Tha Shiznit

After our "luxurious" hotel in Luang Prubang we were sad to say goodbye, but nevertheless excited about going to the so called Gibbon Experience (you will find out later in the blog what it's all about). However, first we had to get to the border town of Huay Xai in Laos. Since there are no roads leading there, our options were simple. We could either take the slow boat (2 days) or catch a speed boat (6 hours). Seeing that two days on a wooden bench sounded like a nightmare, we opted for the speedy boat.

The boat left at 8.30 in the morning, and by 7.30 we were all ready to leave. By all, I mean, Mahta, Paul, Clare and myself. Since the pier was 7 KM outsidef the city, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us there, but it would be a ride worth remembering. The tuk-tuk we had asked was of the regular shitty kind you find in Laos, meaning it was basically an old motorcycle with a hanger. We all got in the back (with our luggage), and told the driver we were ready. He twists the handlebar and gives the bike all the power he has, only to find out that we are stuck on the hill. Shit. No threat though, Haakon gets out and pushes the tuk-tuk from behind until we get enough speed to start going. So far, so good. As you can imagine, the weight of all four of us in the back was obviously way too much for the bike to handle. The ride to the pier was slow and at times we thought his bike would break. However, it is not until we reach the final uphil that it happened. The bike overheats, he stops, and we all quickly realize that there is no chance in hell this bike will ever start again. Poor guy. All he wanted was to get a nice fat fare early in the morning, but instead the four whities are too fat for his tuk-tuk. The thing was completely out of comission, so we were forced to take another one the last 5 miutes to the pier. We did eventually get there though.

After paying about 30 bucks each, we were secured a nice ticket on the speed boat to Huay Xai. We had heard from other people that it would be loud and uncomfortable, but nothing had prepared us for what we saw next. After walking down the hill to the water (ie the Mekong River) we see 4 boats laying there. They all look like big longtails (meaning they were about a metre wide and 5 metres long) with some weird makeshift engine on the back and a long stick with a propeller. The next thing that happens is that the driver hands us a lifejacket each (fair enough, safety first) and a some crash helmets (what the fu$%^% is this for). The helmets looked like motorbike helmets, with the screen and everything. Oh shit, we were all thinking, what the hell have we just signed up for.

We all cram onto the boat, and the driver fires up the engine. With a huge roar and water splashing everywhere we take off going upstream on the Mekong River. It's at this point we realize what the crash helmets are for. We must have been doing about 60 km/h in this dinky little thing called a boat. It was crazy guys. We were moving sooo fast.. All good though, until it begins to rain. An i'm not talking about no spitting raindrops we get in the western world, I'm talking about the big fat stuff that only monsoon countries see. The type that you think you can just lay down horizontally and swim in mid air. So, imagine this, we are zooming upstream in this dinky little boat, doing about 60 clicks when it starts to pour down. When you do that kind of speed, and the water droplets are the size of small grapes, it begins hurting, so we tried to the best of our abilities to cover up. We were sitting there with our helmets on, our rain jackets accross our legs and soaking wet.

We did this for about 3 hours before we finally reached our lunch location; a tiny raft like place which served food. And guys, let me tell you, the soup Haakon ordered must have been made with toilet water (Well, I guess that's impossible cuz the toilet waste flowed directly in the Mekong). It was worse than any soup he'd ever tried. Disgusting. Anyways, after about 45 min, we changed boats (don't know why), added 3 more poeple (which just cramped us more) and continued upstream (oh, when will it be over?). Since we now knew what to expect, this leg of the journey was better than the previous one, but yet it was horribly uncomfortable. About half an hour before we reach Huay Xai, we stop for another change of boats (still don't know why). No problem, right? Wrong. Big problem! See, what happened when the dork of a driver tried to move our bags onto the next boat is that he drops Haakon's backpack in the Mekong River. That's right, the whole bag is now floating in the river. DAMN, were we all pissed. All the people that we had met that day had been really rude and not nice, and this was just the last thing we needed. Oh well, we couldn't really do much but suck it up, and before long, we had finally made it to the final destination.

