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Off the grid

JaiDee

By JaiDee
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JaiDee Newbie

JaiDee

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Hey lads, I am heading off the grid today for.....30? 60? 90? days, maybe more, who knows.....Laos by motorbike for a long while first and then points further east and south from there, but no real destination per se. I feel like Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, not completely sure of where I am going or what I will find there; and if not careful could end up like Colonel Kurtz :)

Anyway, keep the ship running smoothly, we all know how Mister P. Dogg and his colleague Bumblebee have a way of keeping everyone here in line and on their toes at all times heh heh.....

cheers all, chok dee!!

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  • 2 weeks later...
JaiDee Newbie

JaiDee

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Thanks for the good wishes guys....so far so good, I have been in-country for 22 days now and still loving it. some people describe Laos as "Thailand the way it used to be", before the tourists arrived, circa 1950's; I find it to be fascinating in so many aspects and the people are friendly and really nice here.

One problem, which I understand is going on in north Thailand also; smoke from forest fires! Damn, sometimes out on the 'cycle my eyes tear up and actually hurt from all the smoke, and unfortunately it cuts down on the scenery.....what I CAN see as I go further and further north is gorgeous, looks like the Lord of the Rings movies were shot around here [actually New Zealand].

One more strange thing....don't believe anyone who says Lao and Thai are the same language! They may be close, but far from the same.....many of the people we meet are from Issan and may have picked up Lao when they were young, but they are definitely not the same. The little bit of Thai I know is not understood at all.....stranger still, Lao is only spoken in about 60% of the country! The rest is local dialects only, so even when I learn some Lao words and phrases once I get into the tribal areas it's useless because they only speak their own language; very odd. I understand as I head up towards Phongsali they only speak Chinese, that should be interesting.

So far so good! Great place, physically cooler than Thailand also.....extending my visa to 60 days soon and will spend Lao New year [same as Songkran] in Luang Prabang.

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williethepimp Newbie

williethepimp

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Great stuff jaidee-thanx for the updates....as far as I knew issan and lao were the same language,or so ive been told.I love Laos,but ive never been further than Luang Prabang(nice for a few days ,but too many godamn tourists)I planned a motocycle trip to the North myself,but I came down really sick in Khon Kaen (where i'd gone for a Laos visa)and had to cancel.Best of luck on your trip-take some pics of the plain of jars,that would be a great place to see.

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  • 3 weeks later...
JaiDee Newbie

JaiDee

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Still in this super-chill country, lads! Got my extension a while ago and will do 60 days all told.

such a cool place......so mellow and the people are very nice.....if I had to use just one word to compare it to Thailand, I would use "different".

Turned in the 'cycle after 24 uneventful [thank God] days in the north, and now in Vang Vieng for the duration. It's a shithole, but the food and rooms are incredibly cheap; good lunch, dinner and a massage yesterday - all together less than 15 bucks. My room is 19; A/C, hot water, TV with HBO and CNN, 2 big beds and decent WIFI; it would be hard to find a similar room in Thailand for 570 baht.

The north was quite a place......above Luang Prabang they don't get a lot of tourists, so it was nice to find some villages where they just NEVER see white people, and getting the usual assortment of chuckles and head-turns from the locals, and especially little kids, same as you'd get in Cambodia or 'Nam. Phongsali and Nom San on the Vietnam border are about as far as you'd want to go if you are alone and even that was risky IMO; there is a damn lot of space between towns/villages in the north and I kept praying inside that something wouldn't go wrong with the 'cycle. If it breaks down, trust me, you are walking [pushing a 200-pound bike and all your gear] at least 5, 6, 10 miles.....and even then there is no guarantee you will find anything resembling a mechanic or a shop. Just as bad; no one would know fuck-all about the english language even if you did! It was even more remote than Cambo in that regard; I have gone off the grid many times over there but always felt like help was right around the next corner if needed, not so in Laos.

So thankfully that went all well, also no spills or other tragedies....now back to fookin' off for a while and just being mellow with the locals.

A bit more on the language, IE compared to Thailand. Some words/phrases are exactly the same, while most are completely different. Numbers - same -same, which is good because I know my numbers pretty well. When they say "little bit" here, they say "Noi Nid" instead of nid noi, no joke....hello is "sabai dee", which in Thai actually means "I am fine". "Mai Pen rai", no problem in Thai, is "bo pen yung" here, so as you can see not even close to the Thai. And I find that only about 1 in 4 people understand even the most basic Thai that I know, so it really is a totally separate language and while some people from Issan will tell us "I speak Lao", I'd bet they only know about half of it. When you ask a Laotian "do you speak Thai" they will be honest and just say "no". And yet, since there are literally no Lao TV stations, they watch Thai TV out of Bangkok, those inane channel 3 soap opera's or the video and movie stations. A nice lady I know was laying around my favorite place the other day, namely the bar she runs with her husband, watching the soaps from Bangkok; I asked her if she spoke Thai and she honestly says "no" without even thinking about it.....and yet she continued to watch LOL. I'd guess people around the border area's with Thailand, maybe around the Nong Khai, Ubon, Chiang Rai area's, they may speak more Thai.....but get a few hours from there and for the most part they don't.

As I mentioned before, when you get WAY away from the border area, like towards Phongsali {chinese} and Sam Nuea {tribal}, they barely even speak their own language, Lao.....very strange. I was in a small crossroads shop, about 10 miles from the Vietnam border, buying myself a sprite and trying out my admittedly -little, just-learned Laotian I had picked up and the people just looked at me like I was a crazy person. Thai; not even on their radar. Finally I said "Hmong"? and they all nodded and pointed at themselves and said "hmong"; basically they only speak the Hmong language, which I would imagine creates a problem for the tax collectors and lawmakers when they come up from Vientiane.

Finally; Not ONE 7/11 in all of Laos! Not one Burger King, McDonalds, K.F.C., Robinson's or mall of any kind....and I have been to every population center, I just think the government here wants to keep the multi-nationals out and keep this place as original as possible, for as long as possible.

I like it here a lot......not sure if I could live here, I think I'd be bored easily and it's extremely hard to find a sexual partner [the government and the people frown on westerner/locals physical contact] and the visa restrictions are more difficult than Thailand. But it sure is a cool place to visit, and I don't think the 15 years or so that they have opened to the west has really hurt this country much, save for the town I am in now.....the rest of the country is still pretty virgin and Luang Prabang is literally one of the nicest cities I have ever been to.

Cheers from Laos!

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4:17 Sick Buffalo

4:17

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Wow, great report, JaiDee, and glad to hear that there were no mishaps. It sounds like quite an adventure. It makes me want to get out of HCMC and hit the road, although I'd be tempted to do it on a bicycle. I can fix those myself (usually) and I don't understand wrist throttles (and have the scars to prove it, heh).

Please keep us all posted ...

-4:17

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