(The relevent photos will be coming soon!)
We spent a lazy last few days in LP. My new friend, Tai Dam trader NaTing and her family had gone to Vietnam for New Year, although I still had plenty of invites to sit with the other Tai Dam and 'chat'.
One afternoon I dropped into Big Brother Mouse to play with the kids, stacking building blocks and practising English. I also went to the Mouse offices and bought a pack of books to give to someone somewhere. Wandering on, I found several fascinating places we had overlooked before, including Tamarind and OckPopTok. Jo from OckPopTok hails from Esher near where I grew up, which was a little weird. I was especially excited about Tamarind, as they did a specialised Jeow tasting plate, which I knew Andy would like, and a market tour, which sounded ideal for us.
We had lunch there the next day and booked the market tour, which turned out to be a fascinating explanation of all the various strange and wonderful ingredients that make Laos food distinct. Check out the photos for the padaek; the yummy 'Water Buffalo Lower Intestine Juice' and and the 'Coagulated Blood Blocks'. The vegetables and snacks got their fair share of time too, so now I know I can eat the 'Mysterious Looking Bamboo Tubes with Stuff In', but I need to be wary of the 'Cute Little Banana Leaf Parcels Tied up with Bamboo String'.
One afternoon I wandered around a Wat overlooking the Nam Khan river, and was captivated by the drum and gong session being performed with great savoir faire by some young novices. If you want the video (for the sound) let me know an I'll email it to you - I can't put video on Darkfox. It was utterly spellbinding, but when it was finished, the novices instantly and coolly wandered back to their sweeping as though they had just been washing up. I later read it was the full moon drumming, performed for 3 days a month.
Laos has turned out to be like Japan for the quality of cultural and arty things kicking around. So after all the previous nights 'window shopping' we spent an evening in the night market buying more things than you can shake a carved stick at, and then a small fortune posting it all back to the UK. And in between relaxing, doing all this, and playing Munchkin on our balcony, we fomulated A Plan.
We've been off the beaten track again. Instead of taking the comfortable tourist bus from Luang prabang, stopping off at Vang Vieng en route like you are supposed to, we decided to go a more awkward way. Andy asked in a travel agents for details of buses to Sayaburi, but she said she didn't have a clue, and no-one had ever asked her before, so that confirmed our route.
We headed out to the bus station on the appointed day, and, while all the other falang were being loaded onto the VIP bus to Vientiane, we hoisted our backpacks onto the roof with the ducks and squeezed among the locals on the Sayaburi rattler.
What can I say? We watched authentic Laos go about it's daily business from market to school and river to hilltop. We passed though villages where all the houses were traditional wood and bamboo design on high stilts, with wide shady verandahs, and small indoor areas. We saw 'old' ladies in siin squatted by the road waiting for someone to buy their goods, chatting and smiling. We crossed the Mekong and had our passport details taken by a very courteous official at a checkpoint, while the bus and all the faces at the windows looked on. Near Pak Lai we saw locals in conical hats bent over in paddy fields sparkling with reflections of the hills, planting out the silky green new rice plants in a scene out of time.
We waited for a couple of hours at Sayaburi South Bus Terminal (see photo) for our sawngthauw connection to Pak Lai, and ate sticky rice with amazing bbq pork and homemade jeow for Andy, and with a huge papaya for me, while the locals watched with benign but continuous curiousity. We bumped off on a 3 hour dusty journey with a few Lao for company. We stopped at a roadside market, and heard the whisper "falang, falang" like a rustle in the trees, with smiles and shy Sabaidee. Eventually we reached Pak Lai where we spend the wallet-busting sum of $4 on a double ensuite room, before a brief dinner (I never realised egg fried rice could go that wrong!) and bed.
The negotiations for the ferry tickets in the morning were complicated by the conflicting information on prices we were given. One of the locals was keen to 'facilitate' communication with the lady in the booth, and suggest that she would charge us 180,000K each. As our guide book said 1/3 this price, we were reluctant to believe him, and while Andy was negotiating with an English speaking monk, the official ticket office opened in the next room to what we thought was the ticket office, with, magically, the price on the wall - 'Foreigners 120,000K.'
Once on board we were treated to a trippy Buddhist video on the laptop of the senior Buddhist monk - pretty surreal for anywhere but Laos. The journey was 7 hours of sliding past green hills and river rocks, with big whirlpools in some parts. Ripping down some rapids to, sorry, Bohemian Rhapsody on my MP3 player was magical - the sound of the big diesel engine largely precluding conversation. We stopped pretty frequently to load and unload. At one point we stopped to load some freshly made solid wood furniture, most of which went on the roof, but a couple of boathands got a lovely bench seat right up the prow, like old ladies on a cruise, keen not to miss a moment!
We arrived in Vientiane (pronounced Wieng Chan; blame the French!), to the sound of a glorious tropical sunset reflecting in the Mekong, and found ourselves a room in a converted villa in the west of the town for $12 a night, before heading to the Taj Mahal for dinner. I am thinking of renaming our blog to 'In search of the real Taj Mahal - travels among the Indian restaurants of Asia". But it still did the best gulab jamon I have ever had!
