Meandering down the Mekong

The Luang Say glides down the muddied Mekong on its two-day journey to Luang Prabang navigating through boulders of jagged rocks brutally exposed in the dry season.

My fellow travellers and I slipped into a slothful slumber, wrapped in prettily decorated textile cloaks, as the boat pulled away. Re-energised after a snooze, we were awoken for tea, sweet banana chips and guidance.

Travel is slow with ample opportunity to watch life on the river banks. Banana plantations crowded over gold panners sifting the sparkling sand on the river banks. Small boys splashed in the shallows and the scenery alternated between feathered grass, woody slopes, vegetable gardens, small jumbles of bungalows and peanut patches marching in parallel lines across the sand.

Pakbeng, a linear river settlement, sits in a gash in the mountainous landscape on a northern curve of the river. Its sole purpose, it seems, is to provide a bed and sustenance to the hundreds of travellers taking the slow boats up and down the Mekong. The Luang Say Lodge provided us with a gorgeous set of bungalows linked by wooden walkways for the night.

On the second day of the journey we passed many more barges chugging up the river with their bold colours and Laos flags swinging from a bamboo pole at the helm.

We stopped off at the isolated village of Ban Bor to see the women’s weaving products. Ban Bor, surrounded by a small teak plantation, is home to some 200 Shan, Khamu and Lao Leum villagers. The Lao Leum and Shan specialise in weaving. In the past, cotton would have been grown in the area; now it is imported from Luang Prabang.

Monkey magic

The Gibbon Experience allows homo sapiens to live like the gibbons they’ve come to spot in tree houses in the Bokeo Forest Reserve. Seven tree houses have been built high up in the canopy in a reserve, three hours from the Thai border at Houey Xai.
Our tree house was 45m above ground with three levels spread across the embracing branches of an enormous and beautiful fig tree. Our height meant we had a bird’s eye view of the jungle canopy that stretched out below us and three zip lines in and out of our new home. On the upper level was the honeymoon suite, on the second level, the zip lining entrances, kitchen, dining room and hammock look out and on the ‘basement’ level were two other bedrooms and the bathroom. The squat toilet and slatted shower floor meant you could watch the waterworks plummet to the ground and ponder the time it took for the moment of impact to be heard.
The Laotian Black Crested Gibbon (concolor concolor lu) is endangered due to habitat loss and hunting. In Laos the gibbon only lives in a small area bordering Thailand and Burma. The Gibbon Experience helps preserve their habitat by encouraging tourism that demands live sightings and paying for park security.
The gibbon sings like a diva (the male more so than the female) in the mornings only in a melodic, swooping tune that has an underwater tone to it. At 5.30am we got up and watched the mist roll back across the trees. We zip lined across the valley floor and started hiking up at calf muscle-killing speed to bamboo thicket where we occasionally stopped for breath to listen in on jungle sounds. Initially all we could hear was the thumping of our hearts as we strode up steep slopes. Our guide heard the first sounds and we raced through the bracken and came to a stop. Then, all of a sudden, the tuneful whooping began and as it continued it crescendoed, dropped and crescendoed, dropped and crescendoed. A troop of singing gibbons heralded the new morning: it was beautiful, clear and filled the valley as it echoed around us.

Jungle antics in Bokeo

‘Place your hand over the roller, the other on the strap and go’. In this case go meant launching myself along a zip wire 100 metres above the Bokeo jungle forest in northwest Laos. Despite the safety harness and the knowledge that the wire can hold 3000 kg, it’s anti-survivalist to step into the air.
Nothing prepared me for the thrill of it. The forest unfolded beneath me: a basin of greenery opened out and as I whizzed at high speed along the cable, great undulating hills of trees and bamboo rolled towards the distant horizon.
The first few times I zip lined, I was aware of the high-pitched screech of the cable close to my ear and, when on the lower cables, the tips of bamboo branches poking my feet, the proximity of the occasional tree trunk, the rush of blue sky, the depth of the foliage, the speed of the run... and my inability to prevent a crash landing! I blame the platforms: some of them were not designed to be hit at high speed by a clumsy zip liner. As we continued to zip line from platform to platform or platform to treehouse across the valley, our confidence grew: no hands, one hand, co-ordinated moves across two parallel lines and filming. Flight of the humans was addictive stuff...

