Laos

Laos was pretty cool. I spent a day in Vientiane, which was pretty laid-back. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, but I really liked the vibe there. It was great to finally be in a country where somebody isn’t constantly trying to sell me something. If you walk down a busy street in Vietnam or Cambodia about every 15 seconds somebody will try to sell you something. The constant barrage of “Motobike, motobike, you need ride? Where you going?” and “We have best food, you eat here!” and my personal favorite “You need majuana? You want party? You need lady? I have nice lady for you!” really starts to grate on your nerves after a while. Thankfully, there’s none of that in Laos. Every once in a while a guy will offer you a tuk-tuk ride, but you can politely say “no thanks” and they leave you alone rather than following you down the street thinking that if they annoy you enough that you’ll change your mind.

I actually was considering starting a chain of T-shirt stores in Vietnam and Cambodia. I would only sell one shirt in various colors and sizes. Every thing one of them would say in both English and the local language “If I want a room/ a ride/to eat/to buy something/drugs/to pay for sex, I’ll let you know. Now fuck off!!!”. I’d make a killing.

As you can tell I’ve found Laos to be much more relaxing. And while Vientiane was just a pleasant day stop, Luang Prabang was pretty cool. There’s tons of outdoor stuff to do in the surrounding area, as well. I took a long 7-hour hike the second day we were there, visiting a couple small hill-tribe villages on the way. Those were pretty nice as I feel our stops to the villages weren’t staged at all. I’ve gotten the impression from other travelers that similar village stops in more developed and touristy countries like Thailand can be very staged, even to the point of the villages being completely fake Epcott-esque constructions set up to parade tourists through. So I think doing this stuff in Laos was a good call.

Another day I was here I spent the day (well, supposedly I was going to spend the day, in actuality I spent about 3 hours with another 3 hours of waiting around) riding elephants. I signed up for the more hard-core (and expensive) program where you ride the elephants bare-back instead of sitting in a chair they’re saddled with or using some kind of harness. I also some time learning how to mount and dismount the things and steer them. Finally, I went down with all the professional elephant handlers at this sanctuary to give the elephants a bath in the river, which was a blast. Check out the photos as there are lots of nice shots of me giving my elephant a scrub-down. Given the amount of time I was on the elephants the program was pretty expensive, but well worth it. It was without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

The food in Laos was just decent. The whole 6 days I was here I never had anything in a restaurant which really impressed me that much. However, there is some really great street-food. I had a couple of great meals in the stands set up on the river in Vientiane, and also had some quite good stuff I picked up on the street with all the night-food stalls in Luang Prabang. In particular, all the grilled stuff is really good. They’ve got lots of whole grilled fish, grilled chickens, little grilled birds with the heads and claws and everything, pork ribs, you name it. And it’s all pretty good. However, my luck unfortunately ran out regarding street food during my stay in Luang Prabang. The second night I was here I ended up crapping my guts out all evening after chowing down on some fruit shakes, some unidentifiable meat thing, and some cold sausages that were very tasty but I think had been sitting out a little too long. I suppose that given all the down-market places without running water in the facility that I’ve been eating at it was bound to happen sooner or later.

I’m on my way to Chiang Mai now. Hopefully, I’ll get my pictures uploaded while I sleep tonight. It’s been a week since I’ve been in a hotel with internet access, so I haven’t had much opportunity to synchronize all my photos. There should be a fair amount of places in Thailand with wifi, so hopefully all the Laos pictures will be up soon.