I got into Vientiane, Laos yesterday about 2pm after about a five-hour bus ride. What makes the bus ride so noteworthy is that the distance is something like 90 miles. So to put it into better context, we went about 20 miles an hour for about five hours. We did stop for lunch, so the numbers I’m giving are a little bit off, but not by much. What slowed us down was the road was nearly all dirt and had huge potholes that made it so the driver couldn’t go very fast. The ride itself wasn’t that bad, but for the record, it wasn’t a lot of fun.

Vientiane is the capital city in Laos and although I don’t know the actual population, it seems to be a very big city. Not like Bangkok big, but still pretty big with lots of people and lots of cars. I was here six years ago and at the time it was New Years Eve, and to date stands as the best new years I’ve ever had. I was with a group of about 12 people and we were on the Mekong River bank drinking, dancing, and eventually watched the fireworks. It’s one of those memories that will forever make this city something kind of special to me.

After dropping my bags off and grabbing my camera I headed out to see the area around the hostel. There is a huge expat/backpacker community where I am. There are all sorts of western style restaurants and cafes here most of them have at least a few ‘white’ people sitting around. This one I’m at in fact has a guy typing on his computer right now. J

I went to the Mekong just a block away from the hostel first. It’s part of the great memory that I just described above so I wanted to see it again. I couldn’t figure out where I was so many years ago though, so I just walked around taking some photos. I did get approached by a few girls on bikes wanting to give me a massage though. I don’t think there was anything sexual being implied, but as a middle-aged single man; massage equals sex. J Unfortunately though, I am not a perv.

 

After the Mekong I headed back to the hostel. I was kind of burned out from the bus ride and it was very hot and humid, so I decided to rest a bit before going out for dinner.

Like I mentioned there are a lot of western style restaurants around my hostel and I was kind of in the mood for something a little bit more ‘western’ as a long time traveler I know that I can never go completely ‘native’ when it comes to food. There have been times, especially in Thailand, that I think I never really thought about having a burger or pizza, but in most places it just feels good to have something normal. So as I was walking around and checking the menus, I ran into a Mexican Restaurant. OMG! I love Mexican! It’s been so long since I dripped hot sauce over a burrito or tasted refried beans. I did have a burrito in Taipei, but it was not a very good burrito… it left me wanting more. So I decided to pay a premium to eat Mexican and got a table. I could almost taste the burrito from the menu before I even ordered. In fact, I think there was a little drool forming on the side of my mouth just envisaging the meal. Unfortunately though, like everything in life, expectations are rarely ever met and my burritos were okay, but nothing what I was expecting… lesson learned.

 

This morning I headed to the ‘day market’ which seems to be more of mall than anything else. I didn’t take any photos, but it was interesting. The mall is like five floors and I only found one escalator that was working.

I miss the girl from Singapore. You would think that after six months of not talking to her that I would have moved on and just chocked the experience up to traveling alone. For some reason though I still think about her all the time and wonder what she is doing now. Having said that, I miss her.

I’m sitting in a café on what can best be described as a three-sided couch that surrounds a table. There are cushions to rest your back on and I am basically sitting on a bench (couch). I am forced to sit cross-legged to be close enough to the table to type. So why am I describing this so much… the simple answer is that I love it completely. I’m on my second beer and I’ve got a great view of the street just a few yards from my seat. I know that if I ever move back to the US that this type of experience is what I will miss the most. People in the US just don’t realize what they are missing.

There are several different types of travelers. The extremes are those people that want to be pampered and on the other side are the travelers that want to experience something different than they are used to. A professor that I worked with and traveled with to Sri Lanka, wanted to experience what can best be describe as poverty. I also had a friend that would not stay in a hotel that the bathroom wasn’t spotless. The two groups are the extremes and they may share some similarities with groups leaning to one extreme to another. I am the type of traveler that wants to see the real life of the people of the area that I’m in. I don’t want luxury, in fact I hate the idea of luxury, especially if the people around me aren’t living that way.

The reason I am making this statement is for a couple of reasons, the first being how hard I was on Luang Prabang, and the second is because I’ve read some really bad things about Vang Vieng. I also have recently been wondering why I seem to love it here so much. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s my Mother’s fault. :) When I was young my mother would take my brother and myself to Mexico for the summer. It was a magical part of my life and have always considered it to be one of the strongest influences to the wanderlust that I have had as an adult. The place that she took us was, at the time, a small fishing village called San Felipe.

