles in a used bookstore that Andy and I immediately coveted, but were completely unable to buy. The owner had left a note saying that he was out, and for some fantastically stupid, inexplicable reason had suspended all sales or exchanges, but left the store open – in the trust of a shiftless Lao girl who spoke no English. We returned no less than five – increasingly frustrated – times to try and cajole them into taking our money before reluctantly abandoning our bounty.

The last day we spent in Vientiane took us to the Xieng Khuan Buddha Park, 25 km outside of the city on an easy local bus route. The product of one yogi-priest-shaman’s fevered imagination, it is filled with a staggering array of bizarre concrete sculptures depicting imagery from Buddhism and Hinduism, and likely some twisted syntheses of his own. Highlights include a giant concrete pumpkin-like building, entered through a large mouth, housing several floors (including a ‘dungeon’ with some downright disturbing statues) and puzzlingly laid-out concentric chambers that eventually open up through a narrow crawlspace onto the roof. There is also a truly immense reclining Buddha, a tiny wat-like temple with an impossibly steep, narrow staircase, a three-headed elephants, a giant cricket, and dozens of other statues that really need to be seen to be believed.

Rounding out our afternoon was some time at the National Museum. We arrived with only 40 minutes before closing, but didn’t expect to see an awful lot. We ended up spending far too much time in the mediocre sections on natural and ancient history and had to miss out on large parts of a really fascinating photographic history of Laos in its post-colonial era in the second half of the 20th century, many from the Indochina War. The captions were pleasantly frank, making no attempt to water down loaded language, deriding Americans as ‘imperialists,’ and local sympathizers as ‘puppets.’ It would have been really interesting to spend an hour or so piecing together a historical self-portrait of the Lao national psyche from the grungy war-time photos.

Internet, ice-coffee, lazing about in a failed attempt to beat the heat, and our only disappointing meal in Vientiane filled up the rest of our time on our last day before we caught an overnight sleeper bus – complete with beds! (of sorts) – to Pakse, on the way to Cambodia.

Vang Vieng is the most unabashedly tourist-y city in all of Laos. Tourist pastimes include watching ‘Friends’ marathons in cafes, walking around topless to flaunt brand-new Asian dragon tattoos, and getting utterly fall-down drunk at riverside bars while floating down the river on an inner-tube. I now doubt I’ll end up having the time to make it to Southern Thailand on this trip, but after two and a half days in Vang Vieng, I suspect I have a pretty good idea of what I’ll be missing.

The first afternoon in town was primarily spent prowling used bookstores, booking our future escapades, and reading sweatily in hammocks on our guesthouse balcony overlooking the river. At the time, I had been slogging my way through ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ which has not aged aged well, the perfect definition of a book that is important, but not necessarily good (seeing as I’m already convinced that blacks are actually people, too). The melodramatic, overwrought style and transliterated Southern accents made it a slow read, but the charitable descriptions of negroes – dripping with overbearing condescension – were painfully, unintentionally hilarious.

Vang Vieng is also under perpetual construction as new guesthouses and restaurants crop up to take advantage of the tourism boom. It was also a handy place to stock up on a few travel goods I had been unable to find easily in the rest of Lao – a new USB key, a zipper lock for my pack, a headlamp, and a pair of Made-in-Thailand-Made-in-Germany ‘Birkenstock’ sandals (one pair actually had both labels).

Our first full day was spent rock climbing on the towering limestone formations that characterize the region’s geology. Our guide, Kong, didn’t have the greatest command of English, and wasn’t overly communicative in general, making the crash course on climbing safety and knot-tying mildly unnerving, as simple as it was. Having never climbed before, not even in a gym, I found even the easiest practice climbs (5A) entertaining – and exerting – enough. I did my first two climbs consecutively and – in my poor form – relied too heavily on my none-too-strong arms, so I lost my grip on the second face and earned myself a few more travel nicks. The two other climbers besides Andy and I – a Belgian guy, Bert and a Swiss girl, Steph – had some experience, so we ramped up to a 6A before lunch. I was exhausted at that point, and it was definitely beyond my skill level, anyway.

A delicious lunch of kebabs, baguettes, veggie fried rice and bananas served as a revitalizing break before we plunged further into the jungle to tackle another face. The one climb of the afternoon that I was actually able to complete was a 5C, genuinely entertaining but definitely at the threshold of my beginner’s skill. There was another 6A (with one area half-way up that utterly confounded me), a viciously hard-looking 6B (only Bert attempted it), and a 6A+ to cap the day (I was content merely pulling off the first move necessary to make it up from under the overhang before succumbing to the soreness in my arms and giving up on the rest). Andy’s grizzled landscaper’s grip and Chiang Mai climbing experience served him in good stead, and he was able to handily dispatch all the climbs he tried.

