Over the Mekong

Mon 26 Jan

One of our favourite walks is over the other side of the Mekong. We take a local boat, joining motorcyclists, a couple of cars or trucks and local folk for the 10-minute ride over the fast-flowing brown river.

Local boat.

On the other side is a small village with a long paved pathway between the houses parallel to the riverbank which leads out into the woods beyond. On its way it passes three temples: Chomphet, Long Khun and Had Siaw. Visitors to the first two are greeted by ticket-sellers who sit all day at tables, waiting for the occasional wandering falang. We are asked to donate 10,000kip (that’s about 80p).

The ticket-seller.

As I have often mentioned, there are very few birds in Laos (cheap protein) so when I hear birds I tend to look to see where they are. At Long Khun I was just standing near the wat, trying to spot a songbird I could hear in the trees above when I became aware that the ticket-seller – in this case a man – was also gazing at the tree. Ahhh – that’s nice, I thought, a bird-watcher. As you can imagine, I was a bit taken aback to realise he had catapult and stones in his hand, with which he then proceeded to shoot into the foliage. Fortunately he was not successful but I had to admire his skill – or at least his optimism in thinking he could hit a moving 10-cm target from that range.

Leaving Long Khun behind we then scrambled up a wooded hillside, following a line of golden lotuses set on wayside rocks, to an area dotted with golden Buddhist statues.

 On the way back through the village we passed children playing in the street and coming home from school.

These kids were playing "throw the flip-flop" and French skipping.

Walking home from school.

In the dry season the banks of the Mekong are fantastically fertile and sandbanks even the get planted up with beans and peanuts.

Then home again to Khoun and Khone’s for Khone’s delicious red curry and rice with tempura egg plant. Meena, K&K’s daughter, has set up a small business doing traditional Lao embroidery. She's just finished this one. It's taken her two weeks and she'll get about £80 for it.

Meena and her embroidery - a collar for a Lao wedding.

Another of our favourite walks is up the valley from K&K’s along the Dong river valley. As we move further away from the town, the villages become simpler, the people less sophisticated – and (mostly) friendlier, and the houses more ramshackle. Here the cooking is done on open wood fires and the families gather in the late afternoon to eat and talk outside their homes.

Trevann wisely walks well clear of the landslip.

The bridge at the foot of the Nam Dong dam. Constructed in the 1970s to provide power for the royal residence in Luang Prabang, it was the first hydroelectric power plant built in Laos.

I was trying to convey the scale of these elephant ear leaves. They're about 5 foot long!

Blind Man's Buff and Barbeques

Sat 24 Jan 2015

I’m sitting on the balcony waiting for the morning mist to rise in the valley and for the temperature to go up a bit. It’s 16 degrees now, at 10 o’clock, but by midday it’ll be 25 and rising. Interestingly, yesterday morning the cloud was low and persistent. It wasn’t exactly raining but water dripped off the leaves and the thatch, pinging on the bathroom roof. Although the sun broke through at about 11 it was still cold with a chilly breeze up on the balcony. Yet when I went down and sat on the lawn below, just 20 yards away, it was a full 3 degrees warmer – and very pleasant!

And here comes Lianne with our morning treat – Lipton’s tea for Trevann, thick black Lao coffee for me plus a couple of small bananas each. Break.

When we spent our first three months here two years ago I was afraid when we left that if we returned it could be drastically changed. Such is the pace of development in Laos, with Chinese money flowing freely and tourist numbers expanding exponentially, I feared that every plot of land along the dirt road in this green valley would soon be bought up and built on. This hasn’t happened. Yes, a few new houses have been built, and the productive fields in the bottom of the valley have been dug out and converted into fish ponds, but development has been slower than I expected.

Some of the new houses in Ban Na Dad.

The Chinese-funded fishponds.

One of the special features of Khoun and Khone’s bungalows are the moths! They come in all sorts of shapes, colours and sizes, attracted to the balcony lights. I’ve no idea what their names are, but their ability to mimic constantly amazes me.

