Laos

We are in Laos! We took the bus this morning from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong, about a 5 hour ride. Once in Chiang Khong, we boarded a motorcycle rickshaw/tuk-tuk (motorcycle in front and two benches facing each other in the rear) to get to immigration on the banks of the Mekong. From immigration we headed down the fancy (not) border crossing at the beach where we got on a long long-tail for the ride across the river. This boat was an inboard with a fixed drive shaft going below the boat and no gearing. I was a little disappointed to finally land on the Laotian shore as the day was incredibly hot and humid and the breeze offered by the boat ride was quite refreshing. We broke a good sweat walking up the hill to immigration; heck, I had a serious sweat going just filling out the immigration documents. We bought tickets for tomorrow’s slow boat to Luong Prabang and booked a room at the Sawadee Hotel. After paying for the boat tickets and hotel and visas (1500 baht or about $45 each), I was a little low on cash so I hit the local ATM for some Laotian Kip. As near as I can tell the exchange rate is about 10,000 kip to the dollar. There are no coins in circulation and the bills go down as small as 500 kip. I wanted to pull out about $200 but I was limited to 700,000 kip per transaction which turned out to be just as well because this ATM apparently dispensed no bills smaller than 20,000 kip. This made for a serious wad of cash. So much so, I was unable to fold my wallet and, for much of the time in Laos, carried my money around in a big roll held together with a rubber band.

Once we settled in we headed over to an herbal sauna and massage place in the Red Cross building in town. The Red Cross apparently runs these throughout Laos as a means of raisign revenue for the good work they do. Mary and Zak and I first got an hour-long massage. The masseuses used a tiger balm/mentholated balm as they needed our back and muscles. There was a bit of tweaking and twisting but this was not the same as a Thai massage. After the massage, we showered and entered the herbal sauna, one for women and one for men. The saunas were heated by a large wood fire on the lower level that boiled an herbal water mixture that was vented directly to the saunas above. The idea was to spend 10 minutes or so in the sauna and then come out and drink some herbal tea. Both the herbal mixture in the saunas and the tea are unique to each spa and supposedly held in strict secrecy. There were other Laotians enjoying the sauna as well and the Lao girls looked quite exotic in their sweaty sarongs. Maya was not able to get a massage and didn’t want to sit in the sauna for long but she enjoyed running around in her sarong and playing with a younger girl who was the daughter of one of the women working there.