Vientiane with a capital V?

It's very hard to believe that Vientiane is a capital city. It's unlike any other capital I've ever visited; it is very compact and easy to navigate, it has very light traffic, it has no malls, no chain stores, no business district, no crowds and no buzz, leaving it feeling more like an unimposing town. However, for little sleepy Laos, with it's largely rural population, Vientiane makes quite an apt capital.

As the traffic is so light, I decided to hire a bicycle to explore the city. I started my sight-seeing with Laos version of the 'Arc de Triomphe'. It's an odd choice of monument which on close inspection is really quite ugly. It's built from concrete and due to Laos turbulent history didn't get properly finished. Even the building itself recognises how ugly it is, with a plaque on the wall describing it as a 'concrete monstrosity'. It does however provide a nice view of the city and the manicured boulevards below.

I continued my mornings sight-seeing with the presidential palace, and Wat Si Saket, which in a few short hours pretty much concluded the major sights of Vientiane!!

After getting the obligitory sights out of the way, I was keen to visit 'Cope Centre' which is based in the capital. Cope is a rehabilitation centre and providor of prosthetic limbs to local victims of UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) left over from the Vietnam War. It is a really interesting centre, and brings attention to how badly Laos (a neutral country) suffered during the war, particularly due to the use of cluster bombs.

The museum documents some very sad stories of local people who have lost limbs as a result of UXOs. A particularly sad story was that of 9 year old Hamm, who died after a bomb his friends were playing with exploded. He didn't die immediately, but local hospitals were ill-equipped to deal with his injuries, and so the only option was for him to be sent home to die. This is a common tragedy for ill-educated locals who do not realise the dangers of UXOs or are willing to risk of handling them due to their scrap metal value.
Another story tells of a local man who lost both arms and an eye when he found a UXO while fishing with his Sons. He believed that the bomb could be used to catch fish, but unfortunately it exploded it his hands leaving him severely injured. His sons had to row for 5 hours to reach a hospital. The man survived, but spent years struggling to get around and was forced to eat like a dog as a result of his injuries. Luckily cope centre workers visited his village and explained that they could provide him with artificial limbs and rehabilitation free of charge. This is one of the fantastic things cope does, it sends workers into the communities to educate locals and inform them that rehabilitation/ prosthetic limbs are free and available. Cope also have a team who work to destroy UXOs buried in the countryside.
Despite the serious nature of the centre, it has a really positive vibe focusing on improving people's lives  and changing international legistation on the use of cluster bombs. It was a really great experience at cope, and opened my eyes to the problems many Laotions are dealing with as a result of the countries turbulent history.

Trying out a prosthetic leg

Another sight I was keen to visit while in Vientiane was Buddha Park. I traveled to Buddha park by bus for 10,000 kip (80p) round trip, saving myself 13 pounds that a tuk-tuk would have cost. It was an over-packed bus, made even more uncomfortable by the pot-hole filled road, and my location next to a cage of cheeping chicks, but it was worth the journey, as Buddha Park was even better than I'd anticipated. The park consists of fantastic sculptures portraying the artists unique religious ideas, which seem to cross a few different religions. I wandered around the park taking photos until I was interrupted by a local man named Dao, who asked if I would sit with him to help him practice his English. I agreed, and we spent quite a while chatting while he made notes about any unfamiliar words I used. Dao had an interesting sense of humour and after a while decided that I was 'supergirl' and he was 'spiderman', he rambled on about our alter egos for a while which started to border on an odd version of flirting! After listening to his hopes for 'supergirl' and 'spiderman' to save the world together, I felt I'd heard quite enough and left him to it. I left a false email and promised that I would be in touch!

After a few days in the capital I'd seen pretty much all there was to see, and eaten rather too many croissants, and so I decided it was time to leave and head further south. My original plan had been to head to Vietnam after Vientiane, but I'd heard about a few good sights in the South of Laos, so I decided to change my plans.

Baguettes aplenty in Vientiane

'In the Tubing'

Like full moon parties in Ko Phangan, tubing in Vang Vieng is infamous on the South East Asia backpacker trail. It's virtually impossible to travel around without seeing someone wearing an 'In the Tubing' shirt or meeting someone who has recently been, so I knew that at some point I would have to pass through Vang Vieng to try it out myself! The tubing experience basically involves floating down the Nam Song river in an inflated tractor inner tyre, stopping to drink at riverside bars along the way. Over the years it has got very popular, and the town of Vang Vieng has grown into a backpacker hub with thousands of westerners passing through to party..... and occasionally go tubing.