San Felipe was a small one street town that was dirty and dusty, but held me captivated for reasons I don’t fully understand. The old, beaten fishing boats that were beached during the day, the dirt roads leading into the city, and the bars that although I couldn’t enter, felt like something almost magical. It has occurred to me recently that I qualify places that I visit by my experience as a child in San Felipe. I want dirt, I want rough, and I absolutely hate luxury.

I’ve been in Vang Vieng now for three nights and was originally supposed to be leaving this morning for Vientiene, but I’m enjoying it so much more than Luang Prabang that I feel as if I could stay another week and still not be tired of it.

 

The thing that makes Vang Vieng so much better is that it is ‘rough’ in basic terms. The roads have huge potholes, the sidewalks are used more as parking lots for the scooters than they are for walking, and the overall sense is that the city is what it is without trying to be something special. This to me makes it special beyond words. There is a heavy backpacker vibe and many of the businesses have geared themselves to cater to them, but from my experience most backpackers don’t care about superficial things, they care more about experiences. Having to take an excruciating six-hour bus ride in cramped seats is awful, (or taking cold showers at 7am) when you are doing it, but it makes for something to remember, and maybe a fun story to tell.

 

When I was planning my time here I had a list of things that I wanted to do, the first was to go Kayaking down the Nam Song River like I did six years ago. This time I was going to go for a 40km trip down the river; a whole day. So I booked my ticket and headed out to dinner. On my way back I realized that I was getting a little low on cash so I stopped at the ATM and proceeded to get some money. Somewhere through the process though, the ATM screen blanked out and up came the desktop for Windows. Soon some other screens popped up with text like DOS. Crap! I tried to get my card and no luck, the ATM was no longer an ATM, it was a Windows computer and none of the buttons had any effect. I decided to go to the hostel and see if they could do something to help, maybe call the bank. When I explained what happened, the guy asked if it was the blue ATM at the corner, and I said yes. He told me that it happens quite a bit and everyone so far has gotten their card back.

 

Hearing the news eased my concern a little, but the reality was that I didn’t have my card on my possession and I wasn’t going to be comfortable until I did. So the next morning I headed to the bank and eventually I got card back but I missed my kayaking trip down the river.

 

The whole ATM thing kind of messed with my head. It really showed just how vulnerable I am with only one card. There is a real possibility that it could happen again and I could be stuck somewhere without any money.

 

Except for the mess up with the ATM I am having a good time. I haven’t been doing very much and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve spent more time in my room than out on the city or hiking some park somewhere. I do have my excuses why I’ve been somewhat boring, but in reality I think I’d just be rationalizing.

 

I have been exploring the city and I have been going to some great little restaurants, but in the end I think I’ll regret that I didn’t do the kayaking or tubing down the river. I think this is one of the times that I really needed to be traveling with someone else, someone to kind of push me a little. I mean, I wanted to do those things, but I never got the inertia up to break my laziness.

I got into Vang Vieng yesterday about 4 in the afternoon and after a little while trying to get from the bus station to my hostel I was throwing my bags on my bed and heading out to see the small town. After my four nights in the overly touristy Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng was a welcomed sight.

Before I do an entry on Vang Vieng though, I want to summarize my time in Luang Prabang and post a few more photos that I took in the last couple of days.

As I think I noted in my last post about Luang Prabang, the city is very touristy. In fact after the initial fun of seeing some of the sights that I remembered from my time here about five years ago, the thrill quickly subsided. I would say that by the time I was booking my bus ticket to Vang Vieng I was really unhappy with what I’d been seeing in the city. Now I know that this is my opinion and I have every right to make it on my blog, but last night I read a post from someone who said what I’m basically going to say now, and she was slammed for it. I seriously doubt that anyone reads this blog, so I’m pretty sure that I won’t have to deal with what she did, but nevertheless in the back of my mind I know that there is a chance.