Village wandering around Luang Nam Tha

The women carried manioc sticks and branches of wood in their baskets with the strap wrapped around their heads. We passed them as we teetered along rice bunds just outside Luang Nam Tha. Luang Nam Tha in northwestern Laos is a mountainous region shrouded in fog in December and is well known for its pioneering conservation and pro-poor sustainable tourism efforts in the Nam Ha Protected Area.
The rice had been cut making it easier to see the storage huts and the odd bird. After passing the Hmong village of Ban Nam Hoi, we climbed up a steep slope past swathes of sugar and into the planned lines of a rubber plantation. Our guide told us that this 2 ha plantation was managed by the Chinese who used the trees’ sap for shoe soles. At the top of the hill, the concentric circles of other rubber plantations could be seen banded up and down neighbouring hills.
At the Tai Dam village of Nam Gneane, the overpowering whiff of lao lao whiskey on the boil greeted us. Villagers combine 15 kg of rice, 2 kg of rice husk and yeast to produce 15 litres of lao lao that they then go on to sell for 4000 kip per litre.
At Ban Nam Mat Mai, an Akha Village, we passed on the outside of the spirit gates that bookend the village (as it brings bad luck to the village if a stranger touches the gates) and wandered up to see the village swing used in an annual ceremony to give thanks to the spirits.

Elephant wander, Tad Lo

Tad Lo is a small resort collected around a series of cascading falls on the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos. Many folk brave the cold waters for a swim on the upper levels but one of the best ways to enjoy the area is by taking a jungle walk on an elephant. The elephants at Tad Lo Lodge are happy pachyderms and very well trained. They roam free, gorge whole branches of bananas and immerse themselves fully in the river each afternoon at bathtime watched over by a few amused hotel guests. One male and one female were chosen for our mid-morning walk. The path is narrow into the jungle and the elephants, unsure of the terrain beneath their feet, used their trunks to assess the ground and then gingerly step forward. This careful assessment of the path is vital to the elephant’s safety and makes for a blissfully slow wander in a bucolic setting. The highlight was wading through the river with the falls behind us...

Bolaven Adventure

We plucked raw coffee beans off the plants and nibbled at them; most were fairly bitter. We were on the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos which rises high enough (to 700m) and is cool enough for numerous coffee plantations as well as tea. In November and December the plateau is covered in a carpet of wild yellow sunflowers. The landscape is cut through with numerous tumbling waterfalls; one of the most striking is Tad Yeung, a double column of falling water.
Coffee was introduced by the French and then reintroduced by the Vietnamese in 1923 and passed numerous cooperatives that process the beans before export to France.
We also stopped at a family run tea plantation. The same family had been growing organic tea — oolong, green and sometimes white — using the same plants that had been flourishing since 1975. Here the tea is suffused by the flavour of jasmine and gardenia flower.

