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.

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.

My first full day in Luang Prabang was largely uneventful. I wandered around town a bit, napped, and then happened upon some people I’d met in Chiang Mai almost two weeks earlier. I had another veggie dinner at the night market, and then went to Utopia, the trendy new bar in town – it’s an immaculately manicured place on the riverside (giving it a bit of a golf-course-y feel), but its comfortable, and even has a beach volleyball court. After it closed (before midnight!) we took a tuk-tuk to LP’s disco and partied a bit, Lao-style (I guess?), before ending up at my friend’s guesthouse where one of the guys undoubtedly infuriated the other tenants by playing guitar until the wee hours. I was in bed by around 3:30ish, which I feared would frustrate my big plans for the next day…

Being the sucker for punishment that I am, I decided to rent a bicycle (a proper, modern mountain bike; still too small for me, but I came to value every one of its 24 gears) and ride out to the Tat Kuang Si waterfall, which I’d heard was quite beautiful. For a similar price to the bike rental I could have negotiated a ride in a tuk-tuk (one-way), but I am stubborn, and decided I wouldn’t glean the same satisfaction from it. The ride is about 32 km out of Luang Prabang, across undulating (as the Lonely Planet aptly describes them) roads through the countryside. A bit less than a third of the way along, the winding roads became viciously hilly, and I wondered if I would live to regret my plan, but almost every steep climb was followed by a blissful downhill stretch. Despite almost two hours of steady effort in baking heat that it ended up taking, it was a far more pleasant ride than the struggle up the mountain to Doi Suthep. Inaccessible by road before only the past few decades, Laos’ geography is a breathtaking mix of forested mountains and snaking rivers, so the scenery made the sweat worthwhile. There’s something about physical exertion that provides a wonderful slate for thought, and I spent some time reflecting on my travels thus far.

Upon arrival I ravenously wolfed down some lunch, then made my way on slightly rubbery legs up the road to the waterfall. I had been planning on walking up to the main falls, but was distracted by the sight of pooled water through the forest and decided it was worth getting sidetracked. After two hours of cycling, the plunge off the rope-swing into the clear, cold mountain pool was refreshing beyond words. Once I’d cooled off, I spent some more time taking stock of my surroundings in earnest, and found myself in an oasis paradise. The white-noise roar of the falls fills your ears as the water flows down dozens of limestone terraces sculpted by nature, filling placid turquoise pools with crisp, clean water. The surrounding forest is equally beautiful, springing with verdant foliage, the sinuous, grasping roots of ancient trees, dangling vines.

The main waterfall is rather majestic, and there was a path to hike up alongside it, though the reward was slightly disappointing; despite being near the lip of the falls, you couldn’t actually see it, though the view of the mountains and surrounding village was nice. Once above the falls, there was a sign indicating the path to a cave and a spring. Most of the people I’d talked to had come with tour groups, and so had a fixed amount of time to spend, and didn’t think the 3 km walk was worth it. I figured that I’d already been ridiculous enough to ride more than 30 km here, so what was another 3 km. I set out hiking barefoot, since I’d worn my boots for the bike ride, and didn’t feel like re-dressing the scrapes on my feet (though they are largely healed) to stuff them back in my shoes after my dip. While the scenery was less spectacular than below, it made for rather serene hiking, and I only encountered a trio of monks and two couples (rushing back to catch their vans) the whole way there.

While it was bound to happen after the stunning nature that was so readily accessible below, the caves and spring turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. The limestone caves extended about 120 m into the earth, and were probably not very special by cave standards, but were interesting enough for someone who has never done any spelunking before. Still barefoot, I unfortunately had to keep my flashlight aimed more at my feet than my surroundings to avoid mishaps (especially since we spotted a few creepy cave bugs that I would have rather not stepped on).

The spring was a rather idyllic, peaceful little spot, buzzing with flies, bees, and butterflies. A sign urged visitors to keep the spring clean, and not to take a bath; ironically, a few minutes after I arrived, a villager stamped down a path on the opposite side, cleared his nose, and proceeded to rinse off.

After hiking back down, I took a final splash in the pools before setting back to Luang Prabang. By the time I left, the park had been almost completely depleted of tourists, and a calm descended on the falls with the lowering sun. I had to race the sunset back to Luang Prabang, and after the days exertions, the ride back felt long indeed, though the cooler evening air and (slightly) more downhill trend to the roads made keeping a consistent pace easier. I only took one break to guzzle some water, but was still caught in the dark by the time I reached the outskirts of the city. I ate an enormous dinner at the market that night (before I even returned the bike, I tore into a grilled chicken breast, the first piece of hot, satisfying food I could find). After a few beers with a cool Australian couple I’d met on the slow boat, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. After 65 km of cycling, the longest single day I’ve ever done – not to mention the hiking – it wasn’t hard.

I needed to kill a few days before meeting up with Andy, so the next day I got up early and hopped a minivan to Nong Khiaw, a town about four hours northeast of Luang Prabang on the Nam Ou river. The scenery is dramatic. The river flows clear, green, and fast, lined on either side by jutting mountains with sheer cliffs, bare where the dense forests can’t cling to them. The brilliance of the surroundings was belied by the dusty town on the western banks of the river which doesn’t present the greatest of first impressions.

