Paco On Tour

Ends and Beginnings

It is now fifteen months, to the day, since I left home to start this trip and eleven months since I flew off to Peru from Madrid on my round the world odyssey which is pretty much coming to an end now.

I have been particularly bad over the last couple of months to keep this site updated and have still to write, at least a little, of my time in Cambodia, Vietnam and the Baltic countries, where I am now. But I did not want to wait before updating all of that, which will happen eventually, to give some idea of what my plans for the future five months are, given that this particular phase of the trip (the traveling around the world with a backpack) is now coming to a close. I am still not expecting to get back home before the end of October, so there is still a bit of time to go, but I will not be spending it as I have up to now.

In truth, during the last few weeks I have started to suffer a little of what is generally termed "travel" fatigue, which is in my case a kind of over-loading of the senses and capability of absorbing new experiences to an extent to which one becomes just a little jaded with exposure to new things. It was evident in Vietnam, which I crossed in a mere 12 days, something I would have never done at the beginning of the trip and with my arrival in Helsinki on the 20th of May and subsequent descent through the Baltic countries down to the capital of Lithuania – Vilnius – from which I write now has not really gone away.

Although it is a little sad not to be making the very best of these places, and I am conscious of it, I do take it as a positive sign that my backpacking days have come to a natural terminus and it is lucky that it has pretty much coincided with my planned ending of this part of the trip in any case. Tomorrow I will fly out to London and visit friends and family there and move on to Spain to do the same there. My arrival in Europe less than 2 weeks ago was a bit of a shock to the system but I am pretty much getting used to it now. I am certainly very much forward to seeing all of my family after such a lengthy time away from them all. It will also be the first time when I start sitting back and looking at the things I have been doing over the last fifteen months in a retrospective manner and as a whole. I suppose there will be some initial interest in how I have lived these experiences and just having to put these into words (which I have not necessarily done that much up to now) will force me to look back at the whole period as one in many respects.

I am aware that, although it might sometime seem difficult to leave everything behind and take off for more than a year, for many who take off the return and readjustment it requires can be just as difficult. When I set out on the last day of February last year my initial plan was actually to be back in Brussels by now – end of May in fact. As time progressed and my plans changed I have moved that return date to the end of October, but I never intended to keep on traveling and moving as I have done until then. As time went on, and the memory of my "previous life" - to put some term to it! - receded I realized that I would not cope very well with jumping immediately back into the roles I had left behind.

The more I wrote, particularly my personal diary but also what I would get round to putting on the Blog, the more I thought about sitting down at the end of it all and somehow bringing it together in a text which, by its very nature, would be different to that which I had written during the travels. It would serve also, hopefully, as a way of wrapping the experience up and moving on to other things rather than allow myself to hark back to what sometimes may have seemed a an idyllic life. The idea was also to establish myself, at least for a few weeks, in a place which was sufficiently similar to (my experience of) Europe, making a return that much less of a shock, but with sufficient particular characteristics of its own to retain a distinctiveness and novelty which would still allow me to feel not quite in Europe yet. A kind of half way transition point, like the decompression vaults used to make it possible for divers not to suffer the consequences of coming up to the surface too quickly.

After thinking about a variety of places I decided that Argentina, and in particular one of its major cities such as Buenos Aires or Cordoba, fitted the bill as closely as I could probably find. A very European – or rather Spanish/Italian cultural background – making it sufficiently familiar in its way but with a unavoidable South American streak and of course location, which still made it foreign. So I decided to head out there for a few weeks to work on this text – which is as yet quite undefined – but also improve my tango, which has fallen into disuse over all these months – and get a shot of cultural life which is vibrant and plentiful, particularly in Buenos Aires, and which has been one of the things I have sorely missed on the trip. So I am heading off to the southern hemisphere once again in July and will be back in September in time to join the celebrations of (one of) my sister’s wedding.

After this event, the return proper will only be a few weeks away. I have yet to make my mind up fully on how to carry this out but of one thing I am sure, it will not be on an airplane arriving in Zaventem airport as if this were the conclusion of just another trip. Having set off on foot, I have a strong predilection for returning the same way and, in so far as I can, retracing the steps I took when I began. At present my idea is to walk back at least from Reims, perhaps a bit before, across the fields of Champagne, which in early October will be covered with vineyards in their full glory (unlike in March when it was all pretty barren), across the Ardennes and into Brussels by mid-late October. There is something about going back slowly and along the same paths I took coming out, all those months ago, that is especially attractive and even rewarding. I’ll see how possible it is.

For now, there will be a bit of a break on the blog site perhaps. I will definitely update the text to bring it up to today (last day in the Baltics) and the photos will be coming on line steadily during the next few days, thanks to the indefatigable sir Victor who has kindly been uploading them from the CDs I manage to send to him once in a blue moon.

Otherwise, I will continue to write on the site, but it will not be in quite the same vein as up to now I suspect. I do not want to use this entry as a closure in any way – there will be time for that in October – but did feel it might be of some interest to those of you who have followed along during this time.

Saigon

A quick post from Saigon, quick because it seems that if I wait to have time to write about what is going on with a little length to do it all justice, it ends up not being written at all! I have had to shorten everything I wanted to say about Laos - which was a fabulous place looking back - and having left Cambodia a few days ago I have still to sit down and write about it all!! But it has been a sobering experience visiting a country whose people ave gone through so much suffering until so recently.

