Laos: Mekong madness!

Hello friends, enemies, relatives, the 'Man' or whoever else is reading this. I have now begun a whole new chapter of my travels. I'm in Laos; a wonderful and mysterious land that sadly, due to the Vietnam war, has a scarred legacy of being one of the most bombed countries in the world.

Take a look past the beautiful scenery and the nation is still struggling to find its feet after decades of war damage and oppressive regimes. The people are extremely poor. Whole areas of the countryside are still littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, dropped by US warplanes during the conflict. The bomb disposal squads from international charities will need to work away for several more decades (if not a whole century) to get rid of them all.

Since opening its borders in recent times - particularly the one it shares with Thailand - Laos is now suckling on the teat of tourism. If you can picture such an image. The yankee dollars are starting to pour in and the times, well, they are becoming different. There are hordes of tourists here, fresh off the riverboat from Thailand and trooping around landmark after landmark with their Lonely Planet guidebooks. My travel buddy Sonia (who I met on the volunteer camp) and I have ungratefully entered their ranks. This country didn't stay a well-kept secret for long!

Well the Akha volunteer camp finished last week. It was a really great experience and told me much about what goes on in this corner of the world. I was sad to move on, and I really liked the group of people, but such is life; nought but a patchwork of brief moments of respite.

The people at AFECT treated us with the typical warmth and hospitality westerners find so flattering and bewildering in south-east Asia. I think we learnt an incredible amount as a group in the two weeks.

We didn't do much work for the communities, mind you. We spoke to some other western people staying with us who told us this is always the case! I came to accept this project was more of an exercise in cultural exchange, i.e. like when you had to write a letter to a French pen-pal back at school saying, "bonjour, je m'appelle Andrew, j'aime jouer au guitar, ping-pong et le mini-disco" or something like that, and then wait eagerly for their reply.

Traditionally the hill tribes cultivated opium crops for their own use, but they are now forbidden to do this by the government, and now many people from the hill tribes have to migrate to the big cities in search of work. But the majority of tribespeople have not been taught and educated in Thai schools, and cannot obtain a national ID card.

The government will only properly acknowledge citizens who have an ID card, and as such, the Akhas struggle to fight for their rights. Their tribe's traditional way of life is dying out, and the other hill tribes of the region, such as the Lahu, Lisu, Karen and Hmong face the same threats too - so awareness needs to be spread.

On our final days we saw lots more of the region. On Thursday (13th March) we went on a day-trip to the Golden Triangle, where two rivers intersect and the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos converge together like the slices of a big pizza. It was a delightful view, with lush green countryside on all three sides. There were no big black lines running over the terrain like wot there are on the maps, so it was kind of confusing to remember where each country ended and where each one began. Luckily though, God had marked out the borders with some handily-placed rivers.

The same day we went to the Hall of Opium in the nearby town of Sop Ruak, a compact little museum lovingly decked in regal bunting and portraits of the royal family that documents the Golden Triangle region's legacy of opium production. It was a fascinating place, packed with information and featuring real poppy plants and ornate 19th century opium pipes.

One of the things I discovered was that the British were originally to blame for introducing opium to Asia, when their traders needed something to bargain with the Chinese. That's the British empire for you - an efficient machine that spread railways, venereal disease, civil service-style bureaucracy and hard drugs to all corners of the world. I am seeing a lot more of our disturbing legacy as I voyage from country to country!

We also went on a crazy speedboat trip to Laos, which lay five minutes away across the Mekong river. Have you ever tried to eat an orange ice-lolly on a rocketing speedboat? It ain't easy. I got gunk from my lolly all over my digital camera and the lens jammed. And they say the US Marines had it tough in the Vietnam war!

The Mekong is a truly mighty river; it flows thousands of miles, all the way from the snowy mountains of Tibet down into the cornucopia of rivers forming the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. The stretch I've seen has a sludgey brown colour reminiscent of the Irish sea though; you wouldn't want to go swimming in it!

On the final evening we had a big outdoor party at AFECT's headquarters, dining on a huge spread of food with all the other volunteer groups. A dancing troupe of Akha ladies in fancy traditional costumes gyrated on stage to cheesy Thai pop music, while we filled our glasses from the endless bottles of Chang beer doing the rounds.

Our group cooked food from each of our countries; I treated everyone to the British classic bangers and mash! It lost something in translation, as the only sausages the supermarket sold were hotdog sausages, and they had nothing I recognised as gravy. But the mashed potato worked out well, and it seemed to go down a treat!

Then the next day it was all over, and we all left on our respective onwards journeys. Most people have travelled to Bangkok to fly home, or gone on to other places in Thailand. Zach went to Burma (brave guy!), and Sonia and I headed for the Laos border at Chiang Khong, a two hour bus ride away.

At Chiang Khong we caught a small ferry-boat over the wide expanse of the Mekong river, and that was it - the month I'd spent in Thailand was at an end. A month barely did it justice and there's plenty more that will have to wait for my next visit, such as the beaches in the south.

