Sitting here could be relaxing, but instead I’m forced to listen to a full moon beach party on the next island.  The English music you hear when traveling is passport burning worthy.

Sometimes the obscurity of the staggeringly bad 80’s song flaws you and you have to laugh, if only to stop your ears crying. I think maybe in the same way that we used to banish criminals to Australia, we now forceably export all the copies of the shittiest music we’ve ever produced to be played in beach bars in places like Laos. There they are left to slowly die without the dignity they never deserved. More worrying their played here to attract people. I though in the same way I cover myself in Mosquito repellent, bands like Wham could only be described as people repellent! Or maybe they know that hearing “Give me hope Joanna..hope Joanna” will drive you to drink. Bob Marley would turn in his grave he knew how his muscial legacy was being tarnished by beach bars, they are Marley crazy here.

Hmm I’ve wondered off the point.

Ah yes no rules. So here in Vang Vieng the most touristy town in Vientiane you can see the effect of these non-rules everywhere. Sorrounded by beautiful moutains, caves, rivers and lush green terrain its perfect for tourism and its arrived with a thud. The main past time here is tubing - floating down the river on giant tractor wheel inner tubes. Along the way all the riverbanks are filled with ramshackle bars, all the bars are filled with (usually) english men, who are all filled with alcohol, filling me with nothing but concern.

Theres no building regulations, no planning permissions, no health and safety requirements. So as long as you can buy, steal or claim ownership over a piece of land you can build whatever you want. All the bars are wooden, look like they were built in the dark, possibly by the intoxicated English men who now reside in them. They’ll cram a bar in anywhere. If theres a bridge crossing the river (wooden) then they’ll build a tiny mini bar coming off the middle of the bridge in the center of the river. This will consist of two or three slats of wood where a boy will sit and hand out beers to the people floating by saving them the huge inconvenience of trip to the bank. Most of the bars are so badly constructed you’d be more likely to get a splinter than a beer. Floating down the river in my kayak yesterday, you have to wonder about the effect of tourism on beautiful natural places like Vang Vieng.

But on the positive side people at least here are at least getting out of poverty, something that still threatens a great number of people here. Laos is also not Thailand, if you stop outside of the 5 or 6 biggest towns you’ll find no Guesthouse or Restaurant as no one could afford to use them. 

So things like Tolls spring up all over the show on bridges & at the entrance to caves as the guide book says “everyones out to make a buck in Vang Vieng”. All you have to do is show somehow that you are providing an invaluable maintenance to the public for said attraction or service and you can start charging people for using it. In some cases like the cave we went to today that invaluable maintenance needs to be nothing more than planting some flags in the ground that guide people from the main path (tourists that get lost are harder to toll, you see). 

Sportsmanship/Social Responsibility/Fair Play/Class - I’m struggling to find the right word for this trait lacking slightly in Laos culture, and often in people back home. You know the people I’m talking about they steal your parking space as you starting your reverse, they lend you money in Monopoly when they’re clearly going to beat you, just to stop you going bankrupt before they’ve extracted all the possible fun from their long drawn out victory. In Laos, anything is fair game. So if theres one successful fruit shake business, don’t be suprised if someone else opens up an indentical one next door. In Vientiane there were three Internet Cafes next door to each other, the second and third clones of the first maybe one is “fast net”, the second “faster net and the third “superfast net”. They actively fight to do each other out of business rather than just moving a street away. I expect a Lao fight is a nice fight, big smiles, friendly handshakes, complete copying of each others moves ending with a tuk tuk ride to the hospital.

At the moment we’re in Luang Prabang working out what to do next, its looking like heading north jumping right to Vietnam, heading south, jumping left to Cambodia and left again to Thailand describing it like that makes our trip sound like a big version of Dance Dance Revolution but there you go. Now I’m going to go wander around some sacred templey stuff and have dinner.

I might do some more this is where we’ve been, this is what we’ve done, ooh isnt everything pretty, this is where we’re going next, look at our hotel type stuff later as at the moment the posts are so sporadic its probably making no sense and unless I write it all down i’ll probably forget it.

Hope you’re all well! Send me news from home…

Let me welcome you to “Laos, the Land of Smiles”. Not always the nicest smiles, not an abundance of teeth here in Laos it seems, but earnest enthusiastic smiles none the less. You have to laugh when you see farangs (their word for foreigners) handing out sweets to children on the bus, delivering a final sugary deathblow to whatever rotting teeth they did have.

Laos people are the most friendly of any country I’ve been too, I’m going to guess ever as I don’t have a good enough memory to compare them with the other 21 countries I’ve been too (I counted for a who’s traveled the most contest with Annett the other day).

