Well, nowhere is perfect after all. Irritation starts in the arrival hall in Luang Prabang airport. You don’t mind being charged a hefty 35 US dollars – pristine banknotes only please! – per person for a Laos visa; what sticks in the throat is that the French only get charged 30 dollars. What did these colonists ever do for Laos, except introduce driving on the right, wooden shutters and baguettes (the latter still available of course)? OK, some damn fine French restaurants in town, but still. The government picks up a cool 35,000 USD per full flight, more or less. I say more or less because there is a visa surcharge of one dollar for arrivals over weekends and after 4 pm, to cover overtime! As we eventually got to the visa desk after 1600 and on a Saturday, I considered asking if we would now have to pay two dollars but decided silence was the better part of valour.
And then there is the currency exchange philosophy. There is an incentive to exchange 50- and 100-American dollar bills rather than 10s and 20s: you get an advantageous rate equivalent to an extra 8,000th part of each dollar for your trouble; big deal.
But the good news is that there are at least three ATM machines in Luang Prabang now (plus one at the airport), so it is no longer necessary, if you run out of cash, to drive eight hours through bandit country to the capital Vientiane where ten years ago the only ATM was located, and then drive eight hours back (or you could take a 40 minute flight on Lao Aviation, not for the faint-hearted or those without a death wish. And you know damn well the ATM would have a sign on it when you got there saying ‘out or order, sorry for the inconvenience’.
Monkhood in Laos is a major feature of everyday life comprising professionals (lifers) and those doing their equivalent to ‘national service’, often young boys or adolescents. I have never quite fathomed what the mission statement is here; they do not seem to play any community role like catholic nuns, and quite honestly, I am not sure they are all devoted to religious texts all day long to achieve personal enlightenment. There’s a lot of, well, hanging about. However, they make a great photo opportunity. They are roused every morning at 4 am when the gong is struck in the nearby monastery to awaken the residents (and us). They all then pad off to collect their lunch (who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?) from worshippers keen to earn credit for the next life. So, the worshippers save their souls and the monks wish they could save their soles with a lie-in. Lunch, their last meal of the day, is at midday. Now there seems to be an irony here that a midday meal tends to be the first meal of the day for visiting backpackers, who will eventually retire to their beds just as the monks are getting up. Never the twain shall meet so to speak, a bit like having teenager children.
In order to make a modest contribution to our carbon footprint, we have equipped ourselves with dodgy Chinese bicycles to get around which is the ideal mode of transport in this compact and flattish set of picturesque backstreets, full of guesthouses, laundry services, schoolchildren and babies, paper making, vegetable markets and lunch preparation, sweeping, minor building repairs and noisy cockerels and residents.
A stop for chicken noodle soup will set you back three pounds for two, a large bottle of beer 90p or you could have a slap-up French meal for a tenner a head, even with our lousy exchange rate.
As I have mentioned, Limeys are thin on the ground, utterly outnumbered by Scandinavians, Italians, Germans and above all Americans. This may be because of the exchange rate or because many English people are not quite sure where Laos is. This is not the case for Americans of course who after all converted part of Laos into the most widely bombed country in the world up near the Plain of Jars in the north east of Laos. I wonder how many make the pilgrimage up there to witness the desolate sterile and dangerous landscape.
The advantage of staying in guesthouse accommodation – ours is located overlooking the Nam Khan River just before it flows into the mighty Mekong – is that you tend to live closer to the local community, in our case right next door. The pace of life in Laos is slower, the mentality less aggressive and less go-getting than Thailand, and an acceptance of a lower standard of living. Our nearest neighbours lived in typical Laos accommodation: sleeping quarters, a kitchen and a veranda, all supported on stilts to protect against floods and creatures. The ground floor tends these days to be concrete but upper floors in teak, and next door anyway, ill-fitting corrugated roofing which releases the smoke from the kitchen area to waft over their neighbours – us in this case.
Families were all three generational: grannies (no grandfathers here) minding the numerous sprogs (sneaking away occasionally for a quick drag (not Virginia’s best either), mums doing the heavy lifting, cooking and general staff (family) control, while, yes you’ve guessed it, dads take it easy, stamping on old coke cans to flatten them for recycling somewhere, together with old water bottles, all of which seem to be brought home by the under eights.
