Tour de Luang Prabang

Picking up right where we left, off, a boatload of people and I had just landed at the river docks of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the town Luang Prabang, which is a sleepy town lying at the confluence of two rivers, one being the Mekong River, and has a ton of old school French colonial style architecture, particularly in the area designated as that heritage site. We weren’t there for more than thirty seconds before touts started trying to grab us to take back to whatever guesthouse they worked for.

There was a vague idea at this point that we’d all try to stick together. We had come this far, why not? We walked up the stone ramp carved into the hill towards the actual base of the town, and then there was suddenly a major breakdown in agreement as to whether we should just let tuk tuks take us around to guesthouses, or whether we should hoof it. Personally, having just spent two days on a boat, I looked forward to walking around and stretching my legs a bit. Kristian, Mark, Jack (the Australian kid, as well as his dad), Julia, and the German girls stuck with me, while the other British people went around via tuk tuk.

There was little more I could do than shrug, and move on with the latest task of finding a place to rest and wash, as we all could really have used a shower at that point.

There’s about one million guesthouses lining the street that faces the Mekong, and we checked in each one to see prices and availability; unsurprisingly, most of them were more expensive than you might have wanted, but even worse, most of them didn’t have any space.

I was a bit concerned about this, as I knew that a certain problem might be staring us in the face, that of trying to find rooms without reservations the weekend of Chinese New Year.

Yep, it was that time. The next day would be February 14^th, also known as Crass-Consumer-Couple’s Day, as well as being the central day of festivities for Chinese New Year. I wasn’t really sure how this would affect Laos and its tourism industry, but I assumed there must be some effect.

Turns out I was pretty accurate about this. After moving along a bit, we finally found a place that had some free space, but it only had a couple of beds; immediately Kristian and Mark took those, and left our pack, with nary a “hey we’ll meet you later”.

This left me feeling a bit cold. Jack and his dad had moved on as well, but that was a bit different, as he was never a part of the pack. I really expected the camaraderie to last just a bit longer, but no dice. So there I found myself in the (Retrospectively) not so terrible situation of being with three women looking for a hotel room.

There didn’t seem to be much more to find in this area, so we decided we’d head back to where the tuk tuks were and take our chances with that. We paid a paltry sum to be taken to some other place, one that one of the German girls had been referred to by friends in the past; when we were taken there, it was full up. This was in an alley, though, and there was a lot of other guesthouses there to try out. . . every single one was completely full. Every single one. We checked probably over fifteen in that alley and another nearby, and there was just nothing available at all. I had my Lonely Planet Southeast Asia travel guide handy, and there seemed to be a place not too far away that we could check out, that might have others around it also, so I used my internal compass as best I could to go find this other little street with some more guesthouses.

It wasn’t a long walk by any means, though we were all pretty tired. It was a super dark little alley, though, with just a few neon guesthouse signs proving to us that we were in an acceptable place to get lodgings. We turned in at the first one, and it not only had enough vacant rooms, it was also quite a bit cheaper than the other places we had been to thus far, at 80,000 for a room with a queen sized bed. So, the four of us got two rooms; I’d be sharing a room/bed with Julia, which given the previous evening, was a bit awkward, but as far as I could tell, she had no memories of any of it, so I tried to not worry too much.

We agreed to all wash up and rest up for about half an hour, then go get dinner together.

When we were all ready, we walked back where we had came from, though we stopped by a night market on this one street that’s one of the only distinguishing parts of Luang Prabang at night, which also had an ATM I had spotted earlier, something we all needed access to at that moment.

With pockets full of kip, we headed towards the cliff on the Mekong to look for some riverside dining, and to see if we’d maybe run into anyone else from the boat. We didn’t, but we found a totally adequate restaurant that had normal enough prices for food (about 2-3 USD for the average meal). The food itself was a bit blah, especially after having savored on Thai cuisine for a couple of weeks, but it didn’t taste bad, and it DID fill up, so there was that.

