Good Bye, Vang Vien

Well, there goes the river

THANK FUCK IT’S FRIDAY? I sincerely doubt anyone in Vang Vien had a week from hell. I didn’t even know it was Friday. And I don’t think anyone else did either. Lying down while eating “happy” pizza and watching Friends, or tubing down Vang Vien’s river-gauntlet of bars and tree swings doesn’t make for a tough week. And thus being so excited for Friday seems strange because everyone’s been partying like it's New Year’s every night anyways.

You only need to look at the drink specials to see what a tiny town in the mountains in Laos has become. I didn't see it coming, but when I was here a year ago all this was on its way. The town has grown drastically but only in businesses that cater to backpackers like bars, Internet cafes, restaurants, bungalows, and roti pancake carts. Unlike Luang Prabang or Vientiane, Vang Vien has become a party destination for the young backpackers. Here in the middle of the day, the streets are quiet while everyone hides in the river or in the shade, but at night bars offer beer Laos, vodka shooters, rice dishes, weed pizza, and mushroom shakes, all on the same menu.

Tubing down the river has become the highlight of a stay in Vang Vien, complete with spectacular views, cold Beer Laos for cheap, tree swing stunts, and Lao Lao. The river is wide, in some areas deep, and if it flowed any more slowly, it would be sitting still. Only a year and a half ago the scene was relatively quiet with only a handful of bars offering to pull you in with a long bamboo pole, but now it's been turned into a Laotian river theme park of bars and crazy structures daring tubers to swing, dive, or zip down into the water in front of everyone. Several new large bars have gone on the back along with three bridges. A year and a half ago I felt I was lost in Laos floating down the river, but now cars park along the side reminding the tubers that town isn't far away.

For as awfully touristy as the river tubing has become, it's fun as hell. Going down the river is a great way to keep cool during the day, and looking out at Vang Vien's mountains is a great way to relax. The different stunts are fun to do and even more fun to watch if someone does something daring or stupid or both.

But the build up on the river has come at a large cost. Showing no signs of letting up, more and more bars are being built as the land is bought up. In one stretch of the river a large piece of machinery was reshaping the bank to make room for a new bar and on the opposite side, a line of 16 new concrete bungalows were going up. The quiet was replaced by re-mixes, the clunking of a backhoe, and the static sound of welders.

While the tubers got in and out of the water jumping, drinking, relaxing, the locals came down to wash their hair, fish, and collect water. The water is clear and the fisherman were able to catch some fish, but this place is a conflict of interests. The Laotians are making great businesses out of their bars but the 200 backpackers that go down the short stretch of river are doing more to hurt it than help it. Similarly, what used to feel like a quiet, relaxed tube rie with the occasional party at a bar has become a night club on the river. Maybe I'm getting old but some how, hearing "My Hump" blared out of speakers while floating down the river isn't what I'm looking for.


At the end of the day, the tubing was fun despite the construction along the way. The boys out to catch fish caught fish, and the tubers had a great time too. This part of the river is a small stretch several kilometers long, and outside of it the calm and serenity of the Laotian countryside remains. Still, the growth of Vang Vien has been strictly catered towards the backpacker party tour of South East Asia. Without the mountains looming over the town, it would be easy to forget where you really are. The stores in town now lure people in to Skype in A/C, or, "pimp your iPod", or maybe just lay back and watch an entire season of your favorite TV show on DVD. The sad thing is that when you're staying in Vang Vien you forget that you're out in the middle of nowhere.

Good Bye, Luang Prabang

What can we learn about the differences in Thai and Laos culture by looking at this picture?

1. Laotians take pride in their beer. Thais like to drink it just as much, but they keep the Singha, Chang, or Leo on ice. Although slightly overrated, Beer Laos remains the backpacker favorite beer of S. E. Asia and as such, watering the tasty brew down with some ice is a bad call in Laos. (Note: they don’t give you straws with every single drink either. Did the French have something against straws?)

2. There’s a salt shaker on the table. Sure, they still use fish sauce in their traditional cooking, but the baguettes, hamburgers, and quiche are made with out. In Thailand you're more likely to find chilies chopped up in fish sauce or that spicy orange sauce that goes so well on Thai omelets. In Laos however, it's in with falang food and out with the Asian food. Goodbye rice, Hello Bread. No more fish sauce, cover your french fries with mounds of salt.

3. There are napkins (serviettes) in a glass. Thailand on the other hand always offers toilet paper in a "cute" box disguising it as napkins. I can deal with it while living in Thailand, but still, in Laos it’s nice to use what’s meant for you hands with your hands, and what’s meant for you ass, with your ass.

