Laos: between madness and spirituality

Laos, Vientiane

I think Laos is the craziest and funniest country I have visited so far, not because of the country itself but because of the things I did there! Lots of first times for me, but let's go in order. I left Vietnam on a night bus knowing that I had more than 24 hours bus ride ahead of me. The thing is that I love traveling by bus; it's like the soul follows the body: you have time to think about what you saw, what you felt and especially you have time to say goodbye to the country you are leaving in a proper way. And when you get in a new country you see nature, people and things changing, you breathe a new air and get ready to be taken in once again. We arrived at the border with Laos at 6am and had to walk aaaall the way up to the hill to cross it, I think it was just about 1 km but still it was on the way up and very tiring! Plus it took 3 hours to get my passport stamped, just ordinary Asian time! But thanks God "soon enough" we were ready to continue the trip and as soon as we entered Laos I knew we were there and it felt good. The first impressions I had about Laos were that this country has an amazing nature, is very wild and veeeeery dusty! There are basically very few roads, the rest is red sand and stones. My first stop was the capital: Vientiane. The bus dropped us at the bus station and it took an hour to the tuk tuk going to the center to leave it. They were just trying to carry as many people as possible and at the end we were so many we could not even move. And all the backpacks, bags and boxes of people were just thrown up on the roof. I really hoped with all my heart that my backpack would not fall from there, and thankfully all went well. My friend from Naples (the one I met in Vietnam) was waiting for me at the hostel and that hug received as soon as I entered the door made me feel at home. I was happy to be there. And he had a surprise for me: the day before he had met another guy from Naples who is working in Laos as "pizzaiolo". I swear to God the one I ate in Laos was one of the best pizzas ever. Sometimes it takes so little to be happy :o)

We spent a couple of days in Vientiane, visiting temples, local schools and talking to monks. The capital was the most spiritual place I saw in Laos, calm and friendly. On the second day we decided to rent a bike and go to the "Buddha Park", more than 30 km far away from the city. I think I underestimated this distance and clearly overestimated my phisical conditions so that after 20 km I was almost dead and the two of us decided to hitchhike. A tractor stopped by, the guy carried our bikes on board, we jumped on the sides on a wooden plank and soon enough we were at our destination. I was so glad we did it, first of all it was a lot of fun and second the last piece of the road was even worse than the one we had done so far and I don't think I could have made it - ever ;o)

This was the first time I hitchhiked and since then I have done it several times, I really like meeting people like this and only nice people have stopped at my thumb-up so far, which makes me wanting to do it again and again :o)

Our second destination in Laos was Vang Vieng, a super hippie little town were you can smoke/drink opium, tubing into a river and jump out of trees in a cristal clear blue lagoon. I did the last two things as I am very very much AGAINST any kind of drugs, let alone opium. Vang Vieng is just fun, there is not much to do apart chilling on a hammock on the river side and eat amazing sandwiches. The scenarios are amazing though, a small town surrounded by rivers and mountains. After a couple of days, we booked ourselves a night bus which would bring us to our third and last destination in Laos: Luang Prabang. The pick up was supposed to be at 11 pm.  They came at 12 am. The bus was supposed to be a sleeping bus, instead was an old, stiff sitting bus (they simply told us the sleeping bus was broken so leave it or take it - we took it). We were supposed to take 7 hours to get to Luang Prabang but the driver, to be forgiven for the fact that the bus was not what we paid for, decided to take a crazy alternative road in the middle of nowhere and in 4 hours we were there - he was also going really fast and at one point I had to tell him to slow the hell down, as I didn't intend to die in Laos. He seemed to listen, for 5 minutes. Of course, when we arrived at 5 am everything was closed and all guesthouses showed a very big "WE ARE FULL, DO NOT BOTHER US IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT" sign. As we didn't sleep for the entire night, we decided to take out a sleeping bag and try to sleep on a sidewalk: this was another first for me, never in my life would I have thought of sleeping on the street. But here the magic happened: when we opened our eyes, about an hour later, we were surrounded by hundreds of monks and people offering them food. I learnt later that this is a Buddhist tradition: monks only eat food that people offer them at sunrise, that food must be enough for breakfast and lunch (they do not have dinner) and if they have too much they share it with people and talk to them or answer their questions. I couldn't believe I was seeing all these monks at once and witnessing something so powerful that I ignored until few moments before. The conclusion is that sleeping on the street is not always that bad, especially when you are in a warm country anyways ;o)

That same evening there was a big party in front of our hostel. I went at the door to ask if we could get in and they told me it was a private party for diplomats and government people only and we were not welcome to join, obviously. In the meantime we had met a very friendly couple from Chile who had poured us a couple of glasses of whisky and coke and, as I am not used to drink that much, let's say I was happier and crazier than normal ;o) I realized later that this is a bad combination: I couldn't understand WHY we could not get it so I decided to jump off a wall of this private villa and in 5 seconds I was on the dance floor of the poshest party of Laos. My friend and the couple from Chile joined as well and we were all having so much fun dancing with people, eating free food and drinking free beers until someone found out we were not "authorized guests" (we were in flip flops, shorts and old shirts - plus the guy from the door recognized me) and we were kicked out the party. I wished that guy a lot of bad carma as all we were doing was dancing, having fun and entertaining other people with our crazy dances. Now I feel a bit guilty as we were clearly doing something we should have not. Anyways, as the music was so loud and the villa on our street anyways, I kept on dancing all night long bare feet in the middle of the road, inviting people to join, dancing with random strangers, stopping cars and tuk tuks just to say "hello" and having so so much fun. That night was liberating and I didn't feel like this in long time. And when you share experiences like this one with the right people, the joy is double (and no, I was not drunk, just usual crazy me and a bit more, and very very happy).

Breaking into a governmental party without being invited was another first for me. Gosh I love my life! The day after we went to one of the most beautiful waterfalls I ever saw, near Luang Prabang, and there we just chilled and played guitar.

Laos