Loas: The River will make you or break you.

*This post was meant to go up about 2 weeks ago. A lack of convenient internet has caused a bit of a delay. But just pretend its not way behind*

I recently added another country’s stamp to my increasingly colorful passport: Laos. Here is the story of my brief first venture into the mountainous land of party-rivers, baguettes, and communism. It’s a bit of a long one, go ahead and grab a snack, settle in.

So the trip was inspired by my need to renew my visa. Long story short, I needed to get to a city in a neighboring country with a Thai Embassy/Consulate, and Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is the closest and least expensive to get to. My friend from work, Will, had plans to fly up there on the 30^th, a Saturday, and come back the following Saturday, as we had a week off of work. Now, Vientiane is a notoriously boring city, so he had decided to go to a city located about 3.5 hours north – a far cooler place called Vang Vieng – for the beginning of the trip, then sort out the visa stuff later that week. I talked to him about his plan on the Thursday before, and he encouraged me to come along. I had no plane ticket, but eventually decided that I would leave Sunday evening on an overnight bus and join him on Monday, then we would sort out our visa situation a few days later, and get back to Thailand before work began in earnest the following Monday.

By a lucky chance, I got a call on Saturday morning from my good friend Jack (who many of you probably feel like you know by now), and he told me he was seriously considering coming back to Chiang Mai for a night or two before heading on to his next destination which happened to be Laos. I told him he should just hop on a bus later that afternoon, spend the night here at the hostel, and then we could make the trip to Laos together on Sunday. He was immediately on board and in my arms once more a few short hours later.

Sunday morning Jack and I settled our tabs at the hostel and by evening we were on the first of many buses, this one from Chiang Mai to the Northeastern city of Udon Thani. The bus ride was pretty standard, and for brevity’s sake I’ll spare you the details. After an ok night’s sleep thanks to a bit of valium, we arrived in Udon at about 6:30 am, and groggily made our way over to a small bus that took us to the Thai border town of Nong Khai. After the short ride, we found ourselves at the Thai-Lao border, and had to take yet another bus across the bridge that spans the Mekong River, the natural barrier between the two countries. Once we passed through immigration, we took ANOTHER small bus to a market in Vientiane, where we randomly met a couple of good friends from the hostel in Chiang Mai. It was a lovely surprise, and we ate some lunch with them and caught up a bit before we had to leave to get on… that’s right… another bus… to take us the final leg from Vientiane to Vang Vieng. The first thing I noticed driving in Laos:

Don’t see anything particularly odd about this picture? That’s because there isn’t! In Laos, people drive on the right, or I should say, the CORRECT side of the road! It was a refreshing sight, and off we went into the Laotian countryside, which proved quite beautiful, and distinct from but similar to the scenery you might see in certain parts of Thailand, particularly the south.

As we neared our destination, the terrain got more and more mountainous, and more and more picturesque:

Finally we arrived in Vang Vieng, and as we didn’t have Will’s number (or phones that work in Laos), we simply had to find a guesthouse that suited us, then try to arrange meeting up with him via internet communication.  We went searching, along with 3 Thai guys from Lampang, a neighboring city of Chiang Mai, and a Korean guy we met on the bus. We eventually found a place in our price range (ie the cheapest place we could find…) and sent Will an email telling him where we had landed. By the time we had settled in and gotten our bearings, Will was knocking at our door. We talked a bit then headed out to see the town a bit. Eventually, we acknowledged the fact that really the only thing to do in the near vicinity was something affectionately dubbed “Tubing.” This activity warrants a bit more of a detailed description.

Tubing is a party sensation notoriously known to travellers the world over. The basic summary is this: there is a river running between the edge of the town and a large mountainous area. Along this river are several bars. Every one of these bars sells beer, buckets, and a few more illicit endeavors if you ask the right people (but I would, of course, not have the foggiest idea which people those would be). But in addition to the normal things you would find at any outdoor bar around the world, they utilize their proximity to the river by building all kinds of rope swings, zip lines, and water slides, all built for drunk adults and therefore more exciting than your average version. The whole thing gets its name from the tubes that you can pay to rent and use to float from bar to bar, stopping wherever you like to partake in the festivities.  It is like spring break meets waterpark meets nature, and it is insane at best, borderline suicidal at worst.

After quickly deciding that we should get to the river bars while the sun was still out and the party was still poppin, the 3 of us changed and hopped into a tuk-tuk that took us to the first bar. Here is a small collection of pictures that will allow you to get the general idea of what we were workin with:

So we partied (responsibly) till the sun went down, along with the 3 Thai guys from the bus, who we came across by chance at the second bar we went to, and by 6:30 we were all pretty exhausted and ready for dinner. We went back, changed, and ate some Laotian food (which I have to say is definitely not nearly as good as Thai food..) with our new friends, who were kind enough to bring a bottle of Smirnoff with them (which we emptied (responsibly) as a team). After dinner we headed out to one of the bars in town that is routinely packed with travelers, and had a great time into the wee hours of the night. You know how that goes.