My personal view of Luang Prabang is that it has started to believe its hype. The hype was that it is a unique, charming town in Laos with a strong French influence. And indeed on the surface that is accurate, but, and this is a strong ‘but’ the town has gone too far in my opinion. For about three of the four days that I was there, all I could think about was that I was in some section of Disneyland, like Frontierland or Tomorrowland, but in this case it was Laoland. My personal joke was that I wouldn’t be surprised that the next time I come (if I ever do) there will be a fence around the old part of town and the tourists will have to buy tickets to enter. The four main types of businesses in the city are, restaurants, travel shops, guest houses, and mini marts, I guess souvenir shops too. Notice that I didn’t mention grocery stores, hardware stores, personal homes, or anyone of the hundred other places that a city needs to have in order to survive. The reason you don’t see these other places is because, just like at Disneyland they are hidden outside of the tourist areas. Another thing that made my experience less that fun was that all the restaurants, at least many of them, are catering to rich grandma and grandpa, but when I was here before I remember that there was a more of a backpacker’s vibe to it. Now as you walk along the main street there are high-end restaurants, boutique hotels, and luxury mini vans waiting to take grandma to the four star hotel or drop her off in front of the night market. I laughed so hard (mostly inside laugh) when I saw an electric tuk tuk (basically a three-wheel golf cart), yeah I can see how this is a quaint Lao town now. I bet there isn’t another town in Laos that has electric tuk tuks. The funniest thing though was when I saw something akin to an electric tram like you would get on at Universal Studios. I took a photo and will post it.

The final thing that bothered me was the most of the Lao people seem to dislike the tourists. I say most—not all. The guesthouse that I was at had two people working there, a young girl and an older man. For the first three days neither one of them actually acknowledged me in any way. Not a, “hello” or, “Did you enjoy your walk?” nothing. The people in the town were almost as bad except they had to interact for business reasons, but walking through the night market very few of the sellers would even look at me. For the record the man at the guesthouse started to warm up a little by the time I had left, but the girl just acted as if I was a necessary evil that she had to tolerate.

Okay, I know that I’ve been harsh on the city of Luang Prabang and I could go two ways on this, I could apologize and say that it was just unfortunate experience that I had and leave it at that. I could also say that I was expecting too much and my experience reflects an unrealistic view of the city, that the people need the money that the tourists bring in and it is working for them, as well as a great number of rich grandmas and grandpas.

In the end though, I don’t like what the city has become, but I do love the architecture and the winding streets of the city. It is beautiful on many levels, I just would trade a little of it with some authenticity.

I took a sunset tour on the Mekong my last night here. I hadn’t planned on doing it, but the tout that was selling it said that it was only 6000kip (about $0.80). I couldn’t believe the price and must have asked him about five times, “6000” I even made the statement that, “that’s really cheap.” He nodded his head and I returned when it was time for the boat to leave the dock. The only thing that changed was the price, it was now 60,000kip (about $7). I decided that I didn’t like feeling like I was being tricked so I declined and walked along the bank of the river taking photos. After about ten minutes the guy calls me over and lowered the price to 40,000 kip so I said okay. In my opinion, 6,000 kip was too cheap and the roughly $5 that I spent on the 1-hour cruise was fair. I got some nice photos and enjoyed being on the boat so I was satisfied and I’m assuming that the guy was satisfied as well.

 

So I got into Luang Prabang last night and wandered around a little trying to find a place to stay. The taxi dropped me (and two other travelers) off near the night market. It wasn’t long before I started to remember different things from my time here about five years ago. Before I showed up, I really couldn’t say what the city was like mainly because I think I was confusing Luang Prabang with other towns in Laos. Like I said though, I started to remember as soon as I made it into the city… or rather the night market.

Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is probably the most popular city in Laos; at least the most visited. It’s a small quaint city that has narrow streets that all seem to end at the river. There are two rivers here, the Mekong, which I came down yesterday, and another that I can’t remember the name. It really gives the city a nice feel that wherever you go there is a river very close by. It is also packed with temples.

Last night about 6, when the taxi dropped us off at the start of the night market, a festival was just starting and the main street where the night market sits was just jammed with people. The festival seemed more like a parade of dragon floats and school kids singing and chanting than it did a festival though. Along with the hundreds of tourists lining the street there were just as many proud parents snapping photos of their costumed children. The parade/festival lasted about three hours and I feel fortunate to have had a chance to have seen it.

This morning I was woken up at about six from the sounds of a small café preparing for the coming customers. What a nice thing to wake up for though, tables being slid along the ground, pots and pans being rattled, and the workers laughing and joking. What a pleasant experience, especially at six in the morning. :)

I spent the morning wandering along the river just taking photos and trying to remember more of my time here before. Some things were coming back but much I feel like I seeing for the first time. An example was before when I was here, it just seemed more ‘real’ and authentic and this time I feel like I’m in a theme park. It is something that I don’t like at all. There are tourists everywhere and they aren’t the backpacking type either, more like Grandma and Grandpa being driven around by air conditioned mini vans, which is to me is the worst kind of touristlao.