Monk Chat

I think the population of Luang Prabang can be split into thirds. A third tourists, a third locals, and a third monks. There are more than a handful of wats in the city and each of them are home to upwards of a hundred novice monks. Some of the boys come from Luang Prabang, but others come from different provinces in the countryside. Some monks wander the town in their free time becoming a Kodak moment for the busloads of old French tourists (and the rest of us.)


Walking around without a plan, I ended up at a wat on a quiet side of town with nobody around. I walked around the grounds for a minute looking at the different Buddhas and temples until a monk approached me. The spoke in English, asked me my name, where I was from, and how long I was staying in Luang Prabang. His conversational English exhausted, we switched a mix of Laos and Thai and continued chatting. His name was Pang, he was 20 years old and he had been a monk for 7 years. He was the eldest of the novices in the wat, and I slowly saw this in his personality. While we talked other monks came and went, listening in for a while, never interrupting, only saying a couple things, then walking off. Every fetched things for him and treated him with respect, like a Pee (elder.)

I asked Pang what he did on a normal day at the wat. "This" he said, meaning sitting around, thinking, meditating, relaxing. The pace of our conversation reflected his pace of life. We spoke for a couple seconds, then just sat and watched the day go by in silence, before talking again. Neither Pang nor any of the other monks were ever in a rush to do anything. After a while he invited me to sit down. We talked for an hour. Then he invited me to see his and the other monk's quarters. Their room was modest to say the least. In his 7 years as a novice, Pang had collected a small but strange array of books and pieces of paper with obscure collections of English vocabulary on them. The other monks who stayed in the same room had collected even less possessions, amounting to only a tiny stack of things pushed between studs in the wall.

Pang complained of not having any English teachers. He wanted to learn but there were no English speakers around to teach he said. We looked at some of his English books. They were strangely complicated. The first exercise in one book gave categories of parts of speech and asked the student to check the box under which each word belongs. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are easy enough, but the vocabulary the book asked to be categorized were complex words like "contaminated", "commitment", and "hysterical." Without knowing the definition of the words, somehow Pang knew which parts of speech each of them were. He's a good student, but without the right teacher or materials, he hasn't got much of a chance with English.

I hung out with Pang and the other monks for several hours that day, him teaching me Laos and me teaching him English. Walking around that evening I really took notice to how many monks there were in Luang Prabang. With Pang and so many other monks extremely interested in speaking English better, I'm amazed I haven't seen more people chatting with the monks around town.



The next day I hiked up the main wat in Luang Prabang that sits atop the tallest mountain (or hill) in the town's center. The hike up is just enough to get your heart racing and cover you in sweat. The views from up top are well worth it though, and it was there I found another opportunity to chat with a monk. Only 18, this monk left his family in the countryside years ago to come and study in Luang Prabang. Living in another wat, he had walked over to the wat just for the day.

He spoke no English but was real friendly and impressed by a foreigner who could speak Laos. We spoke about very little -just where we were from, our names, where he studied, how long I'd be in Laos, if I'd been to the waterfall and the likes- but I think the conversation is something more than that. For me it was a glimpse into what life is like for the novice monks: slow, relaxed, but curious about all the westerners that came to visit. For the monks, finally talking to a tourist is a chance to hear why they came, what their home is like, and really, just see what these people called falang are like. Another thing Laotians always want to know is: what do you think of Laos? Do you think it is dirty (a common complain from old travelers) or do you think it is beautiful? Is it similar to Thailand? Which is better?

Making both of my times with the monks even better, I ran into each of them randomly later on in the week. I ran into Pang at the same mountain wat and he was excited to see me. His friends were shocked to see he had a western friend and then to see I spoke Laos. Later in the evening I ran into the younger monk passing by the market with some friends and again, his friends seemed shocked when he stopped to talk with a falang and the falang knew his name.

I sometimes wonder how much western influence is good for places in South East Asia. Bangkok and Phuket suffer from too much change while other places in the middle of nowhere lack basic needs. Luang Prabang is perhaps the best conflation of western and eastern worlds into one incredible city. Still, it's tough to know whether our presence here is only helping to erode the culture and beauty that are the main reasons we are here in the first place, or whether we're helping this place being spending time here. I believe in times like these when people meet and talk about their cultures, traditions and the differences or similarities of each, it is the differences that are celebrated while the similarities help show us that no matter where you're from, some things, whether emotions, troubles, wonders, or passions, are innately human.

