Luang Prabang - The 381

Luang Prabang (Laos)

One of the first things that you see when you enter Luang Prabang is Mt.Phousi, alternatively, if you enter during the night as we did, you'll see Wat Chom Si, all lit up and sitting on the summit of Mt. Phousi. Obviously for people that know me, once I see something like that my very next endeavour will be to get up to the top of the thing and have a look around at the earliest point that an opportunity presents itself. So on this day, with just a little bit of convincing on my part, JJ and I attacked Mt.Phousi with the reckless abandon that a climb like that warrants. Reflecting on the day now, I don't actually remember doing much more that day other than the climb and bargaining for a chess set later that evening, could the climb have taken that much out of us?

 

Buddhist temple of Haw Kham (Royal Complex) - as viewed from the start of our climb up Mount Phousi

So somewhere near the start of the climb up you find out that it's 381 steps to the top, taking you closer to the heavens and also presenting a half decent view of Luang Prabang. I'm sure somewhere at this point we also had a Swiss garlic man sighting, disturbing on many a front as 1) There was just no way that we wanted to chat with him, 2) He was still wearing the same clothes that he'd spent 15hrs on a bus ride from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang in, if they were smelling bad then well then I shudder to think at to the odour that those man juices could be presenting now and 3) He was trying out his game on some poor unsuspecting female traveller, oh well, maybe the offer of garlic actually worked out for him on this occasion!?

Part of the 381 - Mount Phousi - Luang Prabang

After hitting the first 100 steps or so of the climb the staircase started to zig-zag up the hill. It's not that bad a walk although with a bit of sun and a high amount of smoke in the air it made it difficult for some of the combatants that were trying to scale the peak on that day. Never the less, as you move up the hill the views back down to the  centre of Luang Prabang and over the Mekong are magnificent, if not made just a little disappointing however by the immense amount of smoke in the air. Although what you lose in terms of air quality and clarity you make up for with some amazing sunsets.

The Mekong from the top of Mt. Phousi - Luang Prabang - Laos

Luang Prabang sits at the confluence of the Mekong River and the Khan River. Once you make it up The 381 you get an absolute panoramic view across the area, making the struggle up the hill  worthwhile. What you also get at the top are you common variety souvenir hawkers and kip opportunists that will take those hard earned kip out of you either with their sly moves, fast talking or emotional game play. Like other places in Asia what you sometimes come across are people that have cane/straw cages that contain several sparrows, the release of which will grant you ,the payor, a kind wish from the anonymous person selling them to you  via manipulation of your heart strings and the clear observation of the pathetic imprisonment of the defenceless sparrows. Of course, as JJ pointed out, these sparrows don't fly away into their bought freedom but rather fly back to the residence of the owner, only to be brought back up the hill the very next day. My argument to this however was that at least they would get to experience a little bit of freedom rather than being caged up for the rest of the day. So we both purchased about an hour of their freedom for a paltry sum of perhaps 10cents, to me at least it was worth the trouble and effort.

JJ on the summit of Mt.Phousi - Luang Prabang - Laos

The sun, cutting through the haze and the frangipani trees - Mt.Phousi - Luang Prabang - Laos

Yeah, always knew that I had big bells!

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The rest of the time we spent taking shots of the surrounding area and wondering at how amazing it was, and what it would be like on a clear day. After which we climbed down the other side of the hill and made our way, I'm sure, into another random bar where the alcohol was cheap and worth our time in being occupied for several an hour.

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Later that evening we wondered through the markets again where I did manage to pick up a fantastic chess set for approximately $30USD. Sure, perhaps a little expensive for these neck of the woods but it certainly serves as a quality piece. The bargaining with the lady took a couple of rounds, and it also took me walking away only for a little voice inside my head to scream out and say,' Henry, that set is yours, now go back and pick it up!'. I think I learnt my lesson from Vietnam, if there's something that you particularly like, don't walk away, pick it up and take it home because If you don' you'll only sit back and regret the fact later on. Of course, this theory does not apply to STD's, lets just be clear about that.

 

Luang Prabang - your 15 hours are up

Luang Prabang (Laos)

We really should have done our research regarding the trip from Huay Xai, even good ‘ole Wikipedia nominates the path down from the border as treacherous, poorly lit and a road that generally isn’t very well maintained. All those elements may have been true, but the thing that got me was the pedal to the metal option that the bus driver took on the way in. He must have been cranking somewhere in the 120kph bracket on a fairly ordinary road and if I wasn’t half in a daze from the prior 15hrs then I would have been a lot more concerned for our safety.