Dolphin spotting at Don Khone

The old French disused railway lines slices through Don Khone but is full of small rocks so I opted for the path that heads north out of the village and around the eastern edge of the island. It’s a pleasant 45-minute cycle ride through villages and forest before arriving at Ban Hang Kon. Here, small boats launch into the lower Mekong for a chance of spotting the critically endangered Mekong or Irrawaddy dolphin. According to the WWF there are only 80—120 of the dolphins left in the lower Mekong between Laos and Cambodia. Here, on the riverine border, the dolphins collect in deep river pools, especially in the dry season.
Our small boat headed out into the intense heat of a December morning to scan the surface for these elusive creatures. According to Laos and Cambodian lore the dolphin is revered so is never deliberately hunted. One of the reasons for their dwindling numbers is the fact that the dolphin gets accidentally caught in fishermen’s nets.
In silence we glided into the centre of the river, the odd clump of vegetation on a tiny sand bank obscuring our view. The river shimmered in the sun making it hard to spot movement. Then it happened, the unmistakeable shape of a large mammal rising out of the water; then two of them. They were still at quite a distance so we decided to pay the extra 10,000 kip to the Cambodian authorities so we could get closer to them across the border. The dolphins continued to rise out of the water for air, fins on show; we also caught a glimpse of a head. It was thrilling to be on the water and to see the dolphins surfacing in their natural habitat.

Sunset on Don Daeng

There’s no better way to enjoy the sunset behind the sacred mountain of Linga Parvata than by reclining by the poolside at La Folie lodge on Don Daeng island. The sun retreats behind Linga Parvata and the entire scene can be watched from your sun lounger, cocktail in hand. As the light dies, local farmers bring their buffaloes and cows to the water’s edge for a soak and a brush down; fishermen’s boats mill about hoping for the last catch of the day; local school children cycle home and hummingbirds hover frantically around the pink bougainvillea framing the scene. Above, swallows swoop. In a country that has eaten a good deal of its wildlife, the sound and sight of birds at sundown was a wonder.

Jungle temple ruins

Don Daeng island, lying supine in the Mekong River, faces the town of Champasak. It’s home to the upmarket La Folie Lodge as well as a community lodge and homestays. Visitors come for the peace and quiet and the cycle rides through the paddies, past homes, wats and mooching buffaloes.
I set off on my bike ride a little too late in the morning. By 9am it’s steaming in these parts of Southern Laos; the sun is relentless and only cools its ardour around four in the afternoon. Don Daeng is 10 km long and 5 km wide but with near on zero shade between the couple of villages that line the island's hem. There are no cars on the island, just motorbikes and bicycles. The centre is a grid of paddies with the occasional wat; dozens of cows, chicken and geese mill about and new-born baby buffalo, snoozing on the ground, look at you doe-eyed if you wake them up with calling sounds. At the village of Ban Dan Thip on the northern strip, a boatman took me across the water to the Indiana-Jones temple of Tomo. Tomo temple is a 9th century Khmer temple, now a ruin and partially buried in jungle. The entrance doorway, remarkably, still stands, as do several structures of laterite bricks, but much of it has deteriorated and is an archetypical ‘lost ruin’. The ground is littered with naga sculptures and at the entrance to the ruins stands a larger, seven-headed naga monument.

Sacred mountain and Wat Phou

The pre-Angkorian ruins of Wat Phou lie under the mountain of Linga Parvata topped by a natural lingam. The site is beautiful — an enormous causeway lined with columns of lotus buds divide the two baray and end in the symmetrical positioning of two pavilions adorned with carvings that are seriously and atmospherically crumbling. All the while the back drop is the lingam mountain. A series of very steep steps shrouded by flowering frangipani leads up to the main sanctuary originally dedicated to Siva. It’s a small temple decorated in carvings of apsaras; a dominant carving on a door head features Indra sitting on a three-headed elephant — the representation of the Kingdom of Lane Xang (Land of a Million Elephants). The sanctuary is now a Buddhist shrine and wisps of incense drift around the Buddha statues that are cramped inside. Behind this temple a makara’s mouth channels the holy water from the holy mountain — once used to wash the lingam that used to be housed in the temple.

