Vang Vieng and More Love from Luang Prabang

After Luang Prabang (LP) , we took ourselves on a minibus ride through the hills to Vang Vieng, and were pleasantly surprised to hear that the locals had heard we were coming, and had arranged for a new road to be built! Thus, a six-hour journey became a four-hour journey, and it was good.

Vang Vieng is a quiet place, though we were taken by surprise when the tuk-tuk to our hotel was ambushed with several  buckets of water, giving our chill out more of a Damascus vibe. Still, it was hot, the water was nice, and our valuables survived, so we were able to see the funny side!

Karst an eye over this...

VV, as it shall henceforth be known, is home to many more of the limestone monoliths we now know to be called karsts, chunks of earth that spring up out of nowhere into the sky, pulling jungle up with them to impossible heights. On day two, we rented a couple of motorbikes, and went to see one or two of them up close!

As always, click to embiggen

In particular, we went looking for one called the Blue Lagoon - supposedly a beautiful body of water hidden up amongst the trees. After some minor roadside kerfuffles, we made it to the base, and were stunned to see just how large these things were up close! Plus, new years celebrations were *still* going on, so there was a massive party in the river at the foot of the karst.

So, in the 40 degree heat, we started climbing the stairs to the cave at the top. These were quite steep! And in case it's not apparent, 40 degrees is quite hot! Still, we eventually made it to the top, where a huge cave opened up in front of us.

The size of the cave was only made more impressive when we remembered how high up we had come. It was strange to think that something so tall and so hot could be the  result of millions of years of water movement, yet it was! We explored the cave a while, spotting a reclining Buddha in the distance, but quickly found it much tougher going than we expected, and we decided that discretion was the better side of valour, and made a retreat before ankles were twisted. The blue lagoon may have eluded our grasp this time, but it's just a reason to go back one day!

See small boy in red for a sense of scale...

That night, curiosity got the better of us, and we went out for Laos-Austrian fusion food, because when else in life might we be able to experience such a combination?? I can vouch for the Vang Vieng Bolognese, and Zoe has fond memories of their chocolate pudding.

For our third day in VV, we were excited to go tubing! This is a must-do in Laos, and we can totally see why. Some smart person years ago came up with the business idea of renting people tractor inner tubes, and dropping them off several kilometres upstream. Not complicated, but effective!

Artist's impression

We had a great time drifting downstream at a leisurely pace, broken up by the occasional patch of rapids, and one very pleasant stop at a riverside bar. Apparently, a few years ago there was a lot of trouble in VV, as there were many more bars to tempt tubers, and drugs were a lot more available. This, unsurprisingly, led to several deaths by drowning and even heart attacks(!), but gladly this had all been cracked down on, and the place seems all the calmer as a result. Still, we saw a few people trying very hard to get very drunk at one of the two big bars, but at least the river was calmer due to it being the dry season.

This was a very pleasant way to spend the day, drifting languidly amongst the beautiful landscape and contemplating our navels. One or two sections were a tad slow, but a little paddling and they were soon traversed!

That night, we took shelter in a Belgian restaurant playing the Foo Fighters as a thunderstorm played out around us.

This is the food we ate somewhere else, just to confuse you. A sampler of Laotian delicacies!

At this stage, we felt that we had seen what we wanted to in VV, and we jumped on to a minibus back to LP, to see what it was like in the aftermath of the new years celebrations, and to start heading towards the North of Thailand.

It was a big surprise seeing just how different the place was, a few days after it  had given us Apocalypse Now flashbacks. Now, Luang Prabang was a cosmopolitan haven, full of pleasant riverside strolls and tasty bakeries, thanks to a history of French occupation.

We visited a temple atop a hill, overlooking the city...

...which was apparently moved there from Sri Lanka by the gods!

We spent a thoroughly lovely three further nights in LP, sorting our lives out in anticipation of the next leg of our journey, up the Mekong river to the Laos-Thailand border. One notable spot we found this time, was a tiny pizza place in a cute candlelit garden, which was ran by a Canadian guy with a woodfired oven, and he certainly deserved it's place as the number one place to eat in LP! 10/10, would eat again, yes yes, *****.

