In which we spend a day on elephants and a night on the Knight bus.
After showering, changing and putting clothes in to be laundered, we met up with Adam and Corinne to find somewhere nice to eat. Luang Prabang has lots of restaurants along its main street, part of which becomes a traffic-free night market every night. The traders had just started to setup when we were walking to the hostel from the where the boat landed, and now it was in full swing. The market is made up of hundreds of individual stalls selling every kind of souvenir you can imagine – clothes, pictures, jewellery and nic nacs of every description – all laid out to tempt you and all cleared away again about four hours later.
After diner – fish curry with sticky rice, which is a bit like having your pudding with your main course – we crossed the road to look at the packages on offer at some of the many travel and tour agents there. Laos is the land of a million elephants and several of the agents had trips out to spend a day riding on elephants, plus learning how to control, bath and feed them. You can spend anything from half a day to a week with the elephants and see a bunch of other attractions too at the same time. We settled on a reasonably priced trip which gave us the most ‘howdah’ time with the fewest shopping add-ons, which we arranged for the next day.
The day was everything we’d hoped for and you may already have seen all the happy smiley photos of Juli on or with her favourite animal on her Flickr page.
Our last full day in Luang Prabang started very early to catch the monks making their dawn rounds of the town collecting food and other offerings from tourists and locals alike. Buddhist monks have been receiving alms in this way for centuries, but not, I suspect, with the additional dimension of some locals selling over priced bowls of food to slightly embarrassed tourists for them to give to the monks. I wasn’t sure quite who was being exploited by whom, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth and I can’t imagine what the monks must make of it all.
I mentioned to Karen that this seemed a pity and she suggested that, as an alternative, we could take the night bus direct from Vang Vieng to Hue instead, which would get us into Hue over a day earlier, at our own expense, naturally. After discussing this idea between us and mentioning it to a few others, by the time we got to Vang Vieng, we had a small breakaway group of seven wanting more time in Hue and interested in finding out more about this option. As luck would have it, the receptionist at the hostel was able to book seats on the sleeper bus for the day after next and arrange transport for the seven of us to the bus station into the bargain. With that sorted, all that was needed was to book an extra night’s accommodation at the Hue hostel, which Karen was able to do for us all. Sorted.
We spent the day just resting, uploading photos (very slowly) and surfing the internet, looking at option for visiting Machu Picchu when we get to Lima next year. We had an e-mail from Oceania (the cruise company) with details of their excursion, but they’re asking a lot of money for something you could arrange yourself, so long as you could be sure that everything fell into place just so, such that you get back to the ship before it sails on to the next port. If you do their trip (£1,800 each) they’ll wait for you; if you do your own, they won’t. The thing is, it involves quite a few connections (taxi, plane, taxi, train, bus) there and back again in just two and a bit days. It would only take one of those to break down and we’d be stuffed. I mentioned all this to Karen, who also does trips to South America and has done exactly this journey. She said she could arrange the whole thing and fly out from England to meet us and take us round herself for less.
The tuk tuk to the bus station arrived on time, but the coach was half an hour late, which was a worry as it turned out we had to change buses in the capital, Vientiane and we didn’t know if they would hold the overnight sleeper bus for us or even if they knew we were coming at all. Looking back on it, we put quite a bit of trust in the hotel receptionist to arrange quite a complicated series of connections we would have been hard pressed to sort out if they became unravelled.
It was dark by the time we got to Vientiane and quite chaotic, what with all the other busses coming in and going out of what is quite a large and busy bus and coach terminal. However, it seems the drivers are well used to clueless tourists not knowing what to do or where to stand and knew from our tickets where we were headed. One of them confidently told us to stand in a particular spot and so we did. Shortly after that, another man asked “Hue?” and, when we said yes, indicated that we and our luggage needed to get into a small mini bus, which again, we just did, hoping that this was not the ‘VIP Sleeper bus’ to Hue we would be spending the next 18 hours in. We needn’t have worried however, as this, it turned out, was just a shuttle to take us to the other large bus terminal in Vientiane. It seems the are two international bus stations: the North Terminal our first coach arrived into and a South Terminal where our sleeper bus to Hue was waiting for us. We were the last to board and took the very last remaining berths: to singles just in front of a row of five across the very back of the bus, which left as soon as we got on it.
Sleeper buses have three lines of bunk beds (one line head-to-toe down each side and another down the middle) plus these five across at the back. It’s a bit like the Knight bus out of Harry potter except that the beds don’t move around, thank goodness. Think of those luxurious, first class, British Airways, beds-seats you see advertised on TV and know you’ll never be able to afford, then try to imagine how they’d look if Ryan Air were to do the same thing at discount prices and you’ll have a pretty good idea about the level of comfort these sleeper seats afford.