How amazing is that!?

When we arrived two weeks ago we decided – given that we had the choice of any of the six bungalows – to try Number 4, which has a big light room and tiled bathroom, rather than our usual Number 5 up the top of the garden. It sits behind the family house in front of the family’s spirit house.

Number 4 bungalow - with resident artist.

"Mak Beng" - little cones of banana leaves and marigolds offered to the spirits to keep them peaceful.

A few days later we were woken in the morning by the sound of roofers removing the old thatch from the family house. I remember this thatch being put on just 2 years ago. Obviously not very durable. This time six barefoot chain-smoking workers – nimbly scaling the roof with the aid of just a couple of bamboo poles cut from the garden – removed the thatch, nailed on a layer of corrugated tin the thickness of Bacofoil, and replaced with fresh thatch panels. It only took two days in all.

Some of the bungalows are in dire need of rethatching.

This is how it's done - nimble-footed and fast.

Meanwhile Mimi invited a gaggle of 15-year-old mates to have a party in the next door bungalow. Much giggling could be heard and I wondered what they were getting up to. We were amused to see them innocently engaged in a riotous game of Blind Man’s Buff on the lawn! No alcohol involved.

Most evenings we head down to town at about 6.30 for a beer and a meal. If we get there early enough we can sit by the Mekong and watch the slow boats tying up at sunset.

One evening Khone invited us to join her and Mimi for a Lao barbeque at a locals restaurant in town. Khoun turned up as well. A Lao BBQ is an interactive affair. The food is cooked in the middle of the table on a hotpot filled with glowing charcoal with a hubcap-shaped griddle on top. Thin slivers of chicken, pork, fish or tofu go on the dome, while green veg and noodles cook in a stock boiling in the groove around it. Delicious!

Khone and Mimi.

It’s great to see and hear the bungalows coming alive again. Having been closed for several months the place was looking decidedly unkempt with floors unswept and rubbish piled up. But now there are guests again and it’s gone back on Agoda so everything is getting care and attention. We’ve been helping out by sweeping leaves – and handing over dollars!

Butterfly and bourgainvillea.

And this week we moved back up to our favourite Number 5 bungalow, where the view is wonderful and the sunsets spectacular.

Cold and wet - but not miserable

Tues 13 Jan 2015

Ahhh – that’s better. At last the sun is peeping through the morning mist and the air will soon warm up. We need sun after a couple of unseasonably cold and wet days here in Laos. It felt more like a wet weekend in Wales. On Saturday it was so dreary we stayed in bed all day, huddled under the blankets to keep warm in a leaky bungalow with water pouring in through the thatch.

This was not how it was meant to be!

Lookin out at the pourin rain

On Thursday morning before we left Pai, Tony, our host at the Pai Nub Dao bungalows, looked up at the gathering clouds and said “It’s raining in Chiang Mai”. Having had clear skies and temperatures in the high 20s for a month it didn’t seem feasible. But sure enough, by the time we reached Chiang Mai (down the 762 curves) and had spent an hour circling the city while our taxi driver found our guest house, it was tipping it down in true monsoon fashion. And it continued during our flight to Luang Prabang on Friday afternoon. And then Saturday and on and off Sunday. And it is COLD! 12 degrees. Brrrr

Evening light in Pai

Pai Nub Dao looking lovely.

Chiang Mai airport

Tony, our host at Pai Nub Dao bungalows.

Still, we had a warm welcome from Khone, who met us at the airport and bought us raincoats and umbrellas.

Ready for anything!

Very fetching get-up.

Much has changed at the bungalows since we were last here in February. When we tried to book for this trip in September we were surprised to get no response to our emails to Khoun&Khone and noticed that the bungalows had been taken off Agoda. Eventually we gave up trying to contact them and booked another guesthouse for February this year. It was only when Khone sent us a message on Facebook in December asking when we were coming (!?) that we decided to book after all, curious to know what had happened.

The huge moths are still in residence at Khoun & Khone's

Blue sky starting to peek through.