On our last day in LP (for real, this time), we headed to some nearby waterfalls, which came highly recommended. And, and! As a plus, we had heard about a cool place just next door dedicated to rescuing bears from their wicked captors.

Spot Zoe...

Firstly, the bear sanctuary. This was tucked away in the forest, and provided a great home to these lovely animals, who had been rescued from the cages of those who wanted to farm them for their… bile? Because obviously it has “traditional” medical properties. (As an aside, Tim Minchin put it best when he said “There's a name for alternative medicine that's been proved to work - medicine”) When we saw the size of the cages they were previously kept in whilst being harvested, it made their new woodland home all the more impressive.

"WAIT A MINUTE"

"... they were going to harvest my WHAT?"

"Not cool dude, not cool"

So we were very happy to see the bears being looked after, and shortly after I was very happy with my new T-shirt supporting them!

Zoe made friends with another dog!

After seeing the bears, we moved on to the waterfall itself, which was a beautiful blue colour, hidden amongst the trees and with many tiers - several of which made for natural pools, which were extremely tempting, particularly in the heat. So, being only human, we got into our swimmers (which we had prepared earlier), and had a little splash. It was lovely! So cool and lush. However, shortly after getting in, Zoe started screaming, which was a bit of a surprise, to put it mildly. After a few seconds, it transpired that some of the fish had found her (and her mosquito-bitten legs) to be particularly tasty, and had started nibbling and biting her! So, she was out of there in a flash, and we said our goodbyes to the beautiful waterfall.

Photo taken in aftermath of fish attack

For one last stop before we set off from LP, our curiousity took us to a nearby butterfly sanctuary. I’m running out of words, so suffice to say that it was very nice, here are some pretty pictures...

After this, we were off... for adventures along the Mekong!

New Year, New Country

We had timed our arrival in Luang Prabang (Laos) to coincide with the beginning of the new year celebrations across Laos, which occur between the 13th and 16th April. Little could prepare us for this giant water fight, as thousands of Laos children and adults sprawled the streets armed with water-guns in hand, ready to attack and show no mercy to anyone and everyone!

Ready for the fight

Supposedly the celebrations commemorate the washing of the Buddha, and the serious message is now broadcasted through a fun celebration of super-soakers, coloured paint and worst of all, flour! (We managed to avoid the flour attacks, but not the paint, alas). Given that Laos is a very Buddhist country, the New Year is a huge thing out here compared to other countries, with monks travelling from all across Laos to join in with the festival. Despite the serious message underpinning the Laos New Year, nowadays its apparently developed a reputation for underage drinking and debauchery among the Laos people.

When we arrived in Laos airport we were fairly exhausted from our day of travelling, which had involved a 2 hour taxi ride and two flights, and made our way to our hotel to finally check in and relax. It was only until the next day when the celebrations began and we decided to go head-first into the action on the main market street. Needless to say, we were dry for around 2 minutes after leaving the hotel and don't think we dried off until a good few hours after that. It wasn't long before we had children spraying us with water, some with hose pipes and buckets.  In England the festival clearly wouldn't work, with hypothermia setting in before the feeling of fun, but in 40 degree heat there is something refreshing about the water attacks, and we barely noticed the baking heat from sun this day!

So we wandered through the parade (which was packed out with tourists and locals), soaked to our skin at about 10 AM. This was just the start of it. We headed to a beautiful temple which acted as a bit of respite, and ended up buying two small water guns to act as some futile form of self-defence. (Turns out that having a gun just makes you more of a target, who'd have thought?!) Poor Matt ended up getting his white T-shirt sprayed with pink paint, which would ultimately create a tye-dye effect of colours as the celebration progressed over the three days! Hat 3 of mine also ended up getting some pink highlights, but lived to tell the tale, thankfully. We spent the afternoon chilling in the hotel so we were a little sheltered to the afternoons activities. However, that evening we headed out for beer by the river and received another super-soaking by the time we arrived, even getting water-gunned by the waiter! This evening had dinner at a French-Laos fusion restaurant, which was superb. It served all kinds of tasty local specialities such as sautéed duck and yellow curries, served with black sticky rice - something neither of us had tasted before. It served as a nice introduction to Laos cuisine, and we vowed to come back there for another meal at some point!

