It seems that the folk's decision to change our original itinerary and visit Laos proved to be a good one. Laos, a former French Indo-China colony, is a country landlocked between Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and China. It only recently opened its restrictions to foreigners on independent travel within its borders. In the late 60s and early 70s it was faced with repeated unnecessary bombings by the United States during the Vietnam War, (called the Secret War in Laos, because the US was not supposed to be there at all). Actually, Laos has seen more bombs per capita than any other country - something not widely known. But leaving politics out of it, I will stick to the details of my trip through Laos with my parents.
Leaving China on the 11th of Jan., we crossed the border by walking across the 2 km. no-man's-land of jungle and were greeted with the soon to be familiar "sabaydee!" by the various officials there. Laos is indeed a whole different country! The look, the feel, the smell... With the sun shinning on us we had our last noodle breakfast at a small food stall just after getting our passports stamped. (This time I entered on my dad's French passport, avoiding the payment of another expensive visa). While eating we pondered on how similar and yet how different this country was to the one we just left. The people are a mix of Chinese and South Asian - therefore referred to as Indo-Chinese. I saw an abundance of children around (no one-child policy here...). Many of them not much older than myself, toting younger siblings under their arms or on their hips. Instead of the regular concrete and white tiled buildings, we saw only simple bamboo and wooden houses. After breakfast we waited for a bus. These too were of a different nature: large, open truck-like vehicles ("songthaew") with two rows of seats in the back. And waited we did. You see, here in Laos most public transport leaves only when full. So we had to wait for more passengers to arrive. It was fine though, as it gave us a chance to familiarize ourselves with the language and the people... Who, I might add, still found me as some sort of curious interest. As for the language, we noticed that there seemed to be more English spoken here by both the young and old alike. And their diction was clear and recognizable. Finally, an hour or so later we headed along the dusty, bumpy, dirt roads. The 4-hour bus ride in the bright warm sunshine took us over small hills following the path of a river and through thick jungle and uncultivated land. As usual I was asleep half-way into the trip. And when I awoke we had arrived at a typical Lao bus station - nothing more than an open earthen field with a few food stalls. Quite the change from the large concrete, block buildings in China. And yet, even in its simplicity we found it to be a welcome change. Especially when it came to public bathroom facilities... Gone were the filthy, stinky latrines and instead we found the clean but basic Asian squat toilets, flushable by means of Indonesian style water tanks, or mandis, and actually kept clean by the attendants in charge.
Since it was late in the afternoon we decided to spend the night in this town (Udomaxi) instead of going on to Luang Prabang. We got a double room with bath in a typical guesthouse ($5 US). These are smaller, cleaner, family-run places with various kinds of rooms and usually in better shape than the majority of hotel establishments in China. They became our standard type of lodging for this country. After settling in we had a quick lunch and walked about the small town. Visited the market and tried in vain to find a bank to change money. Fortunately a lot of places take US dollars as a form of payment. The currency is called the Kip, roughly 10,500 Kip to US$ 1. This meant that when we changed $100 we became instant millionaires! (In Kip that is). And since the bills usually come in 5,000 Kip, it meant that my parents' money-belts were bulging with wads of notes. That day we got our first view of the typical villages here as we walked through a rural neighborhood with homes of unpainted wood and on stilts. At one point we had to walk across a rickety moving, bamboo foot-bridge high over a river. We went slowly and steadily, watching every small step and trying to avoid the shaky planks with gaping holes. Now, one would think something like this could be made a bit more permanent as it was used a lot. We visited a monastery with a dozen young monks and stopped to chat with a couple. Sitting on the top of a hill, near a large white pagoda, we watched the sun set over the rice fields on our first day in Laos.
The next day started off with a great breakfast of fresh baguette. Yes, the real thing with Vache-qui-rit cheese and Lao coffee. This last item is known to be one of the most expensive and the best in the world. Mummy was glad to have really good coffee and cheese, Papa his real French baguette and black tea, and as for me? I was glad they were enjoying themselves. One would think they'd been deprived of a good western breakfast for the past few months....Oh wait ... I guess they were! Hey it didn't matter to me, for I still had my Holland porridge and chocolate sprinkles compliments of Oma! Afterwards we ended up waiting for hours at the bus station for the pick-up truck to fill up before we left for Luang Prabang. There we met up with our good friend Aunty Patty from Toronto and with her spent the next few days visiting the city with its many sights.