I didn't really want to visit Vang Vieng on my own, as I thought I'd have more fun with a group of friends, and quite conveniently I made 4 new friends on the bus from Luang Prabang. Three of the girls were from New Zealand on holiday from Uni, and the fourth was a school teacher, Mariana, from Holland. One of the Kiwi girls had been to Vang Vieng before, so she guided us through the tubing process. She explained that most people don't actually go tubing they just drink at the river-side bars that are accessible by foot, so on our first day that's what we did!


We arrived at the river and were met by lots of drunken backpackers, dressed up, drinking buckets and launching themselves into river from rope swings. It was slightly hard-core for 2PM, but we soon got into the swing of things and had a fun afternoon playing beer pong, dancing to music, drinking free shots and the doing the occasional bucket-stand. When it got dark we made our way back into town and finished the evening in the 'bucket bar'.

The next day the Kiwis decided that they still didn't fancy tubing and were going swimming in a near-by lagoon. Mariana and I felt that we couldn't come to Vang Vieng and not tube (we'd bought the T-shirts!) So we left the girls to it, and headed down to the river with our big yellow tubes in tow.
I had been in contact with my friend from home, Sandra, and knew she was going to be in Vang Vieng for the day, but we hadn't been able to make specific plans to meet up. I was hoping we'd bump into each other in one of the riverside bars... and as luck would have it, we did! While floating down the river I spotted Sandra in a bar, so we signaled to a local guy on the shore that we wanted to stop and he threw us a rope and pulled us in. It was FANTASTIC to see Sandra again, and we spent the rest of the day leisurely floating down the river, drinking Beer Lao and stopping at various bars along the way.

After an awesome day on the river, it was time to say goodbye to Sandra for the second time this trip. It was only a short reunion this time, but I was so glad that we had managed to meet up in Vang Vieng and party together one more time in Asia!

I decided to leave Vang Vieng the next day, I'd had a lot of fun but I didn't want to get sucked into staying and partying for days on end, it was time to see a little more of real Laos.

Sabaidee Laos!

My first stop in Laos was Luang Prabang which is the country's fabulous 'cultural capital' located in the mountainous north east. The city has a rich French colonial heritage, which is very apparent in it's architecture, food and road rules (they have roundabouts and drive on the right) giving it a very unique European-Asian feel.

The first thing that struck me about Luang Prabang was how friendly the locals were; they seemed a  lot less jaded by tourism than some of their Thai neighbours, and were genuinely pleased to see me. This was particularly the case when I took a bike ride to the near-by Kung Si waterfall. The waterfall is located 32km outside Luang Prabang, and the bike ride took me through gorgeous countryside, sleepy villages and bright green rice paddies. I passed lots of local people on the way to the falls, who all beamed when they saw me, calling out 'Sabaidee' (hello) as I passed by. The kids were particularly excited to see me, and wanted to hi-five me as I cycled past...it was strategically difficult but great fun. It was such a lovely ride, if a little strenuous at times, and I easily found my way to Kung Si.
The waterfall itself was absolutely gorgeous and poured into turquoise-blue pools, perfect for a little swim. I spent the whole afternoon at the falls, hiking to the top, eating a french-baguette pic-nic and taking photos; before hitting the road again for round-two of hi-fives!

Back in the city I soon noticed that Luang Prabang has a lovely relaxed pace and so I spent a few days just pottering around admiring the architecture, shopping for beautiful handicrafts and soaking up the atmosphere. There are also lots of little cafes/eateries and so I spent a fair bit of time munching on croissants and watching the world go by! The city is famous for it's fabulous temples and is a centre for novice monks to study Buddhism, and so I made time to check out a few temples as well. I particularly enjoyed visiting Phu Si temple as it is perched on top of a big hill in the centre of town, which provides lovely views of the huge Mekong river, and the surrounding mountains. I timed my visit to coincide with sunset and so got to enjoy the views in the fabulous light of the setting sun.