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Stealing our way into the night (how do you actually do that anyway?),JJ and I bedded down at the Somkhounmuong Guesthouse, a small, quaint and quiet little place about a 5 min walk from the main street in town. Jason and Audrey decided to stay at another guesthouse for the evening and as they say, that was about that. JJ and I only saw those two twice more before jumping a flight from KL to home, and there departure from LP was completely discourteous and full of spite, why, I don't actually know. All that I do know is that they next day they disappeared without leaving word, a note, or responding to my texts. On reflection, a selfish and pretty low thing to do. Any sort of word just to let us know what they were doing would have sufficed. Needless to say, having Jason off my back was actually a blessing.

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The next day JJ and I had our first taste of Luang Prabang and really, our first opportunity to unwind and stay put in a place for long enough to try and absorb our surrounds. It was extremely easy to see why this place is one of the most popular and most visited town in Laos. Firstly from an architectural standpoint there was a distinct fusion between that old style French provincial, which of course dominates in certain areas of Laos, especially throughout it's 19th and 20th century heyday and that of older type traditional Lao style, with some other modern urban style in between which I can’t quite put my finger on, other than to call it typically Western. Needless to say, the town is geared specifically for tourism these days but to me that doesn’t really matter. It’s a charming place and doesn’t have the same hustle and bustle feel about it that other South East Asian towns/cities have, not that there’s a lot of hustle and bustle in Laos generally. The main streets are devoid of any real traffic other than bicycles and motorcycles, from what I remember, that’s because there was a ban that was placed on any heavy vehicles polluting the main streets with their noise, size and generally overbearing nature.
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On our first day in Luang Prabang, JJ and I pretty much just wondered the streets and did what usually comes naturally in our situation, we bar hopped. Stopping at some fairly picturesque places perched atop of the Mekong we enjoyed several cocktails during the afternoon and took in the feel that is LP. Without question it’s a magnificent place and it’s quite obvious why it became World Heritage listed by UNESCO in 1995. It has that maintained old world feel and charm whilst still allowing itself to be modern in part, oh, and there’s some great little wine bars along the way to boot.

JJ perusing the cocktail menu - overlooking the Mekong - Luang Prabang, Laos.

One of the great bars/restaurants overlooking the Mekong - Luang Prabang, Laos.

Our first day passed us by fairly quickly as it usually does when you want a day like that to slow down. In the early evening, commencing at dusk (approximately 5pm) we discovered that the main street closes down entirely to traffic and becomes an interesting night market for the next 4-5hrs. It’s not an exotic market by any stretch of the imagination, obviously its gauged to acquiring the tourist dollar but again, so what. It had that chilled, romantic air about it, and strolling through the place ever so casually was the right way to just unwind from the previous few days and attempt to get over the vehement Lao super-parasite that was still cutting a destructive path deep within the farthest reaches of my stomach and bowels.

TH Sakkarin Street - Main street of Luang Prabang, at dusk.

Another great place to have a drink! - Luang Prabang - Laos

Wondering through the night markets - Luang Prabang - Laos

Huay Xai - 15 hours out of Huay Xai with Captain Detoxification

Huay Xai (Laos) to Luang Prabang (Laos)

Our stay in Huay Xai the next day was unintentional in that had the Gibbon Experience not been so intense then we would have been either on our way to Luang Namtha or perhaps Luang Prabang depending on our mood. As it happened our day of hiatus was in a town that essentially acts as an entry point for those individuals that have been trekking in the north of Thailand and were looking for the cheap and nasty route into Laos. Well, it's not that bad actually, a day of doing not much actually really assisted.Most of the day was spent inside watching TV. JJ and I did manage to stroll down the street at one point and lock the four of us in for a bus ride to Luang Prabang the next day. We did, as all good travellers do, ask the right questions as to time, nature of the bus, departure point, etc. I add this line here because my 'mate' at a later point in time decided to be a tool and hammer me about it the next morning, like I was some moron who had never travelled in his life.
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Later that evening we caught up with our two Dutch friends that saved our bacon on the walk out of the jungle. It ended up being a pretty cruisey evening in all, we managed to find ourselves a decent dinner and some entertaining conversation in the middle of nowhere. I think from memory Claus and his wife (can't remember her name) were going to get up the next day and do some hardcore running as they were in marathon training, well, something along those lines. They were fitness freaks and then some, much respect for keeping to their routine out here.

