A bacon cheeseburger, fries and mustard-oh mustard!-awaited me back in Chiang Mai. I instantly felt better knowing I was going onto something new and celebrated by browsing the local bookstores for something to take on the two-day long trip to Luang Prabang in Laos. I arranged to travel via longboat down the Mekong River from the Thai-Lao border to Luang Prabang. It's a popular route by travelers and I met a couple interesting backpackers and I
finished both of my books during the two days! The river trip is everything people say it is; it's great for meeting people, for reading books, it's relaxing and you get to see how life operates around the great artery that is the Mekong River. On the other hand, it's also noisy, crowded, hot and slow. Sometimes you've got to take the good with the bad.
In Luang Prabang my new found friends and I visited a nearby waterfall and did some hiking in the surrounding forest. We enjoyed a makeshift picnic between taking dips in the cold water and afterwards walked through the night market back in town. I moved on to Vang Vien soon after which is famous for both the plethora of caves around town and for tubing down the local Nam Ou River. It's similar to tubing back home in that you get a tube and a bunch of friends and cruise on down the river taking in the scenery and basking in the sun. The people of Vang Vien have capitalized on the potential of this by building bars next to the river and they excitedly reach out a bamboo pole or liferope for you to grab onto as they pull you into their establishment.
Apart from the drinking, which is the main draw for many people, the entertainment options are great. High, wooden towers rise over the banks for you to hurl yourself off of on a trapeze or zipline into the river below. I can't think of anything more dangerous than getting drunk, climbing up a tree and throwing yourself into a swift current. The lack of liability is supremely apparent and not surprisingly, drownings occur way too often. I may have been the only one not to consume a drop of alcohol on the river that day. But like a kid in a candy store I ran laps up to the trapeze and zipline. There are seven bars along the river and I tried four trapezes (perfecting my backflip as onlookers applauded,) a zipline and a mud volleyball game that quickly turned into mud wrestling! It was a great time on the river and I'm glad I didn't miss it.
The rest of the time I was in town I toured the local caves. My first cave was great, and I'm not particularly impressed with caves. It was lit up and had a walkway through it to guide you around the stalactites and other formations. At one point the lights stop but the sidewalk continues into the darkness. I whipped out my headlamp and beckoned my friends to follow along. We walked to the end of the walkway and turned off the light to experience complete darkness. It was a humbling feeling to think we'd be completely vulnerable if we didn't have that light. At the base of the cave is a beautiful blue lagoon where we swam with the locals. It was a lot of fun to joke around with them and take pictures with each other. I kept saying how much fun I was having.
Afterwards my friend Aurel and I drove out from the city on our motorbike, past the rice fields where workers were just finishing their work for the day and children were walking cattle back home. We came across a sign directing us to a cave advertising a "great adventure." We were up for a little adventure so we followed the sign down a muddy road to a group of kids who charged us 10,000 Kip (about $1) to continue onto the cave. Our guide was ten years old. It was a long walk up a dry riverbed to the entrance to the cave and it couldn't have been more different from our first cave. Sure it was still a cave and had all the cavy things that caves have in them, but it was extremely dark, the ceiling was much lower and ground was covered in slippery mud and jagged rocks. There were no barriers to prevent us from slipping into one of the holes along the sides which seemed to have no bottom and it lacked the inviting blue water of the previous cave. After a few minutes inside we decided that although it may be adventurous, we weren't in for a broken leg or slipping into an abyss and we decided to leave.
Like a lot of backpacker destinations, Laos has a distinct tourist trail. It starts in Chiang Mai, continues to Luang Prabang, Vang Vien and onto Vientiane where it splits in three and travelers go East to Vietnam, South to the rest of Laos and onto Cambodia or West back to Bangkok. Therefore, the people you see on the slow boat you may see again all along the trail. Aurel was on of these people, then there were the cyclists from Spain and a couple girls from Spain and Chile. All that to say, we all met up again quite randomly in Vang Vien and decided to go out. Since we were some of the only people in the club, the DJ let us pick which songs we wanted to hear, and since all of us were Spanish-speakers we played all our favorite Spanish songs and danced the night away! Just as the day began, is how it ended, with me clarifying just how much fun this was.
I must say something about the pork I had in Vang Vien. At a street stall on evening a woman invited me to come closer and handed out a piece of meat with some forceps. Without asking what it was I popped it into my mouth (is that strange?) and I was overcome by what could quite possibly be the best BBQ pork ribs I've ever had in my entire life! Aurel and I bought a rack of ribs to share with each other and I vowed to return the next day which I did after an all-day trek to a distant cave and the pork woman was gone! Oh the disappointment! How many times had I walked by that very spot in the morning wishing she were there? I'd waited all day and could only think of how many ribs I would buy that night and how great they would taste as I ate the rotisserie-roasted goodness standing in the street and tossing the bones to the dogs. Instead the stand was replaced by a woman selling BBQ chicken, an inadequate substitute. But I bought some anyway.
Vientiane was the last stop on my Laos itinerary. I had a pleasant feeling when we arrived in town. The French influence is very apparent in the architecture and the array of French restaurants and bakeries. I immediately went to the French Cultural Center to inquire of French courses just to find out there aren't any at this time. Bummer. Aurel and I walked around the town, ate dinner along the Mekong and gazed out at the lights of Thailand across the river. We parted ways as he went back to Bangkok and I stayed on awaiting my visa to Vietnam.
It was a sincere privilege to meet some fellow believers there in town. I spent Saturday afternoon watching the Olympics and playing farkle (yes they know how to play farkle!) and on Sunday I went to their evening meeting. Tears of joy rolled down my face as we sang "It is Well," and "Blessed be Your Name." There was nowhere else that I'd rather be in that moment that right there with my eternal brothers and sisters in the presence of the fellowship of believers. We shared some great conversation, encouragement and food together before the night was over. I took the next couple days slowly and visited a couple new bakeries for lunch, rented a bicycle and rode around town and picked up my visa at the Vietnam Embassy. My Lao journey was at an end, but it would be very easy to come back.
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