The overall standard of living in the town seems to have improved over the last ten years since our first visit, if measured by the number of new minivans used for touristic purposes, tourist shops and even a couple of local Hummers, so tourism is definitely filtering down, but not all the way. There are still groups of very young urchins collecting recycling material, poorly clothed, and they often appear early in the morning when the monks come out, to sell tourists rice offerings to give to the monks. They fail to mention to said tourists that these offerings will not be accepted by the monks unless presented in the appropriate way: that is from a position below the height of the monk, either sitting or kneeling to show respect. The grander ladies drag out a favourite chair from indoors and sit to make their offerings.
Luang Prabang is not a late-night town. The streets go quiet well before 11 pm, a case perhaps of early to bed early to rise. This also means it is not a town of bars and all its accoutrements for which Thailand is well known. The seamy side of life seems not to exist here which is perhaps why it attracts the generally older and more well-healed clientele, together with the younger adventure-seekers (kayaking, elephant handling type of adventure), rather than female-company seekers.
So, we have fond memories of this town, hardly affected by growing visitor numbers, at least in the old part of town, thanks to it being protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was, however, strange to overhear a couple of American NGO types talking about their efforts to bring ‘demaarcracy’ to Myanmar. They perhaps are not fully aware that their present location is hardly a beacon of democratic practice, but some countries manage to avoid the attention of those critical of other countries’ ways.
***
So, back to Thailand and the outside possibility our youngest will be able to join us from her hectic work and leisure schedule in Koh Phangan, but many a slip.
So to paraphrase the immortal words of Caroline Aherne to Paul Daniels: Whatever do you see in ‘going to Thailand in January’, where snow is an unknown commodity, the beaches are snow white, the sea is turquoise, the temperature hits the mid-thirties at 2 pm, the girls (and the boys) are pretty, the food is scrumptious, the beer ice-cold and no one is sniffing or coughing and the mynah birds are singing in a major key against a backdrop of casuarina trees?
Now it is important to understand that R and R here is a participation activity, not restricted to a permanent state of uninterrupted supine torpor, oh no. No sooner to you settle down with one of your Thailand-W.H. Smith’s ‘3 for 2’ and your Thailand-Boots sunscreen than up comes your first interruption of the day: do you want a cold drink? Mai kop khun. And then a backlog of hopefuls line up every five minutes convinced you are in desperate need of a new pair of sunglasses, a twenty dollar Rolex (It might be a fake, right?), an elaborate wooden model of an outsized Harley Davidson, a three metre bedspread and matching pillowcases, a hill-tribe ethnic bag and matching bracelet or a wooden toy supposedly sounding like a bullfrog if you rub its back with a stick, a chocolate ice, a scuba diving course, a chance to support your favourite local charity, a free on-beach eyesight test with qualified optician and of course the proverbial ‘you want massage mister?’
The purveyors of these fine services range from about four years old (ice cream chart and no English but lovely eyes) to sixty-plus carrying a sprog in a back-papoose, all available from 7 in the morning till 11 at night. You do wonder where some of them spend the night. On a beach-lounger?
A further word on massage here because they are missing a trick due to the fact that no one has heard of Mr Michael O’Leary – yet.
The said service can be carried out without you leaving the comfort of your lounger of course, but some of the tsunami money has been spent of building a purpose-built open-sided hangar replete with permanent mattresses; just bring your body and your towel (and 400 baht). Now this service is available to all and sundry at a fixed price, to 8 stone sylph-like weaklings like myself, as well as to 20 stone heavies of which there are quite a fair number, especially as the beach’s clientele is increasingly Russian.
So what I was thinking as I lay there being pummelled into submission by sweet maidens with frighteningly large and powerful hands, their audible features not as attractive to the English ear as their visual features to the eye was: why not apply the Ryanair business model and charge excess baggage? Ten stone free, then a sliding scale upwards? You could be weighed on arrival; after all, you take your shoes off then, so that saves a bit and it all seems a bit fairer on us weaklings and the girls make up for all the lousy years they have had due to tsunami, bird flu, Bangkok airport closure and other diverse political skirmishes etc.
Naturally, I would charge a modest sum for this marketing expertise, or free services in lieu, and hope to avoid the attention of the local mafia.
Dream on.
All our family holidays in the past, especially in France included obligatory trips to the doctor and the garage to mend the anatomical and mechanical equipment, so Thailand is no different (except for the garage as we rarely drive here).