In any case, I did wanted to say that I have had a bit of a change of plans and finally decided to cross over into Vietnam although my initial plans didn't include a visit to this country, mainly because of a lack of time. I am still short on that one - my flight to Europe (Helsinki) is on the 20th of May - but it was only a 6 hour bus trip from Cambodia's capital (Phnom Penh) and it seemed like a pity to be so close and not take the opportunity.

Saigon - or Ho Chi Minh City as it is officially known nowadays - has been quite an eye opener. I haven't seen anything quite like it since Bangkok really but I would probably vote Saigon as a nicer place to visit in many respects... The French buildings are still maintained and above all the urban layout - large avenues, parks and whatnot, is faithfully conserved. There is a dynamism and spark in the air that I have not really observed in such intensity elsewhere in Southeast Asia and makes me think of what parts of China might be like now, although I have not been to that part of the world.

The plan is to travel up to Hanoi - the capital in the far north, about 1,700 km away - by bus, stopping in about five places along the way, making it the speediest and most "touristy" visits of a country yet, but I guess better than nothing. The heat is pretty oppressive still and the rains are slowly arriving, not refreshing ones, just making it all more humid and sticky! I didn't expect looking forward to a cool Helsinki and Baltic States in May, but I am.

The trip - at least the world-wide globetrotting part of it - is slowly coming to the end. Barely a couple of weeks here and by early June I will be visiting friends and family in London and Spain, which will really feel like a kind of ending. I was a little hesitant as to what I would be feeling by this stage a few months ago, but now I can say that 12 months away from home is probably enough, and as much as I have enjoyed moving from one place to another throughout this time and having completely different experiences almost every week all good things must come to an end and in many ways I am reconciled with that now...

Since I have been so incapable of updating the Blog during the last month I will probably try to make shorter entries making them certainly more frequent! but I have learnt to stop promising or expecting too much and simply get on with things! It is also true that the last few weeks have been particularly intense travel-wise leaving little time for pause and reflection!

I will be leaving Saigon today, after 3 days, head north to DaiLat and from there travel almost everyday until Hanoi. I'll keep you posted! :-)

 

Crossing Cambodia

Leaving Laos and crossing into Cambodia was a little how you imagine borders used to be a long time ago. First you checked out of one country, with a little wooden hut serving as immigration control, at least this one was surrounded by a few fishing village huts selling a few wears here and there – although this was mainly for the benefit of tourists coming along to visit the Irawaddy dolphins on the Mekong here rather than anyone crossing the border. As soon as we got across, we were a party of eight, a minibus offered its services to get us to the first town in Laos, a 2 Ѕ hour drive away. We traveled for about 20 minutes in what seemed to be no-mans land and arrived at the little shack that served as the Cambodian immigration post. A couple of officers making lists and asking for the $ 2 entrance charge, much easier than what we had been led to believe, and with a stamp and a glance we were across into a country with one of the most painful histories of the whole region, and it has plenty of competition in this part of the world for that sad achievement.

The Air-conditioned minibus was quite a luxury on this dirt-road track (no asphalt since we left Laos) and we would remember it fondly in the second part of the trip. Transport is an issue in Cambodia, roads are notoriously bad, especially in remote areas such as the one we were in now, and there is not even a rudimentary system of public buses. Pick-up trucks are about as far as you get, that is how the locals travel, and you never know when they will leave or arrive. We were left on the Mekong across from Staeng Trung which was the first town we were aiming for. Ferry across, they are building a bridge but it will not be finished for some time, and on arrival we were welcomed by the usual tourist touts offering travel service to the South, even to the capital Phnom Penh. The only problem was that there was only one fellow offering the service. It was the middle of New Year and normal transport had apparently come to a complete halt. We seemed to have little choice but to pay the stratospheric (for here) price of $15 to get to the main hub of Kompong Thom about 400 km south but at least 10 hours away…

We seemed to have little choice, there were a group of six other travelers already cramped in the mini-bus, much worse looking than our initial one, and we really wanted to get as much ground covered that same day as possible. Many roads in Cambodia were built by the French during there colonial presence here (although formally it was a protectorate for much of the time) and were then left to slowly decay (except in war-areas, where the decay was rapid) for fifty years with very little maintenance, if any, during this time. Since the early 1990s, with the entrance of a UN presence and above all million of dollars in aid, some of the main routes have been fully upgraded, but these are on the whole around the capital Phnom Penh and towards the south and west. Up here in the north work is only starting now. I suppose we were lucky in that at least half of the way the road was set out, flattened and allowed speeds of about 60 km/h, although it feels like 160 km/h on your usual European motorway. Unfortunately it didn’t stop up us getting a pretty big nail in one tire and going through the required tire change, not that the replacement looked like it was in any good shape. After getting our punctured tire fixed at a little village a few km down the road – wonderful how these spring up just when you need them - we did manage to hang on to it for about 10 minutes before coming across a mate of the driver who had, extraordinarily, manage to completely blow up one of his own tires. Like in Formula 1 although his was not a race car… nice chap our driver. I just hoped we wouldn’t encounter another killer nail on the way…

We didn’t thankfully, there was a lot of partying along the route – thanks to the New Year celebrations – and our two stowaway companions had a rowdy time shouting out at the top of their voices from the windows, half their bodies outside you understand, as we crossed any inhabited place, but all part of the celebrations. It was hot and stuffy in the van and one poor Danish girl couldn’t really hack it a lot more – it had been a long day – and we had to stop a couple of times to let her out, get some air and be sick… poor Mr Driver was at a bit of a loss to understand why we should stop the first time we told him to. I suppose, stuck in the driver’s seat, concentrating on a treacherous road, with a little kid sitting where your back should be, he thought that we were pretty comfortable, all things considered. A/C was something we remembered with fondness from our first morning ride, something of a too high a luxury for this trip.