Cycling through Champasak

Champasak is a quaint one-street town strung out on the banks of the Mekong. Along its one street, old French colonial piles are mixed in with Chinese shophouses, wooden Lao homes and the odd new hideous modern house in Lao-European style and birthday cake colours. Bicycling through is the best way to get a feel of this town, the closest to the pre-Angkorian ruins at Wat Phou. The most beautiful French colonial house is the perfectly proportioned ochre mansion of the former Prince of Champasak, Boun Oum with its green louvered shutters and bandstand entrance. The neighbouring white house is also said to have been a royal residence.
At sunset, I settled down into a riverfront cafe to watch clumps of vegetation float by, children bathing in the river, herb plots being showered by watering cans, fishing nets tugged in the water and fishermen on canoes. As the sky glowed pink, wisps of mist rose above the water.

Journey into the Sacred Forest

Deep in Dong Phu Vieng national park in central Laos lies a sacred forest. The Katang people who live near the sacred forest (known as Song Sa Kae) believe it is inhabited by a spirit. Upsetting the spirit by cutting the forest’s trees or eating its monkeys is bad news for the person who has committed the offence against the forest. It usually results in illness or death. The only away to appease the spirit is to sacrifice buffalo or chicken. The Katang ethnic minority respect the forest and annually make a buffalo sacrifice where they offer up the buffalo head and its blood and the locals also drink the blood during a ceremony.
Actually there are two forests, separated by a path, near the village of Vongsikeo. We walked for several hours to get there, fording streams and grazing our way through the vegetation - cardamom strips chewed, live large red ants munched (very sweet-tasting), forest floor almond-shaped fruits snapped open and nibbled, mushrooms plucked and devoured.
After a nighttime welcoming ceremony of singing and traditional music, fuelled by bottles of lao-lao (rice firewater), we rose early to enter the forest. Our guide sat down on a mossy fallen log and told us that if a villager commits an offence against the forest the spirit comes and possesses the offender. The village shaman is then consulted and will tell the offender he will die if he doesn’t make amends. As we sat in the early morning and looked at the light filtering through the thick forest, the movement of branches, trees, leaves and birds with ripples of wind, it was hard not to believe in the power of the Katang’s forest spirit.

The strip, Savannakhet

Downtown Savannakhet is a wonderful mix of crumbling French colonial architecture, Chinese shophouses and Modernist eccentricities. Most travellers skip through but in doing so miss an untouristy, charming historic centre with possibly the last working original bicycle saamlor in the country.
UNESCO hasn’t paid a visit yet to Savannakhet; it ought to. One hotel company has restored a French colonial building on the main square demonstrating how beautiful the surrounding colonial buildings could be.
The main oblong plaza is dominated by the creamy lines of a French church and scattered around are disintegrating ochre buildings in colonial style. There’s a very modern cinema building nearby, a Lao art deco theatre and the Vietnamese-Lao Association building topped by globes and doves which defies categorisation. Communist leader in chief, Kaysone Phomvihane’s residence, a beautiful Lao house, lies restored in perfectly manicured gardens but off limits to the public. Close by is a handsome French colonial home, with wooden louvered shutters, that was built between 1935-37. It belonged to the city historian. Opposite is the city historian’s father’s house. This man was an adviser to the father of the last King of Laos.
Savannakhet’s newest architectural adornment is Savan Vegas, an outrageously kitsch construction on the outskirts. The casino facade is supported by gigantic crowned white elephants and the front door obscured by an orgy of pachyderms dancing around a fountain!

Socialist Realist statues

There are some glorious examples of Socialist Realist statues in Laos. Aficionados of these communist commemorations should not miss the superb montage at Muang Phin in Savannakhet province. Two golden statues of a Vietnamese and Lao soldier stand united against a backdrop of carved relief showing the fighting during the Second Indochina War. An elephant in battle is depicted too. Muang Phin lies close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail and a downed US helicopter lies next to the statue.

Xam Neua’s main roundabout is also dominated by a Socialist Realist collage of battle and at Vieng Xai in remote Hua Phan province, site of the secret communist city of Pathet Lao during the Second Indochina War, three golden statues of a soldier, farmer and worker are mounted on a pedestal. The worker has his foot pressed onto a golden bomb, inscribed with the words ‘USA’.

