In Summary - Laos

Sat, Jan 26, 2019

2 min read

Here's an overview of our short time in Laos.

In Summary - Laos

Length of stay - 18th - 22nd January (5 days)

Places stayed - Pakbeng, Luang Prabang

Currency - Kip, at time of writing £1 equals roughly 11,000 Kip (easier to assume 10,000 Kip to the pound for conversion purposes)

Plug type - European Twin Plug

Driving side - Right

Some Laos words:

Like Thai, the Laos language has its own script. However due to its French influence, most signs were also written in French and sometimes English.

Three important phrases to know are:

Sabaidi (pronounced sabadee) - hello

Khop tchaï (pronounced kop jai) - thank you

Khop tchaï laï laï - thank you very much

You could also make out the Laos words for meat from the menu, although everything was in English so this wasn’t really needed

As we were only in Laos for a few days, I’m only doing two things this time.

Two good

  1. Slow boat friends - after travelling for a month just the two of us, it was nice to have a group of people to go on excursions and have dinner with, and get past the basic travelling conversations of “where are you from?”, “where have you been?”, “where are you going next?”
  2. Climate - it was so nice not to be too hot for a few days! One evening I even wore a cardigan! Being in the north of the country and in the mountains meant highs of around 26 degrees and evenings around 17. Perfect for us English folk!

Two bad

  1. Bombs - the number of unexploded bombs still littering the Laos countryside is staggering
  2. Poverty - linked to the point above, Laos remains the poorest country in this region. Having only stayed in Luang Prabang, the country’s richest city, for any period of time, we were shielded from this somewhat but there was evidence of it particularly on the slow boat

Two odd

  1. Stick food - everywhere we’ve been so far has served food on sticks, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing chicken feet or rats on sticks!
  2. Drug dealers - every night without fail on numerous occasions the boys in our group were offered drugs on street, everything from weed through to meth. Needless to say they politely declined!