In any case we made it to Phnom Penh eventually in good shape, thankfully. In truth the last three hours of the trip were on a comfortable bus, with A/C and all, pushing the innumerable mopeds and other vehicles on the narrow roads, although paved by now, here the law being that of the strongest and largest. Phnom Penh itself is a rather special place. The first impression is a city divided in two areas, a small one in which expatriates and the Cambodians who have made money move in and then the rest. The Expat presence here is much larger than in any of the other major cities of the region. This is mostly due to the massive influx of foreign aid that the country has received since the UN brought in a large peace keeping force in the early 1990s. That has now left but the legacy of a large ONG presence and governmental organizations remains. I knew little of the history of Cambodia, at least in any detail, before arriving. I did know that it had suffered dramatically as a “side” theatre of war during the Vietnam war (from 1970 to 1975) and that after a raging civil war the terrifying regime of Pol Pot took over for three and a half years from 1976 to 1979, only prevented of physically destroying the whole country by a Vietnamese invasion, but the aftermath of all this terror and destruction remains very much in the streets of Phnom Penh today. The city was completely emptied and depopulated during Pol Pots regime, from a million inhabitants to just a few thousand, mostly working for the government, and the systematic murder of anyone that had a minimum amount of education or was in any way involved in government, finance, or simply any kind of intellectual endevour. The result was an emptying of any urban life, the escape of anyone who could and forced labour for those that stayed. Mindless cruelty, but above all complete lack of organisation, lead to the death of tens of thousands, some speak of two millions, as a result of the famines induced by the completely irresponsible policies enforced on the population. A very sad and tragic story, which would not get much better as I read a little more of the history and came to learn of what had gone on before. But I am not one to provide any kind of history lesson on Cambodia. Suffice it to say that it remains largely unknown in the rest of the world, that much suffering resulting from those times still exists and the country seems rather unable to lift itself out of the trap of misery it has fallen into.

At this point, our stay in Phnom Penh was only for a couple of days, enough time to find a motorbike and head south to visit some of the coastline. I had decided that given the travel difficulties in Cambodia, in particular to visit some of the more remote areas and get out of the “tourist route”, which is really the capital and the ruins of Angkor- not that much else – I was going to need a dirt bike as used in Thailand and Laos before. Yael would be doing her own route in Cambodia so that left me with the bike to do some discovering on my own. Driving in Phnom Penh was pretty dangerous at first, one really has to get used to the local habits, however crazy they may seem at first. I seemed to get the knack of it after a while, but the trip down to Sihanoukville, about 200 km south, the main costal city, was in fact pretty nerve racking. The road is a good one, paved and in proper shape, but this seems to be taken as the ideal excuse for all those Cambodians that have managed to buy a car – at times, very expensive cars.. - to hurdle down without very much notice of anyone else on the road. Lorries of course are worse, being bigger. A few kilometres before entry a good all storm broke out making it a bit of a wet entry into the town itself... Safe enough, although unfortunately Sihanoukville didn't really live up to expectations. Not many people on the beach and, perhaps because of the rains, rather dirty beaches and murky water. It is not supposed to be like that always, but 36 hours was enough to make the decision to move on. This time, rather than taking the same route to Phnom Penh we went up an alternative route which turned out to be a lot more scenic and much less stressful.

Back in P.P. Yael and I parted our ways and I set off for the south shores of the Tonle Sap, the main lake in Cambodia and one that provides a livelihood to many people leaving on its shores. Roads on either side of it are good, so no real worries there, and after a quick night stop in a small village I continued my way around it in a clockwise sense. My objective was to see as many of the Khmer Temples as I could in the West of the country before staying for a few days in Siem Reap and visiting the amazing complex of temples that the great Khmer civilization built there centuries ago.

Laos: El Sur

Esta semana en el sur de Laos ha sido una de las más coloridas y vivas de tonas las pasadas en el sureste asiático hasta ahora. Tuvimos la oportunidad de alejarnos bastante de las rutas "turísticas"- aunque aquí tampoco es que haya muchas – y realmente adentrarnos en partes bastante apartadas de la región, en un país ya bastante aislado de por si. Todo gracias a locomoción alternativa, pero mejor empiezo por el principio.

Después del espeluznante viaje de Luang Prabang a Vientiane el autobús nocturno a Pakse, a unos 600 km al sur de la capital, parecía en comparación de lo más seguro. Claro que en circunstancias normales un autobús cargado con sacos de 50 kg por todo el pasillo central, con gente tumbada encima – haciendo cualquier transito altamente dificultoso, sobre todo en caso de estampida – y un conductor que conducía el artilugio como si el hombre estuviera sobre una autobahn alemana no una carretera de Laos, con perdón. Al menos el camino no incluía zona de montanas y los camiones optaban por no circular de noche. Había que pensar en positivo, y se me ocurrió que en cualquier colisión el peor arado iba a ser la otra parte, ¡o sea que tendrían cuidado en quitarse del medio!

