The uncomfortable road north (Ryan)

So, here we are in the backpacker heart of Laos, Vang Viang, where if you like flying into water at high velocity, getting drunk and watching Friends, you're in for a treat.

On arrival, we thought we'd just stepped out into the Wild West. Nothing was paved and, as it had been raining, the red dirt roads had been transformed into lanes of sucking sludge. Needless to say, one nearly slipped on one's arse a couple of times, gracelessly saving myself by grabbing onto others to avoid total embarassment. But anyway, we wandered from the office where we were dropped off to a guesthouse recommended to us by a guy on the bus - who also mentioned something called the Gibbon Experience, but more of that to come. It was rather nice, done like a Mediterranean villa, which was odd for a former French colony, but Vang Viang is as far from Laos as you can get without finding yourself in Vietnam. That night we went and ate at one of the ubiquitous restuaraunts showing Friends all day long. You basically lie down in these booths decked out with cushions and veg out for two hours, digesting your fried rice with a healthy side order of sitcom. Not a bad way to do it, but you do start to worry when you count how many episodes you're watching per day. I thnk the record was four in the morning, five at night. Too much!

That night we went to the place where just about everyone in Vang Viang seemed to be drinking, trendy wee place called Xayoh, and didn't do too well in a game of killer pool. Following that tragic lack of winning and a couple of beers, we ate Rotees and felt too ill to do much else. For the uninitiated, a Rotee is a big sweet crepe, rolled up, with the filling of your choice inserted into it, smothered in sugar and condensed milk and often extra chocolate sauce. Mine was banana and chocolate and bloody handsome. Felt just a tad ill afterwards, but it was worth it.

Moving on, though. Next day, rather than go 'tubing', as just about everyone else does, we rented mountain bikes and rode out west over a couple of pretty rickety bamboo bridges in search of caves. At the first sign we pulled our steeds into the woods and headed off in search of something vaguely cavernesque. After an hour or so of trudging along this path, we came to the conclusion that we should have turned right at the fork at the start of the road, not left, and went back for the bikes. Next time we had rather more luck. Better signposted, this cave wasn't so far off the main road and was probably the most popular of the caves around Vang Viang. We were soon to find out why. Outside the cave and at the bottom of the hill we came across a perfect blue still lagoon, over which hung a pair of rope swings and a jumping platform. Perfect for cooling off after a sweaty cave adventure. Making a note of it for later, we rented a torch adn headed up the somewhat sketchy path - Southeast Asia seems to have been bypassed by anything remotely resembling health and safety - to the cave mouth, about one hundred metres up.

I personally am not a fan of caves, so this next passage might be a bit skewed. They are generally dark, sweaty and often provide an unimaginable amount of scope for falling over and making a tit of yourself. Needless to say, this one way no exception. What differentiated it from other caves we've seen was that this baby was much bigger. To cut a long story short, Tim's pretty naff flip-flops were nowhere near up to the task of climbing around the slippery cave's bowels and at one point he fell right on his posterior, inadvertantly chucking the camera into the darkness; my flip-flop broke and had to be repaired by a Chinese man with a pen; Shaun, gallant as he his, lent Tim his sandals and went barefoot, standing in Christ only knows how much guano on the way; and in the end, we just followed a little local lad with a torch on his head to guide us out, because, frankly, we would have been screwed without a bit of guidance. Once we were out and had climbed back down to ground level with no broken bones - just sweating profusely and very filthy - we jumped right into that gorgeous lagoon and frolicked in the water for some time, before taking the bumpy ride back home, on the last leg of which my other flip-flop broke, in the process getting caught on my bicycle pedal and causing me to go arse over tit in front of a group of onlookers. I felt somewhat silly.

Tim and I went off in search of the fabled Island Bars, where all is chilled, merry and full of hammocks. After taking a turn which we eventually discovered took us in completely the wrong direction and following the naturally terrible directions of a Rotee vendor, we walked a kilometre in the wrong direction, found nothing and decided to get a massage instead. Afterwards we went in for some more killer pool, again coming nowhere close to prize podium, but, as my mother always said, it's the taking part that counts. On our second attempted, we finally managed to find the island bars, deserted, unfortunately. They basically consist of collections of small thatched booths where you sit cross-legged on cushions - all very chilled out and communal - and sets of hammocks. One of them also has a big bonfire, not exactly the most sensible thing to stick in the middle of a place where people get pretty drunk. We met a few nice people and talked for a while before heading bedwards.

