Laos

Laos is noticeably poorer than China. The Chinese customs building at Mohan is gleaming whilst the Laos side is an old corrugated iron roofed building with posters of Laos calendar girls adorned on every available space. The Chinese have invested a lot in the Laotian infrastructure and the roads close to China are new and easy to cycle on. The houses in Northern Laos are generally wooden with no windows. They have dirt floors and no running water but more often than not have huge satellite dishes beaming in images of the consumerist lifestyle from the richer, neighbouring Thailand. Although many aspects of Laos society are very traditional there are many young girls wearing ridiculous amounts of eyeliner and face powder to make their skin pale (is it foundation or is that something completely different)? I flicked through a Laos women’s gossip magazine and all the images had been photoshopped to make the girls seem much paler than the people I passed by. In general the people seem content with their simple life of subsistence farming but the more exposure they have to other cultures, the more I’d expect people to look at their own lives and feel a sense of inadequacy.

On my first morning I had bought a can of coke to assess the cost of living and sat at the side of the road. A man walked by with a noose and I assumed he was going to kill a chicken. There were loud screams minutes later as he pulled a nice healthy looking dog 50 metres or so with the noose in a bamboo cane then his mate clubbed it to death with 2 swift blows of a stick. The screaming immediately stopped but the tail continued to wag. There was chatter and laughter throughout this ordeal, it meant nothing to the locals. Other than that, my journey to Luang Prabang has been thoroughly uneventful. I felt a bit bored cycling through much of northern Laos. The geography doesn’t change much, the vegetation doesn’t change much either and the people don’t have the same amount of curiosity towards foreigners as the Chinese.

Throughout my time in China I was frustrated about all the things I couldn’t communicate but arriving in Laos made me realise just how much I had come on with the language. I didn’t meet any foreigners or English speakers in my first two days but had a conversation or two with a few Chinese speakers. I asked one how far the nearest restaurant was and he told me 40km, I thought he misunderstood me. That would never happen in China. If there are Chinese people in the vicinity then you’re never far from a good meal. On my third day I saw 9 westerners in one day. It really was a shock to the system. I had arrived in a town (Oudomxai I think) and had decided I wanted to get to know some Laos people and did what I always did in China, sit down and do nothing and allow people to get used to my presence then they’d make conversation. It doesn’t work in Laos. As I was sitting there I saw a western couple with the whitest of complexions (clearly short term travellers) and said hello. When they saw my western face they almost looked embarrassed to say hello back. As far as they were concerned that small town was off the beaten track and the sight of my western face was ruining their adventure in an untouched traditional culture. “It’s ok” I felt like saying, “you can have the politeness to make eye contact with a westerner as you murmur a hello and still have an ‘authentic’ experience with the locals”. They toddled on with their lonely planet map guiding them round every street corner, making just as few cultural exchanges with the locals as myself. I got more amusement from the fact that they didn’t speak to me. Clowns.

I met a couple who’d hitch-hiked from the Ukraine that were far more open. You learn far more or at least as much from other travellers as from your encounters with locals whom you can’t communicate with. In the next town 100 or so km away, I met a really nice Israeli couple and an Australian couple who were also on bicycles and the 5 of us had noodle soup, a good laugh and half a bottle of Johnny Walker. We inspired the Israelis to get bicycles with our tales and enthusiasm.

All in all I have made no effort to get off the beaten track.  I’m sure there are ‘remote villages’ that are more picturesque than the ones I’ve been through but even the villages on the main road are pretty remote and besides, these ‘remote’ villages might have a foreigner every 2 weeks snapping away whilst the villages on the main road only have busses that whizz through and no one ever gets out. The food has been pants, I’ve lived on porridge and noodle soup because that’s all I have or all I can find. I’ve missed Chinese food, basic shops that sell things and the ability to have conversation, even if it is just the same repetitive things, where are you from? How long are you here? etc.