P.S. when I say that the people on the boat were not nice, I really mean it. Next day, we met a couple from Britain who had been on the same boat, just one day after us, who were forced to stay overnight at the shitty little place we had lunch, because they refused to pay more money to the driver. They only managed to get to the final city because a Turkish family felt sorry for them next morning and told the driver that unless they were allowed to come with them they would ask for a refund. The British couple were super upset, but were laughed at by the locals... so sweet of them.

Our 5 hour "bus" ride was brutal. First of all, it wasn't really a bus. It was a pick up truck with 2 narrow wooden benches in back (known as a sangthaw) which makes for very sore bums. Second of all, it was another long, winding, and bumpy road which made for bobbing necks and throbbing heads. However, we arrived at a comparitively HUGE metropolis of Xam Neau. Well, it was in fact a small city with no more than 50,000 people, but we were excited to find food, electricity and guesthouses!

First things first, we need food! We soon found a restuarant to satiate our grumbling tummies and this is where the laziness of the Laos people came shining through. So, we walk in, look at the menu and order our food; nothing out of the ordinary. But then, we wait and wait and finally after 45 minutes we receive 2 omelets which made for a quarter of our total order. Uhhh, where's the rest? The lady continued to casually cut up vegetables with her baby crying on her hip and a few minutes later another lady arrived on her scooter with a some grocery bags. This should have been an indication of a little delay, but we thought these people knew what they were doing... Of course they did, they ran a restaurant!! However, after an hour and fifteen minutes of waiting, there was still no cooking activity in the kitchen; can you believe that the stove wasn't even turned on? Oh the tummies are grumbling! It was time to step our foot down, but as we started to complain the ladies decided they didn't want to hear it AND THEY KICKED US OUT! Hang on, what just happened? Still keeps me up at nights...

The night life in Xam Neau was intense, so intense that there wasn't a living soul out after 8 pm! We could've started to chase bats as it looked really tempting when the man in Nam Soi did it, but we decided to gather in Clare and Paul's room to play Scrabble instead.

We woke up the next morning with the ambition to see the coolest tourist sites around! There were a total of two. The bigger attraction was the Pathet Lao Caves in a neighbouring town of Vieng Xai. The other was a waterfall on the way to the caves. We decided to rent scooters and see all that we can, it was going to be an exciting day! We even bought some fruit and bread to take on a little picnic.

Off we went to the waterfall... we drove and we drove and we never found it. Turned back and around, still didn't find it. The only thing that came out of it was H&M's scooter starting to fall apart; pieces flew off and were never recovered, oops. Haakon nicely repaired it with whatever we had around, hopefully we would be able to make it back home without getting stuck on the way. Still looking for the waterfall, we finally decided to ditch the scooters and walk up a rocky path that seemed to have potential for leading us to the right place, but we were a little disappointed to find nothing but steep and slippery rocks. Disappointed and dehydrated, we decided it was time for our picnic. Oooh, we had the greatest pineapple ever! And the fact that it was only 30 cents made it even yummier! After our picnic we decided to give up on the waterfall and head for the caves.

What a touristy day! We had a guide walk us around some caves which served as shelters and intricately planned homes to Pathet Lao leaders for 10 years while the United States continuously bombed the region in oppostition to the existance of Northern Vietnamese in Laos. The natural limestone caves had many bedrooms, offices and they each had an emergency room with steel doors and huge oxygen machines in case of a chemical attack.
Our guide told us a sad story of how his father, a farmer, was killed in the fields by American war planes. His father, his friend and all living animals in sight were mercilessly shot to death. He also said that during the time of war, each and every family would be responsible for making their own cave in order to acquire protection from bombs and war planes. We left the caves feeling heavy in our hearts.

We spent another Scrabble night in Xam Neau and headed for Phonsavan the following morning. The bus ride was quite normal. Chickens and pigs were constantly being loaded and unloaded at various little villages along the way, Laotians were unable to stomach the curves and twists of the road and were therefore constantly vomiting off the bus.

We finally arrived in Phonsavan, another small city with about 50,000 people and nothing to do and nothing fun to eat. Great! One thing that was quite unique about Phonsavan was all the war relics that restaurants and hotels had used as decoration. Apparently locals go hunting for bombs. They whip out their family metal detector and search for bombs buried underground. Then they obviously soak these bombs in water for about a week in order to disarm the bombs! Safety first! Some people decide to keep the bombs in order to provide tourists with knowledge about the war, while others choose to sell them as metal scraps for $200!