The next day Jack and I got up, definitely feeling.. dehydrated. But we had a lunch of baguette sandwiches and a big bottle of water and all was right once more. (PAUSE: I’ve not mentioned this fact, but there is bread everywhere in Laos. There is a heavy French influence in the country, and so baguettes can be found any place you go. They are also almost always the cheapest option for food, so I ate a lot of sandwiches in Laos. It was a nice change, because both cheese and bread are expensive/not good in Thailand. But I tired of both quickly, and couldn’t wait to get back to the Thai food) Will came over to our guesthouse, and we decided it would be prudent to hit the river again, so off we went. And again, it was a blast. The drinking is fine and all, but drinking is drinking. Whatevs. But the river! Oh man, the river. You really feel that childish excitement, standing in line to go on these rides, loving every second, and just a little bit scared that you might die. Really fantastic. However, falling into the water from great heights and at rapid speeds certainly takes its toll; even a week later, my butt and back are still a little bruised. So worth it though. If you make it to Southeast Asia and are of the inclination to party, don’t miss Vang Vieng unless you really have no choice. I promise you won’t regret it.

After tubing we had some delusion that we would be able to go home, shower, eat dinner, and go out to the local bar for Round 2. It had been a fairly long Round 1… We did go home, and we did shower, then we did.. all fall asleep seemingly simultaneously before we could make it to dinner, and didn’t wake up until 11:30 pm… So after sleeping through a large chunk of our last night in town, we figured we should at least go eat something, so we got some sandwiches and watched the drunk people until about 1, then got another good night’s sleep before getting up for the van to Vientiane at 9 the next morning.

We paid a fairly expensive price for a van for the return trip to the capital, costing nearly double what I paid for the first bus up, so I was expecting a pretty comfortable experience. This was what showed up:

 

Ah, hell nah. Will and I were packed into the middle row of this somehow 9-seater minivan, and lucky for us, we have to fit 4 people in 3 seats! Neat! Even better, I end up crammed up next to this Laotian girl, who is concurrently crammed up next to a woman and her small child who was in and around her lap for the whole trip, all of whom paid probably a third (if not less) of what I paid. It is an unfortunate eventuality when traveling in and around Thailand, and a bit of a bummer, but we take the good with the bad.

We eventually get to Vientiane, and set off looking for the cheapest accommodation we could find. We were not in a great area for cheap accommodation… but we eventually found what we understood to be the least expensive place we were going to come across, threw our stuff in the room, and headed out to get something to eat. With a little somethin-somethin in our stomachs, we headed straight to the embassy to take care of the business end of our little journey.

So a quick summary of the sequence of events one goes through when getting a Visa from a Thai embassy: you get there during a certain window of the day (morning or afternoon), and fill out some paper work and hand in your passport. The following day, you go back during the other window of the day and get your passport back, complete with 60 day visa. We thought they took passports in the afternoon, 12-3. Turns out they take them in the morning, 9-12, and return them in the afternoon. We arrived at 12:30… well dammit.

 But its ok, its ok, that’s why we came on Wednesday, we had a day to spare just in case something went wrong and we ended up having to be there longer than we expected. Oh what’s that? You say Thursday is “Coronation Day,” a Thai national holiday? Is that so… and so, like, all government establishments are closed on Thursday? Even Embassies? Oh…

Welp, didn’t see that coming. Not that the information was unavailable; to the contrary, we’d not gone at the beginning of the week because we’d checked the calendar and seen that Monday was a national holiday, and the Embassy was closed. We simply failed to look slightly further down the list of holidays it seems…

Well no use crying over spilled milk as they say, and though it was definitely a big bummer given how easily avoidable it would’ve been had we done just a little bit more research, it was time to get over and figure out what we should do next.  We could turn our Passports in at the very next opportunity, but that of course wouldn’t come until Friday, and as the Embassy is closed on the weekends, that would mean we would have to wait until Monday afternoon to get our visas. Not an exciting prospect, given our first official day of work was that Monday, and condemning ourselves to another 4 days in this incredibly boring city (that is actually quite expensive by Thai standards) seemed a pretty unbearable solution. So unbearable in fact, that we decided we should just cut our losses and head directly home. And we did just that.

We headed back to the guesthouse, explained that we had to leave immediately and therefore would obviously not be staying in – or paying for – the room as we had originally planned. We got to the border, and rode the same chain of buses that had gotten us there in the first place, this time in reverse order, back to Chiang Mai. The prospect of going back to Thailand was instantly appealing, as I was already missing my new home after only 3 days away.

We were out of Laos by 1:30 pm.

We were home by 9:30 the next morning.

End of Laos Trip Post

So how was your day? (the new tag line; good way to end a correspondence?)

 ian