The bungalows are looking very forlorn and run-down. Apparently they’ve had few guests in the last six months and have more or less closed down. We thought at first that Khoun had moved out but he re-appeared yesterday and explained that he’s been staying in town working to earn money. Meanwhile Khone is trying to sell the business to a friend from Vientien and use the money to buy a house somewhere for her and the children (Meena 22, Fly 17, Mimi 13). Khoun still wants to get the bungalows up and running we think but he doesn’t have the money needed for the repairs.

As far as our stay is concerned all is well. Leanne the cook/cleaner is still here, O, Meena or Fly can drive us into town when we want, Khone is very happy for us to be here “as family”, we can choose whichever bungalow we want, and now that it’s stopped raining we can settle in on the balcony and relax.

Love the local dieties.

And there’s something about this place. I don’t know quite what it is, whether it’s the clean air, or the light, or the balance between green wooded hills and sky, but it just presses my “sense of well-being buttons” like no other place on earth. I feel great here!

Yesterday we went for a walk up the dirt road through the villages. I’ve never seen the mountains looking so clear. No dust or smoke after the rain. We gathered the customary band of giggling children “Falang! Sabaidee!” they cry, waving happily.

Walking up the dirt road

Sabaidee!

Strange, when we first came here 2 years ago I feared that the rapid gentrification and development would engulf these small villages around Luang Prabang World Heritage site. In fact the opposite has happened, business are closing down and sites falling into disrepair. How odd. Khone says that visitors these days are more often in tour parties, perhaps from China and Korea, rather than adventuring couples from Australia and Europe. A different market. We shall see.

All in apple Pai order

5 Jan 2015

The northern Thailand town of Pai was one of the places we thought about going to way back in 2012 when we first decided on SE Asia. In the event, we chose Luang Prabang but I’ve often wondered about Pai. It’s a town with a reputation: completely spoiled by air-headed latterday hippie backpackers and flooded with Bangkok trippers according to some; still paradise on Earth according to others.

From my point of view the main thing that put me off Pai was the description of the journey, which involves a gruelling 4-hour bus trip along a winding mountain road guaranteed – by some accounts – to make the toughest traveller throw up. Sick bags and travel sickness pills are handed out at the bus terminus. This did not sound like fun to me, having painful memories of chronic carsickness in my youth!

Nevertheless, when Mike and Lucy – friends we met in Kep last January who live in Pai for part of the year – got in touch offering a bungalow with a view for 400B and a tour of the best bars and live music in town we could hardly say no.

What a view!

This is from our front door.

And here we are – sitting outside our rustic, packing-case bungalow with the most amazing, wonderful view and cool breezes to keep the mid-day heat at bay. Pai sits in a wide river valley bounded on either side by green wooded mountains. Our bungalow faces east across the valley – straight opposite a large white Buddha half way up the hill on the other side which is lit up at night. It’s stunning.

The Buddha and the steps up to it are lit up at night.

Trevann is drawing and we’ve just enjoyed a mega-breakfast of muesli and fruit and egg and beans on toast served up by Tony, the chilled rasta resort owner. Four puppies tumble on the grass in front of the balcony, chickens and mynah birds do their thing in the background.

Keeping cool in the shade.

And I’m pleased to report that the journey here was without incident too! It’s true that the 762 bends are churning but the minibus was comfortable and the driver felt trustworthy so all was well. I no longer fear the journey back!

Tony's cool cafe.

And the town itself is ok once you know where to go. It’s true that parts are rammed with tourists – both Thai and western – and some parts are pretty ramshackle and grimy, but there are plenty of quieter roads with good cafes and bars. And the bit on the other side of the river is lovely because there are no cars! Hooray!

So that’s good. We’ll stay here, enjoying peaceful days and music-filled nights for the next few days, travelling back to Chiang Mai on Thursday then on to Laos.

And if you ever find yourself in this neck of the woods - I can recommend Pai Nub Dao bungalows for fab views!