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We've been in Laos now for about a week, it is a welcome change from China. Don't get me wrong, I loved China, even with the stupid bureaucracy, but the cities all felt very similar: the same massive selection of shops trying to sell the same massive selection of products to almost no-one.
Laos is hugely different, in almost every way. The infrastructure is basic to non-existent, the population is sparse, prices are even lower than China and it rains. A lot. Actually the rain can be a relief because the humidity has so far been hard to cope with, for me, anyway. Laos is also the first country I have visited in which you can occasionally see World Vision and other charitable organization's offices around the place. It must be a sufficiently "poor" country to warrant the intervention of these agencies, although, to my eyes, it does seem slightly patronizing for the well-meaning West to rush to help all these people who appear quite content thank you very much.
Anyway, back to the trip, and Laos is a very laid back country, not a lot happens quickly here. This is changing fast though, the more I see of the country, the more touristy it is getting. I can well understand why, with tourist prices being maybe three to five times local prices, but still half of European prices. As far as I can see, if you wanted to see the "real" Laos, it has already virtually disappeared, at least from the easily accessible places.
I went kayaking for a day in Luang Prabang, which was excellent, and included lunch at a waterfall where you could go swimming, and ride an elephant! I did both. The elephants here are much smaller than the African ones, but they are still not exactly small, and they were just as eager to be fed as the African ones I met years ago. Riding an elephant involves sitting on a seat a bit like a park bench on its back, but with a fairground ride safety bar on the front. The elephant then does its thing under the command of a mahout, the handler, who sits on its neck. All you have to do is hang on, as you get flung around when the elephant goes up and down hills: the reason for the safety bar is blindingly obvious.
The elephant ride takes place directly in the waterfall, which is more like dozens of small falls in the middle of the forest. The trees all grow directly out of the rock, which seems impossible until you try to break the rock on a tree trunk: it is about an inch thick but fairly soft and cracks easily. The water in the stream must be very high in minerals to deposit so much onto the trees. This water is just the right temperature to cool you down in the heat of the day, and is great to swim in too, which is what most of us did before lunch.
After lunch was just lazy kayaking back down the river, but I personally would have been happier with just the half day, as I got sunburn and sore knees from the unnatural exertion: I'm just not fit enough for this! Or tanned enough, yet.
I would love to tell you about Vang Vieng, but I was rubbish ill there and never left the hotel, so I can't. In fact, I'm still not 100% so my experience of Vientiane is also limited, unfortunately.
Vientiane is clearly where all the money in Laos is, it is still a little sleepy by the standards of a city but it is a city. Lots of bars, restaurants, and not a few old fat foreign men with tiny young local women. Seediness aside, it is quite a pleasant city, with impressive wats and the mighty Mekong never far away.
We have been given the details for the optional trip extension to Borneo now, and we have until we leave Laos to finalize our booking. I have decided that it is too good an opportunity to miss, and so will be travelling to Borneo after Singapore for three weeks! Jungles, beasties, orangutans and Brunei, all await on the island of Borneo! It's going to be great.
The pics are all around Vientiane, one showing the storm clouds but hiding the three mobile phone masts behind That Dam, the pointy stone thing. It can be a pretty city, in the right place.
Even two days before we arrived in Laos, it was obvious that we were in Southeast Asia. The climate and surroundings had changed so much from what I had seen up until then: paddy fields, rubber and banana plantations and just plain jungle became the norm. Laos and China just feel different too, Laos is much more relaxed and laid back than frenetic China.
On the way to the border we were supposed to camp for three nights, but we hadn't counted on every available flat space being a field of some sort. The first night we ended up camping at the side of the road next to a virtual cliff in the jungle, an unusual campsite made even more interesting by the torrential rain and the ant invasion of our tent. The second night we spent in a hotel in Jinghong due to the continuing downpour which turned out to be quite enjoyable: it is a cool little town to wander around. I also got my hair cut here, those who know me will know what an era-defining moment this was! We missed out the last camp, thankfully, as it was still raining and there was still nowhere to camp, and we crossed into Laos a day early.
Our first stop in Laos was the sleepy little town of Luang Nam Tha, cute, prone to power outages and very humid, this so far seems to be the pattern in Laos. We spent two nights there, then moved to Muang Ngoy for one night where we had a great guesthouse room overlooking the river. This river was our transport the next day to Luang Prabang on a noisy long wooden boat. It doesn't sound very pleasant, but it was really great to travel on the river. We even stopped at the Pakou Caves which were quite impressive Buddhist cave temples next to the Mekong river. Almost as impressive was the number of small children trying to get us to buy the freedom of the tiny birds they had captured in little cages, you had to run the gauntlet to get to the upper cave.
The pictures are our wet roadside camp, the view from the terrace of our guesthouse in Muang Ngoy and views from the boat including Rich doing what he does best.
On this trip we don't really get to see the "proper" China, the one with millions of people crammed into every available space, but these last few days gave us just a glimpse of what China is really like for most of its inhabitants, and what it is like for the nouveau riche to go on holiday.
