Laos

The irregularity of my blogging recently is indicative of the amount we have been doing in the fairly small amount of time. I have spent more time on buses that I would like to remember, but have been rewarded by having seen and experienced some amazing places.
From Siem Reap, we caught a bus back to Phnom Penh, out of practicality and necessity more so than desire, and from there caught a bus to Don Det, an archipelago of 4000 islands a few kilometers over the Laos border.
It took a long and laborious bus trip to get there so we were determined to make the most of it and were in rush to travel anywhere else anytime soon. We spent three nights in Don Det, making friends with a Brazilian named Adriano. The days were methodical and formulaic. We would wake up, get a pineapple shake or two, and then relax. In hindsight, I can't actually remember where the time went. It just passed. We spent a day cycling around the islands with Adriano, who, with his shirt off, played on all my pale, skinny insecurities. The "road" did no favours for Adriano's tyre, going flat about 4 kilometers from where we were staying and resulting in a two hour stop at a local's house to get it repaired with about eight tyre patches, and just as were leaving, I discovered mine was bordering on flat too, but I had had enough of standing around playing with the kids, so I just rode back and left the bike owner to deal with it.
The nights were all spent in the same beautiful location, in a bar overlooking the water, drinking Lao Lao mojitos and hanging out with Adriano, Tom, a Laos guy with a hilarious laugh, two Austrians and about a hundred million flying bugs. It was blissful.
The islands have evidently changed a lot since the printing of the 2007 Lonely Planet that we are operating on which said that there was no electricity on the islands, however we established they have now had it for 4 months; the all encompassing hand of globalisation.
I expected Cambodia and Laos to be much of a muchness, however they are not as similar as I thought. They general demeanor of the Lao people is unbelievably relaxed and it is contagious. The prozac of travel. It is an effort to get very far off the tourist trail as public transport to smaller areas is hard to come by, but I have established that if somewhere is a tourist destination, it is that way for a reason.
From Don Det, we had one of the longest and most tedious days of travel I have ever had. A 15 minute boat ride, then a one hour wait, then a four hour minibus ride to Pakse, then a five hour wait, then an overnight sleeper bus (without the sleep) to Vientiane, then a two hour wait (where we were rescued from exhaustion by a cafe), then another five hour bus trip to Vang Vieng; the Mecca of backpacking. I had admittedly low expectations of Vang Vieng, thinking it would be full of nothing more than drugs and debauchery, and while this was a big part of the town, it was juxtaposed by the beautiful countryside which I am sure most visitors are too drunk or hungover to appreciate. We had a whole day of caving, "trekking" (one of the many loosely used terms in South-East Asia, along with "VIP"), tubing in caves and kayaking. We went further into a cave than I ever would by myself, and then turning of our torches and plunging into complete darkness. I stood there in the pitch black and expected my eyes to adjust to the minimal light, but there was nothing to adjust to. The eerie darkness and the sound of dripping water. Sensual respite. We had a local guide named Ktoy, who, we later established over dinner was one of the best people in the world at speaking to girls, so much so that he overcame the language barrier (an admittedly small one), and stole two Thai girls from their boyfriends. He was 29, but looked about 20.
Being that we were in Vang Vieng, we thought it our responsibility to tube down the river, a backpacker's rite of passage, and I think I am one of the few people to have ever done in sober, not really being keen to become a statistic. Safety is not high on the list of priorities in Vang Vieng with some of the most precarious flying foxes, rope swings and giant slides in the world, often made out of nothing more than the ubiquitous Asian bamboo and twine, but somehow giving the impression of haphazard safety. The last bar was two kilometers from the disembarkation point, so it was a slow float back, but relaxing nonetheless and every slight rapid was a blessing.
Vang Vieng is otherworldy. Every restaurant has big screens playing Family Guy or Friends or any other Western television show, and it was a strange phenomenon and sometimes I had to consciously think of where I was.
We have one week left in Laos and Asia, so we are both excited about getting to Europe and meeting up with the boys, but are already dreading going from the relative affluence of being a Western backpacker in Asia to being an Australian in Europe. I will miss Asia, so it is all the more reason to make the most of while I am here.
We are now in Luang Prabang in the north of Laos, a beautiful heritage listed city. It has a very different feel to Vang Vieng. There is an 11:30 curfew in the city. Every morning, monks walk around the city for alms giving, however, since we have only been here for one night (a late one), we weren't in any position to be awake at 5:15 am to see them, but tomorrow will certainly be more proactive.
It seems that there is a fraternity of South-East Asian travelers, and it is surprisingly small. We have met the same people all over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and it is a peculiar experience. There is a family of English travelers, two parents, a 14 year old, and two young kids, perhaps 6 and 4, and we have seen them everywhere we have been in Laos. They have shown me that, contrary to what I had thought, a traveling lifestyle doesn't have to end because of children, and it has also secured me a place to stay in Bath, which I am sure will be a beautifully familial experience after 5 months in hostels.
We have four nights in Luang Prabang before heading back down south for our flight to Lisbon. We have decided that we have to have another night in Vang Vieng. I am already having withdrawals from constant Friends and organic mulberry fruit shakes.
I have found a vegetarian stall in the night market where you can fill a plate with delicious vegetarian Lao food for 10000 kip, about $1.40. Spring rolls are an extra 1000 kip (12 cents), so cost is hardly much of an object. We have lived so incredibly inexpensively and I now understand the mindset of people who spend years here.
There is more I could write, as there always is, but I fear that anything more I write would be rambling, as this has already descended into. It is hard to pick the things I do and see which I deem noteworthy. To write about something is to force myself one day to remember it, and when every moment I am being immersed in such beautiful cultures. It is impossible to express in words the beauty of the minutiae and mundanity of everyday life, but I see this as being the most honest reflection of a place. A walk through a local market divulges more of a culture than a day spent in a museum. Museums and tourist destinations are facades of the actuality of a place, but I am incapable of writing about the beautiful simplicity of an Asian market or a local culture, so I have to leave it to imagination.
It is now 12:30, and probably time to do something more productive than blog, however it is very liberating to be able to now empty my mind of what I have done and look forward to what it is to come.
The last week starts now.