Archive for January, 2008

We got a local bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng. Laos is totally different from every other south east Asian country in one very specific way. Vehicles don’t honk constantly, in fact they hardly honk at all, which is nice in the towns but a bit scary on the windy roads where each time you turn a corner you are involved in a near miss with a cement mixer.

Also somewhat disturbing is when the bus pulls over to pick up a guy who has, along with his bag and 2 year old daughter, an AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle.

We made it to Vang Vieng though. And found out that it is something of a party spot. We met up with Devon again, and partied. Then we got up and went tubing…

Tubing is what Vang Vieng has had a tourist boom for. You float down a river in an inflated Lorry innertube, and stop off at all the bars by the river, jumping off rope swings, death slides, tightropes and volleyball. Unfortunately we didn’t want to ruin the camera so we don’t really have any photos of the tubing so here are a few stolen ones.

Note the santa hats. I had to give mine to a 7 year old girl in lieu of payment for guiding my tube in. I think she was happy about it.

It is crazy fun and would never be allowed in our safety crazy country. We loved it, and made a point of Jumping off the highest ones we found. I managed to split my shorts and so had to do a large part of it wearing a friend we’d met in Luang Prabang, Devon’s skirt. It rather suited me.

All the bars in Vang Vieng play Friends constantly so on the next day Dean and another friend from Luang Prabang, Lucy spent 8 hours watching it. I joined up with two crazy Japanese guys, Yohe who we also knew from Luang Prabang and his friend Ushi. In an absence of any form of political correctness whatsoever I nicknamed them Ninja and Sushi. Ninja being Yo because he does crazy jumps and crawls, Sushi because it’s sounds like Ushi. Ninja is on the right in the hat.

We went on a hike around the area and climbed a mountain,

and then we went into a huge cave which had a lagoon inside it. It took over an hour inside the cave to reach the lagoon, it was really huge and Ninja nearly fell down a chasm. We found an interesting Stalagmite that Sushi sat on,

At some points the ceiling was just over a foot high,

But we finally made it back to the outside world.

Dean’s family have a Christmas tradition where they all go for a Curry, so after some christmas day tubing (involving some serious stunts with myself, Ninja and Sushi), and in keeping with that particular Roskell idiom we went for a curry. Dean, Lucy, Devon, Dan (a third guy from Luang Prabang) and myslelf were joined by two girls I’d floated into on my tube (Emma and Yvonne) and we went for Christmas dinner. It was gorgeous.

Then we went down to the Smile bar, a major bar in Vang Vieng, and we all gave eachother rubbish presents wrapped in bog roll. Yay! Dean got a toothbrush, the reason for this is he chipped his tooth, or rather Devon cracked his tooth, and I got a copy of the Lord of the Rings.

The story Behind why I got LOTR was quite amusing. Devon who was the gift buyer when she first met me said the following of my Tattoo: “Hey is that some kind of weird esoteric asian script? In which case it’s cool. Or is it Elvish? In which case it’s……..   REALLY REALLY COOL!”

The next day we booked on the “Bus trip from hell”, from Vientianne to Hanoi in VietNam and that is worth of a post on its own.

We didn’t see much of Vientianne the capital of Laos, but I did get a look at their striking Arc De Triomphe.

And we said goodbye to our Xmas Luang Prabang crowd in a TukTuk.

After such a long stint in China, which is strange to say really as we both feel that we’ve barely scraped the surface of what the country has to offer, we headed south towards the sun and more relaxed country of Laos (Pronounced Lao).

The bus journey from China proved to be so much easier than we’d expected no thanks to the advice from our Lonely Planet guide. The bus that we boarded in Kunming, was headed straight to Luang Prabang, our first stop in Laos. We’d only bought tickets to the Chinese border thinking that we’d have to cross and get another bus on the Laos side, but a few Yuan in the hands of the driver saw that we could stay on the ride right up to our destination.

So after crossing the boarder in to Laos, and feeling the firm facial slap of complete calm, we really knew that we were in an all together different country.

We also sampled our first bit of Laos food on the border, courtesy of a little Laos lady and her wee stall. It was a fine bit of meat on a stick, but please, don’t ask what variety it was as we don’t know; plus Laotians are known to enjoy a bit of rat every now and then (Don’t worry folks, it’s not the same breed as our friends down in the sewer, I hope).

After a lengthy wait with customs, we were back off through the winding roads towards Luang Prabang, where we arrived at the rather late time of 10:30pm without anywhere to stay. Luckily for us, a man on an adapted motorbike with side car offered to take us on a wild taxi ride round to find somewhere to sleep. Being three of us (I failed to introduce our fellow travel buddy Amanda, who was also traveling on the bus from China) with our bags we were pretty sure this guy couldn’t fit us on his bike, but in what we’ve found to be a great tradition in south Asia, they can fit anything on one of those little things (Wait for Vietnam, where they make it into an art form).

After whizzing round the streets we eventually found somewhere to sleep, and was glad to finally jump in to a real bed again.

