A Country of Contrasts

After the delights of Four Thousand Islands, our next few stops were quite a contrast – both to the islands and to each other. After an overnight stop in Tha Khaek, we arrived in the capital, Vientiane. Being about the size of Bristol, it is quite a small city to be capital; but unlike Bristol there are not many attractions to see. It has a great core of streets with some wonderful restaurants and bars, but otherwise it’s main claim to fame is Patuxai.

This rather odd-looking tower is set in the middle of a massive boulevard like the Champs Elysée, but unlike the wonderful Arc de Triomphe in Paris, this one is made of concrete. Even the local signage says up lose it is “even more unimpressive”. From the top you can see what looks like a mixture of Soviet and Chinese buildings, which gives the city an odd look.

We stayed a couple of days, and absolutely loved the coffee shops and food. We had the most wonderful pork loin and slow roasted lamb with vegetables and gravy. Otherwise we were largely bemused by the place, but it was still a great place to chill.

Our next stop was Vang Vieng. This was a small town set amongst jungle-clad, limestone karsts and paddy fields and was absolutely stunning. We had an incredible hour watching the sun go down behind the wonderful mountains in front of us, as well as a great day exploring the countryside on scooters.

However, the town turned out to be like a Little Korea. Apparently a film was made there a few years ago, and now hordes of Koreans flock too the place to enjoy the scenery and spend time at the sites where they can go zip lining and tubing on the river. Perhaps the oddest thing is when all the twenty-somethings descend on one bar in the evening. With western and Korean music, it must be like a night out in Seoul.

Our third stop on this leg had nothing odd about it. It was quite simply one of the most beautiful towns in South East Asia. Luang Prabang is the ancient Laos capital and is a UNSECO World Heritage Site. Everything about the place oozes sophistication, and it was such a pleasure to walk around and enjoy it.

We experienced everything from delightful French tapas to elephants swimming in the Mekong to wonderful cascading waterfalls to Buddhist monks collecting alms from the local villagers are sunrise. Set on a promontory jutting into the Mekong River, it is surrounded by wonderful pristine jungle, which can be seen from the hill in the centre of town. It really is a beautiful place to spend a few days.

We are loving the time in Laos. It has definitely thrown up some oddities, but generally it has been great. The people are a delight and very friendly, and the north of the country is still carpeted in lush jungle. We hope to explore some more of that in our next section of travels.