On the whole, it was a good time, though slightly overwhelming for a rank amateur. Between my abysmal technique, a mild fear of heights repressed with only partial success (even when you know you’re being belayed, I found it hard to abandon the natural panic that comes with clinging to a cliff face, 20 meters up, with fingertips on the verge of giving way), and grip strength that has decidedly atrophied after trading my landscaper’s shovel for a designer’s pen, I maintain no pretense whatever of being a natural climber.

The tuk-tuk ride back to Vang Vieng would have been uncomfortably crowded had we all decided to pile in, so Andy, Kong, Bert and I rode on the luggage rack on the roof, instead. Along the way, we picked up a gaggle of tube girls, and a pair of lazy bicyclists who spent the trip in tow, holding on to either side of the truck. Only in Laos.

I was most definitely feeling the burn the next day, but luckily the only other pursuit we had planned for Vang Vieng required very little exertion – tubing, that is. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a filthy hypocrite, but it’s fun all the same). Drifting past throngs of drunken falang at the riverside bars, there is a definite air of ‘Spring Break’ about Vang Vieng, and enterprising bar staff reel you in with water-bottles on ropes and offer free lao-lao shots in order to entice you into their bars. There are also water slides. And rope-swings. And DJs who are happy to oblige ridiculous requests for Dr. Dre for a tip (and oh, how they obliged!) Enough said about tubing.

Two days was pretty much exactly as much time as I wanted to spend in Vang Vieng, and with our batteries filled to the brim with an ample dose of over-the-top resort-style tourism, we happily made our way further south, to Laos’ capital city of Vientiane…

The minivan trip through the mountains from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan is a like a six hour rollercoaster ride – I’ve never been given to motion sickness before, but even my stomach was a little bit uneasy by the end of it. Xieng Khuang province, where Phonsavan is located, is one of the poorest regions in Laos, thanks in no small part to the scourge of unexploded ordance that lethally contaminates the countryside. Near the Ho Chi Minh trail, the province was subjected to a ruthless US bombing campaign that has left the country a cratered scrub-plain, littered with millions of tons of UXO that stymie attempts for villagers to improve their lives and expand beyond the land they’ve already developed.

Phonsavan is a sprawling, rather unattractive town that is on the tourist map largely because of its proximity to the enigmatic Plain of Jars, a series of three sites filled with ancient stone pots. They may have been used for burial purposes, but no one really knows, so they remain an archaeological curiosity, and a refreshing change from the ubiquitous temple ruins that dot the subcontinent.

Plenty of tours are available, but unless we chartered a private tour, we would have had to put up with large groups, so Andy and I, a Danish dude, and two German girls decided instead to rent motorbikes and see it for ourselves. The first night we wanted to ride out to the main Jar site to catch the sunset, but downgraded our ambition to a nearby temple, which apparently no longer exists. Then we tried to find a night market, which also apparently did not exist (at this point, we were deeply questioning the value of the guidebook our German navigators were so trusting of), and settled instead for dinner at a tasty Indian restaurant.

The next morning we set out shortly after 8:00 to beat the tour crowds to the Plain of Jars. The first site has the largest jars and is the most informative, but is also the busiest, by far. Going early paid off – by the time we were leaving, the parking lot was jammed with vans disgorging dozens of tourists. The site itself is interesting enough as an archaeological non-sequitur in the middle of Laos, but ultimately not especially exciting. My attempts at flattering photography failed rather miserably.

Going on a shoddy hand-drawn map the rental place has given us, we rode a few dozen klicks along some very rough roads (I found them a frustrating chore, but the others enjoyed them – though the constant rattling cracked off the plastic chain guard on Andy’s bike) towards the 2nd site. Somehow we managed to completely miss it, and instead made our way to the 3rd site. It was much the same as the first, though more secluded and more heavily grown over, providing a more pleasant atmosphere.

Somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd jar sites is a walking route that takes you to a crashed US bomber that I was looking forward to seeing. Since we had no clue where it was, we tried to make a semi-educated guess based on dead reckoning (which was not very useful, since we still had no clue where the 2nd site actually was). It was a somewhat leery affair, since we had to be careful to stay on well trodden paths because of the ever-present risk of UXO. We discovered a few other small, overgrown jar sites, plenty of dessicated rice paddy fields, and some herds of cattle and water buffalo, but disappointingly, no crashed jet. We also missed out on some of the other war-era artifacts (a Russian tank, Viet Cong bunkers, and a US drug-running airstrip are also in the area). Such are the ups and downs of eschewing an organized tour…

Thanks to useful signage, we did, however, manage to find a nearby waterfall that reminded me a great deal of the Canadian Shield. In the dry season it’s nice enough, and enjoyable to scrabble around on, but it must be quite a site to behold during the long rains. We had hoped to find somewhere to swim, since the days have become stinking hot. The water here was shallow, fast, and muddy, but a local mentioned another waterfall we could swim in some 30 km on the other side of Phonsavan, and so we set out.