We disembarked across the river, at the Lao village of Houay Xai, and hauled our rucksacks up the concrete jetty. The first task was to join the queues of travellers waiting in the baking afternoon heat to get a tourist visa. We paid about 40 US dollars for a month's visa at the small immigration office. (In many Asian countries the US dollar acts as an unofficial second currency.)

We celebrated arriving in Laos with lunch at a small cafe. A Lao guy played his acoustic guitar at one of the tables nearby, before running off to shake some fruit down from a tree. The guitar is a very popular instrument in Laos - quite often you walk past guys sat on their own on the pavement, strumming on a guitar without a care in the world!

Houay Xai is a quiet little border town with nothing much to it really. There is one dusty main road lined with restaurants and tourist offices, targetted at the waves of people coming over from Thailand every day. All the shops and cafes accept Thai Baht, US dollars and Lao Kip, requiring their employees to do impressive leaps of mental arithmetic when calculating prices. The lights of Thailand blinked away from across the river in the night, reminding us of the place we'd just left behind (i.e. Thailand).

The next day we began what has been hailed as one of the definitive experiences of Laos - the two-day riverboat journey to Luang Prabang down the Mekong! I was really excited about doing this. Bear in mind most areas of Laos have never had proper roads, so journeying by river is often the quickest way to get from A to B (though this is slowly changing as more highways are built).

To get to Luang Prabang you have two choices: a) do it in six hours by speedboat, running the risk of losing either your hearing (from the deafeningly loud engine) or your life (in one of the fatal speedboat crashes that frequently occur). Or do the journey in much more relaxed style on a slow boat. While the conditions on a slow boat are cramped and uncomfortable, it leaves you free to chill out and enjoy the dramatic scenery.

We set off early in the morning from our guest house and we were collected by a man in a rickety tuk-tuk (rickshaw). A tuk-tuk is a small three-wheeled vehicle with a lightweight metal cage welded to the back, common in Laos and Thailand. I was astonished to discover a dozen other bleary-eyed travellers crammed into the back, and their luggage, piled into a tottering pyramid on the roof!

We gently hoisted our things on to the roof, taking care not to disturb the fragile equilibrium of baggage. Then we inserted ourselves into the cram of bodies and the driver set off through town to the slow-boat pier.

Down at the pier we registered for the trip, showing our passports to a stern uniformed man sat in an empty office whose job it obviously was to reassure us travellers that Laos really does have some sort of functioning government, honest! A line of slow-boats was waiting down on the river, one of them chugging its engine with intent. After carrying our rucksacks across a narrow rickety plank, we were safely on board!

Soon the wooden benches (and all other free space) inside the boat became packed with travellers, and after waiting for a few more stragglers, we were on our way. The boat made steady progress down the river, much swifter than I'd expected it to. The hours flew by; whirlpools, riptides, mountainous valleys and forests were punctuated by stops at villages on the riverside. Groups of village kids swimming in the river would wave to us - the latest bunch of exotic spectators passing through their lives. Despite the basic conditions of the boat and the arse-numbing wooden seats, such scenes of isolated bliss almost untouched by humanity made the time pass by quite fast.

Eventually it grew dark and it was time to make the overnight stop at the village of Pak Beng, halfway on our journey. Getting off the boat was a mad scramble, as everyone rushed to retrieve their baggage from the hold before the local villagers doubling as 'porters' attempted to carry their bags off for a fee! Time to stretch our legs after sitting on the cramped and uncomfortable wooden benches for several hours. Sonia and I clambered off with difficulty and joined the snake of travellers heading for the guidebooks' recommended guest houses.

Like Houay Xai before it, Pak Beng experiences a daily rush of tourists making the journey down the Mekong. The sights, sounds and smells of rural Thailand were present here too; chickens crowing day and night, the smell of wood smoke lingering in the air. We knew all the hotel rooms in the tiny village would quickly fill up from the people off the boat, but we managed to find a room in a small wooden guest house just up from the jetty that many people had overlooked.

It was cheap and accomodating and had fly nets over the beds, and a communal bathroom with cold water only - standard fare for this part of the world! The guy running it was very jolly and even offered to sell us a bag of weed for 500 Baht. What a rip-off!

Everywhere in town we glimpsed familiar faces from the boat. I randomly bumped into a British couple I met staying in the same hostel in Singapore. Then Sonia and I headed out for a meal, and we got talking to a jolly old Canadian guy who reminded me a bit of the Major off Fawlty Towers. He was raving about what a great place Vietnam is. Then we just had time to head back for an ice-cold shower before the village's electricity was shut off at 10pm. Many remote areas of Laos such as Pak Beng only have electricity for a few hours in the evening.

Normally when you wake in the middle of the night your eyes have adjusted to the dark surroundings of the room. But I woke and it was so dark I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. A night with zero electricity or light pollution in the surrounding area is a very black night indeed!

Luckily the sun obliged and came back to light up the world several hours later. And off we left for Luang Prabang. And the rest of the Lonely Planet brigade left with us. And so, Pak Beng became a sleepy ghost town once more, for a few hours.

That was nearly a week ago and I've spent several days in Luang Prabang and Phonsovanh (town in eastern Laos). I will write more when I get chance. Ciao for now!