Mandatory Vacation — Vientiane, Laos

The Mekong River

Any expat who’s lived or worked in Thailand will tell you that dealing with visas is a pain in the arse—especially if you don’t have a long-stay, work visa. Keeping your papers current is expensive and tedious, especially if you’re not near the border. Fortunately, my work permit went through and I was able to get a ‘multiple re-entry visa’ that is good for a year. Unfortunately, Reaksmey won’t have a job until May, so we have to deal with keeping her visa current. It’s all a moneymaking racquet in my opinion, and just goes to show that even if you’re living in the most laid-back country in the world you still can’t avoid red tape.

Essentially, if your visa is about to run out you can do one of two things: go to the consulate and pay for an extension, or cross the border and come back in (IF you have already paid for a re-entry stamp) which would extend your current visa another 30 days (or whatever it’s good for). However, if you have already extended your visa to its maximum limit, you have to travel to another country, find the Thai embassy, and “apply” (pay) for a new one. Blah blah blah long story short, Reaksmey’s tourist visa ran out and we had to take a mandatory vacation to Laos to throw money at a new one.

But hell, we’d never been Laos before, and it turned out to be a really nice trip.

Sleeping booty

We took a night train up to Nong Khai—one of the northern most towns in Thailand—so we could then cross the border into Vientiane, the capital of Laos. The sleeper cars on the train were quite nice, and definitely a better alternative to taking a bus. Being that it is at least a 15-hour trip to Nong Khai, it was nice to be able to stand up and move around—an unavailable luxury when you’re crammed into a bus.

Instead, we'd cast our lot with shifty-eyed policemen, drunken travelers, and friendly but money-savvy train attendants—one of which was 42 years old, looked 26, and has 3 kids who live in our district back in Nong Khaem. He was a nice enough fellow, that is, when he wasn’t helping himself to tips from our change. He’d been on this train for 25 years and was counting the days of the next thirteen when he could eventually retire. He’d gotten good at skimming money off of the passengers fool enough to buy the overpriced beer and awful food onboard. 

Yes ma'am!

We learned the hard way that you shouldn't go anywhere by train if you are on a schedule. We've been in Thailand long enough and should have known that the train operates on “Thai time,” and that we had no chance of making our deadline. But wishful thinking had gotten the better of us, and since I took a personal day off of work so we could make this visa run, I’d hoped it was going to work out like we planned. As there were approximately 35+ stops on the route to Nong Khai, and we were about five hours late. The Thai embassy closes over the weekend, and they require an entire business day to process your visa (for no real reason), which meant that Reaks was going to have to stay a few extra days to get things sorted out on her own while I headed back to Bangkok for work on Monday.

All the same, Laos was a very pleasant surprise. Having heard very little about it and having zero expectations may have had something to do with it—but our experience in Vientiane was very nice.

BeerLao. Delicious.

As per usual we met some nice folks at the border and decided to link up with them so we could save money getting into the heart of the city. We joined a lovely Roman couple and few people from Germany and arranged for a songtaew to take us into town from the border. After we got dumped off on one of the main streets, Reaks and I went our own way and began wandering through Vientiane to look for a guesthouse and the famous BeerLao that we’d kept hearing about. BeerLao, being the “national beer of Laos,” was rumored (and correctly so) to be quite good. As it turns out, the woman who owns the brewery (yes, woman) doesn’t even drink, and yet her company produces one of the highest quality beers in Southeast Asia.

Mekong Riverman

The majestic Mekong River traces the border between Thailand and Laos, and Vientiane snuggles right up into it. There is a nice little park and walkway that lies at the end of the long beach and is host to the nightly market. On the sidewalk, makeshift bartenders serve mixed drinks and beer out of coolers to the people who mindlessly meander around the stalls—rousing and dashing the hopes of the vendors in one sip. The fare is mainly made up of cheap jewelry, small souvenir trinkets, local street food, and clothing, etc. Only the food was genuine, however, and one could find the exact same paraphernalia two tables over. 

But that wasn’t the point. A sliver of the yellow moon was hanging over the Mekong as it drifted towards sleep, and we relished the warm evening breeze.

Riverside night market

Hmm..
French café / S.E. Asian tuk-tuk 

Unlike Thailand, Laos was taken over by the French many years ago and their distant influence still abounds today in 2013. It was both welcoming and strange to be in a small town in Southeast Asia that is so heavily influenced by French culture. Everything from street names, to French-style guesthouses/restaurants, to French bakeries and cafés—all are a common entity in Vientiane, and seeing as how coffee is a local export it was actually very good. It was a nice touch (in a strange way) because small coffee shops/cafés don’t really populate Bangkok so readily, and drinking coffee that didn’t come from an instant brew container was refreshing.

Buddhist wat

Lounging in the tropical clime, enjoying a French meal at a guesthouse restaurant and washing it down with BeerLao across the way from a Buddhist temple was commonplace. Street-side, Vietnamese-style hoagies served on French baguettes, croissants piled high in café windows, and local women selling handmade hammocks to aloof tourists drinking cappuccinos just about sums it up the odd cultural juxtaposition of Vientiane…

And yet, it’s a shame— In a very hypocritical light, a place such as Vientiane is viewed as both charming and overrun by tourists. The fact that there are tourists there turns the other tourists off from the place. Yet, if there were no tourists in Vientiane, it would never be able to sustain itself. As travelers ourselves, Reaks and I do our best to keep the habits, views, and actions of other tourists separate from our own, and we try to see the place as it was in its previous form—the one that attracted tourists in the first place.

But at this day and age, the local cultures in these types of places have adapted themselves so thoroughly to suit its transients that what you get now is not a view into a vibrant culture, but a walk through a street-side market that is geared only towards vagabonding consumers. Visiting a culture that serves only to cater to its customers is a muddy experience, and I feel like one must spend a great deal of time in one place to truly breach its outer, often superficial, shell. These people are worlds beyond being superficial by any means, but their parents and children live and die by the influx of tourists who treat their home and people like living museum exhibits. Entire tourism infrastructures have been adapted and set into place to keep these towns afloat and tourists still bitch and complain when the locals try to cop a few extra dollars off of them.

(Click to enlarge)

 

Nice van.

Late night tuk-tuk action