Pakse es una pequeña ciudad mayormente de paso para los turistas dirigiéndose al oeste, hacia Tailandia, o hacia el sur, a la zona de las 4,000 islas en el Mekong donde el río se ensancha considerablemente y deja al descubierto infinidad de islas, algunas de tamaño considerable, donde se puede hacer una parada de unos días antes de seguir hacia Camboya, un poco mas al sur.

Para Yael y para mí, lo crucial era poder (por fin) alquilar una moto decente (250 cc) para adentrarnos en toda esa parte del país que no esta servida por transporte, casi de ningún tipo. Una vez encontrada la moto, del mismo modelo que habíamos alquilado la primera vez en Tailandia, y después de una pequeña pausa en Pakse – pasando un calor increíble, ya nos habían avisado que el sur, al estar a menor altura, seria bastante más caluroso – nos pusimos en camino.

El primer día comenzamos con una simple, aunque larga, subida a la ciudad de Savannakhet – la tercera del país. Mansiones coloniales, plazas e incluso una iglesia católica. Lamentablemente hoy en dia esta todo bastante envejecido e incluso en estado de ruina a veces.

La aventura empezo a estar servida cuando de Savanakhet nos dirigimos al este del pais a un pequeño pueblo llamado Saravan. Polvo, pueblos, caminos de tierra roja, puentes de tablas de madera entrecruzado no siempre faciles de cruzar con la moto. Por otro lado la sensacion de adentrarte en el Laos mas real y autentico, al margen de las rutas por las que pasan los autobuses... En realidad el camino era un festin de oportunidades fotografias o simplemente para admirar el paisaje y sobre todo las personas en sus quehaceres cotidianos, tan sumamente diferentes a cualquier cosa que hayamos aprendido los europeos. Los rios estan para banarse, lavar, fregar, el agua, vamos de todo. Eramos bichos extranos, eso si. En una moto enorme, para los estandares de por aquí, con casco – casi inexistentes para las personas normales – y con camaras y veocidad. Dabamos mas miedo que Robocop! Pero los chavales tienen una curiosidad innata y nos sonreian y saludaban con mucha alegria!

Estuvimos en total unos cuatro dias por la ruta de caminos apartados, a veces habia algun trecho de asfalto, lo menos, mas de tres cuartas partes eran caminos de tierra. Muchas veces bien pisado y por donde se podia circular con relativa facilidad, la subida a los montes – una planicie en medio del paises donde se cultiva café introducido por los franceses, era un poco mas arriesgado. En cualquier caso, en terminos de conduccion el ultimo tramo entre Attapeu y Champasak fue el de curtirse de verdad. Un conductor vietnamita que venia en la direccion opuesta nos aviso que despues de cruzar un rio - en una pequena barca, empujado (el rio no esta muy crecido) por una senora – el camino se volvia realmente todo-terreno. Efectevamente eso es lo que fue. Unos 70 km con poco mas de 3 o 4 pueblos, atraversando las profundidades de la jungla donde mdereros – probablemente super-ilegales – talaban y transportaban arboles de mas de 3 metros de circunferencia en viejos camiones que reventaban ruedas por el peso y bloqueaban el camino (dimos a parar con dos) y unos cinco rios donde evidentemente la palabra "puente" no habia llegado. Menos ma que esta es la epoca seca y los rios estan en minimos, porque si no el camino hubiera estado completamente intransitable. Aun asi, cruzar rios hasta las rodillas de agua – esto en una moto que personas de menos de 1,75 no tocan el suelo sentadas – daba cierto cosquilleo. Caerte de la moto en esas circumstancias podria creer dificultades, sobre todo para la moto! Pero la condenada cruzaba, no me lo acababa de creer, pero a cada una que dejaba atrás mas dificil se hacia el dar la vuelta cuando te encontrabas de nuevo una delate. El camino era de enduro y la verdad es que aprend bastante!! Ahora, tengo un nuevo respeto por los constructores de puentes, aunque sean dos tablas pegadas de mala manera!

Pasar entre 6-8 horas diaria en la moto bajo estas condiciones cansa y uno llega lleno de polvo y suciedad por todas partes, pero muy contento de haber disfrutado de parajes poco accesibles y aun lejos del turismo tradicional. Tambien hay una sensacion de aventura diferente al no tener ni idea de que le espera a uno unos kilometros mas adelante. El mapa que llevabamos era mas bien indicativo, la condicion de la carretera cambia constantemente y uno se encuentra con sorpresas continuamente que le dan, al final del dia, un sentimieto de logro que no se consigue viajando simplemente en autobus, por ejemplo.

En cualquier caso la moto fue excelente para transformar la vision que habia tenido de Laos hasta entonces. Uno se da mucho mas cuenta de la pobreza real que impera en el pais, aunque eso no implica necesariamente tristeza o penuria como se pudiera pensar. Es simplemente una forma de vida ancestral que la gente de la ciudad o de occidente tiene mal a imaginar.

Al volver a la civilizacion – en este caso a una carretera asfaltada – nos dirigimos al pueblo de Champasak que queda a las afueras de las ruinas de un templo Khmer construido por este pueblo (ahora los habitantes de Camboya) hace unos ocho siglos o asi. Este seria el primero de muchos que llegaria a ver mas al sur, en Camboya mismo, y una interesante introduccion a una civilizacion y sus restos de los que tenia muy poco conocimiento.

