Title:	Amazing people, remarkable waterfalls, beautiful temples and culture
Region:	South-East Asia
Countries:	Lao
Date:	June 5, 1998
My Rating (out of 100):	40
	Hello Everyone, Well I'm back in Thailand again after having spent just under two weeks in Lao. Lao is a beautiful country with really friendly people...the opposite of Vietnam. There are only 4.5 million inhabitants in the whole country, which is about the same size as the UK, but the UK has 60+ million. There is still lots of untouched monsoon forest left and plenty of caves and temples to see. From Hanoi, we traveled down to Vinh, a small town near the border crossing to Lao. It was nearly impossible to find anyone who spoke English in this town, so we relied on phrasebooks for communication. This always is a very slow process. We had a great deal of difficulty finding food the night we arrived as no one could be bothered to serve us, since we didn't speak Vietnamese. Finally we found this nice old lady who cooked us plain rice and fried cucumbers. Yum Yum. At least we weren't starving anymore. The next day we got up at 4am and made our way to the border. After a few hours of walking, buses and jeeps we walked out of Vietnam. Hurray! As soon as we crossed into Lao the temperature was a little cooler, the grass was greener, the locals were nicer and we got treated like people, not walking dollar signs. A world of difference. < There is a gecko on my monitor!> First stop: Vientiane, the capital...a small dusty city of 130,000 people. Plenty of good temples and lots of good food. Great steak dinners for 5000 kip! (that's about $1.80) The currency in Lao is the kip and the largest bill until recently was the 1000 kip note. This is a bit of a hassle, since it's only worth about 40 cents. When I changed 100$ at the bank, I had a 10cm thick stack of 1000 kip notes. My money belt was bulging! They are easy to get rid of, though. A few days after we entered the country and changed money the government issued the 5000 and 10,000 kip notes. Currency traders took this as a sign that the government expected inflation and the kip went down 20% (500 kip / dollar). So, we ended up losing money on the exchange. oh well, not that much. Oddly, the kip has dropped from 1000 / dollar to 3100 / dollar in the last two months, but I was unable to find out why. Overall, this is good for travelers as prices are cheaper, but inflation is already on the rise in Lao. Lao was a French colony so there is still plenty of French influence, mainly in the food. We ate well every meal in Lao for dirt cheap. Great steaks, some pizza's, baguettes and pastries. From Vietiane we went up to a small town called Vang Vieng with about 5000 people. We rented bicycles and rode through the country-side to see the local people on their farms and the scenery. The country is full of lime-stone mountains with flood plains in between that are mostly jungle with a few rice fields. This is in contrast to other SE Asian countries that are so overpopulated that little or no jungle is left. The roads we were on crossed over several rivers, but no bridges were up so you had to walk through. No problem...it was refreshing and the water was not more than 50 cm deep at the deepest. There are also lots of huge caves around the area, some of which have been turned into temples. So, you are exploring these caves and all of a sudden you come upon a Buddha statue in the middle of nowhere. Around the cave area was a beautiful blue-green river that we all went swimming in during the afternoon. A very, very nice place, overall. Picture Perfect. From Veng Vieng we caught a truck to Luang Prabang, another small town to the north. From here there are more caves to explore and one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen. It's a cascading waterfall over five levels, each one about 20 meters high and you can climb up to each one. The limestone has formed like stalagtites where the water runs so it looks like giant mushrooms that the water flows off. You can go under the "mushrooms" and explore the caves behind the water fall. Great swimming, and a beautiful setting. Another Picture Perfect area. Luang Prabang also had great food and plenty of Chinese / Thai style temples to see. In the North of Lao, during the American War, the US dropped lots and lots of bombs on Loa in illegal opperations. There are still plenty of left-overs and the local people either use the bomb casings, etc. as planters, fence posts or for scrap. It's odd-looking. The most common is the "cluster-bomb" casing which looks like an oversized picket-fence post, and is used as such. From Luang Prabang we took a "speedboat" up the Mekong River to the Thai Border, stopping in a sleepy transit village for one night. The speedboat ride makes the West Ed Roller coaster look like child’s play. They are basically elongated canoes that barely fit two people side by side with a big fat LOUD motor on the back. The Mekong river is filled with thousands of tiny limestone islands and the boats weave back and forth between them as they race along at 70kph. A few years ago a Thai tourist was killed in one of them so now everyone has to wear life jackets and motorcycle helmets in the boat. Usually, safety is not even a factor in SE Asian transportation. All in all, the boat ride was great fun even though I couldn't hear for 3 hours afterwards because of the roar of the engine. The scenery was fantastic, even if we did race by most of it and you were clinging white-knuckled to the side of the boat. Anyway, we crossed overland to Thailand and caught a bus to Chang Mai, in the North near Burma, where I am now. From here I'll be heading to Bangkok again for a few days to develop / scan some photos and pick up some airline tickets and visas. After that it's down to Koh Tao for some scuba diving and then Krabi for some rock climbing. A vacation from travelling. Then...it's only Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia left.