Downtown Luang Prabang

Lao Lao on the Nam Khan

I should have known better than to offer to buy another bottle of Lao Lao. What I needed was a way to show gratitude for the food and whiskey they had already shared with me and what I ended up with was a bag of liquor. From a local shop at the top of the steep banks of the riverside, a young girl wound down to the dusty then muddy then wet then rocky path down to our place in the shade. What she handed over was a bag of clear liquid that looked so shiny it seemed extra wet.

In my inebriation and in presumably his, I believed Sai’s perfect pour of the contents of the bag into the empty bottle without spilling a drip was a drunken miracle. Sai on the other hand appeared unimpressed by his own feat, and simply started the rotation again pouring out the next shot. Sai always had the bottle. He poured glasses for everyone in the circle, never forgetting himself, one person at a time. Vidoung, Chanh , the guy’s name I was so drunk I forgot, and I, each took our turns in the rotation with little break. I think this was one of those ‘let’s do what the locals do’ times.

I met the guys randomly earlier that day, just walking down the river. They were just some 20 year old “college” kids enjoying this Sunday like any other Sunday, relaxing on the river with a bottle of Lao Lao. They spoke absolutely no English so conversation was rough at times, but I picked up a lot of Laos and they understood Thai from watching TV and listening to radio. Still, there’s never any rush in Laos, ever, and silences in the conversation were normal, keeping the day relaxed.

Sitting on the bank of the Nam Khan River these guys found a nice place to build a fire between some large boulders and make some traditional Laos food. Some cabbage, a carrot, chilies, garlic, and fish sauce all fried up on a wok in the rocks. When dinner was completed and served with added bowls of limp green weeds in a thin brown broth and some pork rinds we dug in. Our opinion of their cabbage was unanimous: Kem! Salty! Kem lai lai! Very, very salty! Kem lai e-lee! That really is a very salty! The dish had its advantage though. It countered the fire-hell Laotian munshine of death well by completely overcoming the bitter sting of Lao Lao with a punch of fish sauce, garlic, and chilies. Soon out came some more pork rinds and then some sticky rice. We ate the sticky rice quickly but then they pulled out some sunflower seeds, then a guava. Sai took out two and gave one to one of the younger kids who had been hanging out and had helped collect twigs for their fire. The boy jumped down the rocks to wash it in the river, then brought it back it, peeled it, cut it up and gave half to his friend.

There were other young kids always coming and going, playing in the water then just sitting, hanging around to listen in on conversation. One woman walked down in front of our spot and slowly washed her hair. No one else seemed to notice. Later two men came down with a weighted net for fishing, then another fisherman with only a mask. Gangs of young kids came down holding large plastic containers I thought were used to collect water but were actually used as floating toys. Sao sao, or some Laos girls walked along or floated down the river and the guys threw out simple lines. “Pretty girl, where are you coming from? Where are you going? Wanna eat some rice? Drink some whiskey? Where are you going?” One time the girl scowled at them and as she walked away the guy’s name I was so drunk I forgot called at her, “Katooey!” Eventually two girls took them up on the offer and the party came to life.

After lunch we moved to take shade behind the rocks. Sai gave one of the girls a bag of guavas who washed them, peeled them, gave some to the kids playing in the water, then set the rest down for us with some crushed coriander. That was when the whiskey ran out and, especially with the girls around, everyone wanted to drink some more. Then came our bag of trouble.

The drank the second bag quickly and eventually we headed off the riverbank and back to one of the girls’ houses. There we faced another question. Another round of whiskey? Drunk as I was, I knew that was a bad idea. We settled for the much better but more expensive option, Beer Laos. Beer’s got alcohol but I’m telling you, those glasses sobered me up and I some how made my exit soon enough that I was still able to find my guesthouse that I had previously gotten lost trying to find earlier that morning, sober.

I was in bed passed out by 6 o’clock. Then I woke up a 9, made it out to the market for a baguette and some orange juice, and then passed back out at 10 in order to feel good after a cup of coffee at 9 the next morning, ready to do it all over again.

Chicken bus to Luang Prabang

A 60 Baht ride from the hotel to the border, quick stamp on my way out, 20 Baht ride on a crowded bus over the Thai Friendship bridge, a $36 ($1 extra for packing my extra passport pictures so deep in pack that I chose not to retrieve it) and a 300 Baht taxi fare and then I was off to the Vientiane bus stop on my way to Luang Prabang, in the biggest piece of shit taxi imaginable.