In Laos one evening, I was as usual keeping my eye on the gutter while my wife was searching for Ursa Major, or just the meaning of life in the stars above as usual. As most of our lives are closer to the gutter than the stars, I avoided a dodgy bit of pavement but, sadly, my wife tripped and fell quite heavily. Although at first all seemed OK; with the passing of time, it was clear a professional opinion was required, and so off to the international hospital on Phuket once we had moved to Thailand.
Now I don’t want you to picture some Victorian institution built in the 1880s; think more Hilton Conrad or Crowne Plaza. impressive steps up to sliding glass doors to be met by smart welcoming staff (Thai girls and uniforms, mmm), and still called Emergencies not A&E. Shown to a desk to complete paperwork, we were immediately approached by an English-speaking staff member who introduced himself as an ‘international coordinator’ to assist us with any problems, language or other, we might encounter. He then asked: “Would we mind being on an in-house staff training video they were then making, designed to help improve staff/patient relations?” Do you think the NHS has ever tried this? No, nor do I.
As we waited a few minutes for the first consultation, I took stock of some of the other patients, some Thai but many European or Australian, and what a motley crew. Mainly men of middle age or older, bandaged, wheelchair seated, in plaster and/or probably plastered the night before as well. Quite a number were accompanied by somewhat younger local ladies in high heels who, to a woman, looked a bit hacked off. With all these white-clad nurses, perhaps they thought they had died and gone to heaven or just wanted a change of scenery.
But again, I digress. The whole process for us was as smooth as clockwork: firstly, an immediate consultation, seamless migration to x-ray, second consultation, in-house pharmacy with efficient transfer of documents all the way. Free soft drinks, fish tanks and Asian art, smart loos. Sound familiar? I am definitely booking in here next year for my 12,000-mile service and MOT.
At the pharmacy, there was a sign which read: ‘If you have been waiting more than fifteen minutes, please inform the management. This compared with a sign at the pharmacy in Moorfields Eye Hospital in London a few weeks ago, which read: ’Please expect to wait up to ninety minutes for your prescription to be made up’; one raises your expectations, the other lowers them.
At this point, I noticed an alarming bank of ATM machines next to the accounts department, but in the event our ninety minutes of treatment had cost us less than a tankful of petrol at home, and we had enough drugs and bits and pieces to start a new branch of Boots.
It does raise the spirits. You don’t approach a medical facility here in trepidation of leaving with more than you came in with; at the front desk a sign reads: ‘If you are suffering from fever, sneezing or coughing or have a runny nose, please ask for a mask’.
Quite.
With only a few days left before our return, I have to say we are quite looking forward to meeting another Englishman again. They are as rare as hens’ teeth in our part of Thailand, with the notable exception of the seediest parts of Bangkok where the English male is predominant as ever.
But not elsewhere, where we are forever surrounded by Germans, Swiss and Scandinavians of all persuasions. Why could this be? BBC World tells us that due to our ability to devalue the pound we are far better off than, for example, the Greeks, some of whom still seem to be able to venture to these parts despite being ‘worse off than us’, but is seems to me that having less money in your pocket to buy a bottle of water than a German or a Greek hardly seems to count as being ‘better off’. The other downside of being a lone pair of English travellers is that the waiters make a beeline to practise their English ‘as it is spoke’, not with a lilting Swedish or heavy German or drawled out Oz accent which they are not keen to emulate.
However, there is still a bit of dosh left over for a massage, so why not try a ‘fish massage’ I hear you cry.
A what?
Now this does not mean you get hit about the body and head by a tough old red snapper, oh no. A fish massage is where you offer yourself up to ‘eaten’ by thousands of small (but hungry) fish in a two-foot (in every sense) deep tank. So not a matter of man eats fish, but fish eat man. You can imagine the fishes’ conversation early evening before dinner is served: “I am looking forward to an Italian tonight, but I expect we’ll have to put up with an Indian as usual.” These are not of course piranha so they only manage to consume the superfluous bits of your feet and legs as you dangle them in the water, a weird sensation like being tickled to death with a feather.
We decided to restrict ourselves to continue feeding the local mosquitoes instead who annoyingly totally ignored our daughter (now just a local delicacy I suppose after six years living and working here) and concentrate on something more exotic, food-wise: us.
Now maybe there’s a business opportunity here with this fish massage, perhaps not in Cheltenham or Stow-on-the-Wold. It might be worth starting in somewhere a bit more laid back like Totnes or Glastonbury where this might be considered an entirely normal pastime, unless the cruelty to animals (and fish) brigade get on to you.