#2014wintertrip

The last sight that I visited in Laos was the Buddha statue park. It is a park full of Hindu and Buddhist statues capturing some significant figures in the religion. The park meant to reconcile the two religions through finding commonalities and mixing the traditional styles of representations.

And lastly I visited yet again Patuxai, the Lao version of the French Victory Gate. While flying out of Laos I was trying to reflect on the experience whether it was not so pleasant because of my sickness and the weather or because Laos is not a place for tourists. 

Perhaps it is not a place for tourists like me. Vang Vieng offers beautiful scenery, which I saw but it is also the place for party tourism. Vientiane does not boast with much of an interesting tourist sites, especially not for rainy days. I have visited the National Museum, which I thought looked like my Grandma’s bookshelf. It brought together books, posters and pictures about Marxism, Lenin, USSR, Communism, French Imperialism but does not really talk much about what is Laos. 

While I read that Lao nationalism grounds in Communism, I did not realize until the museum that Laos really does not have much physical, natural and cultural heritage upon which patriotism could be built. Besides, almost all the products were imported from Thailand, marked with “Made in Thailand”. Flying above Laos, I also realized that the country has very bad natural conditions for improving its domestic economy and production, since almost the entire country lies in the mountains. In addition, I know that even developed countries receive foreign aid (e.g. Japan received nuclear clearing foreign aid) but seeing how rudimental the foreign aid in Laos is, I realized that the country would not be as modern as it is now. I am referring to the Japanese infrastructure foreign aid, that provided mountain roads (made my bus ride less bumpy) and buses for city transport.

My initial expectations from Laos was that I would travel to a country with a sad history, poor economic development yet flourishing patriotism because Laos was finally an independent country. But I just felt like, there is not much “Lao” in Laos. 

Goodbye Laos!

Okay, a few more pictures.

The below one was something I did not notice in Laos. Most restaurants have a mini buddhist temple in their entrance and they put a tiny portion of their food as a sacrifice. In this case, the restaurant was a café with delicious sandwiches.

This one is an elementary school yard in Vientiane. The classrooms had Marx and Lenin on the wall and the kids were wearing blue and red scarves (they were pioneers).

And the last one is from the previously mentioned café. Yeah. We used to go there a lot because it had fast internet. What I did not realize is that "Free Wi-Fi" at hostels do not mean a working Wi-Fi or a Wi-Fi that connects you to the internet with a satisfactory speed. For example, right now I am posting this from a Burger King in Vietnam because simply Tumblr did not even load in my hostel.

So while going downhill from Chiang Mai to the Laos border, swaying right and left in the serpentines, I decided to practice my French with the older Laotian generation!

One last question that the Wiki sites failed to enlighten me about was why the two versions of the names for the country: Laos and Lao’s. Quest: find it out from local Laotians!

The first stop that the tour included was the Karen tribal village. While researching online the Long Neck Karen tribe, I found many bad reviews about it being “uninspirational” but I always took it in a way that it is rather depressing to see a “zoo of people”. In fact, what they were talking about is that the village has nothing special and not much to see there. With the exception of a few puppies that were incredibly cute, I would agree that the village did not have anything special about it. But on the other hand it made me calm down a bit that I did not visit a “zoo of people” where minority tribes would perform some dance and entertain the tourists. On the contrary, I just felt being too invasive to this village that had nothing peculiar. Western brand clothes hanging to dry under the sun, a set of TV in a dark shack, all in all everything seemed just very normal to me making me feel that I am looking at someone’s living space and that they may not want intruders like us.

Picture: Karen woman making Arabica coffee

Going further we saw a waterfall that was pretty mediocre, then yet again a mediocre market. But when we arrived to the King and Queen temples (our actual intended destination) I just felt that it was worth the visit to the National Park. Unfortunately we had no introduction of why and when the place was erected. From a Wolkswagen car mural trying to appear old, it made me realize that this place was built sometime in the mid-20th century.

Can you believe that we only spent 40 minutes in this heaven on earth paradise? If I was to organize the tour, I would have just left out the village and the mediocre waterfall. This also made me realize how much I want to learn how to drive and just rent a car. Yes! Rent a car! How much easier would backpacking (and maybe life) be if I had a car to drive around? 

Traveling really makes people get to know themselves better and perhaps grow as a person. What I learned while we stayed in Chiang Mai is to overcome my fear of roads. From a very young age on, I had nightmares of sitting in front of the handle of a car and not being able to control it then the next second running into a tree or down the hill. Because of this, I had a fear of biking on the road together with cars as well. Chiang Mai, unlike most Western European cities has no biking lanes and hence I was forced to just pedal on the road with many many cars. There I learned some traffic rules, and also some ways to signal to other cars what direction I am headed to (or trying to in the traffic).

Perhaps I will try to get a driving license! Yeah!

I bought the lens for a price that was more than what I expected, but apparently it was cheaper than in The States (he thought I was from America). I read in a blog that camera equipment prices are cheaper than in Europe, so I decided to buy it. Afterwards, I checked in the subway station how much it was supposed to cost and Taobao showed prices of less than 30 yuan, which broke my heart because I paid way more than 10 times of that price.

In my desperation, I rushed back to the store and I wanted to ask for a better lens. I knew that I won’t get my money back but at least I thought I could upgrade the lens to a better one. Thinking that I was cheated by this guy made me lose my confidence to its last bit.

The vendor calmed me down and said that Taobao has many fake lenses and this is real hence the price difference and he showed me a book full of price tags for lenses. For my mental sake I decided to believe him.

On the way home, I missed my train to Futian Checkpoint, so I had to board the train to the other Checkpoint. Going the longer way I couldn’t avoid thinking about what has happened. I put my phone in my bag and for a moment I thought I lost my walled, because I could not find it. Of course it was there, since I have a lock on my bag. Where did my confidence go?