More Laos - Luang Prabang & Vientiane

Part 5 - Luang Prabang and Vientiane

After idyllic Nong Khiaw, we continue our voyage south on the Nam Ou River. This time Som Nith’s brother takes the helm of our V.I.P. boat. The scenery never lets up. Patricia and I sit in silence and gaze.

Midpoint on our journey the Nam Ou River ends and we enter the mighty Mekong, king of Southeast Asian Rivers. We stop to look at the famous Pak Ou caves, stacked with hundreds of statues of Buddha, where Kings of Laos came to worship and perform ceremonies. After a delicious grilled fish lunch on a restaurant riverboat, we push on. A few more hours and we dock at Luong Prabang, the Imperial city, and ancient capital, of Laos.

Luang Prabang is a small quiet town nestled between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, with no trucks or buses, few cars and motorcycles, broad, tree-lined avenues, low, crumbling French provincial style houses, startling red painted and gilded temples, orange clad shaved-headed monks and filled with tourists. The streets are lined with hotels, guest houses, restaurants, bars, cafes, and studded with Buddhist monasteries. The crowded night market is filled with merchants and tourists.

We’re no longer off the beaten track, yet we’re still on the road less traveled. While Lao is nowhere near as popular a tourist destination as Thailand or Vietnam, it is, nevertheless, a place to go for savvy travelers.

Our hotel is one block from the river, around the corner from the National Museum, and borders directly on the night market, which Patricia and I hit with everything we’ve got. The first night we shop till we drop. The reason I have no pictures to show is because I was too busy shopping to stop and snap.

Nearly every night we take dinner in the market in an alleyway offering nothing but food: open stands with platters of spring rolls, vegetables, sausages, grilled fish, pork, chicken, fresh and freshly cooked in front of our eyes. We get our food and sit on benches at wooden tables, so crowded together it’s impossible not to make friends with your neighbors. Everyone’s happy here because the food is so good and the price is right, and, I’m told, though I don’t partake, the Lao beer is great.

We spend our days walking all over the city, ending up at the river for the sunset. We visit a dozen temples and monasteries but I confess I couldn’t tell one from another and the names are too hard for me to learn. The monks are friendly and chat when we speak to them – in English or French. One morning Patricia rose at five AM to watch the daily silent processional of Buddhist Monks who receive alms which they then use to make ceremonial offerings. Your devoted writer snoozed through the whole thing.

Our suitcases are stuffed with gorgeous embroidered fabrics and things purchased with arduous, hilarious haggling from Hmong sellers at the night market; we take the easy way out for a change, and use Lao Airlines to fly over stark mountainous terrain to Vientiane, capital of Laos, and get yet another view of the Mekong.

Ever stalwart, Patricia prowls the markets and inspects the temples of Vientiane but I take a vacation and lie around in bed and lounge on the balcony of our lovely wooden bungalow set in a peaceful garden with birds and flowers for companions. Except for a tiny, unexpected but delightful flirtation with a Patrick Kavanagh-reciting, handsome young Irishman from Cork one evening, I’m happy to do nothing at all…

P.S. It’s been pointed out that I neglected to describe the special Lao dishes we ate in Nong Khiaw: Deep-fried River Weed with sesame seeds, steamed (or fried) river fish with vegetables and herbs (ginger, lemon grass, cilantro, basil, mint and others), chopped pork with herbs baked in a banana leaf, chicken in coconut sauce with aromatic herbs, grilled sausages, black rice, and, of course, the ubiquitous noodle soup with chicken, pork, beef, and vegetables. Everything was deeply flavored and fragrant with herbs and spices. Chile in everything! All vegetables and herbs were grown in their garden, fresh and organic, everything prepared fresh when ordered. In fact all the vegetables, fruits and herbs we’ve been served so far – in Vietnam and Laos – have been local and organic. And… Deeelishus!

Laos - The Road & the River

Part 4 - The Road and The River

The road over the mountains from the Vietnamese border at Tay Trang to I-don’t-know-where in Laos is an engineering marvel, carved out of solid rock, with sheer drops winding through thick jungle, following the gorge of a narrow river far below. The road is in various stages of construction, none of which is anywhere near finished.

Nothing is paved yet, all is raw, rocky, dusty and muddy; parts are flooded; machines grind, cut and dig with steady persistance. It’s a wild, bumpy obstacle course and we hold on for dear life as we slip and slide around in the back seat. Several times Trang, our skilled driver, gets out to check the depth of a flooded area to see if the car can pass. Sometimes we have to wait until rock-breaking machinery stops to let us pass.

At the same time, we’re struck speechless by the magnificent scenery that passes before our eyes: wondrous thick jungle and jagged peaks, the sheer, heart-stopping, unprotected drop to the shining river below.

After four hours of bone-jangling rock-and-roll we arrive at Muong Khua, just ahead of the public bus that we didn’t take and that left five hours before us. Patricia and I congratulate ourselves as we watch weary, dusty, red-eyed back-packers climb down from the mud-covered bus.

The sun is shining and it’s not so cold anymore.