I don’t really know what to say about Laos…there’s lots of trees, lots of deforestation with logging trucks heading north, a village every 10km, then an identical one 10km later, dogs that sleep on the middle of the road, yeah, it’s ok. It’s been a pleasure to cycle through Laos without having to worry about my visa expiring. I can take my time and have 3 coffees before deciding to pack my tent away. Camping has been easy. Even though Laos is the most bombed country in history I haven’t felt the need to prod the ground with a stick before I pitch my tent to make sure there are no UEO (unexploded ordinance) it’s all felt very tame.

It took me two days to cycle the distance that the Aussie couple planned to do in one. I stopped for coffees, went for a dip in the river and engaged in all round general laziness. There are kids everywhere in Laos. They all say ‘Sabaidee’ as you cycle past.  A group of school kids joined me for 10km or so, it felt like the Le Tour de France and I was wearing my yellow t shirt that my brother gave me. Sometimes the kids will line up along at the side of the road to give high fives as a cyclist passes. If I miss a hand, I’ll go back to give a hi five to the one who’s hand I missed, (because I've got nothing better to do). I thought about ways to communicate with them and remembered being told that Mr Bean is universally popular because people from any language can get the jokes. Apparently he’s a legend in India. I need no encouragement to make a fool of myself. Besides, doing Mr Bean impressions is good exercise for your facial muscles. I stopped at a restaurant once for would you believe it…noodle soup and one of the kids was playing music on his mobile phone. I was in an upbeat energetic mood and started playing musical statues stopping whenever he changed the song. They couldn’t stop laughing. It feels good to make people laugh, especially when you haven’t made any real contribution to society in 7 months. I continued to play musical statues once my food got served and they’d always stop the music as the food was about to go in my mouth. I don’t keep track of time but my soup was stone cold by the time the kids got bored. It didn’t taste of much when warm so I wasn’t particularly bothered. That’s about as entertaining as the road from Mohan to Luang Prabang has got. Nothing bad has happened and there is nothing much to report, I took only a few photos, here are a handful.

Luang prabang is pleasant, there are lots of nice plants in the gardens and it has a nice slow rhythm. When I arrived in Luang Prabang I randomly bumped into Julie and Fintan whom I shared a dorm with in Dali, mother and son extraordinaire’s who have taken a year out of school and work to travel. Julie said I’ve lost weight so I’ve spent most of my time in Luang Prabang eating. Laos is a former French colony. It’s great. I bought cheese for the first time in I don’t know how long and have been munching on baguettes in the day time and dirt cheap Laos buffets at night. The foods nothing like what I've tasted n the road but if it says it's Laos cuisine and it's cheap and its a buffet then I'm happy. One night I ate a whole barbecued fish after my buffet that must have weighed half a kilo (because I can). I’ve had a few wanders, fixed some bike parts, bought porridge, rice, Chinese cooking oil, Chinese sauces and will buy fresh veg from the Chinese market tomorrow, I’ve wrote this blog (and the last one), met up with the Israelis and gave them advice on buying and repairing bikes, watched youtube (because it’s not banned) and met a handful of fascinating and thoroughly decent people and had great chats with them.

I’ve come across my fair share of idiots too. One girl I saw of maybe 19 bought lucky birds because she felt sorry for them. They are basically small birds locked in tiny cages; they can barely fit in the cages. You pay the owner money to free them and they tell you that brings you good luck in the next life. It’s supposedly a Buddhist tradition but I’ve only seen it in a touristy part of Bangkok and Luang Prabang. I didn’t meet many western idiots at all who were backpacking, studying or working in China and you’d often have conversations about the lack of sophistication of Chinese tourists. You meet a lot of expats that permanently moan about Chinese culture. China doesn’t really attract foreigners interested in loutish behaviour. The average age of travellers in China is older and less daft than in South East Asia and it’s easy to forget that half the population of tourists from your own culture are idiots too. I’ll be leaving Luang Prabang tomorrow, taking the road south which leads to Vang Vieng (because it’s the only road that leads south). I’ve been told it will take 3 days so I’ll probably be in Vang Vieng in 8, (because I can).

Adios