I guess many of you will have never heard of Laos, thats okay I hadn’t either before stumbling upon it on a map before the trip, there nestled snuggly between Thailand and Vietnam. Here’s the basics:

1. It borders Cambodia at the bottom, Thailand to the left and Vietnam to the right. Its been open for Tourism for approx 10 years. Its seperated from Thailand by the huge Maekong river. Here you can see Annett sitting on the banks of Thailand looking across the river at Laos.

So close you could throw a stone across. Wouldn’t reach. But you could still throw it.

2. There are no Mcdonalds here (woohoo)!

3. The Capital is Vientaine. Its the capital because it has more fat, bald ex-pats on mopeds per capita than any other city (I think a measurement criteria borrowed from Thailand). Once the other cities here (of which there are only 5 or 6, and I use city liberally as they are in fact, towns) become more developed they too will have a thriving fat western on moped population making you fearful to cross the road (hurry capitalism hurry).

4. Its famous for absolutely nothing. This provides it pleasant shelter from stereotyping, pigeonholing, prejudice and more fat western men on mopeds.  Its a little gem of a country. I think eventually when it comes out of beta it will be famous for its people, who are incredibly hospitable. They’re also unaware or unwilling to view westerners as walking atms which makes it a pleasure to travel here.

Right now as I write this I’m sitting at a wooden bar, behind a wooden table, on a wooden chair (smelling a theme yet?), with a sleeping (non-wooden) cat on my lap who won’t leave me alone no matter how much disinterest I show him. I’m looking out across overflowing greenery towards the corner of the wooden bungalow that Annett is sleeping in. All of these things were built by a mental but entertaining, rambling Irishman called Jo. Jo in a former life before settling here and marrying a Laos woman was (you might not be surprised to hear) a Ozzy Osbourne Impersonator Carpenter. Now he’s a mental former carpenter with an entirely wooden hostel, which I guess is a good sort of mental. Checkout one of his story gems:

Well we had this dog “Bobby Dog”, which was our other dog “Bobbys” son, we don’t really go in for naming dogs here like. So, well there was two dogs Bobby and Bobby Dog. Bobby Dog started fucking wandering around in the daytime away from this place [the hostel]. Well anyway I knew where she was hanging around and she used to come back in the evenings. Then one day he didn’t come back so I went over the fucking Sunset Tree restaurant where I knew she was hanging about and begging for food and I’ve said to them yeah

Wheres Bobby dog?

And they’ve said well we started hanging round and begging more and more, a bit more boisterously, you know nose in crotch and all that fucking business. So, they killed and ate him.

I tell you this story firstly because I found his deadpan delivery of it pretty hilarious, secondly because I know it will stop my dog samaritan sister sleeping at night and thats the sort of nasty brother I am. But the main reason I’m repeating that stories from amongst the other mountain of story gems we’ve heard in Laos is because it nicely highlights one thing Laos doesn’t have - rules.

More on that in pt.2 tomorrow.

Its been a while. Normal posts coming soon. Here’s a mini update:

- It warm now, yummy.

- We sped through the north of Thailand in 6 days or so.

- Then we crossed to Laos which is a lovely, lovely country.

- Spent a few days in Vientaine.

- We’ve been in Vang Vieng for the past 5 doing outdoor stuff.

- I got sick (I think mild food poisioning). Today I’m out of bed and i’ve successfully kept down half a baguette.

- Tommorow the 7hr bus trip to Luang Prabang.

- Next will be Cambodia, Vietnam then back to Thailand to do the south on the way down to Malaysia and Singapore.

- I’ve still not seen a monkey

- We’re both still having lots of fun

Greetings from shiny happy Hong Kong. We finally made it out of frozen China, securing a flight from amongst the hundreds of thousands of people trying to get somewhere for the Chinese New Year. We passed Guangzhou train station one day after the riots that saw a crowd of 100,000 people storm the police barriers and run for the trains. We saw a few near riots when we were in Xi’an station (one fucker swiping my wallet, which had only 50eur or so and no cards in it though), luckily those amazing scenes are now a fading memory and we’re heading onwards and upwards (well if you cheat and turn around and face south).

Hong Kongs really interesting, like a sort of Diet China….

Read the rest

Hu and Jo we salute you!

The day started like any other, an ignored 7:30am alarm call, arriving several hours later at 11am, forgetting to read the time of the last shuttle to the Great Wall, missing the last shuttle by 30minutes, sitting disappointed on the steps revelling in our laziness and deciding what else to do with the day, and the plan for our second try the next day.

“The guide book says if we had four people its only 400rmb a day to hire a taxi. We need to find two other people”, I said.

“hello, do you speak english?”

Bingo! 

I look up to see two Asia men, one has just hit the other and they are both laughing hysterically at the stupidity of asking us if we speak English.

Read the rest