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As our jump day closed and the sun broke on what was to be a nightmare of a bus ride, all four of us wandered outside waiting for the pick up that would take us to the bus station. It was at this point that Jase decided to have is morning 'princess bitch' and went at me regarding my knowledge of how and where we would be picked up and whether I had all the details. Truthfully, I've never really come close to hitting a friend in my life by f*** me, did he push me at times, this being one of those times. It's like I'd never travelled in my life and was some reason required to get his ok on the travel logistics in order to make everything reasonable in his mind, and really, what would have been the harm if the pick-up for our bus wasn't on time in any case? We'd just have hailed a tuk-tuk in order to take us to the bus station, no big deal, no reason for the melodrama. As I've said in early posts, it  felt like he  deliberately gunning for me at times for reasons that I'll never understand and thankfully I never took a swing at him, even though it came really close to happening.

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By powers of sheer 'luck' we made it to the bus station with the actual pick-up that we'd arranged and managed to be there approximately 20 mins prior to departure, who knows how the hell I organised that, a bloody miracle in my books? In any case, this is where the mental torture for some of us began. If the Gibbon Experience pushed our physical tolerance, well then the next 15hours across the top of Northern Laos was to push our mental endurance, especially as we were told that the trip was only to take 10 hours.

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A little while into the journey some random Swiss dude that popped up down at the back of the bus started chatting with one of us, don't remember who he commenced his conversation with but I'll blame JJ for it, she knows how to pick the winners when it comes to random conversation. I think at one point someone passed him a common copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Laos, it was right there and then that I wanted to strangle this head band wearing freak and submit him into a physically imposed silence. As he read passages from the book all we heard was a continuous chorus of 'Oh wow....wow!' and then him looking around at as us in order to gain some acknowledgment in his strange request to read passages out aloud to us, passages that we'd all read a number of times in our travels to date in any case. I'm not sure if he was looking to be acknowledged, or was looking support, or whatever the hell it was, but he was irritating the daylights out of me. Worse was to come however, his commentary on the bus driver also drove me insane. Every time the driver shifted gears, or did something not quite to his liking or his bus driving expertise, this guy laughed and made sounds that had me believing that he was about to ejaculate all over himself. It was a little disconcerting to tell you the truth. Still further, and by far the most excruciating part of our interaction with this imbecile was at the point where we had stopped at a bus station and Mr Swiss, by all his grace and power of courtesy and decency decided to buy a few cloves and garlic, just so he could start chomping on them, in the bus. Now the smell emanating from him was so foul and disgusting after that point not something I was happy to deal with for the next few hours, coupled with his lack of deodorant and generally strange manner, this creature from the country of neutrality needed a warhead up his rear in order to wake him up. I did pull up our Swiss friend for a moment and called him out on putrid the smell was that was coming from his direction, and to quote this freak verbatim, his response to me 'Oh really, I can't smell it, and yet I really hate it when other people are eating garlic because the smell is so bad'. He then continued to bite down on these mammoth cloves and offers me one for my trouble! Seriously, when did you check out of the asylum?

Somewhere in Laos, I think a few hours out of Luang Namtha

Jason and Audrey, 'loving' the experience of 15hrs on the road...oh yeah!

15 hours of fun!

Anyway, our 'fun times' continued for hours and hours after that point in time! If is wasn't the Swiss Multivite coming up with some outlandish stunt then it was the Lao penchant for excruciating music having to be blared out at ridiculous decibels for hours on end that did the trick. As we later came to learn, but not appreciate, the custom on long journeys is for crap Lao music to blare in the bus so that anyone that was trying to get some sleep and forget the difficulties of the dirt track ride (aka, Highway One) , was continuously kept in the present and feeling 'tip top'. Certainly for me, if Mr Swiss and the music wasn't part of the ride I could have survived relatively unscathed and easily could have zoned out, I think JJ was of the same mindset also. The most difficult part was actually the last hour when we were tired of guessing when our arrival into Luang Prabang was to be as most of our guesses had been somewhere in the vicinity of 3-4hours prior when we did actually arrive. As for Audrey and Jason, well, I know for a fact that the ride pissed Jason off, as most things on this trip tended to do. In the last hour there was heated discussion between them as to what their next steps would be and whether they would be leaving for Vang Vieng almost immediately after enduring this ride. Weeks later, what amused me the most in relation to this particular situationis that Jason almost had the hide to blame me for the llogistical inadequacies of his journey due to the fact that the bus ride had taken so long? Bloody hell, really? So I ask the question in return, who was the one to initially cut days off their own schedule in order to get a dumb ass tattoo completed in KL? As always, the kid needs someone to blame and it was almost always going to be me.

