In Laos

Let me explain you the history of Sanjee. Hes is from the north of Laos, from the zone of Phangsali, 200 km from Luang Prabang. He came to Luang Prabang to study to become english teacher, in order to be able to have a good job. He has 19 yars old. He studies in the evening. During the day he works in a very familiar guest-house where he is the only who knows how to speak English and he doesn't get any salary. He gets a free bed and free food for this. The last time he went back to his village was one year ago, it's too expensive and too many hours of bus. But anyway, he smiles in morning with a "sawasdiii" while he prepares me a cup of coffe in the morning. He wants to speak with you, he offers you bananas and some rice while he asks you how is Europe and how is Spain. He has never been there, he has neither been in Vientiane that is 250 km south from Luang Prabang. I will be there in a couple of days after paying less than 10 euros and 9 hours of bus.

I spent with him a couple of hours this morning, and he showed me how is Laos. I've been in Laos for 3 days now and finally I am starting to discover how is Asia like. I left behind Thailand, with its busy streets, the people that want to sell everything to the foreigners or also called "farang", and I am now in the center of Laos.

To get into Laos was a little bit hard. I spent 8 hours in a night bus that left me in the border around 4 am in the morning. I was crossing the Mekong river at 8 and then you have 2 choices to go to Luang Prabang, or you take the air-con bus that brings you there in 10 hours, or you go for the slow boat that takes 2 days stopping one night in a village between. Of course, I choose the second option as any other tourist.

The first day in the boat was good, a lot of people in the boat and you could meet everyone. But the second day didn't start well. The boat had been changed and was smaller. A lot of people refused to get in the boat and after two hours waiting in the boat somebody was negotiating that we will have another boat if we were paying 400$ more. I didn't want to leave the boat without my backpack that was somewhere stored in the back. I was starting to get upset so, we were waiting there for two hours, while somebody with the Lonely Planet on his hands was taking decisions for everybody else in the boat. Actually I was siting in the floor of the boat and it was not too bad. Anyway, so finally an agreement was done, so we had to join 400$ and we would get a bigger boat to continue our trip. So everybody was leaving the boat. I stayed in the boat to help the human chain to move all the backpacks from one boat to the other. When I saw my backpack I just kept it with me while I was looking that the boat was being filled with local people and food, that we guessed that they were going to Luang Prabang too. So finally when all the backpacks were moved, I still had mine with me. Everybody left the boat and there were only 20 local people in the boat, so there was then plenty of space. Finally, I decided not to move to the other boat, and do the trip in the boat with the local people and maybe 10 more western guys. I didn't regret to take my own decision and not follow the crowd. It really was a really nice experience, stopping at every single village to deliver food. All the western people on the boat were very interesting too, real travelers for long time. Finally we ended in the same guest house all of us and today we've been together.

Honestly, Laos is different, I am feeling very good here now. It's very quiet, it only has a population of 6 million compared with the 64 million in Thailand, and everybody is very friendly and kind.

I'll be here in Luang Prabang for a couple of days more and I will try to do some cooking classes. If in Thailand the food was great, here in Laos is brilliant.

C iu!!

Gerard