LAOS

Think of a movie you’ve seen where the shot opens up with a dramatic long pan across majestic mountain range where the clouds obscure the highest peaks and the sun casts an angelic amber glow over the valley below. Now imagine getting up out of your seat and walking into the silver screen….welcome to Laos! When we chose our course for travel, each destination was with specific intention. Bali was to seek out master craftsman of Gamelan instruments. Cambodia was for the inspiration of taking in the massive manmade works of architectural art at Angkor Wat. And Laos was for it’s sheer majestic beauty. Every creative person has their muse, for us, the staggering natural beauty of Laos was just that. Our hopes for our journey to Laos were to immerse ourselves in a landscape where just the simple opening of our eyes each morning would be the inspirational backdrop for our musical thoughts and ideas. The intention was set, the destination chosen and the results…nothing less than what we had expected and in fact quite a bit more.
Laos just opened its borders to travelers in the early 90’s so tourism is very limited and the locals in many parts of the country are still getting used to seeing foreigners. This is very exciting when coming from a place like Thailand which has been entertaining visitors for over 50 years. Starting off in the lower portion of the Northern arm of Laos, we made our way up from Ventiane, the capital, to progressively smaller and smaller towns until the towns became villages and the villages then became nothing more than a collection of a dozen bamboo huts. From the beginning of our time in Laos we were captivated by the scenic, picturesque landscape. Upon arriving in each new town we were convinced that it couldn’t get anymore amazingly beautiful than what we were seeing at that moment. Yet with each bus, boat, or tuk tuk trip to more and more rural areas, we found ourselves saying that same thing each time. To use words to describe what we saw would be a rather pathetic endeavor. Some of the video we took might give you a square inch of entire football field sized picture of what the landscape of Laos actually is. It’s hard to imagine that Laos and all its seemingly untouched natural beauty is THE most bombed country in all the world. During the Vietnam War from 1964-1973, the US spent 2.2 million dollars a day dropping the equivalent of an areoplane load of bombs every 8 minutes for 9…yes 9…9 years straight! This weighed out to be almost ONE TON of explosives for every single man, woman and child in all of Laos. Its hard to imagine that Laos, a stunningly beautiful country even after all the senseless bombings, was a place of perpetual hell for nine years straight, not to mention the civil war that wrought havoc on the country for the next two decades.
Needless to say we spent a lot of time taking advantage of the nature and all the fun things it had to offer. Because we were in Laos during the rainy season all of the water activities which were normally considered a casual, relaxing affair were transformed to a down right adventure. We spent one of our days taking a trip down the river on inner tubes, which normally takes about 4 hours but because of all the rain it was accelerated to 45 minutes! Although we didn’t go straight down…there was far too much fun to be had on the river banks where locals had built a jungle gym of various ziplines, rope swings, treetop jumps and other assorted ways for passers by to risk their lives. We managed to make it down unscathed…for the most part; aside from me falling through a missing board of a bridge and Ben forgetting to let go at the end of a zipline (check out the video for that one!) And the river was just one of adventures. Spelunking in mountain top caves, swimming in natural springs deep inside a mountain, climbing around massive, pitch black caverns and kayaking through river gorges were just some of the ways we burned off our caffeine highs from drinking the local motor oil…I mean Loas coffee. Most of these adventures were had while visiting the small backpacker town of Vang Vieng, known for it’s wealth of natural beauty and opium…no trip to Vang Vieng is complete without sampling both of the local delicacies.


Below you will find some videos and and the first of 2 slideshows from Laos. There will be more videos and photos to come.