I think by the time we finished eating, it was around 9pm. At this point, the ladies were all pretty tired, and decided they were going to retire for the evening. You know me, though...

I wasn’t about to rest on my laurels. I had limited time and stuff to see! So I wandered around after seeing them back to the guesthouse. There wasn’t a lot to see at that street market, but I checked out some of it. It was the same fabrics and little carvings and knick knacks that you’d find more or less anywhere else. Other westerners seemed to enjoy it.

I walked along the riverside cliff again, but everything was closing down. In Luang Prabang, as I came to learn, the world shuts down by 10pm at the latest, with the exception of about three places. Two bars, one bowling alley. I didn’t go to any of those this night, though.

So, not that much later, I retired to the guesthouse, way too early for my tastes, got my travel guide book, a regular book, and sat down in the lobby with a couple bottles of Beer Lao, and started to plan.

Maybe an hour or so later, I finally went to bed. Julia was out for the count, and the bed was big enough that I didn’t have anything at all to worry myself over. I set the alarm, requiring me to balance my iPhone precariously on a high-placed electrical outlet, since the cord for recharging isnt so long to let it rest on the ground, and got ready to enjoy my first real day on the ground in Luang Prabang.

When I woke up, I woke to an empty bed, which is something that, for better or for worse, I’m not particularly used to. Not the waking up in an empty bed part, but rather the fact that I went to sleep sharing it, and woke up to find no one but myself.

I shrugged it off again, got myself ready for life, then found a note in front of the door. Apparently Julia decided she needed a room to herself, and blah blah blah. Whatever, it didn’t really matter to me in the long run.

I went out and headed towards a little bistro I saw not far from where we were staying, a place called JoMo Bakery, listed in the Lonely Planet Guide as well as on the wikitravel entry of Luang Prabang, and got some bacon toast and eggs, my old standby. Their bacon was fantastic, and guaranteed another couple of trips to the location in the near future for me.

Their coffee was okay. As with most of Asia, the difference between Americanos, deep espresso, and drip coffee seems to be lost on them, but it got me through, so I won’t complain too much. Just around the corner from here was a bike rental place, where I rented a multi-speed bicycle, and set off for a day of cycling like none other.

All in all, I bicycled about 60 km or 40mi over the course of the next several hours. It was quite a turnaround from the experience on the boat.

I originally planned on bicycling to some waterfalls that were supposed to be not so far away, but it never did work out that way.

Before setting out to explore anything else, I rode around the UNESCO World Heritage portion of Luang Prabang trying to get a look at the area that I couldn’t see very clearly the previous night. In addition to seeing some temples and colonial architecture, I saw a couple people from the boat the previous days, and chatted with them a while. One of them was Japanese, and I exercised my Japanese muscles for the first time in, well, a very long time, and was surprised I could still communicate somewhat with the language.

Here’s a smattering of pictures of the area, plus one of monk laundry:

After that, it was time to head out of this small portion of town. The UNESCO portion of town is a small triangle of townscape within a much larger town, nestled against the corners of these rivers:

First I biked over across a funny wooden bridge that was made for pedestrian and two wheel traffic into a part of Luang Prabang probably most tourists never see. It was a weird contraption, which I have pictures of below. There were two “lanes” of traffic, and if you were on two wheels, you had to do your best to stay balanced on a small set of beams. There was one set of beams going one direction, another set going the other and then a base platform a couple inches lower that spanned the whole bridge. My explanation might sound a bit weird, but maybe you can see what I mean in the pictures:

This was a little problematic for me, given that I also wanted to take pictures, but the narrow space I had to be riding on dictated that I had to stay with the flow of traffic, and there was definitely traffic behind me.

Beyond that, I had no plan in this area, I just followed the roads and took some pictures of the town around. It was a pretty run down place, and it seemed like a lot of construction was going on, with the streets torn up and concrete debris all over. This made riding a bit hard on the eyes at times, as there was a lot of dust in the air.