Immediately after crossing the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge the median between the lanes widens, then criss-crosses at a traffic light with a large warning sign reading “In Laos, we drive on the RIGHT.” I had totally forgot about that. That cancelled out my plan of renting a motorbike. The next major difference in the two countries was the goats. Tons of them, every where. So many goats eating grass on the roadside and casually moseying into the hectic Laotian traffic of tuk-tuks, taxis, motorbikes and old ladies balancing oddly-shaped whicker containers over there shoulder on a bamboo pole. I found the traffic in Vientiane chaotic but when I looked around I noticed I was the only one who was worried. Everyone else driving amidst the dusty traffic was unaffected. They were neither bitching nor road raging, they weren't they screeching their breaks or screaming at near accidents. Their driving was business as usual.

As fluent as I might imagine myself to be in South East Asia, I managed to land myself in the shitty taxi, paying double the standard fare. When waiting for the driver to bring the car around I made small talk with a shop owner who gasped as my taxi rattled up to the shop. In Laos he said: “That is an a really ugly taxi, the ugliest taxi in Vientiane.” You can imagine my excitement. A sucker for punishment, I hopped in and then immediately regretted my decision when we pulled away and I realized the doors were missing handles to roll the windows down. It was a safe bet this taxi had no A/C.

The gruff driver rolled down his window and somehow reached back and jiggled one of my windows down. It was a dusty sauna of black carpet and black leather, with a small current of cooler, dusty air from outside passing through. I was told 300 Baht for the ride was a rip off but the ride was over 30 kilometers so I still feel like I got my money’s worth. That being said, if there was ever a taxi ride I would have liked to have ended quickly, this was the one.

Instead of staying in Vientiane, I decided to go straight to Luang Prabang to then work my way back south to the south before going home to Kalasin. At the bus station there were several signs advertising VIP buses to Luang Prabang but the few buses parked in the lot were a far cry from having A/C or a bathroom. The ticket counter confirmed my fears and told me the single bus in the lot that looked nice was headed to China and would not be willing to take passengers to Luang Prabang. I bought my cheap ticket for my chicken bus and waited for two hours while they stowed my bag in the back seats of the bus and stacked strange boxes and bags and random stuff on to the roof.

With a two hour wait and needing to work on my Laos, I started talking to a girl who was waiting to meet her mom. She was from Laos but worked at a coffee shop in Bangkok. She had traveled all the way there by bus to deliver her mom some cash and go back to make some more. When asked how many days they would spend together, she told me they would just meet and then each get on the next bus heading back out.

Other falang eventually rolled up, most with funky long hair cuts, worn in clothes, some with big sunglasses, and all wearing colorful but faded jewelry. There was mixed group of European dudes out to conquer the world one city at a time but going to each one and “doing it right.” They often told of the hangovers from the night before like they were injuries of war. They told me American Football was for pussies and that Americans were stubborn for not changing to the metric system.

Most roads in Laos are either under construction or should be. It’s not like the road of hell from Poi Pet to Siem Riep in Cambodia, but the edges of the road were buried in sand and dust and the pot holes were every where. The seats on the bus were average and did lean back but the windows were small sliders that would only open my window so far before pushing the person behind me’s window closed. Thus, we had to all be cordial with a bus neighbors and each share the medium flow of air.

Just leaving town I saw two monks sitting on a tractor while a man was pouring gas into the tank from a pitcher, a worker hoisting bricks up to the second story of a building one bucketful-at-the-end-of-a-rope at a time, and when we stopped in a small town old ladies would run up to our windows and try to sell us odd strips of grilled beef, guavas, and eggs-on-a-stick. For bathroom breaks we stopped in the middle of the nowhere so everyone could pee in the grass.

Up in the mountains the sun began to disappear and reappear from behind the mountains as we wound our way north. Just as the sun was about to drop for good, we arrived in Vang Vien and looking at my watch and thinking ahead of another 7 hours on the bus, I wished I was stopping there. But the ticket being paid for I decided to stick with it and ending up being the only falang left on the bus with 7 other people.

The red and orange hues hung in the sky for a while but when it was gone, the only thing I saw out my window was darkness. I fell asleep for a while then woke to see fires lighting up the mountains. From a distance the forest fires looked like thin veins of lava oozing down the mountain but as we would wind our way up, down or around the mountainside and eventually passed by them,they were so bright my eyes hurt.

