Visit to the Land of 1000 Elephants

I've just returned from an amazing two week trip to Laos - traditionally known as the Land of One Million Elephants (although sadly these days I believe it is home to more like only 1000 elephants). My friend L and I started in the northern part of the country - in the region surrounding Luang Prabang, including a homestay in the Chief's house at a remote rural village called Ban Nayang which was quite an experience - sleeping in an open plan stilt house on bamboo mats, sharing communal meals, being the special guests in a traditional Baci ceremony, exploring the village and playing boules with the teachers at the nearby school and trying to talk english with one of the English classes there.

Another highlight of the trip was spending two days at "the Elephant village" (a sanctuary that rescues elephants from logging trade, rehabilitates them and provides them with a much nicer life). For two days we learnt the basics of being a 'mahout' - riding elephants bare-back and learning the simple commands to direct them while riding them through the jungle, a local village and even into the Mekong River to wash them! It was an amazing experience, Elephants are such intelligent and lovely animals, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to spend some time this close with some, and to be supporting the rescue project at the same time. This particular elephant sanctuary (set up by a German man approximately 15 years ago) also financially supports 3 neighbouring villages where they grow food crops for the elephants (banana, sugar cane and pineapples) and they have also leased some untouched jungle from the Lao government as a protected area. You hear a lot about so-called elephant sanctuaries for tourists in Asia where the animals are treated in ways that I would not be happy to support, but this particular Elephant Village in Laos really impressed me and I would definitely recommend it.

 

We spent some time exploring the streets and Buddhist temples of Luang Prabang (a very colourful and picturesque small city with some French colonial touches intermixed with traditional Lao. This was my favourite of the 3 cities we visited in Laos. We also spent a little bit of time in Vientiane (the Capital) and Pakse (further south).

Further south we spent some time in the area of the Mekong River known as the Four Thousand Islands. We went bike riding, took a boat trip through the islands, and even managed to sight 3 or 4 of the extremely rare (almost extinct) Irawaddy dolphin (freshwater dolphin, only about 13 in the waterways of Laos, about 50 left in the world, spread along the Mekong between Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos).

While definitely very much a developing country, Laos was very beautiful and lush, the people we met were very friendly and generous and I would recommend to anyone considering a trip to south east Asia to consider Laos. It is further off the normal tourist route than many nearby places such as Thailand and Vietnam but for me this added to the charm.