Now, the tubing. The following day we decided to indulge and do what everyone should do at least once in Vang Viang. Tubing basically consists of sitting in a massive rubber ring and floating down the Nam Xong river for several hours, every so often being pulled in on a bamboo stick by the local guys at bars, where you sit, drink beer and leap off the rope-swings to your heart's content. I wonder why it's so popular? After floating for a few minutes we came to our first bar, bought a beer and flew down the zipline a few times. I tried to go all the way to the end, hit off the bumper designed to stop you and do a backflip. Yes folks, I failed and hurt myself. Backflips are not my forte. The next few hours consisted of floating on down the river and much splashing into water from great heights, generally feet first, apart from that one time I practically landed on my face. By five o'clock we were almost at the end and, rather than floating all the way back to Vang Viang, we got out and took a sawngthaew, since we were tired of being munched on by many many tiny river-dwelling bugs.


In the night time we went back to Xayoh, clearly the place to be in Vang Viang, again didn't do so hotly in the killer pool and again, though this time after much rain-related procrastination, went to those little bars on the island with a bunch of people from Xayoh, which was wanting to close its doors. Soaked and sitting in one of the thatched huts, we sat and drank til the early hours, excusing ourselves at a relatively sensible hour for sleep.

On the day immediately following, the three farang rented mountain bikes once more, desirous of more beautiful scenery and the sight of traditional Lao village life. That, on our thirty-five kilometre, arse-breaking roundtrip, is exactly what we got, as well as saddle sores and wobbly legs. After yet more Friends, because that's all we seemed to watch at nights in Vang Viang, we had an early night, ready for rock-climbing the next day.

Our guide for climbing was the same guy who took us kayaking, the multi-talented G. It's kind of given away in the name, but our day's rock-climbing consisted of just that, a fair bit of climbing. The climbs got progressively harder and by number six my arms were so tired and I came off the wall so many times I decided to throw in my harness. Shaun and Tim both fared a bit better and tried the seventh one, which was over a river. Shaun got pretty far, but there was apparently a severe lack of decent handholds and we were all really tired by that point. Tim also tried, not quite getting as far, but still giving it a good shot considering how beat we all were.

After going back over the river from the climb-site by pirogue, a narrow little boat whose motor you almost fear would tip it straight over on starting, we went and booked our bus to Louang Phabang, the old capital, for the next day. After our telly dinners and another good few episodes of our new favourite sitcom, we found Rob, a guy we'd been climbing with, in a bar called Magic Mushrooms, a place with a decent menu and fairly comprehensive special menu, for the more laid-back traveller. Again, we had to get up early the next morning so we didn't dally too long and went to bed punctually - Gosh how boring!

So, Louang Phabang it is! We were greeted in the normal custom at the bus station - 'You want room?', 'Hot shower three dollar', 'Share bathroom two dollar', 'Fan room, sir'. Oh how we love that. We decided on one of the many desperate looking geezers with business cards and checked into Merry Guesthouse, which, handily, had free bananas, tea and coffee. They'd run out of tea and milk and the coffee wasn't nice, but the bananas saved the day. Once landed, the time was right for us to hunt out food and hit the sack. Despite the fact that you're sitting down for hours on end, you still get tired from travelling. Why the hell is that!?

Anyway, on to the next day. I couldn't possibly hope to tell you what day it was, as I rarely know and even if I did it's so long ago now and so much has happened in between that it would be futile even trying. Over breakfast on this random day somewhere in time we were lucky enough to meet up with a French and a Filipino guy who were wanting to do roughly the same things as us, namely visit the Pak Ou Buddha caves and the Whiskey Village a little way up along the Mekong. So we agreed to go and rent a boat together, stopping first at the whiskey village, where they sell locally brewed spirits with scorpions and snakes in the bottles - I think the idea is that the poison seeps out and probably gets you even more wasted (hurrah!) - and then carried on up to the caves. To be honest, the caves were a bit of an anti-climax. Compared to slip-sliding around and chucking cameras and whatnot in Vang Viang, the Pak Ou caves were pretty tame. There was an actual staircase to both the upper and lower caves and they weren't that big and were pretty well-lit. Basically they function as repositories for old Buddha images that are either to wrecked to be on show or that get replaced by newer, shinier ones which obviously inspire better worship from the people. So, we went, we saw many many Buddhas, had some fun with torches in the dark at the back of the upper cave, then went back.


When we'd landed and left the Frog and the Filipino behind we decided to do a couple of touristy bits. First we went to the Royal Palace Museum, where the King used to live, and bought a ticket for two dollars about fifteen minutes before the place was about to close. What could in other circumstances have been a rather pleasant hour's shuffle around the place became a quarter of an hour of being hurriedly herded through the various rooms of artefacts and back out the door on the other side. The King and Queen's rooms - separate, I might add - were rather nice but not at all regal. They looked more like guest rooms that the Royal Family might let visiting dignitaries stay in, rather than rooms they lived in themselves. Rather spartan, certainly, but painted a fairly nice creamy colour with darkwood furnishings. Not bad, I say, not bad. Once we'd been ejected from the Palace we went to the most famous Wat (temple) in Louang Phabang, called Wat Xiang Thong, after which the town's main street is named and located right on the tip of Louang Phabang's phallic peninsula. Twas all rather nice, looked like a temple, smelled like a temple, all like that. In one of the buildings there was housed a massive float with a five-headed Naga dragon on the front that I personally think was once used to carry the ashes of the dead king to wherever they buried their kings. Sure I read that somewhere. Anyway, didn't spend too much time in the temple, as it looks like so many others we've seen. Rather than linger, we went to JoMa Bakery, easily our favourite place in Louang Phabang.