The first day I did essentially nothing – the ease with which one can do nothing and not feel bad about it seems to be one of Southeast Asia’s greatest virtues thus far. I wandered around briefly, read some of “The Devil and Miss Prym” by Paulo Coelho (a concise moral fable about temptation, greed, fear, and change – makes me want to read his other stuff), and napped. In the streets, the plaything of choice for Nong Khiaw’s youths these days seems to be a bug affixed to a plastic straw (make two and you can race ‘em) – mildly cruel, but cheap entertainment. I’ve always wanted to make a house fly helicopter…

The hot season is coming on strong, and I suspect siestas are going to become a regular part of my days to come. Had some delicious Lao food for dinner (laap, which is minced meat with all kinds of herbs and spices, eaten with your hands, with sticky rice to ease the chili burn). I was also offered some lao-lao (the local rice whiskey), which is pretty much the same as the stuff I had in northern Thailand. A 640 mL bottle of lao-lao costs 10,000 kip (just over a dollar) – the commercial stuff seems to be limited to 40 degrees, but apparently most of the local brews are at least 50% alcohol.

I rented a bike the next day to go explore some of the countryside. Not far out of town is the Tham Pha Thok cave complex that housed hundreds of Lao villagers during the Vietnam War, and was pounded heavily by US bombs. It was much more impressive than the tiny cave I saw above Tat Kuang Si. One of the caves actually housed the bank of Luang Prabang from 1968-1974; there’s something truly odd about crawling through a tortuous limestone cave of shoulder-width passages and reaching an area with a sign indicating financial ‘offices’.

Further down the road from the caves was another village that was supposed to have a waterfall to see, so we took our horribly undersized single-speed Chinese city bikes to go have a look. The roads were quite hilly, similar to the ones that I’d devoured on a mountain bike the other day, but a bad bicycle really does suck all the pleasure out of riding. The seatpost was so low that while sitting down my knees never straightened more than 45 degrees, so the ride was largely spent either standing up, struggling on the uphills (the bottom bracket occasionally creaking alarmingly from the strain of torque), or sitting, gliding on the downhills. The waterfall turned out be so stunningly beautiful that we ended up completely missing it and riding another few kilometers uphill until we figured out that we’d gone too far. The ‘waterfall’ we discovered upon backtracking was only a few feet high, and looked like it was really just the result of a low concrete dam. Not so special.

After lunch, I spent a while reading, but found myself bathing in sweat just sitting there, so I decided to take my chances and go for a dip in the river. While I don’t trust the sanitary habits of the few towns that are upriver on the Nam Ou, locals and tourists alike were swimming here at Nong Khiaw, and the water was clear and the current strong. As at the Kuang Si waterfall, the river proved to be a vitally refreshing reprieve from the heat after a hard, frustrating riding.

While I’d arrived overland, I heard that the majestic scenery along the Nam Ou makes the boat trip a worthwhile experience, despite costing much more and being slower. While the views are admittedly nice, seven hours sitting on low benches in a cramped boat is not my idea of fun. We even got some unexpected trekking included with the price of our ticket, since the water level was too low for the boat to pass through a few of the rapids fully loaded, so we had to walk for a while along the shore. On one stretch, we encountered an emaciated elderly villager clutching a piece of old ordinance – a mortar or an RPG – with a tatty piece of yellow string dangling from it. I’m not sure what he used it for, but it was a keen reminder of Laos’ sordid past and the unexploded ordinance (UXO) that continues to plague the country.

Arrived back in Luang Prabang, hunted for Andy a bit, and then ended up at a bar with a couple French Canadian girls I kept running into. Though it’s not enforced (for falang, anyway), strictly speaking there is a midnight curfew in Laos, so bars all close around 11:30. The girls (who were leaving for Vang Vieng the next morning) and a Frenchman that I’d met on the boat wanted to hunt out some post-beer lao-lao, so I tagged along.

The day after was largely been spent nursing the a vicious headache, care of said lao-lao, and then I finally met up with Andy in the night market. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

I had nothing in particular I wanted to do today, but Andy had yet to see the Kuang Si waterfall, so we grabbed a tuk-tuk there and spent another afternoon swimming and chilling out. The backtracking will continue when we head out to Nong Khiaw tomorrow, but we’ll continue upriver to Muong Ngoi (or possibly Muong Khua, depending on how long it takes) where hopefully we’ll find some good trekking in untouched Laos.

Right, so Chiang Khong is a pretty boring place. It’s not a terrible place, there’s just really nothing to recommend it at all, so if you can spend your day somewhere else, you probably should. At least I was able to get a good night’s sleep before getting up early to jump on the slow boat down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang.