There wasn’t anything else too special in this area, so after maybe twenty minutes I headed back to the bridge, then started taking the only road out of town towards those waterfalls. At first, it was a really lazy road that had little remarkable about it. The only thing that really struck me about the area, and this was something that would continue to strike me for all of my time in Laos, was the number of signs advertising Beer Lao. I really have no idea why there’s so many, especially in a market that has pretty much ONLY Beer Lao. In any of the pictures that I have of the areas of Laos, if there are buildings, look out for little yellow signs. More often than not, those signs are advertisements for Beer Lao.

After the turn off to go towards the airport, though, things started changing. I felt less like I was in a town, and more like a village, even if some of the modern amenities of life could be seen. People seemed to be shocked that a foreigner would venture out this far on the road, on a bicycle no less.

Children in particular were incredibly friendly, and everyone wanted to say hello. I exercised my only Lao, “Sabaidee (hello)” extensively, and the children in particular seemed to really get a kick out of this.

The adults were a bit different. Most of them appeared to be world-weary, and on average were not quite as friendly. Its not that they were hostile, they just looked like they couldn’t be bothered.

The stranger thing about this, though, was the disparity between adults and children. I’d say that 80% of the people I saw outdoors, once I got beyond the touristy areas, appeared to be under the age of 25. Now, there are a couple of possibilities for this. The first one is that younger people are more inclined to go outdoors at all times of day, and the second one is that the war torn country just has a much larger youthful generation than usual. A cursory check of some demographic statistics online suggests my second theory is pretty accurate, as people from the age of 0-14 represent a disproportionate amount of the population, a full 40%, compared to the approximately 20% in USA and the same for China (which I therefore take to be the standard amount). In a similarly war-torn country, Vietnam, by way of comparison, the same age bracket makes up 26% of the population.

I’m not exactly sure what kind of effect this would have on a country, but if the kids stay as friendly as they are now when they grow up, I have to think it’d be a pretty awesome place to hang out in twenty years.

After maybe 10km, I stopped by at a random place to get some water. By this point I was rolling through gentle hills and lush enough greenery, and the sun beat upon me like a hammer, so some good ol’ fashioned H20 sounded pretty sweet. The place I tried first, however, wasn’t really situated to sell to foreigners, as a vicious dog came out that said to me, “No Kiel, you may not purchase a bottle of icy cool H20 at this location. Please move along.” I never knew a bicycle could be brandished, but brandish it I did to keep the dog at a pace away from me.

I started running backwards, keeping the bicycle at all times between me and the dog, and once I picked up enough speed, I jumped around and onto the bike seat and started pedaling as if my life depended on it, which, as far as I knew, it did. The dog kept up for a little bit, nipping at my heels, which I think hit the damned thing in the face at least once, as it let out a bit of a whimper, and I rolled on. A lazy old lady looked a bit disappointed, though whether it was because I didn’t buy or anything or because the dog didn’t get me, I have no idea.

Not too much farther along the road, I found a much more safe location, with a guy who was super cordial and happy to get me some water. He even fetched around for the coldest bottle he could find, and we sat and talked for a spell. He had surprisingly good command of English, and he brought his daughter out to talk to me a little (she was probably only three years old or so) but she was way too shy to say even hello or sabaidee.

Ten minutes later, he gave me another super cold bottle of water for the road, and I got rolling. I immediately wished I had a place to put the bottle of water, but, such is life. He told me that the waterfalls weren’t far away. I think I somehow missed a turn off, though, because I never did find them. Ultimately, though, I found a few signs that pointed me in the direction of an elephant nature camp. Having not been able to visit the one Yara had worked at, I figured I could at least ride over in this direction and see what I could find.

It wasn’t a perfect situation for bicycling, and there were some pretty big hills, which at two points I had to walk up, and little shade. I got pretty tired by the end of it, but I finally found my way to the end of it. Construction vehicles blew plenty of clouds of debris in my face along the way, which wasn’t too terribly fun.

