A full day of travel by bus from Jinghong into Laos. What a contrast at the border
crossing at Mohan / Boten. On the Chinese side flash, clean, spacious
buildings with an electronic passport scanner which prints out all the
information onto your departure card so all you have to do is sign. On
the Laos side 100 metres away is an outdoor grubby concrete shed with
chickens scratching in the dirt.
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| The right is China, left
Laos immigration offices |
One of the reasons we decided to return to Laos was to see how much
development has occurred after three years. When we were last here
there seemed to be a huge influx of Chinese money. Sadly the promise of
Chinese funded development that seemed so likely three years ago does
not seem to have been realised and rural Laos seems poorer than ever.
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| Roadside village house with pig and motorcycle |
We arrived at the Luang Namtha
bus station and I remember it as if it was last week. In town we went
straight to a little cafe we had spent many hours three years ago. It was a lovely
evening in the little town. We went to the night markets and visited
old haunts. A few new buildings but very little changed in the three
years.
The trip from Luang Namtha to Luang Praphang was a real
test of endurance. We had a mini-bus (van for 12 passengers) which only
had three other passengers. The road between the two towns is Rt 13
which is the major North - South highway in Laos. Three years ago,
although the road was narrow, windy and steep, it was okay to travel.
Well in three years huge patches of road surface have washed away
leaving gigantic potholes and ruts which had to be negotiated along with
the pigs, chickens, cattle, small children, large trucks and motorbikes
that shared the road. There was one particularly bad stretch of about
60km that took 3 hours to complete.
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| Route 13, Laos |
The driver took the small number of passengers as an opportunity to
make a bit more money and stop along the way to pick up other passengers
who flagged him down on the side of the road. So in hops a lady with a
chicken, others with various bags of vegetables. The driver also
seemed to have a bit of a wholesale business on the side and several
times he stopped at the roadside market and bought bags of produce.
Once it was cucumbers and chokos, another time bamboo shoots and taro.
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| Roadside market, northern Laos |
Finally after nine hours we arrived
in Luang Praphang and it was lovely to see this pretty heritage listed
town again. After 5 weeks of continuous travel and sight seeing, we used our time in Luang Prabang for relaxing, enjoying the fantastic restaurants and saying hello to old haunts.
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| View from the balcony of our wonderful guest house, Villa Laodeum Nam Khan view |
Sadly after 4 luxurious days we left tranquil Luang Prabang. We moved on to Phonsavan, which
is about 250 km southeast in an area known as the Plain of Jars. The
bus trip was the typical 8 hours of tediousness over narrow winding and
bumpy roads making unscheduled stops to pick passengers and cargo or for
the locals and bus driver to do a little shopping at roadside stalls -
once cucumbers, another rice noodles or dried fish. The toilet breaks
are the best though. At totally random times the bus will stop along
the roadside, everyone piles out and tries to find a 'private' bush or
ditch in which to squat and relieve ourselves.
The infamous Plain of Jars is the most
heavily bombed place on earth. The US carried out a "secret" war here against the dreaded communists (Pathet Lao & Vietcong) throughout the
1960s & 70s. The USAF instead of dropping rice, dropped about 3 million tons of bombs in a futile attempt to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh
trail. We rented a motorcycle and went out to one the Jar Sites, the site is
near a small hill and we climbed up to take a look around, all over the
landscape as far as we could see was bomb craters, so much ordinance was
dropped that even today the locals make a living from the scrap metal,
but not without cost, as well all the bombs countless million of anti-personnel bomblets were dropped, many still blow the hands and feet of
farmers and children who find or play with them (they look like a metal
tennis ball, yellow even).
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| Bomb craters 40 years on |
After a day of rain and bombs we decided
to press on to Vientiane. We got the bus and typicaly for a
Lao bus it immediately headed off in the opposite direction. Buses here
do not seem to run to any schedule or route as we know it but make it up as they
go along to maximise the income of the owner / driver. So typically a bus or tuk tuk will
go off on side trips down dirt roads over mountains to pick up
extra passengers, freight, chickens, pigs in a basket etc. It is all pre-arranged by a good nationwide and very cheap phone network. So we stop
in the middle of nowhere and then out of a dirt track comes a truck
with sacks of rice to go up the asle of the bus then a few km down the
road we stop for more passengers.
And so to Vientiane. What a difference to poor rural Laos! Big cars, wide
dusty roads, tall buildings and after dark the Soddom and Gomorrah of
SE Asia with bars on every corner and the tarts and girly boys out strutting their
stuff.
Its easy to see where the wealth of this beautiful country goes or at least what
is left over after Shanghai, London and Geneva have taken their cut. All
the latest model BMWs and Mercs are on the streets.
Vientiane is the only place where we have seen any overt development on infrastructure. Three years ago the waterfront was a huge Chinese/Lao construction site. Now it is a lovely waterside park which fills every evening with people walking, riding bikes or doing group aerobics. The park also functions as a levee for the Mekong which is fast silting up with all the soil eroding from the north where there is massive deforestation - Poor wonderful Laos.
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| Waterfront park getting ready for the night markets, Vientiane (note silted up Mekong) |
Nice to be back on the water in our little Solar Mist. Spent 5 days cruising around the Hawksbury, passing tan jelly fish the size of soccer balls, anchoring in coves with the magnificent sandstone cliffs all around, being serenaded by a father of three young children on an old ketch playing sea shanties on his squeeze box. Perfect. Looking forward to more as the weather warms up.