On day two Laos had upped the ante and the main day for the New Year celebrations had started. The Main Street was packed out and the water fights were reaching guerrilla-warfare level amongst the crowds. We stopped by at a cafe beside the street to watch the world pass by. It was fun to see people of all ages and nationalities get involved - it really was a magical sight. Before long a parade started in the main Ssreet which essentially told a story involving Buddha - this was told by streams of drumming monks, girls in role as princesses, and boys in monkey masks who played the role of the Hindu god Hanuman. All the while, the chaos of the water fight continued. The atmosphere was fantastic, we had seen nothing like it before.

Dozens of Hanumans getting soaked!

Later in the day the celebrations continued, with crowds of young people on the back of pick up trucks doing laps of Luang Prabang with paddling pools full of coloured water and cold beers. Music and dancing filled the streets. We observed it passively by a junction, which was great fun! The traffic, sometimes at a complete stand still, was controlled by police officers who looked exasperated at the best of times. A few of the friendly locals would hop of their pick up trucks now and then to give them beers, which they would stash by the road side for later. A couple of hours passed by and the officers were eventually soaked themselves, mostly due to a few brave drunkards on the cars. No one was safe at this stage!

 

The water fights continued into the afternoon and we headed back to the hotel to escape for a bit. On our way back were attacked with bright red hand prints, which dyed my hair pink for a few days after! Both of us ended up slipping over at one point trying to escape the thick of it, Matt going down bum-first, much to the delight of the children nearby, and then me laughing at him before falling over myself. Poetic justice, some might say.

Hola, Hoi An and Hue

We left Sa Pa glad we had been able to catch a glimpse of the Vietnam we had always pictured in our heads. Instead of catching the train back, we opted for a VIP bus, and were quite surprised to find that instead of seats, it was full of two storeys of semi-reclined beds. Now, the average Vietnamese person is slightly shorter than me, so these weren’t quite long enough for me, but we managed to get comfortable, and watch the valleys fall away behind us as we rolled downhill again.

We were back in Hanoi (for the third time, if you can’t keep up - I don’t blame you), and glad to have a night to chill out before travelling onwards, south again. I know people will scoff, but travelling is quite knackering! Not the sitting-by-the-pool bits, or the enjoying-tasty-food bits, but in the arranging transport, remembering the conditions of your visa and what the exchange rate is bits, all along with keeping an eye out for further shoe-related scams. So, pity us and our great ordeals.

The next day, we flew down to Da Nang, in the middle of the country. From there, it was a short taxi ride to Hoi An, another part of Vietnam that we were particularly excited about. We were staying in a lovely place just a short way out of town, called the Golden Rice Villa, overlooking the rice paddies and home to some very welcoming hosts. After making use of the pool to cool down by a few dozen degrees, we wandered in to town for our first night...

Hoi An is laid back and gorgeous, oozing with history and just a short distance from some promising beaches. It used to be a bustling trade town, and as such has taken influence from many surrounding cultures. The buildings are beautiful old warehouses which have been reimagined as tailors, tea houses, shops and restaurants. A huge part of the Old Town is pedestrianised a lot of the time too, which really added to our enjoyment of it - being able to let your guard down a little and not having to be prepared to lunge out of the way of a motorbike at any given moment allows a lot of pleasure to be found in ambling about.

And, saving the best for last, the place is famous for being decorated with hundreds or thousands of pretty lanterns, scattered around between buildings like bioluminescent bunting. I spent a long time trying to capture just how pretty it all was, but still feel that my pictures can’t do it justice. I’m sorely tempted to cheat a little, and use Google Images instead of my own.

We spent a couple of days exploring the Old Town by bike, seeing such treats as the Japanese Covered Bridge (complete with mini-temple at the halfway point), and a quite impressive merchant house. But our favourite aspect about the place was just wandering around and drinking in the atmosphere.

