South-East Asia

Laos started a bit disappointing. The border town of Huay Xai has actually nothing to offer at all, and we quickly had to discover that Laos surprisingly is more expensive than Thailand in all our major budget positions (room, eating, bus travel). We had our first encounters here with the local health system, for some suspicion of malaria due to having a fever. The hospital was actually pretty ok, and as Laos is still a communist country, treatment here is free for everybody, and you just pay for materials such as syringes, and pharmaceuticals, which cost cents probably because they brew them themselves in the backyard.

As soon as everything was alright, we bought the bus ticket to Luang Prabang. We paid something around 20 Euro per person in our guesthouse (overpriced, as I heard later on). We bought so called VIP bus tickets, and showing up at 7 in the morning the bus there seemed pretty ok, clean, aircon, TV etc. We drove 500 meters out of town, then the bus stopped at some green field next to a rather rotten old non-comfort bus half of the size of ours. Everybody had to get off and sit down in the other bus, which had no comfort at all. Complaints to the driver they ignored, pretending to be unable to speak English. For the next hour, we stopped every 300 meters to pick up some farmer and his bag of rice, lemons, or strange smelling things. The bus ended up being overloaded and overheated, with some people sitting in the aisle on extra plastic chairs. As we heard later on, it is common practice here to cheat that way, and a lot of travelers make that disappointing experience that rather spoils the reputation of Laos for being a hospitable country! The whole trip took something about 13 hours, the driver having no rest for the whole trip. Due to bad roads, the speed is 30 km per hour, but as soon as the bus enters the village, it goes top speed, giving horn signals all the time, so that hopefully all the cyclists, water buffalos, kids playing, etc. is hopefully quick enough to escape.

When we arrived in Luang Prabang, we were covered with dust - seems to be a specific of Laos. The whole country is under a permanent veil, which is either brown dust or mist above the mountains, which gives pretty dramatic shadow-play picture. Luang Prabang is a comfortable town on the banks of Mekong river, with lot of 19th century French colonial architecture and French food, convenient cafes along the riverside, and more temples. Nothing you couldn't explore within a day, but nice to hang around and just do nothing.

One of the best businesses in Laos must be umbrellas. Laotians seem to try to protect against any kind of weather with an umbrella, be it walking or driving on a bicycle or motorcycle.