Laos

After only 2 days in Vientiane we were picked up from the hotel by a minivan for the 3 hour trip up to Vang Vieng. As usual the van was chock-full of young backpackers who let out a collective sigh as we got in, although I hope that later in the bar they were busy telling everyone about these great well-behaved children they shared the ride with! The girls were, of course, fab and grooved away to their MP3 players as we wound up the mountains. On arrival we made straight for the Elephant Crossing Hotel down by the river and were met by Rachel (!) The setting is just stunning with a bar/restaurant deck out over the river, and a big covered open air ‘lounge’ area too, and this was the view from our balcony:

As usual it’s another budget place rather than a posh hotel that has proved a little oasis and our hosts made this place special too , Rachel is Australian, her husband is Lao and they have two children - the eldest is almost the same age as Sadie – so the girls had a great time playing tag, doing painting and bonding over Dora on the DVD! Rachel’s mum is also there at the moment and cook them (and us) a fantastic lasagne one night – a great treat to have a home cooked western meal!

So we managed to drag ourselves away long enough to swim in the pool of the hotel next door, suss out our favourites from the pancake man at the top of the drive (chocolate, banana and lemon+sugar!) and go tubing down the Nam Song River which involved sitting on an inner tube from a truck tyre while the lazy current takes you along the river. Up the top end of the river are lots of little shacks where a man with a long bamboo pole shouts ‘Beerlao?’ at you and pulls you in if you answer in the affirmative. If you think lying in the tube isn’t energetic enough you can have a go on the big trapeze-type swing suspended 15ft above the river - we stopped at one (no Beerlao though – it was 11am) but didn’t get on the swing as a) it looked scary and b) were feeling far too lazy to get into the inevitable argument with Sadie about it not being fair if she can’t do it!

Tubing the Nam Song:

The bottom half of the river is good too – lots of local people doing their thing, swimming, washing and fishing with spears and nets, which is really interesting, although not as interesting as guessing where you are along the river and where you should get out, as there is no ‘exit’point, you just haul your tube up the bank somewhere and walk through town back to the hire place!

We also hired bikes and cycled a couple of miles out of town to the Organic Farm and Café – Laos is developing at break-neck speed and places like this are important role-models. They farm silk for the local weavers and also make goats cheese but their speciality is the number of things you can do with a mulberry plant!

Mulberry smoothie and Deep fried mulberry leaves with honey and lemon sauce:

We had a wander around the farm having a look at the goats and piglets and also the mad little pineapple plants – isn’t it funny how kids love a few animals in a pen no matter where you are: ‘Hello Wilbur, how are you today?!’
That evening we did what people do in Vang Vieng (according to the Lonely Planet which gives the town a very snobbish ‘this isn’t what Laos is about’ kind of write-up) and sat in a café watching an episode of Friends! Jolly good thing too as half-way through dinner a massive clap of thunder overhead signalled a 30 minute ‘stair-rod’ downpour and we weren’t going anywhere for a while!

So that was it, after 4 days we had to leave :-( We have loved being in Laos, it’s like Vietnam, it’s like Cambodia, but most of all it’s just like Laos. It’s the perfect antidote to crazy crowded Thailand and a great way to do a visa run! We chose not to head up to Luang Prabang this time as we only had a week (we don’t like spending 6 hours in a van and then a day in a place just to tick it off ‘the list’), and this is the worst time of year to go due to the lighting of fires in the forest which makes the air quality terrible. We’d also like to see it with ‘fresh’ asian eyes so we are properly wowed by the temples and elephants (6 months in and we have seen a LOT of amazing asian sights already) and when the girls are older so they can do more of the kayaking etc, so it’s given us the perfect excuse to come back!

We are now back in Thailand (via the Friendship Bridge again) heading down to Bangkok by plane (we can't do back to back sleeper trains, it's too tough on the kids) and then another train to the south tonight.