After the ferry ride across to the Laos side at Huay Xai, I pressed myself into the fray at the the chaotic crowd around Immigrations. After the strict order of the Thai/Burmese crossing at Mae Sai, it was a delightful throwback to some of tinpot crossings in Africa – the queue line was more of a mob, and the bored border employees would leisurely reach out from behind their windows to grab passports from the confusion of outstretched arms thrusting their documents forward. For some bizarre reason, Laos visas cost more for Canadians – $43 US – than for any other country in the world. Makes me want to Google “Laos/Canada relations” to find out what indignity we inflicted on them…

Slow-boat ticket to Luang Prabang in hand, I armed myself with a seat pillow (which cost 40 baht), a pair of sandwiches (40 baht per), two bottles of Coke (40 baht for both), and 700 mL of Black Horse Special whiskey (staggeringly, also 40 baht – that’s right, folks, just over $1 for a 26er of hard liquor).

The first stretch of our two-day journey down the Mekong was not superb. The boat seemed a bit overcrowded, with half of the aisle taken up by extra passengers sitting on plastic chairs, and the diesel engine droned noisily in the background. The scenery, while quite lovely, was largely unchanging throughout the trip, so it wasn’t enthralling.

At one point, a drunk Canadian named Evan fell off the side of the boat. It had been foreshadowed earlier, when he fell off his chair in to the boat. “The water’s a lot colder than you think, let me tell you.” He became a bit of a local celebrity on the boat after that, as the butt of endless jokes. My Africa nostalgia was again revived when we pulled into a town on the Mekong (largely, I suspect, to top up our Beerlao supplies) and the boat was invaded by Laotian youths carrying baskets of identical snack provisions entreating us with “chip’an’go!” Theories abound on whether their true meaning was “chips and Coke,” or “chip Pringles.” I spent a lot of the day reading, but towards the end of the trip, my rickety wooden bench demanded my constant attention as it parallelogram’med from side to side, threatening collapse.

We arrived at Pak Beng just around nightfall. As a town, Pak Beng seems to exist mainly because it is half-way between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang. I imagine village life during much of the day must be spent twiddling thumbs, punctuated by frantic rushes to attract business at night upon the boat arrivals, and in the morning before departure. (I bet the guesthouse owners would flip out if you said you wanted to stay two nights). While we didn’t indulge, most of the restaurants tried to sweeten their dinner deals by offering free Lao rice whiskey (whether this is actually a positive incentive remains to be seen until I try some of the stuff eventually). Also, everyone seems to want to sell you weed, which was mildly unnerving after coming from Thailand (where seriously intense drug laws keep public propositioning to a minimum). On the whole, I found the place rather endearing, and a great introduction to Laos – the laidback vibe, the decidedly temporary electrical supply (the generator is shut off at ten o’clock), and the requisite mosquito net in my room were charming reminders of Africa, and a real breath of fresh air after Thailand.

After another refreshing night’s sleep (given that there’s no power after ten, it’s sort of forced upon you), we got up early to have a stroll into the (very) local morning market. It was pretty tiny, but unlike many of the markets in Thailand hawking tourist-y trinkets, this one was definitely by the villagers, for the villagers, so it was nice to see.

One of the nice things about France’s colonial influence on Laos is the ubiquity of fresh baguettes (great for breakfast, as I found), which is a pleasant change from the ultra-refined cake-like white bread on offer in Thailand.

While I really hate waking up early in the morning, I really love being awake early in the morning. Mist hung gently atop the forested hills, and dawn’s light flattered all that it touched. Descending down the sandy banks to the river, we found ourselves on a different boat for the second day’s stretch. It was noticeably narrower, yet somehow seemed to accommodate everyone better, with no need for aisle seating, making it easier to walk around. Wooden scrollwork, tasseled curtains, and elegant light fixtures (that I kept bumping my head on) also lent it a much nicer quality than the somewhat shabby-looking boat that had carried us the first day, even though it really wasn’t any more comfortable. This one also had readily accessible life jackets (two girls were playing cards on their pair, thankfully the best use for them that day), which are the kind of thing you don’t realize are conspicuously absent until you see them.

I’m not sure whether it was the good night’s sleep, the lack of border paperwork, the crisp morning air, the little touches on our new boat, or that everyone was simply settling into the groove of things, but the second day’s trip was downright pleasant. The first stretch on the river was a bit magical, with the morning light diffusing through the soft fog, tranquility in the air. Along the banks, long bamboo fishing poles strung with nets dipped into the Mekong, wedged, untended, into the craggy rock outcroppings. Further along, a local rode atop an elephant, its trunk swinging gaily, saddled for work.

For all its luxury pricing, the Black Horse Special proved to be not-terrible (as ringing an endorsement as I can offer a bottle of whiskey that costs 40 baht), and generous Beerlao doled out from the ship’s bar helped to leaven the already buoyant moods of the passengers. I actually had a moment of genuine disappointment when I heard that we were arriving in Luang Prabang.

My impressions of LP are still sketchy at the moment, with the twilight largely spent finding accommodation, though I’m already loving the night food markets here. A plate of food at the numerous vegetarian buffets costs only 5000 kip (something like 70 cents – I’m sure you’re all thrilled at having to remember yet another new currency for the next few weeks), and if you don’t mind everything being tossed together, they can even heat it up for you.

Might hire a bike and ride out to a waterfall about 32 km away today, or I might just take it easy and wander the city a bit.