After a few hopeless trials at finding accomodation, Clare and Mahta were sent on a mission to find somewhere nice... Of course, a huge rain storm started to pour down on us, but don't worry! The boys were dry; Paul and Haakon stayed warm in a cafe drinking refreshing Beer Lao. Drenched from their walk around town, the girls came back with big smiles on their faces; we knew we had scored the best place in town. Cutest little bungalows at $4/night! The boys didn't stand a chance to win the "best accomodation hunters" award!

Phonsavan had nothing to offer us but rain, terrible food and some boredom. However, we managed to book a tour (yay, more touristy stuff!) to the Plain of Jars for the following morning. What are these jars you ask? Well, nobody really knows. The huge 2000-year-old jars have been found in various sites around Phonsavan and are of unknown origin. They are believed to have been used for burial purposes, either as coffins or urns, but no one is entirely sure yet.

After our 2 nights in Phonsavan and a long time since we were on the tourist trail we headed for the much-touristed city of Vang Vieng. This bud ride was also pretty normal, kids were scared of sitting near us, people were still vomiting and there was a strange man on the bus with an AK-47. Hmmm, what have we gotten ourselves into? Luckily, the AK-47 was tucked away throughout the trip and no body died! Wicked!!

The boys were sent off to find accomodation here and they did not come close beating the girls. 1-0 for the girls. YEAH! $3 for a dungeon of a room didn't seem like a winner. And Haakon's sandals were stolen the first night he left them outside the guesthouse. Good old tourist trail, travellers stealing from one another. How is a giant with size 12 feet supposed to find decent sandals in Southeast Asia? Shame on you!

Vang Vieng was our chance to load up on greasy Western food and we loved every second of it! Pizzas, pastas, burgers and fries became our daily diet and rice was long forgotten. This was also our chance to kick back, relax and bum around... We walked around town, had dinner, stuck around to watch a movie. No stress, no hassles. Really refreshing!

Vang Vieng is famous for it's tubing and the following day, we decided to see what the fuss is all about. We rented an inflated inner tube of a tractor tire and left all our valuable in the dry comfort of our room, so we unfortunately have no photos of this day! We spent 7 hours drifting down the Nam Song river, drinking beer and buckets, and swinging like monkeys. There are numerous kick-ass bars set up all along the river and they pull you into their bar with a giant bamboo stick so that you can have the time of your life! Each bar had it's very own swing where you would jump straight back into the river! Some of the swings were really high, about 10 m drop, and swimming back to the bar became more and more challenging as more and more alcohol was consumed. Ahh, wish we had some pictures!

We spent a few nights unwinding in Vang Vieng before heading to an even more touristy town of Luang Prabang. Guess what? The girls scored again! $5 for a beautiful hotel room that we still dream about! 2-0 for the ladies!!!! On a rooooollll. Luang Prabang, surrounded by the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, is a cute little town of 25,000 people and a huge number of temples. We tried spending a day touring around the temples in the scorching heat but quickly realized how tired we were of touristing around. Needless to say, temple-ing came to a sudden stop!

Clare and Mahta had to contain themselves at the night market. So many things, so little space. They decided to browse the first night and return the following night with a clear idea of what they wanted, just to avoid impulse shopping. Everybody knows the consequences of impulse shopping, oooh woe is me.

We also had the opportunity to visit the waterfalls of Tat Kuang Si some 30 KM outside of Luang Prabang. It was a treaherous ride on the back of a tuk tuk and yet we still saw some brave tourists biking up and down the dirt roads on the crappiest bikes ever. Props to them! The waterfall was beautiful and we had the opportunity to swim around and hike up to the top of the falls. Haha, there weren't many people going up there and we were curious why. Of course, we found out why.... there wasn't really much of a view up there and the hike up proved to be how can i put it? difficult..

Luang Prabang, especially our wicked hotel room, treated us nice... and soon we would be leaving Laos.