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In any case, we got into Luang Prabang sometime after 11pm on that day, wrecked from another draining day and looking forward to some time in one spot for a change. Not sure of what restaurant we stopped in prior to turning in for the night but it was fantastic, just what we needed after experiencing the ravages of jungle food, Lao style.

Bokeo Province - The Gibbon Experience - Bokeo, Northern Laos - 'Get the hell out!'

Bokeo Province - Laos

 

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress

In the movie Return of the Jedi the forest moon of Endor was portrayed as the home of the Ewoks. Relatively small creatures, not particularly technically advanced, they lived high amongst the trees in tree houses built on relatively large platforms. Whilst the Ewoks were considered to be cute, there was always a small component that lay hidden inside of most people that wanted to kick the living shit out of these fur balls because their adorable and charming aspect quickly ran its course. So to when Jai Lee and Sa Va announced their presence online via that distinctive zip line hum, well, I felt like picking up these two Lao Ewoks and throwing them 60mtrs into forest below. The Lao super bug that had gone 12 rounds with me during the course of that night and morning had raised its hands in victory in time to watch the sun rise over the valley and now these almost ignorant dingbats, who knew full well that 80% of us were struggling, were already pushing us to get cracking in order to make a timely rendezvous with the Gibbon Express parked at base camp.

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I may have mentioned earlier, we cottoned on to the fact that Jai Lee was a bullshit merchant from day one. When we advised him of the situation, (the fact that four to six people were really struggling this morning), and questioned him on the duration of the walk and the quickest escape route, this is the dimwitted and none to sympathetic response we received,'We walking, then we zipping, and zipping, 20 min walk up, then zipping, the down maybe 30 min and then zipping’. Dude, just give us a timeframe we all chorused. He laughs and says ‘I don’t know’/ No mate, you do this all the time, how long does it take to get out!? ’We walking slowly, maybe 2.5-3hrs’. Let me just hit this early, this response was a complete fallacy! Complete and utter bullshit really. This walk actually took us somewhere between 5-6hrs, in fairly warm temperatures and in a physical condition that for most of us could be considered to be bordering on somewhere between delirious and that extremely hung over feel, only in a very sickly type of way.

