Geography on Foot: Laos, part 1: Mekong valley

We're not dead! Sorry for the long delay between updates. I got so disheartened after Cambodia and seeing the unexploded ordinance in Laos that I didn't want to think about our trip for a little while. We're in Taiwan now, where we spent Chinese New Year and are now traveling around the country.

This is what we did in Laos. I had to split it into two parts; turns out we did more than it seemed like at the time.

Border crossing
We crossed overland from Cambodia into Laos along the Mekong valley. It was pretty easy overall, although on the Cambodian bus to the crossing I had to scrunch up with my feet on top of a box of rice and Min somehow slept even though she had no back on her seat. At the crossing, a guy working there asked Min to help him translate a document into Chinese. It described how vehicles needed special documentation to cross the border into Cambodia, but if there was no documentation there was a way to cross that was technically illegal and you had to keep quiet about it. The border guards helpfully had written this down and translated it into several languages, and Min helped ensure future Chinese travelers had their fair chance to cross illegally.

Walking across the border.

We met some nice travelers from Holland during the crossing and they happened to be going where we were (Don Khon, and island in the Mekong). We ended up having dinner with them a couple times and sharing information.

Safe in Laos
Don Khon was really chill. It has a few relics from the French colonial times but it's mostly fishermen and farmers (and entrepreneurs) now.

I think this is about all Min did on Don Khon

Lots and lots of bugs near the river

There are some huge waterfalls on the Mekong on both sides of the island, although they're not particularly photogenic. The atmosphere comes from the booming noise, which gives a sense of how much water is really flowing there.

One tiny little piece of the kilometers-wide falls

We only stayed two nights on Don Khon, then took a bus up to Savannakhet, which was awful; we stayed one night and left for Thakhek. The bus ride is half the fun in Laos. When the bus stops for meals, people get on selling chicken and fish on sticks and all kinds of interesting food.

Chicken on a stick
by Min

Eggs on a stick
by Min

Min took this picture of a girl with her mother and printed a copy for them

From Thakhek we went trekking in the hills and did a homestay in one of the villages.

More limestone karst hills, this time on dry land

Natural bridge

There are huge caves all over the area. The roof of this one we had to walk through is over a hundred feet high.

Dual purpose road: supports travel and dining

Playing a game kind of like horseshoes in the village in which we stayed. The guide was a shark and won a beer off me.
by Min

Entering a national park area, where the trees are much taller since they can't be cut for firewood

Looks like I'm sitting on a rock in the forest.
by Min

(That's Min sitting on the tree)
This sinkhole ("Blue Lagoon") was really deep and had a beautiful blue-green color. It's full of tiny fish (and a few bigger ones).

After trekking, the owner of the guesthouse in which we stayed in Thakhek invited us to a barbecue with his family. It turned out to be more like a clan, with cousins and lots of relatives. We got to try proper Lao food, sticky rice eaten with the hands. You grab a little piece of rice and ball it up, then pinch another piece of food against the rice and eat it. It was a good time.

We went from Thakhek straight to the capital, Vientiane, by bus. This time we tried the meat-on-a-stick.

In Vientiane we had just planned to be there for a short time while we found the bus up to Phonsavan, but we missed the only daily bus and had to overnight. We saw a few things since we were there, such as the national history museum. The museum starts its history with prehistoric times, devoting the first room to dinosaurs, then moved on to stone age and iron age humans, and on and on up to modern times. The portrayal of America is as a capitalist, imperialist, aggressor, which is difficult to argue with from the Lao perspective.