Journey up the Mekong by Richard Waters
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Laos conjures images of simple rustic life, conical hats and misty temples, but it’s increasingly catering to a more sophisticated boho crowd on the lookout for lux-backpacking opportunities – getting down and dirty by day, reclining in Indochinese elegance by night.
For even in the remote quarters of Laos, stylish boutique guesthouses are now blossoming, making some of those more intrepid trips seem tenable. Let's face it, after a day's trekking who wants to sleep on a mat when you can be swallowed in Egyptian linen and goose feathers? Where better to escape to than a land of boutique hotels, quirky guesthouses and cuisine that might have been swept off a Parisian table for a tenth of the price?
The days of holing up in hermetically-sealed, luxury Lego hotels far away from the locals are over. Increasingly, we're looking to really taste our journeys and get more out of the countries we visit. Laos is the perfect place to complement your Bloody Mary with a pair of hiking boots. Finally, it’s possible to have adventure and great value luxury combined – with treks through tiger and hill-tribe country that will bring out the Martha Gellhorn in you.
Thanks to its lack of coastline and landscape of endless mountains, Laos is reasonably safe from being infested with hordes of regular backpackers stripping its authenticity; many places you visit feel as if you’re the first falang (westerner) to have discovered them. Having flown into Bangkok, caught a plane east to Ubon Ratchathani and crossed the Thai border into Laos, I head south by bus for Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands).
A stone's throw from Cambodia, these myriad islets and sandbars rising from the turquoise waters of the Mekong, are a backpacker’s dream. Don Dhet and Don Khon islands are the best places for hammock-dwelling, tubing and dolphin spotting.
There are myriad guesthouses to choose from, however there's only two real contenders. On Don Dhet I opt for Little Eden, perched on the tip of the island with achingly photogenic sunset views. With its excellent cuisine, five cosy bungalows and tranquil gardens, it's a castaway sanctuary. I hired a pushbike, cycled the length of the island (less than three miles) and meandered over the old French bridge from Don Dhet to diminutive Don Khon, the air thick with wood-smoke and impending twilight.
By far the best choice of accommodation here is Sala Done Khone, one of a handful of colonial-style hotels run by the Sala Lao group who specialise in restoring old French villas with a boutique feel. Fireflies were gathering in the sugar palms as I haggled with a boatman to ferry me to Cambodian waters where the Mekong fans into a wide, deep lake; a favoured place of the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin. For half an hour we puttered through rocky passageways, the sky slashed in swathes of salmon – and right on cue there they were; a pod of four dolphins in the centre of the gunmetal lake.
Leaving the islands, I head north six hrs by local bus to Thakhek; a little-known riverside town bursting with bougainvillea, noodle houses and peeling Gallic facades. By night it’s festooned in fairy lights, a festive fruit market piping psychedelic organ music into the air.
It still feels untapped, evidenced by the fact there's only two really cool places to stay. The Inthira Hotel offers sybaritic comfort. Its white linen rooms, particularly the ones facing the town square, are a delight. On the outskirts of town is Tha Kek Travel Lodge – forget the moniker, like an oasis at the end of a road to nowhere it fuses summer camp ruggedness – with its nightly communal fire – and shabby chic. My room featured a four-poster bed and romantic mozzie net, beside a little bureau for me to contemplate work.
My real reason for coming to Thakhek was to use it as a launch pad for ‘Kong Lor’ cave. Hidden away in Attapeu province – the least visited area of Laos, boasting some weirdly gothic scenery – this is a forbidding 7km passage under a mountain, through which a darkened river rushes. Not many come, which adds to the excitement as you approach the near deserted rustic village of Kong Lor, and pay your fee to the ever-ready ferryman. Minutes later you’ll find yourself on a green river weaving past playful children and then – like a rotten mouth baring its jagged stalactite teeth – looms the cave. By turns you’ll be wet, exhilarated and spooked – not necessarily in that order.
As our trusty Charon guided us into the bat-raftered Underworld, anxiety bubbled in my stomach: I was worrying about the giant spiders that hang from the ceiling, and the prospect of swimming back through soupy darkness – iMac clenched in teeth – should something happen. After mooring at a rocky jetty – half expecting to be greeted by a skeleton – we climbed a slippery clay bank to a forest of stalagmites, and I began to wonder what the hell I was doing here. It’s so completely outlandish and unnerving you feel as if you’re in an old Star Trek set having been spiked with LSD.
Thoroughly adrenalized, I next pull in at Vientiane (5hrs by local bus). Once a torpid backwater – the kind of place you’d expect to find a Graham Greene roué – it’s definitely on its uppers, with half a dozen first class guesthouses like Hotel Beau Rivage and The Orchid Hotel shining a light for discerning travellers. The French settled Vientiane as an important hub of Indochina and there are traces of those pastis-drinking colons at every turn; be it the whiff of fresh-baked baguettes or their wilting, shuttered villas refusing to drop.
With quality spas, boutique hotels and high-end shops selling the finest silk pashminas and Bhuddist statuary, Vientiane merits at least two days. By the time I'd been bewitched by its frangipani-lined boulevards, tranquil wats (temples) and silently gliding monks in burnt sienna robes, I was hungry. And there's no better place to get the munchies – for Vientiane is a global celebration of the taste buds. After a healthy breakfast of fruit and muesli at heavenly JoMa Bakery, I pop into Le Provencal, a Breton-style restaurant in the centre of town. The tender wood-fired steak au poivre was less than £5!