That night we were invited to a party! It was hosted by the owner of our hotel (Van), and she had invited all guests to come along to encourage us to mingle. A big part of it was that this place had only been open for a couple of months, and they were excited to start seeing good numbers of guests staying, after the first intrepid explorers had left glowing (and deserved) reviews. We ate tasty local food (including deep-fried wontons, a new favourite of Zoe’s), had tasty local beer, and had fun getting to know some of our fellow guests. Here, we got some good tips for future travels in Laos and beyond, and also re-learned the lesson that, no matter how long you’re travelling for, there will always, ALWAYS be someone who can say, “oh, that’s lovely! We’re travelling for four times that long”. It’s the way of the world - there’s always a bigger fish.

On our third day, we took ourselves on a nice cycle through the paddies to the nearby beach (An Bang, if you’re curious). There’s not much to say here, except that somehow, after travelling for over a month at this point, this was our first beach! We had a pleasant day shade-bathing, and I even managed to entice Zoe into the water, after she had performed a thorough visual patdown on the water to convince herself that she wasn’t under threat from a million jellyfish. We had a good swim!

Stoic cow, admiring the views

Zoe met a nice dog, and wants me to record it for posterity's sake.

In the end, we stayed in Hoi An for 6 nights, instead of the 3 we had originally booked. We were really happy with the place, and happy to stay a little longer somewhere after feeling like we had rushed a little around the country so far.

On day 5, we took ourselves on another pretty cycle, and had another day of worshipping the shade at the beach. It was, and no doubt remains, very nice.

Look, just LOOK at how hard travelling is!

We made friends with Stoic Cow!

For our final full day in Hoi An, we had treated ourselves a little, to a cooking course! It came highly recommended, and we were very keen to be able to bring back some tasty recipes for our friends and families. We were collected, along with 10 other tourists, given embarrassing hats, and taken to the morning market to find our ingredients!

This was a nice opportunity to see some of the everyday lives of locals. The markets were packed with stalls selling all sorts of fresh and tasty goods, and divided up into sections - rice, fruit and veg, and the ‘wet market’, where seafood and other meat were sold.

The wet market was surprisingly eventful - for some reason, the sight of a zillion carcasses in various states of undress, combined with the heat of the morning sun, led to not one, but two of our group to faint in the street. Oops! I scurried over to offer what assistance I could, and achieved little except for knocking over a mushroom display and encouraging the girls to drink water. Thank goodness for med school!

After that bout of excitement, they were taken off to a nearby cafe to recouperate, and we pressed on into the wet market. Zoe, in particular, pressed on ahead of all of us (including our guide), and was lost in her own little world following another group of tourists in embarrassing hats. After shouting a gentle enquiry at her, she snapped back and joined back in (a good job, otherwise I might have had to rename this blog).

To cover the rest of the day briefly, it was a lot of fun. Each of the 12 of us had chosen a different recipe to learn, and our instructor talked us through them. Some of our group had gone for particularly adventurous dishes (stuffed squid? Beef bone stew?), but me and Zoe went for stuff we felt would be more realistic - chilli and lemongrass chicken stir-fry for me, and BBQ pork with satay sauce for Zoe).

Everyone spent a while preparing their dishes, then one at a time we were brought in front of the group to cook it. Once the applause had died down, each dish was shared amongst us, which yes, meant another 12 course meal. It was gorgeous, and everybody was rightly proud of themselves. Once finished, we were gifted recipe books, then rolled ourselves home, happy and stuffed, unlike our friend the squid, who was not so happy about his stuffing.

The next day, we boarded the train, to Hue, a city nearby, and thus still pretty central in the country. This had previously been the capital of Vietnam, and was pretty much the front line during a lot of the American war. Our train journey was pretty, hugging the coast and giving us lush views of the coast. And, as was becoming alarmingly normal by now, it was punctuated by someone else fainting. After that slight kefuffle, were in Hue!

We stayed there for two nights, before we were due to fly to Laos. It was a nice place, and on our full day we went to explore the old citadel, which was still very impressive, even though a lot of it had been flattened by bombing during the war. They are gradually rebuilding, but I really liked the contrast offered between delicate architecture, and overgrown ruins.

After a hot day of exploring, it was time to say goodbye to Vietnam, and make a move for Laos!