When I arrived, it was a godsend. I locked up my bicycle, in front of some Lao guys that I think were surprised to see someone showing up on bicycle, and then started walking around and taking pictures immediately. Here’s what I got a few shots of:

Pretty soon, I saw that there was an associated restaurant, which was perched on a cliff above a river, so I got some noodles there, and hung out at some excellent seating on the edge of the cliff. Not long after, some tourists came by and rode out on elephant back to the river down below. I got a few pictures of that, as well as of their return ride:

Between the spotting of them in the river and their return, I read the camp’s literature on the dilemma of elephants. They discussed where each of the elephants in the camp came from. I think there were 8, and most of them were female, and most of them were middle aged, around 30ish years old, and most of them were blind in one eye or something else terrible, from incidents dealing with being used in the logging industry.

Elephants are used in the traditional logging industries of much of Southeast Asia, but for various reasons have been losing their jobs over the years. Also, due to the expansion of human settlements in the area, the roaming territory needed for elephants to live in the wild has been seriously limited.

Since its difficult for them to be self-sufficient in the wild, it falls upon us to provide for elephants in one way or another. The main way has been to employ them in the logging industry, which, maybe could potentially be regulated to use them responsibly, but thus far that hasn’t been the case, and abuse is rampant.

The other thing, of course, is conservation efforts, under which you might include zoos, which of course are also more often than not abusive, and then there’s places like Yara’s camp, and this one. Yara’s camp is at the far end of the spectrum, which tries to take care of elephants without putting almost any demands on them. The camp I visited on accident arranges for elephant rides, and justifies this as being a way to make a decent amount of income, whereas Yara’s camp still finds this sort of thing to be abusive and unnecessary in bringing money into a camp.

The thing is, elephants eat a lot. And I mean, a lot. Hundreds of pounds of food a day per elephant. Including veterinary care and other things, that means its not cheap to take care of. So while I understand Yara’s camp’s mentality and desire to take such good care of the elephants, I also understand why other places would compromise the elephants to some extent to bring in more income to support them. Either way, I’m glad I don’t have to worry about making the decision of which side of the line to straddle in running an elephant camp.

I didn’t really interact with anyone there, I was too tired, and I just wanted to take in the nice sights. I caught a few pictures of some Lao people fishing in the shallow waters of the river, and really thoroughly enjoyed those noodles, plus a requisite bottle of Beer Lao.

After I felt recharged, I wandered back over to my bike, got on, and rode out, further on, as it was only about 1:30 pm, in search of those darn waterfalls.

On the way out, backtracking on the dirt road that took me to the elephant camp towards the main road, I took some photos of the path along the way, which I share with you now:

Nothing amazing, but illustrative nevertheless!

At the intersection with the main road, I made acquaintance with an older British couple.

We were all trying to find those waterfalls. I rode a bit faster on the way out, as their bikes had no speeds, and I tore down some crazy hills, rocketing through random Lao villages on the way, getting further and further into territory where peddling white folk was utterly unexpected. I still got the same kinds of responses, in general, and there was a lot of warmth and enthusiasm, which was such a far cry from what I saw in most of Thailand, where almost every local person I met seemed to be pretty jaded, with the exception of those two young college girls in Chiang Mai that I hung out with for a couple of hours my first night there.

Another 15 km in or so, I finally came across a sign that informed me that I’d have another 20 km to go if I wanted to reach some set of waterfalls. My guess is that this was actually a second set, and that I went the wrong way to find the first ones, but who knows. So when I turned around, knowing there was no way I could add another 40 km (that’d be a grand total of like 70 miles in one day on a bike), I let the British couple know, also, as soon as I ran across them.

They were up for some pretty hardcore riding, but that was also too far for them. We needed to get our bikes back by sundown, more or less, so we all rode back together, not in perfect synch, but close enough. At times, I went faster than them, at times, they went faster than myself.

I suspect they were both around 55-60 years old, and had been married for a long time. They had never had children, and instead used the excess money that would’ve been spent on raising a child to travel extensively around the world.  Apparently, the wife was tough as nails, and dragged the husband along more than vice versa. She looked pretty worn from this bicycling trip, though, and I guessed that the heat was getting to her.

