Sabaidee

My health is getting better in the last days, so I'm back here to write a little on the blog.

Since the last post we have crossed the border between Thailand and Laos and slowly travelled the first hundreds of km into the country. Crossing the border was easy: a tiny boat took us across the Mekong river, then it was just a matter of filling the papers, giving a visa photo (a shiny new picture of me with short hair!) and paying the fee (in American dollars, as it is cheaper).

Border crossing to Laos

The difference with Thailand doesn't seem that big at first: the nature looks similar, the people look similar, the language sounds similar and they even accept Thai currency here. Yet you start seeing the huge difference as soon as you leave the immigration office and head towards the bus station of Huay Xai.

Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world, a communist country and apparently an economic colony of neighboring China. The difference with the rich and developed Thailand is striking. Do you know what tourists do if they get hurt or sick in Laos? They get as fast as possible out of the country and into a Thai hospital. Infrastructures are either lacking or poorly maintained. Another thing that we had also heard, and could verify pretty soon, is that people smile much less here. Coming from Thailand it's hard not to notice their less joyful attitude, although that is an unfair comparison, since the Thais are famous for their omnipresent smile.

Going back in time

Nevertheless we like it a lot here. The scenery is beautiful and the country is different from what we have seen so far. The people may smile less, but they have great dignity and are very nice. In Thailand you always have to avoid dozens of people offering you transportation, food, massages or other innumerable things. In Laos you have to search for them and hope that they have time and will want to attend your requests. It usually looks like they are making a big effort to listen to what you say instead of going on with their normal activity, which often consists in staring silently at the void in front of them. At least this has been the reaction at most shops, hotels and offices.

Our first stop was Luang Namtha, where we had planned to stay for various days, until we saw the size of the town: few houses and less roads filled with dust and some tourists. Our hotel was very nice though, and the night market offered some great food,like the greasy roasted pork that satisfied our craving for meet and stained K's pant two nights in a row. We decided to spend two nights there anyway, and we're glad we did it. With our rented mountain bikes we rode about 30km in the surrounding area, cycling around rice fields and villages: fun and beautiful, although our bottoms didn't enjoy the ride as much as we did. The best part was definitely seeing the number of children that smiled at us, waving their hands and yelling 'sabaidee' when we passed by. They always seem so happy to see new faces around :) It's much less nice to see women and children doing hard labour like carrying heavy loads of woods or rice. Life seems pretty hard here, from a westerner's point of view it's easy to forget how hard life can be.

Fields around Luang Namtha

Going home from school

School is for everyone

From Luang Namtha we catched an early morning bus to Oudomxai, planning to take a connecting bus to our real destination: Nong Khiaw. Thing were looking good as we met a couple of Belgian girls willing to answer all our questions about Cambodia, and the minivan driver wasn't as crazy as many here. Unfortunately the mood of our four hour ride changed drastically when a woman started vomiting loudly out of the window, and went on for the three remaining hours, soon followed by another passenger that every now and then would jump from his seat, leap over other passengers and stick his head out of the bus. Apparently car sickness is common in this area, so we'll have to prepare for this scenes to repeat more often than we'd like.

Eventually we arrived at Oudomxai at 11am and bought a ticket for the next bus, which would leave us at some tiny place in the middle of nowhere from where we could take a shared taxi to cover the last hour of road until Nong Khiaw. Both the driver and the lady selling tickets promised that the minivan would leave between 1pm and 2pm. We got to know another common custom of transports here: quite often the bus doesn't leave at the scheduled time, but only when it has collected enough passenger.

The "bus"

 Minutes passed and passed. At about 4pm we decided that we would arrive too late at our final destination even if the bus were to leave immediately, asked for our backpacks and prepared to spend the night at Oudomxai. Another reason behind this decision is that it allowed us rejoin a couple of Swiss friends that we had met in Thailand a few days before. We managed to meet them, spend a nice evening at a local restaurant and continue our trip toward Nong Khiaw together the following day.