We have been visiting towns, and one city: Shangrila, Lijiang, Dali and Kunming. The first three are all tourist towns, but almost exclusively for Chinese nationals. They are all relatively similar, in that they have pretty old town centres which tourists love to walk around whilst buying expensive authentic local products which only seem to be the same as in every other shop in the area. Of the three towns Shangrila is the least authentic because the old town was specially built to attract tourists, and the name of the town was changed to Shangrila from Zhongdian, again to attract tourists. Lijiang has the largest and most original old town, and is also the most popular destination, meaning that the crowds were enormous. It is totally geared up for extracting money from non-locals, and does it very well. Dali is probably the most honest of the three towns, if a town can be called that. It is a tourist town, but not to the exclusion of local life, which to my mind gives it more character than either of the others.
Kunming is a totally different kettle of fish. It is the closest I have seen to a true, massive Chinese city. It reminds me of Glasgow, but with sunshine. It sprawls over the area, with heavy industry surrounding it, and shops, traffic and tower blocks in the centre. Kunming does have an old town, but from what I could see, it is less than a block in size, and what is left is being demolished to make way for a mix of skyscrapers and a new old town, with more expensive shops. You can't stop progress, especially not in China.
Pics are views from the hotel in Dali, and in Kunming. We have three days left in China, then onto Laos, and no mobile data anymore. So updates will be less frequent again, unfortunately.
Tibet has two official tourist roads: the road from Nepal in the south, and the road we used to enter it from the north. We had to travel east, to Yunnan, using an unofficial road: the main road linking the two provinces. In another country, this would mean driving along a main road, but not in China.
The road varied from poor to terrible, with a smattering of non-existent thrown in for good measure. A relatively short distance took us five days of hard driving to complete, due to the state of the road and the extremely mountainous terrain. The upside of the journey was some of the most spectacular and different scenery in Tibet, with vast forests covering the mountains. It was more reminiscent of places like Scotland and northwest America than Tibet, albeit with steeper and higher terrain.
We were supposed to camp for the whole five days, but the weather turned very wet and we were put up in two hotels for the final two days: one in Markham, and one in Deqen. One of the photos is the traffic outside the hotel in Markham, it was a very rural town. So rural that the otherwise good hotel had only three rooms with showers, and the remaining rooms didn't even have access to one. However, it was much better than camping in the pouring rain.
Deqen was slightly more civilized, but still felt quite Wild West. We ate dinner in a little local restaurant: basically one room with half of it being the kitchen and half of it with chairs and tables. Whilst eating our meals, a scrabbling sound came from the kitchen area. A plastic bag rolled into view, and a chicken poked its head out! Its legs must have been tied up because it spent the rest of the time trying vainly to escape the bag. We didn't order chicken that night.
As you will see from one of the pictures, we had a rather large tyre failure. Thankfully the truck was stopped at the roadside at the time. I put a mug on the tyre to show how large the hole is, and yes, all the steel belts are broken.
The rest of the pictures are of the varying scenery on this road to Yunnan which, incidentally, we were the first overland truck to travel. It is very unusual for foreigners to see this area!
On the way back from Everest, we were able to see the solar eclipse just in passing. It was maybe 90% coverage, which meant that instead of complete darkness the light just went dim and strange. The birds nearby were very confused though! I tried to photograph it but it didn't turn out too well, even 10% sunlight is too bright for a camera.
After two nights of bushcamping we reached the road leading to Mount Everest, or Qomolangma. The first pass on the 90km road gave some of the best views of the Himalayas, with five 8000m+ peaks visible, truly stunning scenery. After a wonderful drive through some picturesque hamlets we arrived at a weird tent conglomeration, a bit like a shanty town but entirely consisting of tent "hotels" for tourists like us. The hotel names are great: Metal Yak Grand Hotel; Alex English Tea House; Hotel De California; Mt. Everest Happiness Tea House and Steel Firm Guesthouse to name just a few. All of these establishments are about 5x5m tents made of brown yak hair, which makes the names even more amusing.
From here we could go up to the proper base camp, either walking or by taking the bus conveniently available for lazy people like me. So one furious bus ride up a gravel road later, we were at Everest North Base Camp. Or to be more precise, we were at the army checkpoint guarding the camp. After some time queueing to show the guards our passports, we were informed that we were not allowed into the camp, as there was some technicality wrong with our permit. I have been knocked back from clubs before, but never from a mountain! As it turns out, we didn't really miss much as to go further than the camp required a second, extremely expensive permit. Anyway, the view from tent town was better since the clouds had lifted by the evening. The following morning was better still, with not one cloud obscuring the peak at dawn, truly amazing.
Qomolangma is a real wonder of the world. Even if you didn't know that it is the highest mountain in the world, you cannot fail to be awed by it. I had a great day here, especially since I have finally acclimatised to the altitude: 5100m in tent town!
Everest at dawn, Tuesday 21st July, 2009.
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