The roads to the waterfall were well-paved, with broad, sweeping corners, and I enjoyed them far more than the rocky dirt paths we had spent the first half of the day traversing, building back some of the riding confidence I’d earned before my spill in Pai. The sun was beginning to get lower in the sky, and we had to get the bikes back by 6:00 pm, so we stopped – probably only a few km from the waterfall – for a brief picnic on a rocky outcrop before turning back.

The man at the rental place was happy to see us, and offered us shots of lao-lao – in the bottle, supposedly healthful mushrooms were marinating. It didn’t taste great. Afterwards, we went to the Mines Advisory Group and read some chilling facts about UXO in Laos, and watched a documentary called “Bomb Harvest,” about the frustrating process of de-mining the country that has been by far the most heavily bombed, per capita, in the world. A huge feast of local food, Beerlao, and chatting in our guesthouse until the wee hours rounded out the evening.

The next morning, the owner of our guesthouse needed to run an errand to Vang Vieng to pick up a toilet, so we were able to grab a lift in his uncrowded luxury minivan for a steal of a deal. With the exception of Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng may be the most popular tourist destination in Laos, but the two and a half days we spent there are a tale for another post…

In hopes of disappearing into the wilderness for a few days, Andy and I ventured north from Luang Prabang, back to Nong Khiaw, and then further upriver on the Nam Ou to the village of Muang Ngoi. While it meant a bit more backtracking for me, Muong Ngoi is considerably closer than Luang Nam Tha (another trekking destination), and the latter is apparently a bit brown and crispy in the hot season.

Muang Ngoi is a lovely little hamlet, largely consisting of a single dirt street running alongside the Nam Ou. At one end of the street is a humble temple, and at the other is a garbage ditch. The prime riverfront real-estate has mostly been snatched up by guesthouse bungalows and restaurants, and I ended up spending long hours peering over my book at daily Laos life on the river. There’s very little to the place, which is a large part of its charm – during the days, throngs of chickens peck around the town, the ubiquitous Laos dogs sprawl lazily across the road, boats glide up and down the Ou, and the pace of village life is slow. Girls played jump rope with a colourful chain of elastic bands, feet pounding on the wood floorboards, counting up to five for each series of tricks (slamneung! slamsawng! slamsam!..) With the exception of one guesthouse which has 24-hour power from micro-hydro generation, power is strictly a generator affair from 6-10 pm (nominally), so nights are rarely very ambitious.

Upon arrival, Andy’s nascent stomach upset rapidly blossomed into full-fledged gastrointestinal distress, so my first few days in Muang Ngoi were spent rather lazily while Andy acquainted himself with our guesthouse toilet. There is not much to do in town besides chill out, so while I motivated myself to explore some nearby caves one of the days, most of my time was spent staking out picturesque spots around town, people-watching and reading (I burned through “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in no time, and really enjoyed it). One of the villagers also ‘mended’ the cuff of my shirt that had been torn in my motorcycle accident, but it was a pretty haggard repair, so whether the end result is better than it was before remains in question.

The first day that Andy could do more than sleep and purge, we rented a few tubes and planned to spend the afternoon drifting downriver. We must have missed the bulk of the upriver boat traffic, so after about an hour of frustratedly trying to flag down (or charter) a boat to take us upstream a bit, we ended up just walking along the banks. Rolling my tube down the hill on the way down to the river, I managed to neatly impale my tube on a piece of bamboo. Despite the best efforts of my thumb, my tube ended up with a rather comical droop by the time we floated back to town…

Andy eventually battled off his uninvited intestinal invaders, and we booked a two day trek into the mountain villages north of Muang Ngoi. As our luck would have it, there was a 4-day wedding bash going on in town while we were there, and the morning of our trek found our guide Vita suffering from a debilitating hangover. He squinted at us with a pained expression and apologized profusely, between gurgly burps that reeked of lao-lao.

We were able to find a last-minute substitute guide, one of Vita’s friends named Ki – his grasp of English wasn’t nearly as good as Vita’s, but we were already champing at the bit after wasting three days in town, and wanted to get on with our travels. By the time we set off it was around ten o’clock, and already the hot-season’s sun was beginning to bake.