Half way in the pitch dark 7 hour journey we stopped for dinner. I had some of that green stuff, some of this brown stuff, all on top of some rice, thank you very much. Before getting back on the bus I noticed the bus driver went to fridge and picked himself up the Thai bus driver night cap special: a couple cans of Beer Laos and a couple M 150s. Sap lie duuh.

The rest of the way there, the bus driver drove like we were rushing someone to the hospital. As he swerved left and right bottles and other garbage rolled from one side of the bus to the other with every jerk of the wheel. The overall rattling, shaking, clicking, jerking, high speeds and abrupt stops of the bus ride were very much similar to those of any rollercoaster worth waiting in line for. When it all came to an end, like some show on TV, I chose to believe that each of the 8 of us on the bus all became friends that day because we were each the survivor of a near death experience. We all waved good bye to each other at the bus station and wished each other good luck in our travels.

We arrived at 2:00 am, only two hours later than the bus driver had told. There were two tuk tuks waiting at the station but only one off the drivers woke up. Four of us shared a ride in the same one, them heading home and me heading out to find a guesthouse. Despite the noise coming from the tuk tuk, being outside I could hear how quiet it was at night in Luang Prabang. All shops were closed up, lights were off in homes, and nobody was in the streets. Then we got into town. We came to the local disco just as the bar has closing and suddenly we were in a sea of motorbikes rushing away like a motocross race. Drunk driving home from the bar, nobody wore helmets or drove carefully. They were all goofing around, driving along and still talking together before whisking off past our tuk tuk and on to some other party.

With one turn we lost all but a couple of them, and those even sped away quickly and again the town was quiet. The driver left me at the door step of a basic guesthouse where the owner who was sleeping next to his wife in the lobby under a mosquito net, woke up and showed me to a room. With sleepy eyes and no rush, he showed me a room, I took it, and before I could even ask how much, they guy just smiled and said, “tomorrow.”

It's spelled Laos but don't pronounce the "s"

This is the last sunset for this trip to Thailand, reflecting off the Mekong. Across the river is Laos, where I'll be spending the next two weeks.

If you don't know anything about Laos it's the land locked country that borders Thailand's north-northeast. It's slightly bigger than Utah, with a population of roughly 5,750,000. It's basically made up of mountains and rivers and thus there are many waterfalls. That also means getting around can be a bit of a pain and often times the best way to get someplace is by river boat. It's an extremely poor country where over 30% of the population lives under the poverty level but from personal experience, I consider it to be one of the happiest places I've ever been. Life in Laos crawls by slowly and every one is laid back. Laotians are incredibly friendly, helpful and generous.

One of the most notorious and unbelievable statistics about Laos is that they are the most heavily bombed country in the world (per capita.) In what is called "The Secret War", during the Vietnam War our wonderful nation dropped over two million tons of explosives on Laos. I would guess most Americans have no idea whe ever dropped a single bomb on Laos, let alone a enormous amount. We bombed them more than all of Europe was bombed in World War II. Go us. I don't think they called it shock and awe back then. Anyways, now decades later the results are still disasterous (in Cambodia as well.) The countryside remians littered with bombs and mines that have yet to go off, prohibiting hiking in the mountians and visiting some historic sites.

Vientiane is the capital city but perhaps Laos' most well-known city is Luang Prabang. The city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage cite in 1995. The website briefly desrcibes the town as, "an outstanding example of the fusion of traditional architecture and Lao urban structures with those built by the European colonial authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its unique, remarkably well-preserved townscape illustrates a key stage in the blending of these two distinct cultural traditions." Since you probably won't be able to make it out there anytime soon, check this link from the World Heritage website. It has incredible 360 degree pictures of several spots in the town.

http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/asia/la/luangPrabang/map.html

Laos is home to a myriad of different ethnic groups of numerous languages. This map shoes SE Asia and all of the different ethnolinguistic groups throughout the region. Many of these groups are the indigenous people everyone over here refers to as "hill tribes." Many of the traditional ways of life still intact, going from Thailand to Laos feels like taking a time machine back 50 years.

So as of tomorrow I switch from speaking Thai to speaking Laos, a linguistic jump not so difficult because the Isaan language I have picked up living in Kalasin happens to be, well, Laos. The two languages are very similar, even more so than say Spanish and Portuguese. Even more exciting is the anticipated switch from Thai beers to Beer Lao, a delicious alternative not imported to Thailand. On top of that, the remnants of French influence, good coffee and bakeries remain in the big cities. All I have to remember is that the food isn't "a-roy" (delicious), it's "sap."