Lovely Laos

The lovely Chris and I have recently returned from a short visit to Laos, a first for both of us.  I had meant to write this post from there, but quite frankly, we were too wrapped up in pursuit of hedonistic pleasure.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Unfortunately there are no direct flights from Singapore to Laos, so we went via Bangkok, a pretty smooth journey which featured a most extraordinary incident on the travellator on the way to baggage reclaim.  There was a group of Eastern European guys just in front of us, built like front row forwards for the Vladivostok Vandals who suddenly started howling out loud and then jumped over the hand rail, off the moving carpet and set off in hot, still howling pursuit of a couple of blonde air hostesses on their way to board their plane.  Weird!

On arrival in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, we realized we had to get (by 'get' I mean purchase, for the bargain price of USD 36 dollars each) an entry visa.  Only greenbacks would do, no other currency and no credit cards.  Well, it's one way of guaranteeing a steady stream of hard currency I suppose.  The cost of the visa would have been a mere 35 dollars, but we had no photograph.  Fortunately, this serious security issue could be overcome by the payment of one more US dollar.  At one level I can understand the desire of the government to attract dollars, but Chris and I were amazed at how little resentment there seems to be on the part of the people of Laos of what the Americans did to their country during the years of the Vietnam war, the legacy of which remains in thousands of unexploded cluster bombs in the countryside (what monster allowed the manufacture of this abomination?) which are still claiming the lives and limbs of innocent people.  If you visit Vientiane, I urge you to spend some time, and some money at COPE - the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise.  While clearly not your normal tourist venue, this visit is eye-opening and intensely humbling.  You can read more about it on tripadvisor; just follow the link below:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293950-d1092459-Reviews-Cooperative_Orthotic_and_Prosthetic_Enterprise_COPE-Vientiane.html

The Laotian currency is the charmingly named Kip, of which there are 12,000 to the pound.  Just for fun, we bought a million, and you can see TLC posing with them above.  We took dozens of photos, but even my most faithful readers are bound to have a limited tolerance for pictures of temples so I have sprinkled in a few other views throughout this particular post.  


We stayed in Vientiane first, the capital, which was nice, but not a patch  on Luang Prabang, which was where we spent most of the time - in the most gorgeous boutique hotel which had been recently converted from its previous use as a detention centre.  As we commented in the visotors' book before leaving, we plan to re-offend in the very near future!  The hotel had just 23 rooms and we were the sole occupants most of the time, as we went during the low season .  We never had to share the pool, the bar or the spa, which was not great news for the hotel, but rather lovely for us.  And talking of the spa.........
Stoned 

The pool at the Settha Palace

My regular readers will have shared what I call my "nook and    cranny" experiences since moving to Asia, where the normal observation of the client's modesty that prevails in the UK during massage therapy does not seem to apply here.  I had already decided that I was going to try and work my way through the entire menu of spa offerings over a couple of days ( and I managed all but one - pretty, good, huh?).  The lovely Chris was persuaded to join me for some of the treatments (our joint favourite over the two days was the hot stone massage) and so we padded off on our first morning to meet our therapists, who turned out to be a young man, for Chris, and a young woman for me.  All very fine, apart from the fact that the sessions took place in the same room.  Now, beautiful and light and airy as this room was, the massage beds were side by side, separated by no more than eighteen inches and all we were wearing was a pair of knicks.  No matter how deft my lassie's holding up of the sheet as I was lying down and turning round,  it all felt a little exposed, but hey, it's just one more for the nooks and crannies list.   Slightly more worrying was my therapist's declaration of love for me on the first afternoon.  Charming as she was, not to mention married with two children, I did not feel able to reciprocate.  

One of the many Buddhas we
saw in Vientiane

I'm conscious that I have been writing for some time and have not yet mentioned food - not at all like me - and there is plenty to write about Laotian cuisine.  Our favourite meals were probably the simplest, most notable of which was the lettuce wraps we ate on our first night in Luang Prabang.  I'm really tempted to try to replicate them with a different twist for one of my upcoming dinners with friends.  I'll keep you posted on the results. 

The other notable food moments were pizza for breakfast overlooking the Mekong and morning alms, both on our last day in Laos.  We  had heard good things about the Saffron cafe and were keen to spend some time by the river, which is particularly beautiful at that point.  Since I had been up since 5.30 in order to participate in the morning alms procession, I felt that pizza could be, on this occasion, a breakfast food.  TLC was more circumspect and had a banana muffin (and very yummy it was too).  The Saffron sells some of the best coffee I have ever tasted and the story of the coffee is fascinating.  Its genesis is the outlawing of opium cultivation by the Lao government which meant that the hill tribes whose livelihood depended on the opium crop were forced to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture in order to survive. This meant that entire mountainsides were cleared of vegetation and burned off.  The fields were planted for one season and then abandoned as a new mountainside was cleared - clearly not a sustainable solution for the farmers and barely enough to solve the short-term problem of feeding their families.  Enter David Dale, an American living in Laos, who discovered that Arabica coffee would  grow on the hillsides and Saffron Coffee was born.  He partnered with local tribes and created a coffee tree nursery, sending the little wee coffee trees to over 300 mountain farmers in more than ten different villages with the right land for planting coffee and purchasing all their coffee when it is harvested.  Talk about a virtuous circle!

Morning alms in Luang Prabang

I felt quite virtuous myself at the morning alms ceremony.  Shortly after dawn, hundreds of Buddhist monks leave their temples and walk along the main street to collect their morning alms - mainly sticky rice, supplemented by biscuits and fruit.  I had arranged with the hotel to join in, and it was another pretty humbling experience, but also a joyful one.  

Let me leave you with a view of the marvellous Mekong river and an exhortation to visit the beauties of Laos if you find yourself in this part of the world.  We will most definitely be going again, to see Luang Prabang and to explore new places.  My next post features the lovely AnnMarie, my fish spa chum, and  takes us back to Singapore, so watch out for "Chinatown", coming to your PC soon.