Sorrowful Savannakhet songthaew journey

The mobile clothes’ shop came to a halt. It was a songthaew lined with clothes’ rails that was moving from village to village to sell to the locals. Our songthaew pulled in just after it to pick up a woman with a baby. The young mother’s smile revealed betel-nut stained teeth; the nine month old child was dressed in a royal-blue eskimo hood. The mother had just been to visit a shaman, some 50 km from her home. She explained that she had visited the shaman because the baby kept crying at night. The shaman requested 50,000 kip up front (a small fortune for a local) and then a donation of a shawl and sinh (woman’s skirt); after that she would just have to pay the bus fare for the visits. The shaman had offered to take care of the child until it was older but the mother could not agree to this but did agree to make regular visits to the shaman. The mother was worried, she said. This was her eighth child; the other seven had died. Many of them had died at several months old; but two of them, young teenagers, had died in a hospital in Thailand of insect-related disease.
The mother explained that she used to have farmland but her husband had to sell it so they had no rice for eating that season. They were just growing vegetables and bamboo shoots. I gave her my bag of sun-dried buffalo meat as she stepped down from the songthaew.

Capital of snooze

Vientiane is probably the most chilled out capital city in the world. It’s also small like a provincial town. Each part of the city is quaintly called a village and there’s barely a traffic light in sight. You can walk the length of the historic core in about 15 minutes. Most buildings are low-slung and streets are interspersed with wats giving it a cosy, small-town atmosphere. It also boasts, curiously, a large number of Italian restaurants and dozens of local clothes shops in a small radius; its largest ‘department store’ only has two floors. Tuk tuk taxi guys are underemployed and snooze over long lunch hours on hammocks in their vehicles, appointment times shift, traffic police sway in boredom, and lights go out across the city before 11pm. No all night dancing here...

Sundowners on the Mekong

Just before dusk, locals, expats and travellers wander down to the Mekong river bank in Laos’ capital to sup a Beer Lao and munch on freshly cooked food while watching the sunset. Plastic stools and tables are rolled out, small fires start burning, and huge shrimp squirm in metal bowls, ready for barbecue. This evening rite of passage is a great way to wind down. You can watch the vendors at work, take in the Thai skyline on the opposite bank and watch fisherman in the dying light in the shallows. The sky bleeds a fabulous shade of orange for quite some time before the darkness approaches. This sunset pastime, however, may not last long as a huge project to redesign the river front is underway. Land is being reclaimed, a road is to be built, gardens planted and permanent restaurant sites already ejected as the bulldozers set to work. Get there while you can still sit at these makeshift stalls on the river bank.

Trekking and caving around Vang Vieng

Yapping puppies greeted us at the Hmong village of Ban Pa Thao, north of Vang Vieng. Just 10 years ago these Hmong villagers lived in the nearby mountains but having eaten all the wildlife they were forced to come down to the river basin, our guide said. Also, post-1975 the government has awarded them land and the village was a mix of bamboo homes and concrete houses. Towering limestone mountains sheltered the village and line the entire Vang Vieng valley cut through by the Nam Song river.
We wandered past a canal smothered in red dragonflies where two boys were fishing. Sporting snorkelling masks they were pushing their faces through the river while holding handmade harpoons; the occasional stab produced a tiny wriggling silver fish that was placed in a small basket attached to one of the boys’ belts.
After a carbohydrate lunch at the restaurant at Tham Nam (water cave), we plunged into tractor tubes (and the icy cold water) and pulled ourselves using a rope under the low ledge that heralded the entrance to the cavern. The low-slung cave eventually opened out a little into what felt like a giant sluice. Blacker than the darkest night we switched on our lamps and pulled ourselves along the rope, spinning occasionally, as the current washed against our tubes. Tiny drips of water splattered on our heads and millions of miniscule flies dived at the lamps. As we travelled further in, giant, clumsy stalactites came into flashlight view. Then we hit a mound of pebbles, got out to walk and as we sunk back into the tubes to continue our journey I realised the rope had gone.
‘Now we swim with no rope,’ said the guide. Errr... this is the bit when we disappear forever, I thought.
‘You do know the way back, right?’ I enquired as I noted that there was not just one tunnel but one leading off to the left and then to the right and perhaps even a few more left and right tunnel turns as well.
It was inky black, the air was humid, the flies were kamikaze, the dripping intensified and the water felt syrupy. Powerful arm muscles were needed to paddle against the flow into the bowels of this cave. I refrained from asking how far we could get on our muscle power as I wondered about ever seeing natural light again.
The return paddle was much easier as we weren’t fighting the river current. We flowed back and happily blinked our way back into the daylight.

