Asia | Laos | Land of a Million Elephants or something...

We left Hong Kong with the hope of finding a last pleasant silence, idyllic nature, and intimacy with the animals in Laos. Maybe even to make peace with the residents of Southeast Asia, whom we hadn't found so delightful until now.

So on January 30th, we took the double-decker bus to Hong Kong Airport, where we first had to find our way around. Note - Hong Kong has the world's largest airport... Our flight was from Gate Number 522. That says a lot. In Laos, for example, there are exactly 4 gates for international flights.

Here are a few facts that should be mentioned in connection with the locals here: You ask a question - and the person says yes/no/right 500m/absolutely not/we don't have... etc. whether they know it or not. In our experience, most people don't know what you're asking for... Here, the principle is "it is impolite not to give information...". "Sry. Is there a post office at the airport?" Man from the airport information desk: "no... no post office". After asking several times, it is clear - he understands us, and there is no post office... One stand over, they know more, and we visit the post office one floor down. Wtf?

That's Laos in a nutshell... So on January 30th, we arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, with 500,000 inhabitants. A quiet sleepy place where we find ourselves in a "hotel" that was pure horror! At 15€ it was actually very cheap... but seems to be not worth 2€. See the pictures^^.

But there is no time for annoyance in the last month of our trip. We left early in the morning, rented a motorcycle, zoomed around, and visited the markets, rivers, Buddha Park, and some other impressive places of the old city in two days. We ate from all around the world - French, Italian, Indian, American, Asian - but always had to make sure that no burping, spitting, sneezing, and squeaking Laotian sat next to us and ruined our meal with a satisfyingly choking burp... After 3 months traveling around Asia, that annoys us the most. The second worst is probably the "leisureliness" described in the guidebooks. We would rather dismiss it as lazy and rude. Well... here it's "leisurely". Leisurely ignoring when someone asks something; leisurely stamping the passport as if there were a problem; leisurely bringing the wrong food multiple times; leisurely not cleaning the bathroom in the hotel, so the used toilet paper, soap, etc. from the previous tenant are still lying around... and if you even mention it to them... well... then... then you get the leisurely indifferent look with dead empty eyes that only ask: "do I have to listen to what you're saying now?? I want to look at my phone...". (also a seemingly common disease here... digitization messes with everyone like that... Where 'perhaps' there was once meditation, friendliness, harmony... now there are only empty eyes from 5 to 80-year-olds who mainly stare at the glowing screen all day long. Terrible...

The landscape itself is beautiful, impressive with the mountains (similar to what we saw in Vietnam and Thailand), the climate mild and dry, and the economy booming. But nothing is being done about it... The garbage piles up in the ditches - brought by the thousands of Chinese people who come here to pack in an expensive water, shopping, and zip-lining experience in their short vacation and then leave, leaving the plastic behind, screaming. Screaming... that's the next keyword... which we will explain later in another experience...

Back to the course of our journey - we then took a minibus of the worst kind, in a reckless manner, to Vieng Vang, where we (surprisingly) stayed for 7 full nights. The rooms were fine, the people were not, the noise was not, but the scenery was top notch (with hot air balloons, mountain ranges, puppies, kittens, and great coffee). Once again, we hopped on a motorcycle and explored the dreamy surroundings, ventured over almost collapsing wooden and bamboo bridges, each of which had old bombs from the war times set up in front of them. You should know: Laos was covered by the crazy Americans back then with about 2.2 million TONS of bombs... You read that right... 2,200,000 tons^^. This was also the reason why we decided not to venture to Eastern Laos, as it is said to take another 100 years before the area is free of bombs... and since we ourselves did not intend to become involuntary bomb collectors, we simply skipped this part. We climbed some of the hill landscapes, enjoyed the view, and were constantly disturbed by noisy-screaming Asians, teenagers with mobile phone music like Dubstep/House in the middle of the forest. So finding peace here is not that easy, but possible - we found it in several sparsely visited water oases and mountain caves, which mostly smelled of collapse.

After the eventful week, we took a "VIP" bus with a semi-drunk driver who luckily brought us safely to Luang Prabang through the broken gravel roads in the mountains. Temples, saffron robes, haggling, and bargaining were on the agenda in the very busy city. A day trip to a gigantic waterfall with a bear sanctuary sweetened our stay a bit. The early morning alms round of the monks marked our conclusion in Laos. Unfortunately, Herbert had a fever for the last 3 days and has been trying to recover since.

Laos: Nature awesome, food okay, infrastructure shitty, people disgusting (literally)...

And here are the photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KQzBacSU6XsmIN25gFoCbZCI1MGIpqeR?usp=sharing