Vientiane - probably the most laid back capital in Asia

I really liked Vientiane. It is nothing special, not very beautiful and not very exciting as a city. But the laid back atmosphere is very refreshing after having experienced big cities with millions of mopeds, cars and people. Vientiane gives you a break from the stress of other large cities. The best thing is, as it is the capital, you can get your visa for every country in Southeast Asia here. This is where most Bangkok expats do their visa runs and you can really understand why.

If you are a weary traveller, Vientiane is a place where you can relax and wind down while you are waiting for your visa application to be processed. And enjoy the culinary influences of the French colonial times.

Mahout for one day

During our stay in Luang Prabang we checked the what-to-do's at the local tourism offices and found out that it is possible to ride elephants here. At the beginning I was not very convinced that this was what I wanted.
Sitting in a kind of chair on the back of an elephant while it walks through the jungle seemed very odd and touristy to me. 

But Cisela insisted on doing it, we even went as far as to book a one day Mahout (traditional elephant rider) experience, which gives you the possibility to ride the elephants by sitting on their necks and giving them directions with your feet and knees! Hmmmm...

So we went to that elephant camp, and have been given a basic history about elephants in Laos (used for heavy work in logging camps) and the sustainable sanctuary (housing elephants freed from these logging camps) we were at, before we have been tought the necessary commands to ride an elephant, such as 'bai' for 'go' (already forgot the other ones...).

The Elephant Village is home to 13 elephants, which all have been used for logging before the German founder of the sanctuary bought them. Logging elephants have to work very hard in the jungle and their job is a dangerous one with long working days, so life in a sanctuary can be a lot better. However, there are a lot of people only interested in making money with the animals and not every so called sanctuary is well kept and treating their animals in a good way. So we chose a tour which was a bit more expensive, but where the elephants only had to work for four hours a day.

After about an hour, we finally were allowed to mount the elephants and try our best. Wow, what an experience! But scary as well, having the head of the amimal between your knees, no security at all and three tons to move! Luckily a real mahout sits behind you to provide help in case you need it. So we walked the elphants through the jungle, through the river, up hill, down hill... Sooo coool! 

In the afternoon, still happy about the great experience, we even drove the elephants down into the river to bathe them! Haha, bathing the elephants ended up bathing those who tried to, including us!  A really great day, one of the big things in my life so far! Thanks Cisela for insisting on doing it!!!

Laos, the Land of a million bomb craters

Laos was once called the Land of a million Elephants. Sadly, this is no longer true.
The elephants are long gone, there are only about 1,600 of them left in the country. What you can say about Laos today though, is that it is full of UXO (unexploded ordnance, eg. bombs, landmines, etc). Travelling through the northeastern parts of Laos, the scenery is often so beautiful that it almost makes you forget to breathe. The Lao people are among the friendliest and open we have encountered. This is why our visit to MAG's (Mine Advisory Group) visitors center in Phonesavanh was so emotional. On display are dismantled bombs, bombies and landmines, as well as pictures of land mine and bomb victims. If you want to, you can watch the documentary Bombies, covering the aftermath of the US bombings of Laos during the secret war.
This film is very well done, it certainly gives you goose bumps and makes you feel sick to the stomach.

During nine years, more than 2 million tons of bombs were dropped over Laos. The reason? One was that parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail went through the jungle of Laos, close to the Vietnamese border. The worst thing however, was that when the bombers did not find their targets in Vietnam, they would just get rid of their bomb loads over Laos instead of landing fully loaded with explosives back at the base in Thailand. About 30% of these bombs did not explode and are still hidden in the soil of Laos, making it very dangerous for farmers to farm their land and for the authorities to build new roads, schools, etc.
Before anything can be built, the land has to be cleared of UXO, which is very expensive and time consuming.

Our souvenirs from Phonesavanh, one MAG T-shirt each, are certainly the most worthwhile thing we have bought so far.

But we did not go to Phonesavanh because of the bombs and mines, the reason we went there was to see The Plain of Jars. Lots and lots of large stone jars spread out on the fields of the Xieng Khouang Plateau. Nobody knows what they were used for and who made them.
There are many sites, but as only four have been cleared of UXO, only these are open for tourists.

Stay on the white side of these markings, since the land on the grey sides has not been cleared yet.

The old parts of cluster bombs are used in very creative ways in Laos

The owner of our hotel had his own collection of stuff from the war. In the breakfast room...

Luang Prabang - a place to feel Lao tranquility

We arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos, from Hanoi to flee from the cold we have been exposed to in northern Vietnam. In fact, when we arrived in Luang Prabang, which is located amidst a beautiful mountain landscape, we were surprised that it was still not warm at all! Not really cold, but 18 degrees wasn't what we expected. And cloudy.
Luckily we found out that it was only during the morning hours that the weather conditions was like that. Classical temperature inversion, for those who are in to meterology.

Once arrived and unpacked, we took the chance to take a stroll through Luang Prabang's old quarter (world heritage again) and enjoyed its beauty while having a cup of coffee and really good cakes. Quite expensive, but hey, sometimes these luxuries are necessary to make a day. We really liked it here, especially after having escaped bustling Hanoi.