After buying ourselves a suitable quantity of baked goods, we left to catch the sunset from the top of Phou Si, the large hill in the middle of Louang Phabang, but not before discovering the JoMa had a half-price selling off of most of its stock between eight and nine that evening. After walking up the fairly large hill to the temple at the top, we watched the rather beautiful sunset, of which there should be a picture somewhere in here, and then headed off for food followed by half-priced goodies at the bakery. Much sleep was subsequently enjoyed by all as the next day dawned.

Following day was a bit of a blur, as far as I was concerned, so perhaps if you ask Tim or Shaun they'll fill you in on what they did. Essentially, we all went into town to buy torches and book speedboat tickets to Houayxai the following day, as we had decided to take part in the Gibbon Experience and made our reservations on it, and then ate. I then came over all ill and went back to bed, where I was to be found pretty much all day, apart from when I accompanied the others on a brief foray in the evening to find food. Sorry, but that really is all I remember of that day.

It's the following day, by which time I was pretty much fully recovered, which gave this blog post it's title. The speedboat to Houayxai easily constituted the least comfortable, perhaps even the worst, seven hours of my life. I don't know what we were expecting for our thirty dollars, but what we got was eight people and all of their luggage crammed into what was basically an oversized canoe with a sodding great engine on the back, and which then proceeded to make an awesome amount of noise as we were propelled at rather scary speeds down the oftentimes tumultuous Mekong. The visors and life jackets they gave us at the start often felt like they would be needed. The life jacket was, in fact, the only padding between our backs and a highly uncomfortable wooden board that we sat against, and we were stuck curled up in foetal positions in a space the size of a large cardboard box, several times being battered by rain and even hail, for seven hours. Granted, we stopped for much-needed breaks every hour and a half or so, but by the time you'd spent five minutes back in the boat you were aching as badly, if not worse, than you were right when you got out. It's hardly a wonder than no one else we've spoken to has taken the speedboat.

Rant over now, and I'm sure you all got the point that speedboats are definitely a no no out here, we arrived in Houayxai, right on the Thai border up north, for those of you interested in the geography, nearly didn't get into the sawngtheaw taking everyone the rest of the way into town because we thought we were being conned, but made it in the end and got to a decent guesthouse. Checked in at the Gibbon Experience office, ate and slept, ready for the next morning's early start and long, rough journey.

Now, for those of you who aren't in the know, which I suspect is all of you, I'll briefly explain what the Gibbon Experience is. It works to prevent villages around the Bokeo Nature Reserve from resorting to slash and burn farming and logging by providing them with a decent regular income from the project. In order that the project itself causes minimal damage to the jungle, the visitors all live in treehouses, totalling four with the capacity for sixteen people altogether, accessible only by ziplines and connected the same way, with fairly short walks going between the lines. The guides and ladies who cook your meals are all locals and receive salaries and all of the farang involved are volunteers, essentially teaching the guides English for their food and supervising the economic aspects of the project, which foreigners evidently have better heads for. Everyone, really, is a winner. The volunteers love what they do, as do the guides and all of the paid local staff, the villages receive an income that prevents them from destroying the forest, and we, for a certain amount of money, get to live out that childhood fantasy of living in treehouses and navigating wild and remote jungle from a hundred metres in the air. Oh yes, and we might also get to see or hear the gibbons themselves, though sitings are quite rare.

Well, that's another mammoth of a post from me. We really should update this thing more often, so we don't have to put huge great posts up at a time, but this time it was fairly unavoidable, as by the time we should have been doing a post we were out of range of internet access for almost a week. Murphy and his crazy law strikes again!

Au revoir til next time.

(1st photo: For some reason, we still carried on down this path. 2nd photo: Tim and myself admire the view just a couple of kilometres outside Vang Viang. 3rd photo: Probably the only cave photo in which we aren't sweating like hogs. 4th photo: The best possible way to cool off after sweating like a hog in a big, guano-filled cave. 5th photo: Who's that crazy fellow about to fall into the water? I must say, I quite like his taste in swimming shorts. 6th photo: A moment that epitomises tubing. 7th photo: The scenery was even more beautiful in real life, and perhaps without those two irritating fellows in the way. 8th photo: As we turned to walk back, we had a strange feeling we were forgetting something. 9th photo: Crazy whiskey with scorpion poison in it which, if you drink it every day, is supposed to be good for you. I doubt it, somehow.)