Month: May 2024

I’m sticking to my Patrick Leigh Fermor timeframes writing this blog and plan to take at least 40-80 years writing this. This is a reference to A Time of Gifts (published 1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (published 1986), and The Broken Road published in September 2013 (after Fermor’s death) which told the tale of his trip walking from Holland to Constantinople in the early 1930s. 

Perhaps because PLF didn’t finish Broken Road before his death, the Constantinople bit is almost entirely missing, but there is a chapter on Greece which he went to after he arrived in Constantinople on 1935, which I still haven’t read as I was so disappointed about the lack of detail there was on Constantinople, I didn’t feel like going to Greece (we’ve since actually been to Greece, which was part of this 50 year Backpacker trip). I feel at least I didn’t have to wait from 1986 to 2013 to find out that there was perhaps never going to be much detail on Fermor’s time in Constantinople, which could be a good opportunity for a documentary entitled Tracing the Footsteps of PLF & Working Out What He Did in Constantinople in 1935. 

I can’t help but think of the series Breaking Bad which, by chance, I also got into in 2013 – the year Broken Road was released – which I first saw on Australia’s ABC TV a few years earlier (maybe in 2009). It was airing on a Monday night when I had seniors hockey in Lyneham in Canberra. When I got back home from the game, I’d watch part of an episode, as it’d already started by the time I got back and slumped into the couch. It looked a bit weird and I couldn’t get into the story. Some middle-aged guy in his underwear standing by a road with a gun and a campervan. Something about meth. So I tuned out and didn’t commit to the series. That was until around 2012/2013 when I started being able to stream the series on some platform and got hooked, like Heisenberg’s meth customers. I binged and binged and finished the entire series that had been released to that date, and, luckily I ended up  just having to wait a few months for the final 8 episodes to come out. Again, by chance (well I’d obviously planned it a bit otherwise I wouldn’t be there) I was in the USA in August 2013 when the final series of Breaking Bad was released. I actually went to a Dodgers baseball game with Breaking Bad star, and Dodger’s fan, Byran Cranston (and my niece Tali). Well Bryan was in the crowd. Maybe I should call him Mr Cranston. You can read about it here: You Gotta Try a Dodger Dog. To continue to name drop, in a most tenuous way, I also saw Mike Tyson in LA at a cigar shop. 

This is very Gonzo Journalism right. And did I mention I’m going to see Monty Python’s Eric Idle this weekend on the Gold Coast? Wow, I used to almost literally cack myself when I first saw the Monty Python movies, and now, like Bryan Cranston, I’ve well and truly outed myself as a middle-aged man. Well, the title of this blog – 50 year Backpacker (the misspellings of this in various blogs is a homage to Fawlty Towers – another indication of being over 50) – probably already gave you a good idea I was middle aged, but I doubt/ hope I’ll reach 100. 85 would be fine, to be honest, as long as I can still get an erection (not sure why that’s the first thing that comes into my head, not still having my marbles or general health or anything like that, just being able to get an erect penis). Not sure why that will be relevant at that stage of my life, and certainly evolutionarily speaking having the ability to have sex at 85 is probably not that important, especially as I already have two kids and a vasectomy. Plus there’s all these sustainability issues in the world, so let’s not add too many more people, especially in developed countries where they use most of the energy and cause most of the sustainability issues.

So, none of that has anything to do with Luang Prabang – but to round off the Patrick Leigh Fermor/ Breaking Bad story, I only started reading his books maybe in 2017, so I didn’t have to wait at all for the last edition as it had already come out. And as I was in the USA in August 2013, I was able to buy the very last episodes of Breaking Bad on iTunes which weren’t available in Australia at the time. I also went to Mexico for the first time in 2013 (I already have lot of blog posts and Juanito’s Travels pages about that – including the time I got stoned in Palenque on that amazing Mexican weed), which led me to go to Mexico several more times, and then marrying a Mexican. Just as PLF visited Greece again in World War Two in the decade following his walking trip of Europe. I really might read those Greece chapters.

It’s only been a year since my wife and I were in Luang Prabang (in 2023) so I don’t want to be overly ambitious and exceed my idol PLF in rushing through this thing, but then agin I’ll be over 90 in 40 years, and planning to be dead by then, so I might just hurry things along just a little. The two eras of PLF’s 1930s and my 2010s and 2020s Juanito’s Travels (though I do include a few stories from the 1990s, including in this 50 year Backpacker blog) are difficult to compare. We live in a post COVID pandemic era with the ability to travel easily to anywhere in the world – just a few weeks ago my daughter was in Mongolia at an eagle festival, which used to seem so far away but which now can be fitted into a week’s tour with some nice people, but also an annoying British tourist who insisted on using drones despite the Mongolians telling him the drones would upset the eagles (according to my daughter). We can also publish from anywhere in the world using a rose gold Apple MacBook Air (or inferior windows/ android product). In these 2020s many have moved, permanently or temporarily, to places like Chiang Mai in Thailand to become Digital Nomads. We just got very wet in Chiang Mai as the Thai New Year Festival of Songkran was in full swing.