After "dinner" we were looking for something to do and of course, there was absolutely nothing around, so we decided to go for a walk. After our unadventurous walk we returned to the village and saw all the villagers watching our host chase a bat with a giant bamboo stick.. that was their entertainment for the night! What a life! Surely twiddling your thumbs is more exciting... Throughout the evening Haakon showed the kids some magic tricks, Clare played cards with the daughter of our host, Mahta fell asleep and Paul anxiously waited for the minutes to pass. By 9:30 the entire village had gone to sleep.

Next morning we tried to sleep in as much as possible to decrease our waiting time, but the family had numerous people coming in an out and needless to say, they needed their living room which we were sleeping in. We woke up starving but quickly lost our appetite when the daughter had - for BREAKFAST - a handful of stiky rice plus a sweet we had given her. Where do these people get their vitamins from? I'm sure that girl would rather have brussels sprouts! Anyways, we didn't want breakfast, we just wanted the bus!!! Paul and Clare decided to shower in order to waste 20 minutes and decrease waiting time! As soon as they finished their shower and we were all packed and ready to leave, the most heavenly thing happened! The bus arrived 2 hours too soon! We were absolutely stoked and jumped at the bus! We were finally on our 5 hour journey to Xam Neau, what a relief...

Seeing that we both survived the motorbike trip, we were ready to start thinking about leaving Vietnam. The country has some beautiful scenary, but the people are not nice at all. They generally feel that tourist deserve to pay more for everything and that it should be no other way. For example, the driver on a local (non-tourist) bus threatened to kick us off when we refused to pay more than the local price; don't worry though, we stubbornly managed to keep ourselves on the bus. We thought this "you pay more" attitude was strictly towards tourists, boy were we proven wrong by some villagers in the middle of nowhere during our motorbike trip. Allow me to elaborate, our guide had brought along a stack of photos he had developed for the host at our home stay. As we were crusing along, clumsy Hung managed to drop these photos without realizing, but it just so happened that we had to stop a few meters further to repair the bikes (big surprise!). What happened next might give you an indication of how the a-typical Vietnamese thinks... a villager brought us the photos, SO NICE! Yeh, except that she was requesting a handsome payment of 200,000 Dong (USD 12.5) in exchange for the photos AND this was after she had gone through them and selected her favourites as a souvenir!! Keep in mind that it had cost Hung 120,000 Dong to develop the photos and so the final settlement was that he would develop copies for the lady and hand-deliver them to her on his next trip. In the meanwhile, there was a group of ladies who had come to check out the foreigners and their cameras. As shy as they seemed, they asked Clare to snap their photos and had a blast looking at them, requesting more photos and taking turns to have their photo taken individually. It all came to a shocking halt when they actually had the nerve to ask Clare for money after THEY had asked HER to take numerous photos...What?!?!

Needless to say, this entrepreneurial mentality got VERY tiresome in the long run and we were quite excited to leave the country.

As explained earlier, the British couple (Paul and Clare) had become old friends by now, and since we were all heading in the same direction, we decided to continue our journey together into Laos the following morning. Now, in order to go to Laos from Hanoi, one has a few alternatives. First of all, you can jump on a plane with the infamous and always reliable Laos Airways.. Sounds tempting.. I think not.. Secondly, you can utilize the so called " 24 hour bus ride from hell" (that's quoting Lonely Planet). Apparently, the busses are an absolute nightmare, it may have something to do with the 30+ chickens on the bus or the 35 degree heat without A/C, but we're not sure since we opted for a different and more unconventional route. We decided to cross at the most remote (but closest to Hanoi) border crossing. There was only one problem... This most appealing crossing did not issue Laos visas on arrival and of course H&M had not arranged them in advance. How do we get ourselves out of this pickle? Now, this is how we solved the problem:

Let me paint a picture for you. Mahta, Paul, Clare and Haakon are walking downtown Hanoi about 4 o'clock on a Saturday evening when we decide to take the route described above. Paul and Clare had been planning ahead and had already bought their Visas earlier while H&M were less prepared. Oooops!!! Not a good start for the unconventional route. But hold on. We are in Vietnam, not the western world, maybe the embassy is open? After a long search for the right phone number and some help from a local girl, we get the answer. It's SATURDAY EVENING.. are you crazy... It's not going to open until Monday. DAMN!!!!... hmmm, what to do... Oh, what if we ask one of the travel agencies, they seem to advertise visa arrangements... And sure enough, after a little bit of digging, we found one that could do it in time. We handed our pasports in at 5.00 PM on Saturday evening, paid what amounts to a small fortune in Vietnam, (but really isn't that much) and 2 hours later, we had great, shiny (AND LEGITIMATE) visas in our passports. YEAH, the Vietnamese corruption finally paid off. I mean, where else could you get a visa after the closing of the embassy through a random travel agent...