See ya

CRFS xxxx

We climbed off the train in Nong Khai just a few 100 metres short of the Friendship Bridge and the Thai-Laos border, so we hopped into a tuk-tuk for the 5 min journey to the immigration buildings. Having been stamped ‘out’ of Thailand we then got a shuttle bus for 15 baht each (‘baby no pay’…) over the big wide Mekong River, which defines the border between the 2 countries. We realised on the train that we had no photos AGAIN for our ‘visas on arrival’ (v. poorly prepared but at least we’re consistent) but had no desire to trapse the streets of Nong Khai looking for a photo booth (unlikely) and as Chris said ‘I very much doubt we’re the first people to turn up with no pictures…’ Needless to say for US$1 each they would ‘photocopy’ the pictures in our passports so no worries. For US$35 we all got another full page visa sticker – very beautiful, dare it say even more sparkly than the Cambodian one AND pink and purple so girls were v. pleased - and we were safely into Country #8.

After that we changed some money into the local currency – the KIP – there are currently 8700 Kip to US$1, and around 17000 Kip to GBP£1 (if only we knew our 17000 times table well!) The largest Kip note is a 50000 (approx £1.25) so we had quite a bundle! Then we had to pay the obligatory Customs ‘fee’ of 20 baht for 2 people (baby no pay again) and steeled ourselves to run the gauntlet of taxis and tuk-tuks outside the immigration building, preparing our bartering skills (no more than 400 baht into Vientiane we’d been told.) But *shock and amazement* they now have a ‘set fare’ system, just buy a ticket and a driver will be produced – 250 baht for a tuk-tuk and 300 baht for a taxi (for the sake of 50 baht we opted for a taxi as it was 30 minutes drive away!)

Once happily ensconced at the hotel we took a walk around downtown Vientiane and learned that as well as this being a country of 3 currencies (the US$, the Thai Baht and the Lao Kip) it’s also a country of at least 4 commonly used languages – Lao, Thai, French and English. As you can imagine, sign-writers have issues…In Vientiane streets are named ‘Rue’ and little pattiserie’s and boulangerie’s abound, baguettes are the ‘bread’ that comes with breakfast and the coffee is very strong in little cups (hurrah!)

The next day we were up quite late - Fin had been sick in the night, which we now think was a reaction to too much chocolate ice-cream and extreme tiredness, but at 4am I was lying there thinking ‘well if she’s worse in the morning we’ll just get a flight back to Bangkok, it’ll be OK!’ It’s been a while since we were in a place with limited medical care, and it hits home with a poorly child in the small hours! So anyway after not a lot of sleep we dosed her up on Dioralyte and bananas and she seemed much better so we engaged a tuk tuk and ventured out to Pha That Luang – the Lao national symbol. The kids were duly impressed – ‘that’s pretty big and VERY gold!’ It was so quiet and peaceful inside, we checked out the Buddha and lit some incense and candles and just sat with our thoughts for a minute.

The Big Gold That Luang:

Outside the temple there were a fair number of stalls that the girls had a poke through and bought a couple of little things and then we headed back as Fin was starting to wilt a bit. After a siesta back in the room we wandered along the road where we rented a couple of bicycles – they had cool padded seats and footrests on the back so the girls could perch there while we pedalled them around town. Of course it wasn't long before Sadie started doing tricks on the back of mine – ‘Can you tell if I’m holding on or not, Mum?!’ The roads are so wide and flat in Vientiane and the city so quiet that cycling around was no problem, especially as ‘downtown’ covers about 5 blocks!

A bicycle made for two:

It’s another place so influenced by the French that it has become an integral part of the city, just like Hanoi in Vietnam. Big shuttered chateaux sit 3 doors along from elaborate buddhist ‘Wats’, it makes for a very attractive town. At the end of the afternoon we ended up in the little square by the Nam Phom fountain, with it’s café’s and awnings set around it, we could have been in any little French town:

Although we agreed that actually it was slightly smarter, cleaner and more manicured than some French towns, so perhaps the Lao actually do France better than the French! Zut alors!…

See ya,
All love CRFS xxxx