For a start, their more like reclined car seats where the back never quite goes flat. (In fact they can’t go flat because the feet of the person behind you are under it.) If you’ve every had to sleep in a car you’ll know what I mean. Then you’ve got the shape of the seat; the edges are raised to hold you in your seat as the bus careers through the night. Put the two together and realistically the only way you can lie is on your back. Finally the dimensions of the seat – the width and particularly the length of the seat in terms of leg room – are presumably based on measurements taken from typical south-east Asians, who, by and large (or, rather, small) are about half the size of your typical westerner. Even I can’t lie flat with my legs out straight in these things, so you can imagine how Juli faired. Now factor in the noise of the bus, the noise of your fellow passengers and the noise of the non-stop Chinese martial arts movies playing through a tinny speaker just inches from your head and you’ve got the full picture.
Days 114-116 (Luang Prabang)
Last time I wrote, we’d just met up with the others at the Spicy Backpackers Hostel, a.k.a. the Lemon Laos Hostel. Our room (and the rooms of others upgrading) however was at another hotel a couple of doors down from there. Now, we’ve had some really nice upgrades and Karen always does her best to put us somewhere nice, but she has to work within a budget and with what’s available. The room we got, though it had it’s own shower and loo, was not on this occasion what you’d call nice, to the extent that we didn’t really mind that it had no windows and just one small strip light, because it meant not being able to see it so well.After showering, changing and putting clothes in to be laundered, we met up with Adam and Corinne to find somewhere nice to eat. Luang Prabang has lots of restaurants along its main street, part of which becomes a traffic-free night market every night. The traders had just started to setup when we were walking to the hostel from the where the boat landed, and now it was in full swing. The market is made up of hundreds of individual stalls selling every kind of souvenir you can imagine – clothes, pictures, jewellery and nic nacs of every description – all laid out to tempt you and all cleared away again about four hours later.
After diner – fish curry with sticky rice, which is a bit like having your pudding with your main course – we crossed the road to look at the packages on offer at some of the many travel and tour agents there. Laos is the land of a million elephants and several of the agents had trips out to spend a day riding on elephants, plus learning how to control, bath and feed them. You can spend anything from half a day to a week with the elephants and see a bunch of other attractions too at the same time. We settled on a reasonably priced trip which gave us the most ‘howdah’ time with the fewest shopping add-ons, which we arranged for the next day.
***
The next morning after a full American breakfast, we set off in a mini bus with some other tourists to an elephant camp by the Mekong river. All the elephants there are ex-logging elephants and the Mahouts ex-loggers. The Lao government seem quite keen to encourage the move from logging to tourism and, I imagine, the elephants are as please with the change of emphasis as we are.
The day was everything we’d hoped for and you may already have seen all the happy smiley photos of Juli on or with her favourite animal on her Flickr page.
Dinner that evening was taken in the lantern-lit garden of another excellent restaurant followed by a stroll back through the night market, where some light bargaining and souvee shopping completed a near perfect day.
***
After that, we set off up the hill to visit a temple with many statues of Buddha, including a group named for every day of the week. Our climb was rewarded not only by the things we saw on the way but by the slightly magical, early-morning misty views out over the town.
On the other side of the hill is the palace museum. This had been the residence of the kings of Laos before the last of them was deposed in 1975. We saw a very grand reception hall and various artefacts from the pre-republican era, including some splendid old cars: Lincoln Continentals – a gift from the United States. I wonder if that was before or after the carpet bombing.
After a bit more wondering around and lunch by the river, we headed back to the hostel and a well earned rest. In the evening, we split up: Juli went back to the Palace Museum theatre to see a performance of Lao ballet or opera or something else I wasn’t particularly interested in, which was unfortunately cancelled due to the fact that they’d only sold four tickets, while I went with a few others of our truckmates to an evening cookery class, where we learnt to make a small selection of typical Lao dishes, which we all shared afterwards. I made a kind of fish soup with smoked aubergine paste plus a pork and shredded banana flower salad. All very tasty though I say it myself.
Days 117 (Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng)
Early breakfast (stir-fried veg and egg on a baguette) to be ready on time to transfer in a tuk-tuk-truck from the hostel to the bus station where our truck was waiting for us along with one new tyre and one newly repaired tyre.
Once we were all on board and on our way, Karen handed out the itinerary for the three weeks between leaving the truck in Laos when we travel through Vietnam and Cambodia to Bangkok, Thailand using a mixture of private and public transport. This is because Foreigners aren’t allowed to bring vehicles into Vietnam and the paperwork required to bring vehicles into Cambodia makes it unworkable. Instead, Will drops us somewhere near the Laos/Vietnam border and drives direct to Bangkok and waits, while Karen stays with the group.
Anyway, the first part of the new itinerary is the journey between our last stop in Laos (Vang Vieng) and out first in Vietnam (Hue). This involves two nights of bush camping to the Laos/Vietnam border with the truck, two long bus rides either side of the border and a late arrival to Hue. The itinerary also shows that we have to move on to our second stop in Vietnam, Hoi An after just half a day in Hue: not really enough time to do justice to what was once the imperial capital of Vietnam and town with a lot of history.
