Blowin' In The Wind : Visa run to Laos

After our failure to secure a visa in both Chiang Mai and Bangkok, Plan C involved a trip to Laos, Thailand’s neighbour to the east. The capital city is Vientiane and a trip to the Thai consulate there was necessary for us to extend our visa for another 90 days. They make sure you stay at least one night by having you apply for your visa one day and receiving your answer the following day.

Vientiane is a city of approximately 800,000 people and it seemed to us that their national pastime was “napping”. Actually, the Lao people could not have treated us any better than they did, going out of their way time and again to assist us. Unfortunately, the city itself did not leave a wonderful impression. There was a great deal of garbage in the streets (reminding us of Cairo last year) which apparently is somewhat new to this city. Vientiane hosted the Asian Games a few years ago and at that point the city was spotless. Afterward, it seems, the money for cleaning projects dried up. The Mekong River runs through Vientiane and where one might expect a number of beautiful riverside buildings, restaurants etc., none existed. At least we didn’t see any.

Luang Prabang, a Unesco World Heritage site, is a small city north of Vientiane and that was our next stop. A beautiful and charming little city, LP is also on the Mekong River but in contrast to the capital it uses its natural beauty very effectively. There are numerous guest houses along the river but no high-rises or modern hotels to be seen. It is a town that is easily walkable or rideable and fortunately our guest house provided free bicycles (as well as a free pickup from the airport). We decided a river cruise on the Mekong at sunset would be a perfect end to the day and start to the evening (the sun sets about 5:45) so for 100,000 we got an hour on the water.

Ah yes, the prices. One U.S. dollar is approximately 7500 Laotian kip, so the majority of our time was spent trying to make sense of the money. We actually withdrew 2,000,000 (that’s right, million) kip at one point just to have a cup of coffee and a muffin. If you dropped a 500 kip bill in the street you really had to consider whether it was worth your while to bend over and pick it up.

One of the highlights of our trip to LP was being part of tak bat, the daily procession of monks along the main street at 5:30 a.m. Hundreds of locals and tourists line the street with alms (offerings of food, mainly sticky rice) every morning to give to the monks for their daily sustenance. There are well over a hundred monks walking in single file as well as in complete silence. There is also almost total silence among the almsgivers which makes for an eerie but awe-inspiring ritual. The people give the food in order to “make merit” or receive spiritual redemption. As is often the case though, the spirituality is somewhat lost when you see such things as monks having to sidestep cameras on tripods in order to accept the alms. Subtlety and discretion are seldom evident in tourists. However, a return to Luang Prabang is certainly in our plans.

Until next time…………