Luang Prabang is also very famous for its monasteries, which inhabit around one thousand monks and novices. All dressed in shiny orange robes, perfectly posing for our pictures... It is tradition for the monks to get their food from locals in the morning by walking through the streets, offering prayers for the people in exchange for food. Unfortunately, the monks have to walk very far these days as the town center, where all the monasteries are located, is nowadays occupied by tourists only and locals cannot afford living there anymore. Just another downside of tourism...

However, we used the time in Luang Prabang mostly to relax, to recover from the cold we caught in Hanoi. You have plenty of chances to do so as Luang Prabang is the ultimative relaxing town.



The view from Mount Phousi



Relaxing on the Mekong



Buffet at the Night Market

Food: One very good reason to go to Vietnam

If you ask us, the Vietnamese food alone is an excellent reason to come here. We have tried a loads of Vietnamese specialities and even if some of them were things we would never have tried if we had known what it was, everything tasted really good.

We had some less-than-perfect food experiences, but that was always in restaurants (or on the cruise) catering for tourists. The best food we had was in the little food stalls on the side of the street.

Food stalls on the side of the street, the best way to experience the Vietnamese cuisine!

Pho, the classic noodle soup. Simply delicious!

Fresh fruit tastes even better if you dip it in chili salt. Yummy!

Vietnamese coffee, simply great! The best coffee so far!!

Hanoi and Halong Bay

Feeling brave, we decided to go for a night train again. (Not until we had checked that there are no wild elephants who might want to get run over in Vietnam though! If you missed our train adventure in Malaysia, here is the post.)

The night train got us from Huế to Hanoi in only twelve hours and was not too bad. We shared the cabin with a Vietnamese couple who did not speak much English, which was ok since we slept through most of the trip.

The downside of the night train was that we arrived in Hanoi at four-thirty in the morning. Try checking in at the hotel at five, they will not be thrilled. We left our backpacks in the lobby and went out to explore early-morning Hanoi. As we reached the Hoan Kiem lake it was still dark but the sidewalks were bustling with people out on their morning run around the lake. Groups of people were practising Tai Chi. It was amazing! Old ladies in groups of up to twenty were doing their morning gymnastics. One square was filled with younger women doing something that looked like a mixture of Tai Chi and aerobics. It felt as if the whole city was up and exercising before going to work.
After watching the crowds for a while and walking around the lake, we visited the Ngoc Son Temple (The Temple of the Jade Mountain) which is located on a small island in the lake. By nine in the morning, we had already seen a lot of the Old Quarters and the area around the lake and went for a second breakfast before checking in at the hotel.

Hanoi is much nicer looking than Saigon is. A lot smaller, prettier houses and less traffic. Unfortunately for us, Hanoi has four seasons just like Europe. Even though the winter is short and a lot milder than at home, 12 degrees is rather cold if you are not dressed for it. We were so cold!

But Hanoi has some nice cafés where we could warm ourselves up between our sightseeing walks. Some Hanoi pics:

The Hanoi Opera House



The garden of the National Museum

Courtyard in the Temple of Literature

Temple of Literature

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Since it is really easy to get to the Halong Bay from Hanoi, we decided to go on a 3 day cruise even though the weather was not ideal for it. According to the weather forecast the Sunday would bring more sun than any other day in the next two weeks, so we booked a cruise starting on Friday.

The bay really is amazing, even if the grey skies did their best to ruin the trip for us. We spent one night on the boat and the second night in a bungalow in a very secluded bay on Cat Ba Island. When we woke up on the island we were finally rewarded with blue skies and sun (but it was still really, really cold!). On the boat trip back to Halong City we could really enjoy a beautiful scenery! See for yourselves:

Imperial Huế

Transport in Vietnam is not a problem. There is the very convenient system of open tour buses, where you can buy a ticket for a special route with certain stops on it for virtually nothing. To get from Saigon to Hanoi can be as cheap as $ 45, but you are stuck to the route that you chose. Good thing is, you can stay for as long as you like at every destination along the way.

We went from Hoi An to Huế by open tour bus and payed US$ 4 each for the three hour bus ride. I have never seen a bus like this one, it was a sleeping bus with bunk beds (sort of, built for Asian size people though). Three rows with about 14 seats in a row. Quite a comfy way to travel I must say.

Open bus

We arrived in Huế around noon and were welcomed by a steady drizzle and grey skies. Huế is supposed to be a nice city, but every city loses a bit of its magic when it is raining. (Everyone who's ever been to Salzburg will know that...)
Except for the citadel and the former Imperial City, the central parts of Hué don't have that much to offer, especially not in winter when it is cold and rainy. The Citadel and the Imperial City are quite something though. Sadly, large parts of it was destroyed in 1968 during the Tet Offensive but many of the buildings have been restored and you get a general idea about how beautiful the Imperial City once was.



Imperial City, Huế

We rented bikes from our hotel to explore the Citadel in the morning and headed out to the old Elephant Arena in the afternoon. It was the fighting arena where tigers had to fight elephants, a kind of Vietnamese Colosseum. The elephants represented the monarchy and they always won since the tigers (representing rebellion) had their fangs and claws removed before the fight. Not exactly fair now is it?
This is a quite forgotten site and not many tourists come here even though it is just 4 km outside of town. Maybe because it is not that spectacular anymore and the arena itself was closed for conservation. But it was still a nice place and the old Elephant Temple nearby was very peaceful even though it looked like it had been neglected for the last century.

Elephant Temple

Tiger and Elephant Fighting Arena