They were both extremely friendly people to talk to, and made for good 30km bicycling partners. We all collectively forgot about this one massive hill that was a joy to sail down, but made for pretty daunting measures to scale back up. Other than that one hill, though, it was smooth sailing back into town, and we said our goodbyes. I ended up having enough time before needing to return the bike that I could make arrangements for a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, the next day. I arranged for a pretty early ride, not wanting to waste time, especially given that it was supposed to be a 6-8 hour ride.

The main reason I was heading to the capital was to get a visa taken care of for getting back into China, I had little other interest in going there.

After this, I returned the bicycle, then went back to the guesthouse for a shower, and looked around for familiar faces, of which there were none.

I walked back towards the water front for another round of noodles and beer, and enjoyed having dinner in the same location with a bit more light. I got the opportunity to take some photos of the sun setting above the river, and the fleet of slow boats waiting patiently for the waters to rise once again.

In particular, this picture should be in National Geographic, and if you don’t agree with me, you shouldn’t be reading this! : P

I headed back to the night market street, and hung out there for a while. Ran into Jack again, and had a good twenty minutes of conversation with him as his dad wandered through little doohickies. I remembered it was Chinese New Year, so I wished him a happy one, and realized this was my first Valentine’s Day alone since I had started dating at the age of 14. Weird stuff. But not a bad way to be celebrating it alone, bicycling for a full day in a fully foreign country.

Afterwards, I was pretty sore, so I did the only thing that could possibly make sense in the situation, and got a massage. There was a place right next door to where I rented my bicycle from, so I went there, and was promptly led upstairs. At first I got ... I don’t know, I tried what they called a Lao traditional massage, which I didn’t find all that great, then asked for a different kind. Each massage was performed by different masseuses. I found out the first one was 16 years old and the second one was 17 years old. This felt pretty strange, and I still think it’s a bit weird. It was totally legitimate though, as far as that sort of thing goes, so at least there’s that? They were also both pretty nice, and taught me a limited amount of Lao language; limited further by their grasp of English, which was just enough.

Oddly, they each asked me the same series of questions, something along the lines of “How old are you?” “Where you come from? “Do you have girlfriend?” Ultimately, it was obvious neither of them were really interested in the answers, and I’m not even sure they understood them. I think they were actually taught to say this series of questions, and I think there was another one or two that I am now forgetting. Kinda weird!

At one point, when they put me in a sitting position, while the girl was behind me with her hands on my shoulders and her knees on either side of my spine, trying to use her knees for pressure, it didn’t quite work out, due to me being twice the size of her, and we collapsed, a couple times. It was kinda funny, and finally she gave up. I laughed.

I went back to my guesthouse, and found another note from Julia. This one let me know that she was going to be at a local bar, one I forget the name of... and can’t find online, either. So I got a tuk tuk to take me over there, and it turned out it was really ridiculously close. Also at the place were Kieran, Rick, Ben and Sarah, and maybe a couple of others as well. We had a couple of drinks, then played a bunch of darts. It was my first time playing darts since way back in the day with Chuck and Keegan back in Osaka, and it was a different version of the game, so I was absolute shit. The other guys all collectively kicked my ass, but I didn’t really care anyhow.

Oh, and here’s a picture of Kieran eating a bomb:

From there, we wandered back to the guesthouses. It turned out that the others were all staying at a guesthouse right next door to Julia and myself, so we hung out there for a while, kicking back in the wee hours of the night, against the regular culture of Luang Prabang, before going back to our respective places. They’d all be spending another couple days in Luang Prabang, and were surprised to hear I’d be taking off so quickly.

Surprises or not, I had stuff to take care of, so I went back to my room, and got a good night’s rest, easily granted after the day’s activities and lubricated with a bit of alcohol at the end of the night. The next day, I’d be in for yet another long haul.