Lovely Little Laos
A river cruise, motorcycle touring, and new friends
We’re back on American soil, but we still owe you some posts! We’ll keep writing until we’ve gotten a chance to share everything we experienced.
River cruise on the Mekong
There are a couple of ways to get from northern Thailand to our next destination in Luang Prabang, Laos. Flying tends to be fast but pricey and not very interesting. The bus is cheap but notoriously uncomfortable. The last option is the slowest, but by far the most scenic - taking a boat down the Mekong River. Mind you, there are a few different choices of boat available. Most infamous are the high speed long tails, where passengers wear motorcycle helmets in case of a crash. That wasn’t our cup of tea.
We had the time, so we opted for a more comfortable two-day Mekong cruise from Chiang Khong, Thailand to Luang Prabang. It proved to be a highlight of the trip! Our ride down the “Mother of Waters” - as the river is called in Laos and Thailand - was smooth, beautiful, and a delightful way to make new friends. The morning we arrived we boarded and found our assigned table where we were paired with a wonderful bloke named Oliver (from England). We loved hanging out with Oliver, which was good because you spend a lot of time chatting with you tablemate on a two day boat trip. Besides having good craic, Oliver turned out to be quite the social chair for our boat. He organized dinner our first night in Luang Prabang, brought friends from his hostel on excursions from town, and ensured everyone got together for a farewell lunch before leaving town. At one point on the boat Jenna told Oliver that he has a “good heart”, which naturally he hated it because he’s British and compliments made him deeply uncomfortable.
There were a few organized stops as part of the cruise. The first was a local village, where dozens of kids were running around playing, joking, and generally being the truest form of children. The next was a temple in a cave, which wasn’t new to us veteran travelers, but it was nice to stretch our feet. We also stopped at a whiskey and weaving village. It seemed kind of like a tourist trap, but we made friends with a little boy and played an excellent game of “roll the dump truck around”. We did also sample the local whiskey. The first two versions we tried tasted like juice and the third one was reminiscent of rubbing alcohol.
The experience of being on the boat was a joy in part because you could just sit back and watch the whole world of Laos and the Mekong steadily roll past you, giving us a chance to appreciate the slow arrival in a new place.
Luang Prabang
This little town, once the capital of Laos, was utterly charming. It’s surrounded by two rivers, the Mekong and Nam Khan, meaning many restaurants and hotels are right on the water. Buildings make extensive use of teak wood, and we came to love the sense of rich warmth the material provided. Unlike some parts of Southeast Asia, the streets are walkable and remarkably quiet. There is a magical quality to the town at night, with warm breezes floating off the water, lantern light spilling across the sidewalks, and the arched rooflines of temples visible on many corners. In short, we loved Luang Prabang.
We were having breakfast with friends this past week, and our friend Brian asked us who was our favorite person we met during our trip. While there were too many to pick one individual, one of the standouts came along during our visit in Luang Prabang. As we settled in at the hotel on our first full day in town, we were experiencing some issues getting data to work on our phones with the local SIM cards, which the helpful hotel staff was trying to troubleshoot. As we waited to diagnose the issue, a Bulgarian man named Vladimir walked up to check in. Overhearing the conversation, he offered to buy one of our SIM cards off us, despite only being in Laos for two days and already having his data set up. Naturally we declined his offer, but we got to talking to him and he was truly fascinating. Vladimir had founded and now ran a company developing solar energy projects all over the world, loved America and taking his kids on RV roadtrips across the country, and had done a stint as a Bulgarian minister of parliament. We even did a little fact checking online after our conversation and Vlad’s stories checked out
We were so intrigued after our chance conversation that we set up dinner with him the following night where we learned even more. First, Vladimir somehow convinced a restaurant manager to give us a table on a fully booked evening. Next, we got to sharing stories about various outdoor adventures we’d had, and explaining the concept of type 1 and type 2 fun, to which Vladimir said he thought he had a good example of type 2 fun. This is when we we learned that Vladimir had attempted to row across the Arctic Ocean from Norway to the Arctic over the summer. Yes, you read that right. This whole situation was so crazy. Vladimir and a partner prepared for months, as they expected to be on the boat for anywhere from 20 to 30 days. During the time that they would be at sea, one person would need to row constantly for two-hour shifts while the other person attempted to sleep, eat, and navigate. While they made it 313 nautical miles, the attempt was cut short due to terrible weather and Vladimir’s seasickness which meant he couldn’t keep water down. We were very entertained by the story and glad to have met Vlad.
