It's Lao, not Laos
So the boat ride to Luang Prabang wasn't so bad. It wasn't the most comfortable transportation I've ever taken, but it was far better than the 8-hour, 3rd-class train ride I took from the south of Thailand to Bangkok.
It's really a bizarre thing when you think about it. They crammed about 100 westerners on the boat--which could have "comfortably" held 70 or so. So it wasn't outrageously overcrowded. It made for an interesting group, though. Of the 100 or so passengers, I'd estimate 85% were younger than me. 95% were white. And probably 90% were native English speakers--mostly Brits, with lots of Aussies and Canadians, as well as a spattering of Americans with the occasional German or French. And they were by and large upper-class and educated kids--you know, the type to travel to SE Asia.
So here you have this group all arriving at once in the town of Luang Prabang after a two-day boat journey together. And I'd believe we were in Southern France except that it's over 35°C and people aren't all snotty when I approach them speaking English. The streets are wide, the place is littered with sidewalk cafes, winebars, and creperies, and the architecture is unmistakable French. Yet only the old (and educated) people still speak French; the new generation speaks English (as their second language). Only a few signs are still in French. Haha, take THAT, France. Your language FAILED.
So yeah, it's a weird thing, being part of 100 white, upper-class, young, native-english speakers being dropped off in this town on the Mekong of central Lao that could just as well be France. So far I'm loving it!
Tomorrow I'm joining a group of Brits and one Canadian girl to do a 3-hour kayaking trip, and the next day a few of us are going on another jungle-trek. It's really convenient having made friends with the tourists before even arriving.
So why does the rest of the world call Lao Laos? I read something in Lonely Planet to the effect of when the French colonized it, they read somewhere "Lao's blah blah blah" as the name of the country and so thought it was actually Laos; for some reason that stuck. That story seems a bit suspect, given that the Laos wouldn't have used roman characters to spell their country name to begin with; but it's a nice story.
It's really a bizarre thing when you think about it. They crammed about 100 westerners on the boat--which could have "comfortably" held 70 or so. So it wasn't outrageously overcrowded. It made for an interesting group, though. Of the 100 or so passengers, I'd estimate 85% were younger than me. 95% were white. And probably 90% were native English speakers--mostly Brits, with lots of Aussies and Canadians, as well as a spattering of Americans with the occasional German or French. And they were by and large upper-class and educated kids--you know, the type to travel to SE Asia.
So here you have this group all arriving at once in the town of Luang Prabang after a two-day boat journey together. And I'd believe we were in Southern France except that it's over 35°C and people aren't all snotty when I approach them speaking English. The streets are wide, the place is littered with sidewalk cafes, winebars, and creperies, and the architecture is unmistakable French. Yet only the old (and educated) people still speak French; the new generation speaks English (as their second language). Only a few signs are still in French. Haha, take THAT, France. Your language FAILED.
So yeah, it's a weird thing, being part of 100 white, upper-class, young, native-english speakers being dropped off in this town on the Mekong of central Lao that could just as well be France. So far I'm loving it!
Tomorrow I'm joining a group of Brits and one Canadian girl to do a 3-hour kayaking trip, and the next day a few of us are going on another jungle-trek. It's really convenient having made friends with the tourists before even arriving.
So why does the rest of the world call Lao Laos? I read something in Lonely Planet to the effect of when the French colonized it, they read somewhere "Lao's blah blah blah" as the name of the country and so thought it was actually Laos; for some reason that stuck. That story seems a bit suspect, given that the Laos wouldn't have used roman characters to spell their country name to begin with; but it's a nice story.