I mentioned to Karen that this seemed a pity and she suggested that, as an alternative, we could take the night bus direct from Vang Vieng to Hue instead, which would get us into Hue over a day earlier, at our own expense, naturally. After discussing this idea between us and mentioning it to a few others, by the time we got to Vang Vieng, we had a small breakaway group of seven wanting more time in Hue and interested in finding out more about this option. As luck would have it, the receptionist at the hostel was able to book seats on the sleeper bus for the day after next and arrange transport for the seven of us to the bus station into the bargain. With that sorted, all that was needed was to book an extra night’s accommodation at the Hue hostel, which Karen was able to do for us all. Sorted.
Day 118 (Vang Vieng)
Vang Vieng is a curious place. Apparently it used to be a bit of a party town where booze and drugs were freely available and consumed almost in equal measure. unfortunately this didn’t mix well with the town’s other principle activity, tubbing, which is floating down the Mekong or through caves along underground rivers on a lorry inner tube. Over the years, there were quite a few deaths and disappearances, and when this fate befell two Israeli special forces soldiers, questions were asked and action taken at a level sufficient to shut the whole enterprise down. Now it’s the town which just floats along.We spent the day just resting, uploading photos (very slowly) and surfing the internet, looking at option for visiting Machu Picchu when we get to Lima next year. We had an e-mail from Oceania (the cruise company) with details of their excursion, but they’re asking a lot of money for something you could arrange yourself, so long as you could be sure that everything fell into place just so, such that you get back to the ship before it sails on to the next port. If you do their trip (£1,800 each) they’ll wait for you; if you do your own, they won’t. The thing is, it involves quite a few connections (taxi, plane, taxi, train, bus) there and back again in just two and a bit days. It would only take one of those to break down and we’d be stuffed. I mentioned all this to Karen, who also does trips to South America and has done exactly this journey. She said she could arrange the whole thing and fly out from England to meet us and take us round herself for less.
Days 119 & 120 (Vang Vieng to Hue)
The next morning, we got everything we needed off the truck, which we wouldn’t be seeing for another three weeks, and said goodbye to those of our truck mates sticking with the original plan. Our bus was due to leave town until the afternoon, so we had a little more time to kill.The tuk tuk to the bus station arrived on time, but the coach was half an hour late, which was a worry as it turned out we had to change buses in the capital, Vientiane and we didn’t know if they would hold the overnight sleeper bus for us or even if they knew we were coming at all. Looking back on it, we put quite a bit of trust in the hotel receptionist to arrange quite a complicated series of connections we would have been hard pressed to sort out if they became unravelled.
Sleeper buses have three lines of bunk beds (one line head-to-toe down each side and another down the middle) plus these five across at the back. It’s a bit like the Knight bus out of Harry potter except that the beds don’t move around, thank goodness. Think of those luxurious, first class, British Airways, beds-seats you see advertised on TV and know you’ll never be able to afford, then try to imagine how they’d look if Ryan Air were to do the same thing at discount prices and you’ll have a pretty good idea about the level of comfort these sleeper seats afford.
For a start, their more like reclined car seats where the back never quite goes flat. (In fact they can’t go flat because the feet of the person behind you are under it.) If you’ve every had to sleep in a car you’ll know what I mean. Then you’ve got the shape of the seat; the edges are raised to hold you in your seat as the bus careers through the night. Put the two together and realistically the only way you can lie is on your back. Finally the dimensions of the seat – the width and particularly the length of the seat in terms of leg room – are presumably based on measurements taken from typical south-east Asians, who, by and large (or, rather, small) are about half the size of your typical westerner. Even I can’t lie flat with my legs out straight in these things, so you can imagine how Juli faired. Now factor in the noise of the bus, the noise of your fellow passengers and the noise of the non-stop Chinese martial arts movies playing through a tinny speaker just inches from your head and you’ve got the full picture.
***
We arrived, somewhat bleary eyed at the Laos/Vietnam border at about 5.30 am and queued for our exit stamps, which somehow, though our visas were in date, required us to pay some sort of over time payment, or possibly it was an overtime payment due to the hour of our arrival, I’m really not sure which. We then had to wait for the Vietnamese border to open at 7.00 am. (Why they don’t time the bus to coincide with the crossing I also don’t know.) When it did open, there was a mad rush for the passport control windows, which of course, being British, we didn’t join in. Mind you, maybe I should have been a little quicker off the mark as my passage through passport control took a little longer than most, while the passport officer checked then re-checked my details, then passed my passport to another officer to check, who had to phone through to some other office or officer. He then handed it back to the first officer who seemed less than impressed and left on the side while he dealt with a few other passengers but eventually stamped me through while in the middle of processing one of our group. Borders are such fun.
Anyway, by 8.00 am we were through and back on the bus, and by 11.00 am we were in Hue, flagging down a minivan taxi to take us to our hotel. Hotel to hotel: about 22 and half hours. Then it was shower, laundry, lunch and out to book a tour to take full advantage of our hard-earned extra day in Hue, one time capital of Vietnam: country 22, about which more next post.
TTFN - N
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