Antes de eso, la ultima parada en Laos fue en las islas del Mekong, casi en la frontera con Camboya, donde aun se pueden avistar los ultimos delfines que viven en el Mekong – desafortunadamente en vias de extincion – asi como unas pequenas cataratas que se suceden aquí, haciendo una navegacion continuada del Mekong imposible en este punto. Despues de el palizon de la moto unos dias de descanso relativo venian muy bien. Desde aquí el proximo paso era la dura Camboya.

Happy New Year !

Yes, it is New Year here in Cambodia - also in Thailand and Laos. People throwing water at each other in the streets and lots of partying at night. All shops are pretty much closed as well! I just wanted to assure anyone who might have wondered that I am still alive and well :) It has been a little time since a real entry and now Laos has come and gone in little more than 3 weeks. I hope to have a proper text on it soon - unfortunately photos are probably going to have to wait for a lot longer...

Very hot and dusty here but excellent people, but I won't go on to that just yet... Update not too far ahead, thanks for the patience!

400 Days

In Vientane, the capital of Laos, today about to quietly celebrate the 400th day of my particular tour, this catches me a little by surprise :-)

All well for now, on my way south towards Cambodia tonight, will be writing on Laos itself on my next entry. I simply wanted to thank all of you who have been reading this jumble of mostly unconnected thoughts, from those of you that have followed since the very beginning to those that just pop in out of curiosity once in a blue moon, for the support and interest in my rather personal voyage. Over 16,000 hits on the site to date, which is a rather humbling thought.  It has been, and of course still is, a pleasure to share at least a part of it with all of you.

I was hoping to write some more meaty recollections of the many things that have happened over this year and a month, but I think it is better to leave it for a little later - perhaps day 500 :-)

Gracias.

Luang Prabang & Vientiane

At the end of a little more than two and a half weeks in Laos I come through with a contrasted vision of the country and quite a few unique moments - for good and for hair-raising! It has definitely been action-packed but also some surprisingly lull moments and looking back it is quite surprising to think that it all took place in little more than 20 days.

I had left off with me, still accompanied by Yael, leaving off on a long and crowded "slow boat" trip down the Mekong. The great majority of tourists crossing from Thailand into Laos doing this northern route make the trip on these lazy and colourful boats. You are pretty much squashed in quite tight and bench sizes are more adequate for Lao’s physic (about 1.55 m) than European ones. We were a little too late boarding initially - border difficulties of some members of our van - and ended up with no cushion on our narrow bench :( I suppose third class trains in Southern Europe were a little more comfortable at the time! But it is all part of the fun after all. The Mekong flow already at quite some width at this point, about 2,000 km from its source in the Himalayas, and definitely provides the best source of livelihood and communication for the few people that live around here - small village dwellers living off fishing and slash and burn farming.

Given the rugged terrain, poor communications and the fact that this particular border crossing has only been open for about ten years it is all pretty much back-packers zone, and not a very busy one at that. The boat trip to Luang Prabang, the main town in northern Laos, takes about 15 hours to do - downstream - and is split into a 2 day trip. Some brave souls catch the "speed boat" which is a flimsy wooden boat with cramped space for, at most, four or five passengers and a 1,200 cc motor which makes a deafening noise and which can go down the same way in about half the time. Accidents have been known to happen and life-jacket and helmet are highly recommended :)

We got into picturesque Luang Prabang in the middle of the afternoon and were very pleasantly surprised by this provincial enclave which used to be the home of the royal household of Laos when the country was a kingdom - until 1975 - and previously a rather tranquil outpost of French Indochina, the influence of which remains very much evident and gives a distinctly more "colonial feel to it than Thai cities ever had. The town is quite definitely a little gem with architectural displays - especially the temples and the Royal Palace - which have been recently granted World Heritage status by the UNESCO. The Heritage quarter, with its old colonial mansions, is also getting some major refurbishment and the whole place will definitely acquire a lot more cache in the years to come as its "secret" beauty is further revealed and discovered. Apart from the sightseeing there is also a thriving handicraft market - aimed mostly at the tourist segment - but still retaining the quaint charm of the individual posts with wares exhibited simply on a mat laid out on the ground. The major product is silk-ware and particularly scarves. Silverware is also quite important, all hand made of course, a relic of the town’s history as the national centre for craftsmanship which served the royal household and monasteries here.  Even though the French presence here was short-lived and minimal - this being a flung out post with only a couple of hundred of Frenchmen and their families at the height of the colonial period (it was the Vietnamese civil servants which did most of the actual running of the administrative work) - the baguettes are still a common staple food and there is a particular French / European flavour to the layout and main buildings of the town.

After the successful motorbike trips in Thailand we were really hoping to be able to repeat the experience here in northern Lao. In fact the road infrastructure is much worse, public transport unreliable and extremely slow (9-10 hours to cover 300 km or so) making it an ideal country to cover autonomously in a dirt bike. The northern parts are also the least visited and most remote making them the most interesting of course.  Unfortunately, no bikes were for hire at all in Luang Prabang. No dirt bikes, not even mopeds so we were really rather limited to public transport, which meant we visited little outside the town itself. After three days it was time to make our way south to the capital – Vientiane also on the banks of the Mekong. Public transport throughout the third world countries can be a little intimidating at times given the levels of comfort, and above all, security that one may be used to in western countries. At this point I have traveled a few kilometres in buses and had very few incidents to speak of. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and its buses and roads are only very slowly coming up to a "reasonable"standard – even in comparison to other poor countries. The fact that the north is a very mountainous area does not help either the quality of vehicles here – tough on motors going up and on breaks coming down – or in road building – plenty of narrow crossings and gullies into nothingness at present.