In addition to dinner with an interesting Bulgarian man, we explored local waterfalls by motorcycle, tried our hands at traditional weaving, and took one of our favorite cooking classes. The ride out to the Kuang Si and Tat Sae waterfalls was smooth in a metaphorical sense, but not in terms of pavement. There were a lot of potholes. But we eventually made it to the popular waterfall and were able to sneak off to a quiet path. Tat Sae in particular required getting a little extra adventurous! There are multiple levels to the waterfalls, but the bridge to the highest pools was washed out. Using roots as handholds, we crossed the gap and climbed up to what felt like a secret oasis.
The waterfalls and pools have very high levels of minerals, which turns the water an intense aquamarine blue. The minerals also reduce the growth of algae and other plants in the water, and the deposits build up into a rough but delicate layer on all the surfaces the water flows over. This means you can actually climb up the waterfalls between pools which is a surreal experience!
For our cooking class we met at Tamarind, a local restaurant. Everyone was loaded into the back of a covered pick up truck to be taken to the market. At the market, we saw lots of interesting things for sale, including Buffalo stomach and intestines. After the market, they drove us the rest of the way to the beautiful complex of kitchens and gardens outside of town. The class itself was very well-run and interesting. All of the cooking took place over charcoal fires in the Ceramic brazier. The food was really interesting. Almost everything involved using a mortar and pestle (unsurprisingly). We made traditional eggplant and tomato dips, steamed fish and banana leaf, stuffed lemon grass with ground chicken and spices, and lap, which is the signature dish of Laos. We were offered the opportunity to include stomach and bile in our lap, which is traditionally served raw. We’re pretty adventurous eaters, but declined on all three points in this case. The food was delicious and the class was a ton of fun.
Motorcycle tour to Nong Khiaw
After catching the motorcycle bug in Vietnam, we knew we wanted to get another adventure in during our time in Laos. We also wanted the opportunity to see more of Laos beyond Luang Prabang, and we heard that the nature up north could not be missed. We found a shop in town that would rent us a scooter, and after a brief explainer on how to change gears on our 110cc Honda semi-automatic, we hit the road for Nong Khiaw.
Matthew successfully navigated the four hour trip along the intermittently paved highway with minimal issues, eventually bringing us to a beautiful stretch of mountains along the Ou River. Our two different accommodations in town were both charming and peaceful, with little cottages right on the river. Our second spot even had a lovely pool to spend the warm afternoons next to.
On our first morning we woke up early to hike Pha Daeng peak. While we weren’t early enough to catch the beginning of sunrise, we were lucky enough to be above the morning clouds rolling through the valley. The views were spectacular and finishing the hike by 9:30am left us feeling happily accomplished.
On our second day, we asked our hotel for a recommendation on where to rent a kayak. We scootered over, and handed over our 100,000 kip ($4.50) for a boat “for the day,” the guy said (no need to return it by a certain time).
After a bit of confusion from the young Lao kid who got us the kayak, and a comment from us about a drainage hole we needed to cover with shoes, we were on our way. We set off and were slowly making our way up stream, which was fine since we were in no rush, and Jenna was mostly taking in the scenery rather than paddling. But after 15 minutes, we started noticing our balance was off, and we could not figure out how to stabilize the boat. We went back and forth for another two minutes, trying to move more in sync, until Matthew realized that the hole in the center of the boat (that we had covered with shoes) was actually allowing water to flow into the hull.
We barely made it to a rocky shore before we had to get out of the boat. Now standing on the side of the river, we weighed our options, and watched the kid who gave us the kayak drive by on another boat on the far side of the river without stopping. At that point we decided to beach the water logged boat, scale some rickety stairs, and make our own way back to the kayak shop to drop our life jackets and paddles. It wasn’t the afternoon we planned, but we laughed about it later that day.
After a couple days in the far north, we looped back toward Luang Prabang where we planned to catch the fast train on the new Laos China Railway on to Vientiane. But the best laid plans were not to be. We had booked tickets on the train through a third party site called 12Go which operates all over Asia, which we had read would take the stress and hassle out of the process. As it turned out, 12Go did not come through on these tickets, and informed us the morning our departure that the train was overbooked and we were out of luck. Apparently this is a common problem in the high season, where Chinese tour companies get first access to train tickets and will often book up all available seats on the line. While it’s not clear if this would have worked better in our case, we’ve heard that local hotels often have more luck securing tickets, and are definitely better at communicating when there are issues. We ended up booking a last minute flight on to Bangkok since we needed to get to southern Thailand to meet up with our friend’s for the second to last leg of the trip!