Laos - Luang Prabang

In Laos, $1 equals roughly 7,000 kip. (Don’t ask me which $, the US or Australian—at the moment we’re working off of currency cards we bought in Oz that hold US$ but which we purchased with Australian $. So it’s much of a muchness and we’re going off of round figures.) That’s a weird exchange to work with, for sure, certainly harder than Thailand where $1 was roughly equal to 25 baht. When traveling in another country, you easily get lost in the new currency, paying attention to the currency’s value only during the first day or two. Then, aside from buying transportation, you tend to get into the local currency mindset.  

Take 10,000 kip, for example. Equal to about $1.50. What can you buy for 10,000 kip? Prices vary from restaurants to convenience stores and from city to city, but here are some 10,000 kip purchases we’ve made so far:

• 2 x 1.5 liter bottles of water from a convenience store
• 1 litre bottle of Beer Lao (at a restaurant—cheaper at the convenience store)
• a baguette and butter/jam (but not both, you usually have to pick one)
• In Luang Prabang, a coffee
• In Houay Xai – a Laos iced coffee (this is a delicious concoction made up of coffee, thick as tar, with a heaping spoonful of sugar added, then a generous dose of sweetened condensed milk stirred in, and this all poured over ice—the guide was right on this one, it is far better than a Frappuccino)
• 2 small bunches of incense
• In Vang Vieng, it will get you a 4km tuk tuk ride from the bus station to the center of town

From Houay Xai to Luang Prabang, we took a two-day slow ferry down the Mekong that stopped for the night at a random little town called Pak Beng. Apparently the slow ferry is very popular amongst the traveling crowd so we decided to give it a whirl. But you know that little voice in the back of your head that wonders if two days on a boat isn’t a really long time? It was right. Two days on a boat is a very long time. J I finished two books during the ride, one horrible romance novel that I got free off of Amazon, and Another Quiet American by Brett Dakin, a story about his two years working in Laos after graduating from college. Thank goodness for the kindle. The ability to carry around 20 books with me on that little device is pure genius. I tend to carry five or so books with me when traveling and I can easily say this was the best investment I made for this trip. It’s also ridiculously helpful that it has backlighting so if I’m having a restless night, I can turn over and read. Thank you Amazon. 

The first day of the boat ride, I tried to conserve my Kindle reading time and spent most of the day reading about Vietnam in the guidebook and doing Sudoku. Seven hours later we arrived at Pak Beng and got hounded by different guest houses and managed to find something suitable for a decent price. Hmm, decent price. That started us on the spree of 40,000 kip rooms. Probably too low of a price, but hard to resist a room with private bathroom for less than $6! Aaaaaaaand we got to see the, um, beauty of Pak Beng. It’s a one-road town that caters to the slow ferry boat tourists coming to stay one night. Sandwiches and pastries galore, and they even croissants and chocolate muffins. We were also impressed by the purity we saw there. As we walked out of our guesthouse to dinner, there was an old man who said, “Sorry,” as Marcus walked past, then I walked past and heard him rip a big loud one. Quaint! My “Wow” was responded to with his repeated “Sorry”. Then we continued on down the road and saw a naked little boy dancing to his TV. Truly, it was a charming place. 

The next day we were in the boat from 9am—5:30pm. It was a long, long day. We were relieved to arrive at Luang Prabang and I think I can safely say we won’t be taking any long ferry rides again anytime soon. Though I must say, they’ve certainly made it a more comfortable trip than it could have been. Some ferries had wooden seats. Ours at least had car seats! Random to sit in a car seat on a boat in the middle of the Mekong, but it was a great idea. 

When we arrived on the peninsula in LP, we again performed the accommodation ritual and found something decent (for 40,00kip). At least it seemed decent until I found bed bug bites trailing all over my arms and legs the next morning. We moved guesthouses and put in a load of laundry. Gross. 

Luang Prabang is a nice little town full of old French buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the French tried to colonize the country. Along with the colonial architecture, the French left a legacy of baguettes in the country (that I must admit I’m quite thankful for). The Lao monarchy used to live in LP and we took a tour of the old palace as well as a number of temples, including yet another temple that housed the Emerald Buddha. We also took a tour out to some waterfalls and went for our first swim in southeast Asia.  

We also rented bikes, spent time in cafes and wondered about the Laos people. Every time we walk into a guesthouse, there are a number of people there. Only one attends to you while the rest continue watching TV. It’s a similar story in the restaurants. In LP, we were often the only people in an entire restaurant, I assume because it’s low season. But there were often up to seven employees lounging around, watching TV or playing on their smartphones. No one cleaning, only one person taking orders, maybe one person out of sight preparing food. It seems like such a waste to have so many people milling about doing nothing and Marcus and I have mulled over why that might be. Marcus is reading a book about Cambodia and though Cambodians aren’t the same as the Lao, it said that workers would make enough to pay all their immediate expenditures and then when they had enough they’d stop working. A story was told about an aid worker who introduced fertilizer to some villagers, and the fertilizer doubled their yield that year. The next year he came back and the villagers had only planted half the crop size as the previous year. What could they possibly need more money for? Apparently any extra money was taken in taxes (or by Chinese moneylenders, though that begs the question, if they had debts to pay off, why not earn enough to pay them off?). Another explanation involves Buddhism and the emphasis on lack of attachment.  

In the book I was reading about Laos, it talks about the workers in the middle class who are educated, then not hired for the skills they’re trained in. Engineers and language experts working in tourism. And the office politics are 100% top down and workers must comply with quasi-dictatorships. Ambition and hard work don’t appear to be valued.  

From my Western perspective, this seems completely backwards to me. Why not work hard? Why not grow and learn? Education, knowledge and hard work are highly valued in our world and it seems like the lack of value on these commodities helps explain the different economic states of the countries. In the towns we’ve been through, apparent poverty levels have been lower than I expected. Everyone has a cell phone, most are smart phones. And most homes have a motorbike for transportation. I attended a workshop on the “culture of poverty” way back when I started working at the College Success Foundation. I didn’t buy into it at the time, but the workshop taught that people from very poor backgrounds tend not to save their money or think very long-term. Instead of investing in education or a savings account, people spend their money on flash phones, clothes, cars and TVs. Money is spent, never invested. 

We did see more poverty on the drive from LP to Vang Vieng. And of course what we see are the big cities and the villages that line the major highways of the country, which together make up the majority of the sealed roads of the country. More of the countries’ roads are unsealed than sealed. And behind the façade of the villages we pass on the highway, the country looks different. There are more houses and huts behind what we’re really seeing; villages of houses and huts, farmyard animals running freely. I have to remember that we’re just seeing the face of the country that’s easy to get to.