All would come together in the trip from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. Buses leave early in the morning, it takes about 8 hours usually to cover the 360 km, the road being impracticable at night, just too dangerous… We were on our way by about 8:00 in a 1980s bus a Hyundai (South Korean – a bit like 1960s Japan) loaded up to the brim (and then a bit more – of course) and winding through the hills and mountains that cover the region. Only eight or nine tourists, mostly at the back, the rest locals, which is usually a good enough sign. After a couple of hours and on a particularly steep hill the engine went CLANK and we stopped. All passengers off, for the necessary inspection of course. Litres of water poured into the over-heated engine, it was probably as thirsty as we were, but no sign of life. One German tourist – a bit of a mechanic / engineer apparently – stated tat a cylinder had busted and the motor was pretty much kaput. We wouldn’t be going any further with this one. You are pretty much stuck when something like this happens, but the driver somehow managed to get the message across to home base that we were down and after about an hour and a half of lying in the scorching sun and looking at the dead motor as if it might suddenly resucitate. It didn’t, of course. A "reserve-bus" came along but rather than arriving empty (our bus was full) as it should have it seemed that the driver had taken the liberty to pick up about ten other passengers on the way, nice chap. It meant that ten of us, unfortunately the least agile or observant – in this case including three tourists – would stay behind…

The "new" bus and driver were a little worse in terms of wear and tear. Not that this seemed to affect in anyway the speed at which we hurtled down the mountains, our driver seemingly on a mission to make up for lost time due to the breakdown. It is also the dry / burning season here in Laos, as it was in Thailand, but the fires here are pretty savage affairs, with what seem to be acres of jungle just going up in flames all around you. One hopes they are controlled, but you are never quite sure. A particularly fierce fire was roaring through the bottom of the valley which we could see from above. With our crazy driver and fire and smoke all around it all seemed a little like a modern take on Dante’s Inferno. At the back of the bus you get the rawest sensations, so we were really having fun with the driver’s sharp curve techniques. It became less amusing when the bus suddenly started to gather more speed than usual and we took first one corner with quite a swerve and then a much less controlled one (not that the first was very controlled!) A storage door at the side of the bus flew open with quite some violence and a number of passengers got to their feet shouting at the driver to slow down. It became clear he couldn’t. The smell of burning rubber blew into the passenger compartment and we could only see further sharp, tight, down-hill curves ahead of us. It did not look pretty, and for a few seconds – which always lengthen almost eternally when the adrenalin is pumping – I began to wonder if we would actually make it in one piece.

Painfully the bus seemed to gradually slow down and by the time it had managed to get onto the curve-side to make use of the rougher ground to decelerate quite a few of the passengers at the front were getting ready to get off as quickly as possible. It eventually crawled to a halt, we all gave a sigh of relief and thanked our lucky star nothing had happened.  Off the bus – once again – to inspect the damage and reason for the break failure. Faulty air-compressor and burnt out hand break was the verdict – our German companion providing the technical details on this one as well. We plodded along to the next village. No real towns between L.P. and the capital, with half-repaired breaks – apparently something had been done during the stop – and a great urge by our German contingent, and quite a few of the others to abandon ship. They were lucky enough to get a ride in a couple of tourist minibuses that just happened to stop at the same place as us. But available space was very limited and for the rest of us the hearty laughs of the driver and slaps on the back together with a few cries of "No Problem, no problem!!" were as much insurance as we were going to get against any other mechanical or human failure. Thankfully we had by this point passed the rugged terrain and followed into a stretch of road that required less breaking power – but our heightened tension did not really diminish until we got into Vientiane, after a 12 hour trip. One to remember!

After the over-intense trip down to Vientiane I really did need a couple of days "relaxing tie" and got them in the capital of Laos. Amazingly hot on the day following arrival I had little option but to head for the nearest A/C café for a cool drink and an escape from the heat. In any event there is not really all that much to see in Vientiane –certainly less than in Luang Prabang. It is definitely the only city in Laos and the ex-pat community has a certain presence – essentially working on aid development projects I suppose. Some eccentricities in town, such as the Asiatic-like "Arc du Triomph" built following the template of the Parisian one plus some modern, grandiose looking Wats (temples) but all pretty much done in a day and a half or so.

In any case it was a welcome urban stop in what is a largely an agricultural country. The north has definitely remained a largely untouched area and is still of very difficult access, a dirt bike would probably have been the best way to visit it, but the logistics were just too complicated. At the same time, the difficulty that the tourists encounters in moving around means that the great majority of the country is largely untouched by "global tourism" even places like Luang Prabang keeps its charm and has achieved a great combination of comfort, historical sites and openness without losing its own character in the process. This might change if the trickle of tourists becomes a flood but it will probably not happen for a few years yet.

I was surprised at the indirect influence of Thai culture here – but once you learn that the Lao language is quite close to Thai – a little like Dutch and German apparently – all those Thai soap operas they seem to be watching wherever you look become less of an enigma. The country, like Cambodia, is caught between two very large neighbors – Thailand and Vietnam – and for centuries was effectively a vassal state of the Thais or simply a buffer state between the two Southeast Asian powers. The collapse of Communism worldwide and the gradual opening of Vietnam has probably left little choice to Laos but to follow suit itself, but it continues to be a predominantly agricultural and egalitarian society.

