Been there Don Det - Laos

It’s been a little hard to keep the motivation to write about our trip, we’re already in and out of Laos as we write this. Never the less, here goes an attempt to summarize three weeks in Laos in as concise a manner as we can!

So we made our way from Cambodia to Laos by minibus, and what a ride it was! There were 15 places on the minibus, but somehow they managed to fit in 20 people, with 20 people’s luggage and a live chicken for the three-hour ride to the Laos/Cambodian boarder. Its not that hard when you have four people for each three seats, when you pack-in a bunch of locals in the front row and when you have a passenger sit in the driver’s seat and then have the driver sit on the passenger’s lap for two and a half hours… pretty nuts!

The boarder was a bit of a scam, but they always are. It costs Canadians $42 to get a Laos visa, for some reason we are the country that has to pay the most to get into Laos. But then we had to pay all the extras… 2$ stamping fee to get out of Cambodia, 2$ stamping fee to get into Laos (in addition to the $42), and an extra dollar because it was Saturday. Such BS!

Anyways, we made it to our destination: Four Thousand Islands. We went to an island called Don Det. It was a nice chilled out island. Things are cheap in Laos, 2$ for a big beer, 1$ for a bottle of local whiskey, 13$ for an Air Con room, but everything closes early, all bars are closed at 11:30PM. We enjoyed our time on the small island; we took a full day kayak tour through the islands that was pretty amazing. We ran into about every obstacle that we could have, trees, rocks, going down rapids backwards, we really sucked at kayaking. But it was still lots of fun. 

    

That same night, while walking around the island, we ran into a local party. They were either celebrating the beginning of the construction of their new home, or the destruction of their old home (either way it was just a field they were pointing at); lots of dancing, local whiskey being poured into your mouth by old ladies, and loud music, very fun!

From Don Det we made our way to Paksé to check out “the loop”. Getting to Paské wasn’t that easy. Buses are completely random, they leave whenever they want, they are all over booked, and if you get their late, you get a plastic chair in the isle. They have it all figured out!

Either way, we made it to Paksé. We quickly rented a motorbike and took off for the 180KM loop, 2-days/1-night. The loop consists of driving in a giant circle and stopping off at the many waterfalls all along the way. You sleep in a small town based near one of the waterfalls. It was really fun, all the better because we met a really nice French-Canadian couple from Winnipeg. It was pretty cool to meet people from “the Peg” who spoke French; there is a big French community in Manitoba near St-Boniface.

    

The highlight of the entire loop, and possibly of our entire trip, was stopping off in an Animist village and getting a tour from a local. What a special place! The tour started when our guide showed us the caskets that villagers buy themselves when they can, usually when they reach the age of 20 or 30. They leave these caskets under their homes to ward off evil spirits. When they die, they are put in the casket and buried. So you walk around the village and can see caskets under their homes (all homes are built on stilts). The caskets are really small and narrow, but as our guide pointed out, the people in his village are very small, not like us :)

But then the tour got a little more interesting. We start to see children smoking out of giant tobacco bongs. That’s when the guide explains to us that children begin smoking tobacco when they are 4 or 5. We asked why, and we were simply told because the kids wanted to, they see their parents smoking and so they want to, and the parents don’t mind. WOW!

     

Next, we are explained that it was a polygamist society. Men are allowed to have as many wives as they want, provided they can pay the dowry to the woman’s family. We asked what the dowry was, and it started as we expected: Buffalos, Pigs, Chickens, the usual stuff you would expect in a small rural village. Then he tells us, new motorbike and satalite TV, lol… modern village! 

He showed us homes that were no bigger than 600 square feet and then he told us that 45 people lived in there. A man, his 10 wives and about 30-40 children, they had lost count.

It also turns out that marriages are all arranged. Children are married anytime from the age of 5 upwards. The boy’s family pays the dowry to the girl’s family and the little girl goes to live with the boy’s family. They are raised as siblings until they hit puberty. Then its baby making time. WOW!

