Laos – The Land of Smiles pt.2
// February 26th, 2008 // Comments // Laos
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…