Our route took us past the cave that I’d explored earlier, through fallow rice paddy fields, up dusty hill paths, and along shallow streams that burbled past bamboo scaffolds atop low dams the villagers had set up for spearfishing or micro-hydro turbines. In the Laos village of Huay Xen we had a lunch of fried duck eggs and sticky rice that made up for variety with quaniity. Apparently glorious Buddhism had just recently been brought to the formerly genie-worshipping villagers (I tried not to chuckle at our guide’s hypocritical disdain for the old religion) by a trio of tattooed monks from Luang Prabang. We found them sitting in a mat in the shade, with packets of cigarettes and instant coffee, and a flashlight for their Buddha-cave vigils.

The rest of the first day took us up, up, uphill, treating us to some rather stunning vistas. We ended our day in the Khmu village of Ban Kiew Khan, an assemblage of traditional-style huts on stilts, perched atop a flat hill. While only home to about three hundred, it is one of the liveliest places I’ve come across in my travels, the air teeming with the sounds of a daily life nearly untouched by modernity.

The rhythmic pounding of a foot-powered see-saw mortar and pestle provides a background beat. An unmistakable barnyard pungency tinges the nostrils; pigs, dogs, chickens, ducks, and water buffalo are practically part of the family. Some children fashion harpoon guns by whittling away at pieces of wood with a machete, while another amuses himself by tossing around a chicken on a string and stepping on the leash when it attempts to flee (mild animal cruelty seems like a common way for kids to get their kicks in rural Laos). Women weave on hand-looms, or groom each others’ hair. A few men strut by with comically long rifles used to hunt squirrel or other small game in the surrounding hills.

Activity outside dies quickly as night falls – the micro-turbines provide enough electricity for most homes to light one compact fluorescent bulb (though the big chief’s house was hooked up to a conspicuously large satellite dish). Dinner at our homestay was a bit of a disappointment, not only because of the food, but because the Lao folks brought us our food, then went downstairs to eat and chat amongst themselves. Our guide had talked up the bamboo that they had specially ventured out to cut for us for dinner, but the stalks tasted somewhat akin to terribly bitter artichokes, and not even the chili paste could disguise them. Complimenting the ill-tasting bamboo was another serving of fried eggs, and another mound of sticky rice.

Instead of stewing in our disappointment after dinner, we decided to go downstairs, where we were invited in to join their table around flickering lamp light (they’d reserved the electric bulb for us falang). While our host spoke no English, he did give us lao-lao, and our guide taught us Khmu and Lao words for various things (all promptly forgotten), and chatted to us about his sketchy overviews of political theory, including his painfully unrealistic view of the communist/capitalist dichotomy.

The next day, after a breakfast of – what else? – eggs and sticky rice, we set off for a few hours of trekking that took us past the most stunning scenery I’ve yet beheld in Southeast Asia. In contrast to the optimism I had for the micro-hydro power generation, we saw first-hand that rural Lao-style agriculture remains quite literally a slash-and-burn affair, in which huge swaths of mountainside are denuded to provide land for rice fields that are productive for only a single season. After descending for a while, a refreshing hour or so of the morning’s hike took us splashing through shallow streams, where the raiding party of village kids prowled for small fish with masks and elastic harpoon guns. The trees lining the stream were soft-fleshed and (presumably) fast-growing, but it still shocked our Western sensibilities a bit when our guide chopped down a handful of full-grown trees just to recover one hand-sized edible seedpod from each, for his dinner.

The sight of the Nam Ou around a mountainous corner was abrupt and amazing, and a short walk down the hill to another village brought an end to our hiking. We took a small boat to a nearby beach where we had lunch (I had given Andy 5-to-1 odds that it would be eggs and rice, and he still didn’t take me up on it – we were pleasantly surprised to get beef and noodles) and had a lovely, but all-too-brief swim in the river. We stopped at another village, Ban Sop Jam, which was charming, idyllic, and peaceful, but essentially plain, where we got some bananas that, shockingly, had seeds! At least a dozen large, black, hard pits inhabited each small banana, which does a lot to take the enjoyment out of eating one.

The final boat ride back to Muang Ngoi took about half an hour, and was over far too quickly. Whether it was a quality of this particular stretch of the Nam Ou, or merely that we were seeing it from an open boat, exposed to nature in its entirety, we spent the trip gawking in open awe at the majesty of our surroundings. Hammocks, Beerlao, and reading rounded out our last day in Muang Ngoi.

The next two days were largely spent in transit, on a variety of boats, sawngthaew, tuk-tuks, and minivans which ferried us to Nong Khiaw, Luang Prabang, and finally on to Phonsavan for the next stage of our adventures in Laos.