A long narrow wooden motor boat carries us across the river to Muang Khua, a sleepy fishing village just beginning to wake up to its commercial possibilities – but with still a long way to go. There are only two streets in town, and nothing is going on. We enter the market where we hook up with a local family celebrating something (we don’t know what) with a lot of beer and loud music. We dance and drink with them, buy candy for their kids, and return to our room to dine on delicious left-overs from our picnic lunch, and fall asleep feeling as though we're still on the boat.

Next morning, Som Nith, our boatman shows up, grabs our luggage, and leads us down the road to his long wooden boat which we’ve chartered to take us down the Nam Ou river for the next three days. “V.I.P.,” says Som Nith with pride, pointing to the comfortable padded passenger seats, wooden roof, safety vests, and foot rests. He positions a plank and we climb on.

Steep, rocky mountains plunge into the narrow river forming stark vertical walls on either side of us. Jagged rocks of karst and low bushes form small islands, jutting out of the sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent green water. Tiny bamboo villages, small cultivated fields of corn, rice and vegetables dot the narrow beaches of the river. Fishermen cast nets from small wooden boats and pull out large carp, catfish and dorade.

The guidebook says the Nam Ou River has some of the most spectacular scenery in Asia. Pictures, while not nearly enough, tell more than I could ever describe. All I can say is The Nam Ou River is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

Nong Kieow is paradise: a small village with a beautiful bamboo bungalow resort overlooking the river, and an old suspension bridge connecting two sides of the village. We spend two days and nights here. Our hotel has the best food in town and we take all our meals here trying all the Laotian specials on the menu. We relax on our terrace, high over the river, and gaze at mountains and the Nam Ou river…

HAPPY HOLIDAY & BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR!

More Vietnam

Part 3 – Sapa to Dien Bien Phu

Our guide, Son, shows up with a solid four-wheel-drive Ford van just as we finish thanking the friendly Sapa hotel staff, who apologize for the cold weather. We take off down the mountain through the fog over roads so broken and pot-holed it’s difficult to maneuver, but Son is a champion. We stop at the Hmong Tam Duong village market where Patricia and I are the only white people. No one badgers us except one Black Hmong woman -- who must have gotten her hard-core sales training in the Sapa market -- who tries to sell us everything she’s got including the clothes on her back. Patricia wants to taste insects and drink worm liquor, but not me.

Lao Chai, our overnight stop, was once a picturesque mountain town but since construction of new dams has begun it has moved to another location where it’s become an anonymous modern city with paved streets, high rise apartment houses, schools, stadiums, monuments and public buildings. More than two million Hmong people have had to leave their flooded villages, rice paddies, fields and traditional way of life for the sake of hydro-electric power. Thanks to the help of foreign investments, the Vietnamese government will stop buying electricity from China and start using their own resources. They’re also stripping the jungle and planting rubber trees in hopes of providing work for displaced tribal farmers and families, who find themselves living in a modern city.

Nothing works in our cavernous modern hotel except electricity and a little heat - tg. Son says there’s nothing to see or do in Lao Chai so I use the time to recharge my phone, camera, laptop, kindle, edit pictures and write. Patricia snores away happily as I work.

Next day the weather is clear and with the car heater on we enjoy stunning vistas with mountains, forests and terraced rice paddies; tiny villages with wood and bamboo structures, a few buffalo and pigs. Hmong women sit on the ground beside the road cradling their babies in shawls, selling chestnuts, oranges, onions, herbs.

No matter how primitive and remote a village may be every house has a TV antenna, and, cell phone towers are everywhere, in the jungle, forest, in the middle of nowhere.

We arrive in Dien Bien Phu, a surprisingly lovely town, and the weather begins to warm up – but only a little. Patricia and I stare guiltily at the huge grey marble War Memorial in the center of town and visit another market where Patricia gets to taste her worm liquor. She likes it.

That night, over a delicious farewell dinner of fried fish, roast pork, steamed vegetables, sticky rice, and fiery rice liquor, Son relates horror stories about the winding road ahead, still under construction, over tall, looming mountains into the remote northern forests of Laos.

Son is gone, Patricia and I are now on our own. Our plan had been to take the local bus from here to our next destination – an adventure we decided to undertake before we got a taste of the terrible road conditions, and, moreover, discovered the bus departed at the unreasonable hour of five AM. By next morning we had changed our minds three times and after breakfast finally decide to avoid the 80 kilometer, nine-hour “bus ride from hell,” and hire a local driver with a good car to take us out of Vietnam, through the border at Tay Trang, into Laos – and depart at a reasonable ten AM.

Our new driver is Trang, who’s made this journey many times and knows the road well. Our hotel packs us a delicious box lunch for the road. We pass the frontier without a hitch. The Laotians issue my visa for $35 and here we go…

Vietnam

Part 2 Halong Bay and Sapa

I didn’t get any writing done over the next three days while we cruised around the islands of Halong Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin, one of the most magnificent natural sights I’ve ever seen in my life. Think of the Grand Canyon in reverse: erosion wreaked by the ocean forming thousands of tiny islands that erupt like small mountains that are home to soaring eagles.