In an attempt to be a little more constructive, I also decided to spend a morning volunteering to teach English. It was a very informal drop-in lesson organised by 'Big Brother Mouse' which is a Lao-owned project supporting the education of Lao children. I went along to the morning session and was assigned to a group of young Laotian teenagers. There weren't enough volunteers that morning, and so my group kept increasing in size until I was chatting with around 8 kids at once. The idea of the session is to help kids learn English by talking and listening to someone who speaks it as a native language. Some of the kids have been attending the sessions for months and are very keen to improve, a few even brought along questions for me, and so I found myself explaining the concept of past, present and future tense, translating text from the Internet and explaining what snow is! The session started off slowly and I found myself constantly having to make conversation, but in the end everyone got more confident and I started learning as much about Lao culture from them as they learnt English from me.

While I was in the north, I was also keen to trek to visit the indigenous hill-tribes living in the surrounding mountains, and so I joined a 2-day trek with 'White Elephant Tours' to visit both Hmong and Khmu villages. I was in a group of five, with four fellow French backpackers (there are LOTS of French tourists in Laos) and we had two local guides, one had grown up in a Hmong village, the other a Khmu village before they moved to Luang Prabang to seek their 'fortune'.

The villages we visited were very isolated from busy Luang Prabang; we first had to drive for an hour into the mountains and then trekked for 3 hours before we reached the first village. The village was Hmong and is inhabited by around 40 families, all of whom are farmers in the surrounding countryside. Life for the villagers is very simple; they live in small wooden huts, which are usually just one room housing bamboo beds, a fire pit for cooking, and lots of bags of rice. Some of the houses have a single light bulb to light their hut when the evening draws in, although there was little evidence of any other electricity. There are no bathrooms, or even outhouses, and so villagers relieve themselves in the woods, and shower (fully clothed) in the spickets outside their houses. The villagers mainly eat rice and vegetables, only getting to eat meat once a month. It all seems far too rustic to be pleasant, but everyone we met seemed to be really happy, particularly the children. In all three villages we visited we were followed around by the children, who were just as fascinated by us as we were them. I spent a lot of time playing games with the kids, ranging from drawing in the dirt with our fingers, to pushing around old bicycle tyres.
I mused that to a western outsider these kids dressed in ragged clothing, playing in the dirt would seem in dire poverty, but I realised  that the fact that their clothes were ragged and their toys were make-shift didn't matter, they were so happy and they were healthy and really it was only material possessions that they were lacking, and from where I was standing it didn't seem that having more possessions could make these kids any happier than they already were.

After spending time in the first village and checking out the village school, we trekked for another hour until we reached a second Hmong village, where we would be spending the night. We stayed in one of our guide's grandmother's house, which was so exiting and made it feel like such an authentic experience. Grandma is 99 years old, and still going strong, she didn't speak English, but seemed very keen to make sure that we were comfortable. Our guides made us a dinner of vegetables, sticky rice and buffalo, while we played petanque and chatted around a campfire. After dinner we went to bed, it was only around 8.30PM but there was nothing else to do, and it was the best way to stay warm.
In the morning we had a breakfast of toast and omelette (not too authentic) before we continued our trek to visit the Khmu village. The Khmu village was probably my favourite, as it was buzzing with activity and had a real village feel. The kids saw us coming as we trekked down the hill into their village, and excitedly stared shouting 'bye-bye' and waving to us. Again we spent time interacting with the villagers, I taught the kids how to limbo, and they showed me the snake they had found and killed; it was speared by a stick and dripping with blood, and they were about to cut off it's head so they could make it into soup for lunch -seriously-.

All too soon it was time to leave, and we spent the rest of the day trekking through the fields, and then the jungle back to the pick-up truck which would take us back to Luang Prabang. It was really hard to believe how far the villagers are from civilisation, and how trekking through the jungle is the only way to access proper amenities. On our way, we came across a group of villagers who had been into Luang Prabang to buy Beer Lao for a wedding that was happening the next day. It took around 15 of them to carry it back along the trails and family members of all ages were helping to get the beer back into the hills!

It was such an amazing experience being able to visit the hill tribes, and as nearly 40% of the population live that way I felt like I had seen a little of the 'real' Laos which is nothing like life in the bigger towns and cities.

It had only been five days, but already I felt like I had seen some amazing things in Laos, and really interacted with the locals. I was immediately a fan of Laos, and I was excited to see what else this little country had to offer!