In any case it has been a very interesting first 10 days in Laos and I am looking forward to seeing more of the "lowlands" and the country to the south.

Mae Hong Son Loop & Golden Triangle

When we - Yael, who I met at the Embassy of Cambodia in Bangkok and myself - got to Chiang Mai, the amount of things that were on offer outside of town, the relatively good condition of the roads hare - they seem to be building and/or improving them all over the place and the general security made the option of travelling by motorbike a really attractive one. Splitting the costs of the motorbike by two just made it more affordable. Of course, the last time I had ridden a bike for any length of time was when I was 17. I did ride for a few hours in Noronha and a day on Easter Island and although I don't actually have a proper bike licence I did seem to get along fairly well. I was a little hesitant as to whether we would be asked for a license, but they only wanted a passport to make sure we would return.

For the first day we rented a scooter just to have a look around town and at least have some idea of what Chiang Mai was like. My camera lens had also become blocked - it would not rotate - and this seemed like the last place I would be able to repair it before heading into rather more remote areas. Chiang Mai is a big centre for courses on all kind of Thai arts - meditation, cooking, and massage - plus quite a few outdoor activities too. We took a miss of all these but did treat ourselves to a Thai massage during our stay. As in Bangkok, a great way to relax!

One of the funnier selling expressions to come from the many tour operators was the sale of the “non-touristic treks/visits”;. Remarkably well presented in one place you actually got to think it might indeed be something a little different, but you quickly realised that it was more of the same as you saw the same sales pitch all over town... With our day scooter we managed to see most of the important temples in the city as well as an interesting tribal museum on the outskirts. All the mountainous area around Chiang Mai, mainly along the border with Myanmar, is home to at least a dozen different tribe people which are not part of the Thai ethnic majority. Quite a number of them in fact are escaping persecution in neighbouring Burma (Myanmar) where, as a minority there too, they have suffered even more mistreatment than the general population.

Before we went off to “discover” these tribes, we had a walk around the night market here in Chiang Mai - very popular for the sale of more “touristic” wares and found a group of striking artists making quite professional drawings - carbon as well as colour - from photographs, usually portraits, brought in by customers. The good value of these was also surprising, plus nowadays you only have to send in an email with the photograph you want drawn and they will do the rest. The following morning we traded in our scooter for a more robust dirt bike, Honda 250cc, which would provide the freedom to cover the whole of the so-called Mae Hong Son Loop with the town of the same name half way around the loop as you start from Chiang Mai, about 650 km in total.

The road provides a wonderful window on all that is on offer in Northwestern Thailand. A multitude of waterfalls, amazing caves, a couple of national parks to go through, small traditional villages off the tourist-track as well as some of the more eye-catching, if over-visited, members of hill tribes - such as the long-necks. It is the dry season right now and the month of March is particularly the time when the fields are set alight in order to burn the undergrowth and fertilise the soil in preparation for the planting later in the season. Unfortunately for the visitor this means that there is a constant smoky fog covering the land which blocks visibility beyond a few hundred metres most of the time and doesn't help your eyes when traveling in the open either. We therefore missed out on some of the more spectacular views to be had from the mountain heights as we ascended with the motorbike but it did not take the fun out of getting up there in the first place.

We did have a bit of a shaky start with the motorbike though. During the first day it already seemed to be struggling more than it should of going up the steep hills we encountered but we faced a real challenge the following morning when it didn't start at all. At least we were somewhere with a mechanic, but he simply shrugged his shoulders after looking through it for a couple of hours and decided that he couldn't do anything for us. A call to the rental shop was happily possible and brought the good news that they would bring another machine along, although we were 260 km from our start point and tat would mean losing the day. Could have been worse, for sure.

From then on we didn't have any more mechanical problems and our new bike had a little more punch than the first one. This came in particularly handy when dealing with the many hair-pin bends we would make our way through up and down the hill ranges almost throughout the loop. Some of the terrain, and especially the isolated villages we crossed, rather reminded me of Peru and Bolivia, although road conditions and even the conditions of the people here seem to be rather better. We got into Mae Hong Son a few hours before the beginning of Spring - at least further up the Northern hemisphere - and on the next morning watched the sunrise from a beautiful set of temples perched on a hill overlooking the town. Picturesque but not that easy to photograph!

During the day we went out to visit the longneck village - these have women who wear bronze rings around their necks from childhood and adolescence that leave them with over-stretched necks by the time they reach adulthood. Something of a magnet for tourists here, and rather delicate decision whether to actually visit them or not. The tribes, as others, have come over from neighbouring Myanmar and you could see some posters in the villages decrying the persecution suffered by their people in that country. The entrance to the village itself was a little accident-prone as we managed to skid - or rather I did, being the driver - over a river crossing, no bridges here, resulting in both Yael and myself falling rather ungainly to the ground in a split second. Thankfully we only suffered a little shock and rather wet clothes but no further damage to ourselves or the bike - but it definitely gave the village a certain sense of “adventure” it might not otherwise have had :-)

In fact, I was very glad we had not come to the village with a tour of any kind since whilst things were definitely set up for the tourist trade - the village's main lane was essentially a row of stalls coming out of their huts selling their wares to the passing foreigners, we were actually the only two there and were able to glimpse at some scenes of normality in the village that otherwise we would probably have missed. The highlight was a group of four young village girls playing and laughing around us and, as we were leaving, having great fun posing for photographs and then looking at the small screen on the camera with them on it. Hoots of laughter and cries for more. I think at least a couple of nice shots did come out :-)

The following day was more of a natural-phenomena one. Some hot baths along the way, geo-thermal, which seemed a little misplaced in such a tropical setting but were curious to see all the same and, the highlight of the day, some huge interconnected caves - by the name of Nam Rod - for which you were required to hire a local guide carrying a bright mine lamp ad even a short trip on a bamboo raft to get to the last cave. Very impressive, but being in very dark conditions sometimes you just had to make an educated guess as to how large the caves really were.

