i headed for a park called Tam Coc which is closest to the city of Nin Binh. as soon as i woke up, though, i was stuck by the cold drizzly-ness of everything. it got progressively colder and drearier as the day went on and by the time i made it to Tam Coc it was downright freezing. Tam Coc is sometimes referred to as 'halong bay on rice paddies' and is composed of similar rock formations and jagged mountains forming an inlet around some rice-farming areas with a little winding river running through it. the boat-owners who run the tours take you out in little rowboats which they use their feet to propel the oars! there were a fiar number of tourists there (nothing like halong bay, though) but the whole area was extremely well preserved and free of touristy-development. the boat meanders down a little river before it goes through a huge cave at the base of one of the mountains and then spits you right into a chinese scroll painting. it was really one of the most magical places i've ever seen: a slow winding river dancing between verdant rice paddies full of peasants and water buffalos extending all the way up to sheer 1000-ft rock walls covered with sparse vegetation and the odd bamboo grove. it was positively freezing, however and by the time the boat returned i was well-ready for some hot Pho and tea. after that i hopped a bus for Vinh which is an industrial-communist hell-hole where i spent a night and caught a bus in the morning.
a new border between Laos and VN just opened up to foreigners a few months ago and i decided to go through there instead of at the well established ones. it was both a good and a bad idea. the bus took me through about 8 hours of breathtaking chinese-scroll-painting-country widing up and up and up into the mountains as the road condition got worse and worse. i made it to the city nearest the border around 3:30 and caught a motorbike (an old russian 150cc Minsk) to the border itself. the moto-ride took about half an hour and it was practically straight up into the clouds. when we got into the clouds it was all wet and foggy and visibility dropped down to about 5 meters (who'dve thought clouds were full of rain?). i finally made it to the VN side of the border which consisted of a little official-looking building with lots of flags and communist propoganda and absolutely no english or other people about. the vietnamese guards were typically slow and corrupt and after the head-honcho guy spent nearly an hour making me take EVERY single item out of all of my bags simply so that he could flip through my books, practice his english, and detain me as long as possible, he advised me that i better hurry because the Lao-side of the border was probably already closed. i got my stamps and left vietnam and trudged through the 500m no-man's-land in three inches of freezing mud and zero-visibility-fog. luckily there was one guard at the lao-border station and i was immediately struck by how much friendlier he was than everyone in vietnam. i was also immediately struck by the complete lack of infrastructure in Laos as after getting my stamp he told me (with a bemused laugh) that i'd have to walk to the nearest town as all the taxi's went home hours ago. so i walked the nearly 16 kilometers to Nong Haet with all my bags up a mountain (500 vertical meters) in the freezing rain and the dark. even if it hadn't been completely dark (and i mean COMPLETELY dark, 60% of Laos doesn't have electricity) i wouldn't have been able to see more than a few feet ahead of me due to the fog and rain. it took me just over three hours and during that time i didn't pass a single vehicle or welcoming abode. i was not a happy camper. it was just about as 'alone' as i've ever felt in my life.
during The Long Walk, i kept on repeating to myself that "It's always darkest before the dawn" and, as usual, it turned out to be true. i finally trudged into the guesthouse in Nong Haet (the "city" isn't even on most maps) and was greeted by about a dozen Lao men who were gathered around a fire drinking to ward off the cold. before i could get my bag off, i had been force fed two shots of Lao-Lao (distilled rice-wine, aka Lao whisky) and was frantically shaking hands with everyone who were all absolutely stunned to see a soggy american walk in off the mountain in the middle of the night. amazingly, two or three of them spoke english and i spent the next few hours getting all warm and toasty and drunk before sleeping the sleep of kings in a little wooden shack with about 4 blankets piled on me to keep the cold out. there was no running water and when i woke up, it was about 5C/40F degrees out and the locals were out back pouring buckets of rainwater over themselves and scrubbing down with stiff wire brushes. nobody wears shoes out there. they are incredibly tough.
i hopped a big 1960's-style banger bus to Phonsovan and made it there by noon. it was still ridiculously cold, drizzly, and dreary. Phonsovan is a real city (by Lao standards, that is) and i quickly found a decent guesthose with warm-ish water. the main attraction in Phonsovan is The Plain of Jars which is an eerie Stonehenge-type site consisting of hundreds of huge (2-3m) stone jars littered all over the countryside. i hired a moto to take me out there and spent the next few hours wandering around the PoJ all by myself. the fascinating thing about them is that nobody knows where they came from or who made them or why. it's almost a complete mystery. most estimates reckon they're about 2000 years old and the leading theory (which is almost entirely unsupported by evidence) is that they were used for burial ceremonies of some sort. there's a tired guy in a little shack collecting the $0.70 admission fee who then points you in the direction of the jars. there are no signs, trails, or anything. just a bunch of rolling hills with big spooky stone Jars all over the place. very mysterious and moving. the enigmatic nature of the site made it almost more interesting to me than Angkor Wat. i had some more nice indian food in Phonsovan and then caught the morning-bus to Laung Prabang in a desperate attempt to escape the cold.
on the bus, i met a nice canadian couple (Mathew and Sasha, 25 and 24) whom i've been traveling with ever since. the bus ride was about 6 hours and comfortable enough. about half-way through the ride, we stopped in the middle of nowhere for a bathroom-break. we're standing around peeing off the side of a cliff and Matt notices a big hole in the ground with a pig in it. he mentions something and people start crowding around looking at this pig that obviously fell into the hole and can't get out. finally one of the Lao guy peeks in and jumps back into the bus and re-emerges with a long rope. "great, he's going to rescue the pig, how nice!" i thought. he makes a lasso and manages to drag the now-squealing-pig out of hole, quickly hog-ties it's legs and climbs up on the roof of the bus and puts it there with the rest of the luggage. free pig! we could hear it squealing from inside the bus for the next 4 hours.
Luang Prabang is another World-Heritage site and is a very slow and relaxing little town on the Mekong that's just lovely to stoll through. it's getting a bit warmer, altho still cloudy, and i'm thinking of staying for another day or two before heading up north towards the chinese border to experience the real Laos. the people here are so incredibly friendly and kind. i didn't realize just how intensely everyone in vietnam tries to rip you off until seeing the contrast here. it's been a rough couple of days but i've recovered and am enjoying the warmth of the people and the wonderful food immensely. the exchange rate here is around 10,000 kip to the dollar and the largest bills that are in common circulation are 2000 kip. i changed $100 and got a six-inch stack of 2000 kip notes. i'm a millionare!
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