Now, with the visa situation taken care of, we could start our journey early next morning. Mind you, we weren't able to leave for 3 hours due to the normal complications with Vietnamese people (they "accidentally" bleached Mahta's pants in the laundry and wanted to fight Mahta - yes, that's right, MAHTA - and some other shit), we finally left Hanoi on a local bus by 11 AM. The beginning of the journey went really well, and about 7 hours and 2 bus changes later we ended up in a place called Mai Chau. The whole trip sounds really boring, but believe me, it's way more fun travelling on local busses than it sounds. There is continous entertainment from all around: funny locals doing random things, crappy busses crying for power, blocked roads due to landslides, people suddenly begginging to beg just cuz they notice foreigners around, and other random happenings. Wish I could go into detail, but I think that would be over the top. Anyways, we made it to the village of Mai Chau, and instinctively began searching for a place to stay. Seeing that the town is REALLY small, has no hotels the first option presented to us quickly became our only option. Yeah, that's right, we ended up staying with a local family. They kinda rented us their living room, and we slept beside the son. It was cool though. The house was built on stilts, completely made out of bamboo from top to bottom and all we had was a thin mattress on the floor with musquito nets.. Really cute. Since we were staying with these people, we also accepted their offer for dinner (for a small price of course). Thus, by 7 PM, we were served a delicious home cooked meals with vegetables, spring rolls and other delicious stuff I can't even pronounce. YEAH!! Unfortunately, they didn't speak much English, but we some how managed to ask for the local brew, which in Vietnam means RICE WINE. It's dirt cheap (about 60 cents per litre), tastes pretty bad, contains about 30 percent booze, is done as a shot and is a ritual included in any Vietnamese meal of a certain size. By 11:30PM, Paul and I had polished off 1 litre of this stuff and were just starting to get drunk. GREAT STUFF! Can you imagine the disappointment we felt when the family asked if we could go to sleep at midnight??!! BUMMMER!! Oh well, the family had been really nice, and they had a cozy home.

Coming up in the next blog: leaving Vietnam and crossing the border into Laos, only to find out that there is absolutely nothing on the other side. What happened? Where did we sleep? Did we get food? Find out in the next entry...

When we awoke next morning, the storm had finally passed and the air was fresh and clean. Surprisingly, the day brought little excitement as our goal was simply to get back to Hanoi as quickly as possible using the local highways. The only funny thing was to ride behind the broken Minsk. The bike was still really loud, and people were still pointing and laughing; we HAD to take a one hour break to finally fix the damn thing. I can also tell you that our asses were hurting like hell, and on top of that the backseat passengers were ready to poke their eyes out from boredom! We all arrived safely (and exhausted)regardless of 6 hour hectic Hanoi highway traffic.

Once in Hanoi, we were all asked to sit down with the manager for a drink to talk about our trip. WOW, this is great was our intial reaction, and gladly sat down. That's when we find out that our guide, Mr. Hung had cheated us all along. He had spent way less than the budget on food, and most likely pocketed the excess money. He had also asked us to pay for stuff that according the the managers were supposed to be included in the trip. The managers were in fact really pissed at him. Supposedly they had had problems with him before and told us that he would most likely not be allowed to go for another trip. We felt really bad as we thought he had been a decent guide, but I guess they had been angry with him for a while. Because we hadn't received what we were supposed to, they even offered us a 50 dollar discount. Can you believe it?? A Vietnamese person saying sorry for something.... and offering a discount!!! We were absolutely dumbfounded. Really outstanding service.

We eventually left the office feeling kinda angry about Mr. Hung basically lying to us, but yet very happy with our trip. We had a great time and I would reccommend the trip to absolutely everyone that wants to get off the tourist trail and see some more of Vietnam...