Please look here: bhttp://indochina-junk.com/ because my words and pictures can’t do justice to its wondrous beauty, nor to the luxury of the red-sailed, wooden Chinese-style junk (The Prince, with 2 cabins) on which we wined and dined like royalty. We took kayak trips to a beach to visit caves in the rocks and where they prepared a barbecue for us. On the last night we celebrated Patricia's birthday with champagne, music and dancing with our fellow shipmate, a handsome Dutchman, and the entire crew. I noticed a twinkle in the Captain's eye as we danced to music of the Beatles.

After our dream cruise, we returned to Hanoi where we caught the overnight train to Sapa, high in the mountains of the northwest region of Vietnam, near the Chinese border. It’s cold but sunny and we marvel at the panoramic view from the large terrace of our large comfortable room. The porters offer us a motorbike ride around the region. We hop on and take off on the bumpy road to marvel at the terraced rice paddies cut in irregular shapes out of the steep mountainsides, crossing the nearby pass to visit a stunning waterfall. Stunning mountain views all around. We pass through villages of “minority tribes:” black Hmong, Red Hmong, Dao people and Tay people, whose women dress in traditional embroidered clothing, with large earrings and colorful leg warmers. Patricia and I are glad we brought our anoraks and warm underwear.

After a delicious dinner of pork spring rolls and noodle soup in our hotel we light a fire in the fireplace of our room, turn on the electric blankets to warm our beds, and sleep like angels.

Next day a heavy fog descends on the mountains and the temperature drops to 40 degrees. Not only can’t we see the mountains we can’t even see our terrace. Bundled in all my warm clothes, plus the rubber boots I purchased in the market, we go for a three hour trek off the road, on a muddy track, to get a close look at a few Hmong villages. But now the rain is falling hard, the temperature drops again and it’s too cold for this thin-blooded West Hollywood Los Angelina.

We head straight to the only place in town with central heating: the five-star $300 per night Hotel Victoria, where we spend a glorious warm spa afternoon getting foot massage, aromatic oil body massage, soothing papaya wraps, and hot soaks in wooden tubs filled with flower petals. They bring us tea and snacks and we forget the cold for a little while.

Next day, the weather is colder yet and rainier, which is out of season. Patricia went back to the market and I stayed in our room, next to a roaring fire and the space heater on full force… finally I have time to write.

Why don’t we get out of town now? We’ve arranged for a private car to drive us to Dien Bien Phu tomorrow morning, a drive which my guidebook declares passes through the most scenic area in the country. I just hope the weather will be clear enough for us to see something.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICO!!! Grandma loves you!

Southeast Asia

Part 1 – Taipei and Hanoi

I began this missive a dozen times since my departure but my days have been so full there’s been no time to write. I scribbled the first words at the beginning of the 16+hour flight on Cathay Pacific to Taipei, my first business class flight ever, while stretched out like a queen on a comfortable divan, with a glass of champagne, a bowl of warm almonds, a big screen TV and two, or three great Chinese meals. I found time to nap, allow my glass to be refilled several times, and watch four movies- but not to write. The business class experience has spoiled me forever, but at my age that’s not such a long time.

I picked up my journal again in Taipei where I attended the 29^th. Asian Composers League Festival. Here I was treated to five days of non-stop live music , between 1:30 in the afternoon until 9:30 at night; works by a select group of eminent composers from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Turkey, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, and Korea, performed in the gorgeous National Concert Hall of Taipei, by the finest musicians of the country. As if that wasn’t enough, I got to meet and talk with the composers over long, leisurely buffet breakfasts in the hotel dining room each morning. It was a joyful experience as well as a great privilege, but left me no time to write.

Next stop, Hanoi, where I rendezvous with my friend Patricia, from France, who’s joining me on this long-planned, seven-week Southeast Asian adventure. Another Franco American invasion!

For four glorious days we walked around different neighborhoods of Hanoi, mostly in the old quarter, looking in boutiques with beautiful goods and clothing, visiting crowded street markets, gobbling ubiquitous noodle soup, munching flavorful grilled beef and vegetables and spicy spring rolls at street stalls, and dining in a couple of fine restaurants where Vietnamese and French cuisines are combined with masterly skill. We visited a few recommended tourist sites and spent a lot of time sitting in cafes watching the world go by.

Hanoi is an unending river of motorcycles that somehow manage not to run you over as you cross the street. People are warm and friendly, quick to smile and help us out, but I carry a heavy albatross of guilt with me and, when asked, am ashamed to admit I’m American. I gaze at beautiful smiling faces of men, women, children and especially old people, and think about the unforgivable things we did to them and their country. I can’t get it out of my mind. Yet, as far as I can see, they hold no grudge. As one of our guides said, “That was the past. Now we move on.”

Our last night in Hanoi we went to a rock concert featuring rock bands from Tokyo commemorating the recent disaster. The hall was filled with thousands of enthusiastic people. A young Vietnamese girl offered me some fruit. We danced in place and smiled in recognition of each other. Peace and unity is the feeling I get as the crowd gyrates wildly to the intense music. Rock and roll joins us together. Then why do we need to make war?