Kayaking the Nam Song River

The elephant cave is so-called because of the stalagmite that looks like a small pachyderm that stands on a ledge in a cave. Two kiwis were lost in this cave for two days; they walked in without a guide and locals thought they were lost forever. At the cave entrance is a bell fashioned from a missile head.

Nearby, is the starting point for a kayaking trip down the Nam Song river back to Vang Vieng, Laos’ adventure and drinking capital. I stepped into the kayak, lost my balance and immediately fell in; giggles all round from the Lao and other tourists. I was soaked to start with so didn’t need to worry about the upcoming rapids, I thought. Eighteen kilometres on the Nam Song back to Vang Vieng and a Beer Lao - no sweat.

The Nam Song outside of the rainy season is a pretty welcoming river. The rapids were enjoyable, not in the least bit challenging, but the kayaking was hard work as the river was sluggish. The sun was intense but as the afternoon wore on, the line of jagged karst mountains blotted out the sun. The intense green of the river banks and trees drinking at the river’s edge gave way to a monochrome view as shade was cast over the valley. This made the kayaking easier and we could slow a little and watch the locals cast for fish in the shallows.

Around four kilometres north of Vang Vieng, the peace is shattered by the start of the tubing run. Almost everyone that comes to Vang Vieng floats down the river in a giant tractor inner tube while drinking and swinging on huge ropes from the river bars that line the routes. Suddenly, the verdant peace of the valley was transformed into the Costa del Nam Song as tourists danced on bamboo platforms and glugged booze for this rite of passage. If you hadn’t heard of tubing the Nam Song you would have thought you’d unwittingly ordered a ‘happy’ pizza on coming across this river orgy. Gliding past the tubers we swapped ‘sabaidees’ and then tried to avoid being jumped on by tourists hurling themselves across the water on the flying fox swings.

Dusk in Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is a bijou city of golden temples, terracotta rooves, chic cafes and winsome French colonial architecture. Dusk is a good time to wander as the pink sun sinks slowly into the Mekong River. At Wat Xieng Thong, the most exquisitely decorated of the city’s temples, monks chant while seated on the floor as the last of the visitors eye the vibrant mosaics. Children use the low-slung iron fence around a relic chamber as a goal post in an impromptu game of footie, meanwhile, up the road, a wat courtyard has been converted into a badminton court and the shuttlecock flies back and forth in front of the gilded eaves of the wat; it’s a mesmerising sight. As the light fades, the back streets are lit by the latest manmade craze. Fancy, bendy, chrome-and-colour skateboards sport wheels that illuminate on the move and all over town pre-teen boys show off their balancing act while trying to avoid tourists, dogs and motorbikes. Looking down on them are visitors who have crowded onto their guesthouse balconies or inched slowly into a chair for a Beer Lao at the many riverside cafes.
In the back streets, old Lao women sit under door frames peeling vegetables for dinner. In other homes, small cauldrons are already burning outside homes as young mothers scoop up playing toddlers. At the tip of the peninsula, the silence is broken as tuk-tuk drivers screech around the bend at a three-wheel angle ruffling the bougainvillea as they conquer their racetrack urges.