5 days in China, out of Laos, about time to start writing this Laos summary. Laos was certainly another great addition to our already great trip, and it was different from Thailand and definitely Malaysia. With Thailand there are also quite a few similarities: the language is similar, some of the food is similar, people look a bit similar, etc.
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Spectacular Lao scenery
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Cycling in Laos was actually very nice. The roads were much better than we had expected, we had only exceptionally short stretches of bad road. Sure, there were potholes regularly, but even that was not too bad. Most roads did not have a hard shoulder to ride on, so you had to share the road with the motorbikes, cars and trucks... Most of the time, drivers were more considerate than we expected, although you had the occasional mad drivers too. The only place where cars just couldn't care about bicycles, was in Vientiane, where we seemed to be invisible to car drivers. Besides drivers being careful enough, there was mostly simply very little traffic, making it nice to cycle (besides safety, it's also nice because less noise). We expected to see a lot of tour bikers in Laos, and when we got into Vientiane we did see many indeed. Once on the road however, we didn't see that many anymore - probably a bit more than in Thailand though.
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| Cycling in the mountains is tougher, but the rewards are immense! |
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| A very representative picture of the road; this is on road 10, one of the main roads north of Vientiane, on our way from Tourakhom towards road 13 |
Then of course, there were the mountains of Laos. Before going into the mountains we were a bit nervous about it, as it looked like very tough cycling. Well, it was tough, but it was also really good fun, fantastic scenery, and not as tough as we feared it might be. I guess we have become cycling mountain goats now... Another plus for cycling was the weather: cool nights and mornings, mostly pleasant in the afternoon, not too hot (oh yes, we had some hot days too). And ah, one more thing: street dogs! While in Thailand we had dogs barking and chasing us regularly (although rarely really aggressive), there were many dogs in Laos too but they were just plain calm!
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| Great cycling! |
We have mixed feelings about the people in Laos however. We have met extremely friendly and super kind people, and we have met many uninterested, unfriendly, indifferent people too. This seems to an experience many other travelers have too. It's clear that there is a difference between cities and touristy areas on the one hand, and the rural areas on the other to start with. Cities and tourist areas are the worst of course. In the villages, sometimes most people were friendly - but not always. It almost seemed to depend on the village... Children were fantastic - most of the time. We had many hellos, good mornings and sabaaidees from children, it always brought a smile to our face! Children also seem to be really happy in Laos, playing a lot outside, with friends and simple toys (we hardly ever heard children crying!). When they grow up they lose this spontaneity - ok, we all do to some extent, but there it's a metamorphosis - and they become "different", don't know how to better describe it. We had a boy guiding us through his village, trying to talk to us, showing us a hiking trail through the rice paddies, all just for fun. We had a lady leaving her own shop to show us, in another shop, where we could buy what we needed. We had a woman running around to get us a nice dinner, even though her restaurant was about to close and had no light yet. But on the other side of the spectrum, we had a young woman in a shop who did not look up from her phone when we entered, she did not return my sabaaidee when I went to pay, she did not look at me when she mumbled the price, she did not say anything or look at me when she returned money - she just did not make any contact at all, she couldn't care less, it was rude. There was a taxi/van driver who came to pick up 2 girls in our guesthouse, before 8, while the agreed time was 8; the girls were still preparing to leave, were indeed ready by 8, but the guy became very angry he had to wait... Strange...
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| Beautiful villages in natural settings |
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| The bamboo bridge in Luang Prabang |
The people are quiet, reserved, sleepy, uninterested by day, yet from 4pm onwards or so you hear loud music everywhere, Beer Lao comes out (there is Beer Lao e-ve-ry-where), and another metamorphosis happens... Drinking and singing... It almost seems the Lao government is happy to make the people depend on beer, to keep them calm. It must also be a difficult thing for the Lao people: this country is going though such a rapid change, that I can imagine they have a hard time adjusting to it. When we traveled in Laos in 2011, most of the villages on our way had wood and bamboo houses; now, at least half of them (in most villages much more) were new houses made of stone. Roads are good, making travel much easier - for tourists, but also for the local population, also for business as shown by the many Thai and Chinese cars and trucks on the roads.
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| Getting help from happy children while saving CO2 |
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| Fascinating villages on the way, some still very primitive (or should we say traditional!?). It's impressive how many stone houses have been built in the last couple of years in many villages though. |
We were also not so impressed with the food in Laos. After coming from food heaven Thailand, being spoiled of course, we thought Laos would be similar. It wasn't. Less variation, more bland. Noodle soup, fried rice, and some other variations. But: we did get to eat som tam with the real fermented fish sauce! With the population being much poorer than Thailand, I guess it's also logical that the cuisine has less variation. There is also much less sugar in Lao food and drinks - in Thailand everything was over the top sweet - plus less use of coconut milk, and thanks to that it's clear people are much less fat than Thailand (Thailand does have a problem with obesity).
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| Fish or chicken, what will it be? |
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| Carbon, safely stored in charcoal - for now... |
Our cost of traveling in Laos was quite a bit higher than Thailand, by about 30% even! You would not expect that... It's mostly because Vientiane and Luang Prabang are expensive, once on the road we spent less. Accommodation is a bit cheaper than Thailand (except in these 2 cities), but food is about double of Thai cost. A simple noodle soup would be between 60-80 Baht, in Thailand it is literally half of that. We bought bread regularly (not as easy to find as we thought however), Laos inherited baguette-like bread from the French, with a price varying from 1000kip to 5000kip!!! And if 1 vendor charges 5000, they all do, competition does not undermine that apparently. You just know you're being charged the farang price regularly, but there is very little you can do about it. A nice trivia: in our 24 days Laos, we spent just shy of 10,000,000 kip. It was nice to be a millionaire for a little while!
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| Kids playing near Vang Vieng, with self made toys (looked like the small wheels of luggage trolleys fixed to a stick) |
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| And for breakfast we have... deep fried banana! |
An interesting last note. Laos seems to become more and more a "Chinese province". Many investments are Chinese, infrastructure works are all Chinese, businesses are more and more Chinese, there are many Chinese cars on the road, Chinese signs on the road, Chinese supermarkets, ... It's weird, and it somehow does not feel right. Not that Chinese can't migrate to Laos, it's just that it seems they're "overtaking" the country. Laos is about 7 times the size of Belgium, with only around 7 million inhabitants. It'll easily be "overpowered" by the Chinese I'm afraid.
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| We met up and teamed up with Bas, who made some wonderful pictures of the 2 of us cycling together |
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| Incredible sunsets in Laos, almost every day, could never get enough of this! |