Wats, markets and waterfalls!

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  Luang Prabang, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Everyone warned us about Laos Buses but there really is no other way to get around! we prepared ourselves for another mammoth 9hr journey to Luang Prebang and booked onto the vip bus to hopefully avoid the crowds - oh how wrong we were! vip bus is supposed to be comfier, air con and a bit more pricey which means its normally all tourists - not necessarily a good thing.We turned up (there was 6 of us altogether) at the bus station to find that today was public bus day not vip bus day and the rickty old bus was already full with sacks of rice in the isle with people sitting on that. 9 hours seemed a very very long time now! we weakly showed the guy our tickets and said that we had booked seats the day before but there were clearly no seats. He hauled everybody off the bus and started calling people up by seat number. all the falang (westerners) had booked their seats so we got on and seated and watched guiltily as the locals scrabbled for the isle seats they were the lucky ones, some people had to wait for the next bus. there was only 1 a day! in fairness we had paid more for our tickets but tom and i still felt really bad.
The journey itself wasnt too bad, sleep was impossible as the roads twisted up and down mountains and for 2 of the 9 hours i was bursting for a pee - i had to jump out the bus window and run to the bushes when he finally stopped! the bus was so old he couldnt stop on an unhill slope for fear of it never getting going again - i wasnt the only person to jump out the window and the bus had come to a complete stop! on some of the uphills we couldve walked faster than the bus and again frustratingly in 9 hours we only covered 220km!!
The scenery had changed again, gone are the sharp jagged limestone karsts now we were into rolling rounded mountains that went on and on. one road cut across some of them but most just had a footpath winding across them. All of them were covered in dense jungle with a small wooden hut every now and agian in a cleared area now filled with banana trees. We would pass through villages where the houses were now not on stilts but on the ground with no windows - it was colder up here and no risk of flooding from the monsoon. the little hill tribe villages were filled with different people all who stopped and stared when they saw us!
When we finally got to Luang Prebang we ate a lovely dinner with rod, isobelle and sean. tom and i went local and had buffalo skin dip, dried river moss, cracked pork (massive pork scratchings!), stew and sticky rice. it was all gorgeous - stew was mega spicey though!
Luang Prebang is beautiful full of old french colonial houses, buddhist wats and night markets - it was quite touristy but a lovely place. We went to Wat Xieng Thong - LP's most important wat and visited Tat Kuang Si waterfall which had lovely bathing pools of aqua water. Ate some great food with travelling friend new and old Alex who we helped nurse his tubing related injury - he put his hand on a beer lao bottle and had waited till now to go to the hospital. he had to have the glass removed without anesthetic with a crowd of locals watching - they didnt even give him a stick to bite! i might also add he is 57 and from melbourne! We had a last supper with rod, isobelle and sean - cant believe we ve been travelling with sean for a month. dunno how we will survive without our daily gethin fix, we seemed to but into him even when we hadnt arranged to meet him! hopefully we are going to get together in thailand again. Its been great having normal conversations with people who im happy to call friends - you meet so many aquaintences and have to answer the same few questions to so many people 'where you from, how long are you tavelling, where have you been'
enough gushing you ve got to read toms installment on Nam Tha (well you dont HAVE to) that he's writing next to me!
Hope everyone is well and you'll be pleased to know tom has agreed (under duress) to shave after becky, chris and sarah have seen his 'beard'....only a few days to go now, really looking forward to seeing them!!

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Old French colonial houses.

on route to LP

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