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Finding a new tempo of travel

Off the tourist trail, the country’s sedate pace offers a lesson in patience

JENNIFER SIZELAND SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Trip to Laos offers a lesson in the art of slowing down.

The thin stern of a pastel-bluepainted boat barely created ripples as the driver propelled us to the moss-fringed mouth of the river cave. We glided past plumes of pale green butterflies, which had gathered to lick salt from the muddy banks, before the damp dark of being inside a karst jolted our senses.

My partner and I were midway through a yearlong overland whirl through Asia, and after seven months of life on the road, sailing along a river in Laos felt like the antidote to travel exhaustion. Until then, I had been trying to see and do it all — a hard-to-resist temptation in a continent as vast and fascinating as Asia — and it wasn’t until Laos that I learned to slow down.

As I stood on the banks of Nong Khai, looking over the Mekong River that forms the natural border with Thailand, I could see lush trees and bushes after the choking dryness of my preceding weeks in northern Thailand. Laos was an enigma to me, a departure from the well-beaten paths through places like India and Thailand. There was something so intriguing about a country I’d rarely heard about.

As soon as we arrived, I could see that the capital, Vientiane, was unlike any other in Southeast Asia, a relaxed city with tree-lined streets, an easy café culture and palpable history, reflected in ancient, gilded Buddhist monuments and Frenchcolonial architecture. It felt right to sip our first Beerlao by the banks of the Mekong as the sun went down, with fireflies flitting over the water.

The whole city seemed to be out on the expansive promenade, taking an exercise class, having manicures and pedicures, shopping or playing cards. I watched as a ferris wheel spun at a snail’s pace, and it struck me that Laos had a patience I didn’t yet possess. I had to know what the countryside had to offer.

The drier season meant that the ex-party town of Vang Vieng was much quieter than normal. Its prime attraction was traversing the Nam Song River in the inner tubes of old truck tires. With the river so low, tubing meant drifting past cows taking a drink, and gazing upon the emerald-covered karsts that line the bank. It was so relaxing that some in our group actually fell asleep.

Rivers are the open veins of Laos as they criss-cross the country, and swimming is a beloved national pastime as a result. It’s considered the ultimate way to recharge, so we took ourselves as close to it as possible by staying on a stilt lodge on the Nam Ou River in Nong Khiaw. The river barely moves due to a dam upstream and the limestone crags surrounding it, creating a small oasis we revelled in.

Once we travelled past the charming yet sleepy city of Luang Prabang, the already-tiny tourist trail dissipated completely. This meant we had to learn to slow down even more, as public transport became barely existent.

The journeys were increasingly long and dusty, and regularly punctuated with stops to fix buses that were scarcely roadworthy. We were rewarded for our patience, however, by having the attractions almost to ourselves in places like the caves of Vieng Xai, which the Pathet Lao communist party once used as its headquarters.

We found the Plain of Jars similarly solitary and altogether more mysterious, with fields and forests filled with more than 2,100 tubular megalithic stone jars, thought to be used as burial urns in the Iron Age. Needless to say, both sites would’ve been overrun with visitors if we were in Europe.

Our next leg, a ride from Thakhek to Kong Lor Cave, required more patience, with our capricious jeep breaking down six times. Normally I would be having a breakdown myself, but instead I accepted the sixhour journey as it stretched out to 10.

We didn’t arrive until midnight, but the keepers of a local restaurant stayed open just to feed us delightfully greasy spring rolls, washed down with a Beerlao, before dropping us off at our hotel — kindnesses that characterized so many of the experiences we had in Laos.

The next day we swam with striped fish in the clear blue river that ran through Kong Lor Cave, with nobody to interrupt us, except frogs croaking. Every arduous journey came with its own reward.

The Mekong River’s Si Phan Don (the archipelago that translates to “4,000 islands”) was the perfect place to end our trip.

Even with the exploding rockets of the Boun Bang Fai festival — a tradition thought to bring in the rainy season — in the background, it was seemingly impossible to break the tranquility.

The orange-gold sunsets over the Mekong were the most incredible I’ve ever experienced. I felt enveloped by the river, completely alone, save for the fishermen cutting through the colours to bring home their catch of the day. The warm light, reflecting on the ripples of water, seemed to renew in me a sense of joy for an entirely different tempo of travel. That and the Beerlao, of course.

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2021-07-31T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-31T07:00:00.0000000Z

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