Happy days; I’m stuck in Paradise :-) As fate (or luck) would have it, I lost my passport in a country without a British Embassy … Laos. On the bad side it would appear that I am going to miss my flight to Oz; but never mind – I get to chill here longer!
‘Here’ is Vang Vieng; a small town on the Nam Xong River in Northern Laos. I am actually writing this entry whilst sitting in a hammock by the river, overlooked by stunning mountainous scenery, sipping the local beverage (recommended by the Laos tourist board as the safest bottled stuff to drink, mmm) – BeerLao, and watching people float past on tyres.
My adventure into the (sadly ex) Land of a Million Elephants began on the 28th January. After escaping King Kong and moving south, we took a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai – a small town in Northern Thailand, from which we were able to buy a visa and cross ‘Friendship Bridge’ into Laos herself (one of the few land border crossings in the world where cars actually have to switch driving sides of the road). In a single trip we took an overnight train, tuk tuk, bus, pick-up and coach; mowing straight through the capital ‘Vientiane’ and on to our destination; ‘Vang Vieng’.
After settling in; myself and Conor armed ourselves with mountain bikes and spent a few days exploring the impressive neighbourhood. The town itself is just like any town; it is the river and scenery around is which is soo stunning! It was great fun checking out the many caves, awesome river views, an underwater lagoon, and we even got to play linesman at a local football match. However the best fun was had just following the river, crossing rickety wood bridges, finding isolated bars (a man and a bucket of BeerLao), and just chilling!!!
Not to get totally sucked into a life of laziness (and I’m convinced that this is one of the best place in the world to be lazy), I decided a day of floating / swimming / jumping / diving / zip-lining and sliding was in order. So I did what most people do; hired an inner tyre and went ‘tubing’ down the Nam Xong. You basically get given a ‘tube’, are driven upstream and left to float the few k/m back to town. However, the key is that the river is lined with bars, and even better - barmen who literally throw you a lifeline and drag you to shore. And here begins the story of my lost passport…
This particular lost passport story begins with a snake and a jar… On being pulled into one standard beer serving bar, with a bunch of Aussie’s (who else!?!), I was offered a choice of free shot – Whisky, Vodka or some local stuff in a jar with a snake! Taking full advantage of ‘free stuff’, and to extract some revenge on the animal kingdom, I naturally chose the snake. This was probably not in my top 10 good ideas of all time, and would soon lead to a lot more zip-lining into the river, another beer or two, and ending with me chasing my tube down the river. Anyhow, at some point my dry bag became a wet bag and my passport and wallet thought it clever to sneak off, leaving my phone to commit suicide in the resulting puddle...doh.
I guess the moral of the story is that snakes are bad, even when in jars. Oh and that loosing your passport can hinder the whole travelling thing. Still I am now the proud owner of an Australian emergency travel document, which will let me get to Bangkok. Even better it allows me to stay here in paradise a little longer whilst the Thai’s take a nice bank holiday weekends rest. I spent my extra time thus far exploring a massive underwater river by tube, and Kayaking through this never-failing-to-impress scenery. Seriously come to Laos – it rocks!
Before I go, I’ll leave you with some good advice - learn some local words when visiting a new country or you may end up looking like a bit of a plonker. On arriving back in the capital (to ‘fix’ my passport problem) we planned to stay in ‘Sabadee Guest House’. Getting out of our long-distance pickup, we were more than a little surprised to find a load of tuk tuk drivers running up to us shouting ‘Sabadee, Sabadee’!!! Not to be deterred we jumped in the first tuk tuk and confirmed ‘Sabadee Guest House’ as our destination… It was only a few hours later when thumbing through a guide to Laos I determined that ‘Sabadee’ is the actually the local word for… yep you guessed it … ‘hello’ :-)