A few pounds heavier, my journey north took me past laughing girls harvesting rice padi toward mountains scowling with mist. I'd elected to hire a powerful motor-cross bike from Jules' Classic Rental in Vientiane, to see the countryside at my own pace and drop the bike off in Luang Prabang (10 hrs away).
Lovely as the south is, the quintessential Laos for me is crystallized by its rugged highlands, with its myriad hill-tribes and impenetrable forests. Its night as my motorbike bike purrs into fabled Luang Prabang, secretly visited by A-listers like Mick Jagger and Kylie Minogue.
With its lantern-lit streets, redolent food markets, colonial architecture and 33 gold and emerald-glittering wats, this World Heritage city lays claim to being the pearl of the Orient. What better way to relax than being pampered with an aromatic massage, lounging in shady cafes and staying in uber-reasonable boutique hotels dripping in Merchant Ivory atmosphere? And gone are the days of hard slog across mountains, or slow boats down the Mekong to reach this Shangri-La – arriving in Bangkok you can catch a connecting flight and be here within an hour.
You’ll need three days – at least – to do the former capital justice; whether it’s meandering through the jewellery shops or chilling in the nirvana-inducing peace of the temples. Boutique hotels, Three Nagas by Alila and The Aspara are so effortlessly nostalgic with old world meets contemporary chic, you'll be reaching for a faded parasol and white linen jacket. And with trek companies offering overnight visits to a local elephant farm, and mountain biking and kayaking; there’s plenty to do if you want to burn off a few calories.
Alternatively, follow the scent of incense along the achingly photogenic peninsula. Hidden down its temple-threaded streets are eclectic boutiques like Orange Tree – where you can pick up memorable mementoes from the colonial period – and funky eateries serving local food with a twist of Gallic flair. I spend my last Luang Prabang afternoon at idyllic Kuang Si waterfalls (20 miles away). Beside its menthol blue rock-pools (great for a natural dip) there's a sanctuary for brown bears rescued from poachers.
Hindered by a lack of time I'm forced to catch the infamous speedboat upriver (6 hrs of travelling recklessly fast over submerged pillars of rock and whirlpools). My destination is Houay Xai, once an important node in opium trafficking through the Golden Triangle. These days it's more likely to be heroin or yaa baa (methamphetmaine). That said there's a hidden gem in this dust-blown border town; The Gibbon Experience is an eco conservation tour group dedicated to saving Laos' forest from logging, poaching and slash and burn farming.
Black crested gibbons have long been in danger of extinction in a country where the word ecology resonates little with an impoverished poacher trying to feed his family. Amazingly, The Gibbon Experience convinced the hunters of the Bokeo jungle (six hrs west of Luang Prabang) to protect the animals instead of eating them; by constructing an ingenious series of cables over the dense triple canopy.
Guests to the jungle stay for two nights in fantastical, dizzyingly-high tree houses whilst using these 'zip-lines' to see the animals – and we’re talking wild elephants, macaques, leopards, giant squirrels and tigers, though you'll be lucky to see them. Now the hunters are consistently making more money as guides and conservationists, than they did as killers of necessity.
Seven of us – Israelis, New Englanders, Aussies and myself – tramp toward mist-cowled mountains following our ex-hunter guide – he doesn’t look much like of an executioner, he’s too busy singing mournful Lao love songs. Up we climb, sweating our way through post-monsoon ooze, over the tentacles of lianas and banyan roots, the secondary jungle thickening into original growth forest. Then finally, near the summit of our first major ascent we tentatively take our virgin 'zip'.
Bravado flies out of the window as I look down at the drop I'm about to jettison myself into; 'chasm' just doesn't cut it. Attached to the harness around my waist is a primitive looking wheel on the end of a cable – Health and Safety? In Laos forget it. And then I’m flying, my stomach in my mouth as I try and contain a scream. It’s scary as hell but you soon relax into it; within seconds I felt like the Silver Surfer, the green canopy rushing hundreds of feet beneath my super hero feet.
By the end of the first day as we collapse into our shared accommodation tree house – also reached by zip – the group is bonding with sweat and exhilaration. We're 200 feet up in a kid's fantasy (the only guests allowed are participants of The Gibbon Experience).
Between candlelit ghost stories and delicious fire-grilled beef, cabbage and sticky rice (prepared by our guides) we listened to the pulsating sounds of the jungle. You sleep on a simple mattress beneath a mozzie net and less than decorous duvet – not exactly premier class but given the natural environment, somehow you don't mind. And where else can you take an alfresco, rainwater shower, your only suspicion of voyeurism being the gibbons who are too busy hiding from you?
By the third day we still hadn't seen one, which was unusual. However, we'd come across tree vipers, tiger scat; giant black squirrels and heard leopards mating in the faraway dark. As I sipped my hot chocolate watching the mist draw in on the skirts of twilight, I wondered, where else can you so affordably live out your childish adventure fantasies by day whilst losing yourself in timeless luxury by night?
For a handy, bite-sized guide to Richard Waters's Mekong odyssey, take a look at Laos: Hotels, Eating, Drinking and Shopping.