     

Some other interesting facts from the village were that it was taboo for women to give birth within the village; women must go to the forest with a mid-wife in order to give birth. As well, when someone dies young, it is believed that there are bad spirits that are haunting the family. In order to get rid of the bad spirit, the family times a dog to a post, and everyone takes a turn kicking the dog until it dies. This rids the family of the evil spirit. WOW! 

Definitely a special experience!

Our next stop was Kong Lo, home of a giant 7.5KM underground cave. 

    

It was a pretty epic journey to get to the cave. We left Paksé at 8PM on an overnight bus, and arrived in Kong Lo village the following day at 2PM. 18 hours of transport, including the breaking down of the sleeper bus, three hours of sleep at a 5$/night bus station guesthouse, four different buses and an hour long tuk-tuk ride; but we finally made it. It was worth it! Amazing scenery and a great hotel room for only $7.50 a night. Shortly after we arrived, the village was hit by a storm, and we lost electricity and all running water for the next 2 days. Unfortunately for AJ, she didn’t have a shower when we arrived in the village before we lost electricity. John did. After two days of no shower, AJ asked the guesthouse where she could get water to wash. The solution: AJ went by bicycle with a little girl from the guesthouse and was brought to the river to bathe with the local ladies. She was very famous in the river because of her white skin, the locals believe white skin is so beautiful. One lady even went up to AJ and looked at the soap she was using… it wasn’t whitening soap. However, AJ didn’t quite master the ability to wash while wearing a sarong!

    

Next we made it to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. There wasn’t much happening here. We stayed two nights so we could get out visas completed for our upcoming trip to Myanmar.

    

This, a couple of temples and the food were definitely the highlights of Vientiane. 

From here we made our way to Luang Prabang in the north of the country via another sleeper bus. The road was so curvy; there was no real way of getting any sleep. We met some nice French Canadian people here, and had some more nice food. The night market here is amazing, so much shopping and an amazing selection of really cheap food!

One of the things that makes Luang Prabang so famous is seeing all the monks performing the ‘Alms’ ceremony each morning. They walk around the town and receive their offerings from the Buddhist villagers. This is how the monks get the food to eat everyday. It’s pretty cool to watch them in their bright colours lined up as people donate what they can in hopes of receiving good Karma. 

The other highlight was an amazing waterfall with the bluest water, and all this right beside a great bear rescue sanctuary.

    

Next would be our last stop in Laos, Vang Vieng. This was definitely one our highlights in Laos. It gave us an opportunity to settle down and ended up being a very nice place to stay. The food wasn’t very memorable, and we didn’t get up to much, but we still had a lot of fun. There are lots of caves to visit, but we didn’t bother, we’ve pretty much seen some of the most amazing caves in the world so we are pretty blasé about caves now. We did go to the blue lagoon twice. An amazingly blue pool of water where people just chill out, read books, sunbathe, swim and generally do nothing. 

The other two days we went tubing. It used to a really crazy event to go tubing. Tubing consists of getting driven 5KM up river where you are dropped off with your giant inner tube and you begin to float down. There used to be bars all along the way where you could get drinks all kinds, and anything else. These have since been closed due to dozens and dozens of people getting too wasted and drowning. Now during the entire 5KM river ride there are at most three bars open. 

Never the less it proved to be an amazing ride. It wasn’t nearly as crazy as it used to be, but it was plenty good for us. Very relaxing, getting off the tube every hour to grab a beer or two. The entire ride takes about 5-6 hours! And by the end you are so tired from being out in the sun and drinking all afternoon, as relaxing as it is, you have no energy when you’re done. Lots of fun.

Side note: even though it is much safer now and the water is really low, less than three feet deep, in many places only a couple of inches deep (you need to push yourself over the rocks) it can still be dangerous if you get too drunk. We had to stop, jump off our tubes and walk against the current to pull a guy out of the water. We saw him passing out on his tube, he then ran into a rock and flipped over into the water face down. We may have saved his life, who knows; he was definitely a mess and likely doesn’t remember us holding his tube for the last kilometre of the ride.

From Vang Vieng we went back to Vientiane to catch our flight to Bangkok. Next up for us is a fun St-Patricks day in Bangkok (although it has nothing on St-Patrick’s in Montreal…)