We spent our last night before the return at Pai, which used to be a small sleepy village and is now a rather tourist / hippy-like town with quite a number of travelers bumbling about and keeping busy one way or another. The final day was a pretty straight forward return to Chiang Mai although we did stop at one of the Elephant camps along the way to enjoy an hour long ride on one of them. It was mid-afternoon and the poor beast was a little tired of carrying tourists along the well trodden trail he probably had to walk every single day, which must have been in any case exceedingly short for him (her?) by his stage. It was a novelty for me though, but I would probably think about it twice before riding again in similar conditions.

The Loop was definitely a wonderful experience, greatly enhanced by the freedom and pleasure of discovering and exploring at our own pace and seeing the area quite fully from the motorbike - a very different vantage point than that from a bus or car, especially in conditions in which there is so much to see. I have come away quite convinced that I will get a motorbike license when I return to Europe and definitely repeat the experience of traveling on a bike whether in Europe or other places. I don't think I have quite what it takes to emulate Steve's bike-adventure across America but small more manageable tours are surely thrilling in themselves.

After spending the night in Chiang Mai, we took a bus north to Chiang Rai (pronounced Lai) where once again we rented a dirt bike - this time only for a couple of days - to ride around the Golden Triangle! This is in the far north of the country which borders still with Burma (Myanmar) on one side and Laos on the other. Since mainly World War II it has been an area o large scale production of opium processed later into heroin. This is much less the case in Thailand nowadays but is still relatively important in the highlands of Laos and especially in Burma with its internationally ostracized military government. A somewhat delicate area a few years ago it is now quite safe to roam around the attractive rugged terrain, more hill tribes to visit plus the possibility of popping over to Myanmar for a few hours - a country where tourists are relatively controlled when visiting for longer.

We drove up to Mae Sai  - which is the main border town in the area - where we stayed in some very cozy huts looking across, literally 10 metres away, the river that marks the boundary between Burma and Thailand. There is not much to see in Mae Sai other than a rather cheesy market for tourists mainly, Thai ones that would be I think. On the other side of the border - which we crossed for a couple of hours - the misery and backwardness the people are kept in was quite evident. Rickety motorbikes, sale of very rudimentary objects, it sometimes reminded me of certain communist countries I had visited during their lowest period in the early 1990s, but this was probably worse. It was particularly harrowing to think that as a border town this was probably wealthier than other towns within the country, but not having visited those I couldn't really say.

From here we followed a rugged road that runs parallel to the border and has quite a number of army checkpoints - we counted about four - relations with neighbouring drug warlords on the other side seem to have got out of hand in certain instances and I suppose the Thai state simply wants to show its presence in such remote and potentially volatile areas. Along the way back to Chiang Rai we came across a surprisingly high-tech "Opium Museum" set in the countryside with luxury accommodation all around and catering to a rather more select clientele than your average backpacker. With an entrance fee of $ 6 - expensive for Thailand - we found a very modern museum full of the latest educational gimmicks and presenting, on the whole, a very balanced and fair presentation of the production, trade, use (and misuse) of opium in the region - including the whole of Indochina and China itself. Of particular interest was the role played by the British Empire through its merchants and Navy, pushing through the legalisation and free commerce of opium - of which the British Empire was a main producer - in order to sell freely to the large Chinese market. This was in practice achieved through two "Opium wars" and created and supported the habit of about 15 million opium addicts in China, when the total population was about 400 million. Much of the incentive to open this trade seems to have originated in the persistent trade deficit that the British Empire had with China which only the sale of opium in ever-increasing quantities managed to redress. Queen Victoria and the Empire did not come across like "the goodies" in this particular chapter of history. Of course the hypocrisy of many western powers, which less than 100 years ago were making a roaring profit off the sale of opium, in insisting on the complete eradication of opium and coca production - which in their places of cultivation were originally used above all for medicinal purposes - is not completely lost by those that approach the subject from a non-western viewpoint.

After returning our bike - much more reliable than the first in Chiang Mai - we found out how best to get to Chiang Khong, about 60 km away on the western side of the Mekong. From the eastern bank, in Laos already, we would catch a 'slow boat' which would - at a leisurely pace - navigate down the Mekong for a couple of days to the ancient royal city of Luang Prabang. Until a few years ago it was not possible to cross here without a visa, but luckily they will now issue one at the border for $30 valid for 15 days. In order to catch the 10:00 AM boat we took a 6:30 bus, a little rudimentary but with a large TV and powerful sound system churning out the US's World Wrestling Federation championship, probably one of the worst shows ever... rather incongruous but that is the cultural reach of the States for you.

In any case, we sorted out our visas in a quick hour and were ready to go, in rather sweltering heat, by 11:00 afloat on the Mekong into Laos.