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I guess I don’t need to go through a blow by blow detailed account of the walk out, aside from a few critical moments that remain clear through that sickly, fuzz filled head of mine. The first zips in the walk, for me at least, were torturous. I didn’t care much for the surroundings and was only concerned about being one of the first online so that I could give myself more recovery time on the other side , which in turn was basically just sitting down on the ground, breathing in slowly and hoping that I didn’t need to throw up any time within next 30 seconds. The second critical point was a climb that we did about a third of the duration into the morning, it was physically exhausting, the sun was cutting through the canopy, the Lao dingbats were driving us on for reasons unbeknownst to me and it was then that Jason started to waver. Obviously Jase had been hit harder than any of us by the Lao hell bug and this walk was beating the living crap out of him, but it was only at the point that he fainted on the path that it clicked in my head that this was turning into a very serious situation. A couple of things happened at this point, our Lao guides for their part offered nothing. No support, no sympathy, no advice, other than staring at us in a perplexed, dumbass type of fashion that made several of us want to crush their craniums with a well struck blow from  our zipl ine trolleys. For the rest of us, the thought was, ‘what the hell do we do for Jason now?’. Believing that he wouldn’t be able to walk out and having no other form of transport in to pick him up, my thinking at least was that we’d need to get some sort of stretcher in so as to allow us to carry him out. I can only say that after resting for 15-20 mins and allowing Jase to cool down and get his faculties about him, we all breathed a little easier when he got back up again and started walking , a pretty ballsy thing to do in the situation, even more so when you consider that at the point we stopped we were still three hours away from the village. I also remember a relatively long zip later on when JJ yielded to the destructive power of the Lao parasite and looked like she was in the hot zone as she ran for the shelter of some forest undergrowth and trees. It was either this zip or the following one that had a deathly transition from one high long zip via a rather precarious platform, down a few stairs, and onto another zip that was 30mtrs above the ground. I wish I had had the gumption or the awareness at the time to have filmed it or at least  to have taken a few photos. Even in absolute health I would have thought, ‘Hey, you need to be alert here, your well being kind of depends on it', but in the current state we were all in it was verging on being moderately reckless. I don’t have any of the stats on the numbers of injuries that take place at the Gibbon Experience but you’ve got to think that at some point along the line serious damage has been done. It reminded me of an instant early on the second day when I was unclipping from the zipline and took a step back to where I thought the platform was only to be warned by a few people watching that the next step would back would have assured me a fall to a torturous ending. If I was on my own or people hadn’t been watching me at that time I’m sure there’s many a bone that would have been broken.
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Approximately 4-4.5 hours in to the walk we arrived at what appeared to be the  living quarters for the guides. Most of us were completely wrecked by the time we got there. Resting on the benches outside of this hut we didn’t say much, we didn't really need to. We kind of all looked off into space and thought of it ending or imagined what it would be like to pick up a Coke or Fanta from the village when we eventually got there.
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Another memory I have is of one of the guides telling us that ‘many foreigners’ drink when they’re in the tree houses and thus their illness is obviously derived from the impending doom of the hangover that appears on route the next day. It appeared however that no matter how many times we explained that we had not been drinking and that it was the food that triggered the path to destruction within  this group, they just didn’t believe us. Again, I think at that point in time we all felt like attacking the guy and making him feel a piece of the pain that we were all enduring at that point.
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From the point that we left this little guide outpost back to the village it was mostly easy walking. Along the way we did run into what appeared to be an overly boisterous, overly excited and ambitious group that was raring to get into their own personalised Gibbon Experience , oh yeah, I remember that time and place, that feeling, that was us two days ago. Look at them, they’ve got no idea as to what they're about to encounter!.We're the stalwarts, we’ve been in the shit, we know the reality of the Experience. The looks on their faces gave them away however, that fear of the unknown creeping initial expressions of intrigue and exhiliration when they saw our pain and anguish, retelling stories of what they shouldn’t be doing or eating, oh and yeah, be wary of those bats in tree house one, they’ll be out to get the rats that will running past your feet all night!

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Once we were out of the hills and onto the flats then we finally realised that this was actually the last leg om this hell day. It was a relatively easy walk back to the village at that moment but by this point we had been beaten from pillar to post. I don’t recall a more unpleasant day hiking since my Year 8 ‘Rambo Camp’ , (seriously, that's what it was called), at Patrician Brothers where for some reason I developed such severe chafing between my legs that I had to walk the last 2kms looking like I had severe elephantitis. Finally, and thankfully we made our way across that crappy little creek that two days ago had looked so quaint, and as we entered the village we all made our way to the only place in the world that mattered at that point in time, the small crappy shop that sold Coke and Fanta. I don’t know where they had imported the stuff from, and not that it really mattered because it certainly didn’t taste like Coke, but those first long sips were the stuff that dreams are made of! Also, to be duly noted, at the side of the shop was a little box that read ‘tips for guides’, or something along those lines - 'So you want a tip do you? Here's one? Get the f*** out of my way and I'll do my best not to smack you across the face!'.
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After a few drinks and a little mental coaxing to get us up and mobile we poured ourselves into the truck for the bushwacking drive back to Huay Xai. Not sure how long the ride back took but I can tell you that through the fog of sleep and dreams I don’t remember much of it. I took a few shots on the drive back just to show how wrecked we were at the end of the drama of the last day.

JJ and Audrey on the ride back to Huay Xai

On the ride back to Huay Xai - I think the look says it all !

 

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Eventually we found ourselves back in Huay Xai, everyone in that barely lucid state of 'Did that really just happen'. We lined up the Sabaidee guesthouse pretty much directly on arrival. In all truth, quite a decent place with a great view over the Mekong river into Thailand, especially into the early evening when the sun was setting. Not that we really made much of the joint other than the beds that we immediately crashed out on after the much needed showers. Actually, from the point in time that we got there until some time during the next day I don't remember much of what actually went on or whether I did anything other than pick up a few bits and pieces of TV through half closed eyes.

Sunset over the Mekong - Sabaidee Guesthouse - Huay Xai - Laos

Downtown Huay Xai taken from the Sabaidee Guesthouse - Laos