My Adventures in Little Tokyo

LUANG PRABANG: Has to be the best city, or perhaps it should be a town, I've visited in South East Asia. Came down on a 30 hour bus ride from Kunming on Monday afternoon. The bus was a sleeper bus which basically means two rows of, very thin, bunks. On one side there are single bunks and on the other side doubles. This meant I spent most of the night curled up with a Chinese guy but during the day he sat downstairs watching the longest movie I've ever seen so I had room to spread out.

I also befriended a Japanese guy named Shin who has becoming something of a traveling companion. At least in Luang Prabang. We were the only non-Chinese on the bus so it made it somewhat easier to have somebody else with me while we tried to fumble through the border and the bus's sometimes strange etiquette. The trip also provided ample opportunities to see Chinese men shitting on squat toilets, door wide open, smoking on a cigarette. Not exactly something I ever want to see again.

But we arrived safe and washed up on a hostel that turns out to be something of a Little Tokyo. Japanese travelers have a unique system of swapping information in note books which means they often end up at the same hostels. Much the same way LP or Rough Guide travelers probably do. Anyhow I quickly befriended some Japanese guys and spent most of my first day walking around or playing tak raw (Thai hacky sack style game with a larger bamboo ball) in the shadow of a stupa at the local wat. A bunch of tourists took photos, I'm sure because they thought the blokes were Lao.

The following day we took a bus out to the local waterfall which came complete with a rope swing and turquoise water. It was nice to have a spinal injury again. Probably the first since the end of summer in Oz in 2005. Then we hiked up to the top of the waterfall and took about a thousand photos. The complex also included a bear rescue centre so we stood around and watched these very cute bears playing for a while.

The night time turned out to be an even bigger adventure when we met a couple of Laos guys who worked as English teachers at a school opposite our guest house. We were having a couple of beers watching them play bocce before this morphed into an impromptu singalong. Sometime later they decided we should go to a Laos nightclub so we all jumped on the back of motorbikes and spread across town for an evening of Laos dancing - something like line dancing. With the nightclub about to close we jumped back on the motorbikes and headed to a local house party where Shin and I were obliged to sing Thai karaoke. I think it goes without saying that neither of us speak Thai. Eventually we made it back to the guesthouse well after curfew.

The following day we wanted to go to the Pak Ou caves with a Malaysian girl we'd met the day before and another Tokyo-ite from the hostel. But to make it cheaper we needed more people so, as the only native English speaker in the group, I stood around in the dust by the Mekong playing tak raw and touting for business with the Laos riverboat drivers. Eventually we convinced an older English company to join us and we got our price.

The journey up to the caves - a local Buddhist temple filled with about one thousand Buddhas - took about an hour but it was a beautiful trip. On the way we stopped off at the popular whisky village, renowned for making lao lao, a local spirit. Some friendly guy explained the distilling process so we stocked up on a little. Then it was down to Pak Ou caves before heading home via another village where they make paper.

All that was left was a meal and a Beer Laos overlooking the Mekong and another trawl through the markets. I've really been taken with the doona covers but there hard to carry. I might pick one up and post home from Chiang Mai.

Sorry if this all sounds a little rusty. My prose certainly isn't up with the Conrad novel I'm reading but I'm off to explore Luang Prabang withmy friends. Tomorrow I head up to Nong Khiew and then on to another village I can't pronounce. Apparently they don't have much power so I'll be out of range for a couple of days.