The next day we went for a wander round the streets to see what the city and indeed Laos had to offer. The city itself is a UNESCO world heritage site playing host to many fantastic temples, monuments and natural wonders. After eating breakfast we decided to go and see the waterfalls. During our discussion with a Tuk Tuk driver, trying to barter his price down, another Tuk Tuk pulls up behind us and an Aussie lad pops his head out of the side saying “Wanna come to the waterfalls? Hop in the back”. With barely a moments hesitation the three of us were sat in the back of a Tuk Tuk along with a group of other revelers ready for some high diving and rope swings.

The waterfalls didn’t just play host to a mass of water coming in high and falling down low, it also for reasons unknown to me had a few bears and tigers.

We decided to climb to the top of the waterfalls, hoping that we’d discover some hidden pool away from the other people. After about thirty minutes of climbing, we discovered a fairly muddy pond, and not the secret oasis we’d hoped for. Still it was an enjoyable stroll enabling us to get some nice shots from high.

But enough with the jungle, we went there to dive from waterfalls and swim in a unnaturally blue waters.

Sadly not many photos were taken of us diving in as we didn’t want to risk getting the camera wet. I’ll have to just talk you though some of the highlights, and what turned out to be a low-light too.

Stretching over the pool was a rather well placed tree, on to which someone had tied a rope, creating a superb swing into the water. We all took great enjoyment in swinging out and launching ourselves into the blue below. Obviously though, this is a mans game, and men like to create challenges and over come them. The challenge here was to climb higher and jump higher, like the primitive ape-man clutching his first bone weapon and shouting from the topper most peak that he’s the greatest and most powerful one of all. So a step up from the rope swing was the waterfall, which after the first ape jumped from and survived, the rest of us followed suit… then a group of six-year-old girls did the same and the ape-man was left feeling a little deflated. So the challenge had to go higher. Above the waterfall hung the tree that the swing was attached too, and ape doesn’t need swing, he can climb higher and jump further without it. So ape did.

This particular diving ape goes by the name of Tom, and he wanted to prove that he was the mightiest of the jungle, so he climbed up high and launched into the water- Top Bombing as they say. Actually, they should say ‘Bottom Bombing’ because that’s exactly what he did. Yes, he landed rear end to a rock under the waters surface. So this poor ape didn’t wave his bone weapon anymore, instead he limped out of the waterfall, and indeed did the same for the following few days, kinda like a hairy John Wayne; and if you listen to the winds from the east you should still be able to hear his moans of rectal pain to this very day.

We ended the day with some food, drink and bowling! Laos has a strict curfew, with almost everywhere closing between 11:30pm and midnight, in Luang Prabang, the only exception we found was a bowling ally.

We played a particularly rubbish game, despite all the hardcore training I put in on Wii Bowling before I left the UK.

The following day, Tom and I went on a more cultural trip visiting the local temples. Actually, who am I kidding, Tom had read that some of the temples featured the mythical creatures Naga; which as you all know is a creature featured in World of Warcraft.

We gladly found a good few examples of the beasts, as well as many other really amazing looking pieces of architecture and carvings.

After wondering round a few of the temples, we decided to visit some more temples for a change. This time though, they were over the river, which required us to get a boat and sail across.

It was a short but cool ride over the water, the boat was really low down keeping you close to the lovely brown stuff beneath. I’d have loved to have traveled that way for a while, taking a slow ride through the many rivers, but our time was short in Laos and we sadly didn’t get the chance.

The other side of the river was much more run down and village like, the buildings and the path ways looked quite shoddy, but quaint at the same time. Also the free roaming chickens and wildlife gave the place a really back to basics look.

The temples had less of an overall splendid feel to them, but the lack of shiny gold and well kept carvings gave the place it’s own level of charm.

We also visited a cave, which of course also doubled itself as… you guessed it, a temple. Pitch black inside, we followed a young guide clutching a torch and wondered down into the dark depths below. It was possible to hear the bats in there stirring as we passed on our way to view the many ancient statues of Buddha.

After the cave we took the boat back to our hostel side of the river. Along the way we met a group of kids playing in the river and doing a bit of rowing; who needs Playstations for fun eh?

The last thing on our list to do there was to watch the sun set from the mountain in the centre of the town. We weren’t the only ones looking to do that, so we found the sight seeing spot to be a little crowded. Still, some nimble climbing from Tom (he doesn’t learn) enabled us to capture some great shots of the days end.

As we wondered back down the mountain we checked out the selection of Buddha statues amazingly named: Sunday Buddha, Monday Buddha, Tuesday Buddha (I don’t need to go on do I?).

I dubbed this one ‘The Double High-Five Buddha’.

Oh, there was one other thing we saw on the way down, a bit of fantastic thinking by someone. On the far side of the mountain was a gun emplacement, I presume from the time when Laos was in war. These days though, the local kids use it as a round-about, which I think you’ll agree is a much better idea.

[Sadly the videos of us on the 'ride' won't upload, so the static image of Lucy having fun at the fair will have to do for the time being.]

Just before leaving the mountain we spotted another Naga and I wanted to see if I still had the killing touch…