Patrick lived in a post ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic era (well, it’d been a few years since the flu pandemic but still it was more post Spanish flu than post mid-1300s Middle Ages bubonic ‘Black Death’ pandemic which many historians believe Ghengis Khan may have accidentally contributed to – and the cause of Genghis Khan’s death may have been plague). PLF has to also find paper and pens and stuff – he had a paper based diary, which was stolen on his journey but which he got back. Patrick also had to contend with Nazis and very patchy wifi. And, because PLF was walking, he couldn’t just pop over to Mongolia for a week to see some eagles. He would have respected the eagles and the Mongolians though, and I’m sure he would have definitely not used his drone in the area like that stupid British tourist.

Those Nazis Patrick saw in his first book, or was it the second – I’m not even going to stop to look that up – even burnt books. It’s hard to burn the internet. Even if you used all the kindles in the world as kindling it’d be tricky. You’d have to go find its source which I think is yet to be determined but which may be high up on a Mongolian plateau, next to Ghengis Khan’s body.

Back to Luang Prabang. Like Patrick, I’ve not been quick to finish what I’ve started, and I wander around getting distracted. But I keep thinking it was more important that we took the journey – to Luang Prabang and other places –  than document it. Possibly a thought PLF also had, though as far as I know he never went to Laos. He did go to Peru though in 1971, the year before I was born, and wrote Three Letters from the Andes to his wife. I send my wife funny gifs, pictures of what I’ve been eating that day, and updates on my erection situation, and to let her know it’s all still functioning down there, and hopefully will do so until I’m 85 when I may or may die. Eric Idle is 81 (in 2024). He was born in the month Karditsa in Greece became the first city in Europe to be liberated from Nazi occupation in World War Two, after a campaign fought by ELAS, the Greek People’s Liberation Arm, and 10 years after PLF (Patrick Leigh) set off on his walking tour from Holland to Constantinople. Other more horrific things occurred in 1943 in Europe including the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Kraków. But let’s look on The Bright Side of Life and focus on Eric Idle being born, and now coming to entertain me on the Gold Coast. Like I wrote in Munich from Dachau to Oktoberfest: And as I walk, I think how I can keep promoting a world of inflatable unicorns, bratwurst, beer and joy. Because the alternative is sadness.

Back to experiencing the journey rather than focussing on documenting the journey. There’s been millions of journeys in the past which are now just stories told in small circles of friends and families along with random people on Insta and other platforms. Like Genghis Khan’s trip to Europe in the 1220s–1240s which has now virtually been forgotten. Well, his trip was more of an invasion, but he only took one photo that I can find (which I suspect may be AI generated).

​​It felt good in Luang Prabang. Once we’d recovered from the slow, oh so slow, boat down the Mekong we got into the slow life of the little city – which has a population of 467,157 (2020) which is cannily close to the population of Australia’s capital Canberra, which has 456,844 (2022). As with everywhere in the world, including Canberra, which was voted by Lonely Planet as one of the world’s three hottest destinations in 2017, tourists have discovered Luang Prabang and are continuing to discover the place, in great numbers.

My friend Howie, who lives in Canberra, didn’t like Luang Prabang so much, saying the monks who collect alms in the mornings have just become a tourist attraction, with tourist photographers waiting around to take photos of them. And that it was ‘just like Thailand but in Laos’. If you haven’t been there, the Buddhist monks of Luang Prabang walk around in the early morning collecting alms. That is offerings of food for their daily sustenance, their breakfast and lunch (they don’t generally eat after 12pm so not so much dinner – something I got used to when doing my vipassana meditations which I write about in a chapter of The Adventures of Kosio & Juanito.

Juanito, who is me, if you hadn’t gathered already,  is still here but I haven’t heard from Kosio for some years and I’m tempted to go try and find him in Sofia, Bulgaria, one day, hopefully before he’s passed away – which is something Buddhist monks have to do (both live off alms and, like all of us, pass away). Eric Idle also talks a lot about death and his song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life is now a favourite at people’s funerals. I’d like to have Particle Man by They Might Be Giants if my kids are reading this, or TMBG’s version of Istanbul (not Constantinople). If there’s time they can also read out the whole section of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s book relating to Constantinople. As I said, it’s not that long.

Patrick Leigh also visited Bulgaria where he got lost on the coast, fell into water, and entered a cave and then met some fisherman.

You have to get up early to watch the monks gathering their alms in Luang Prabang, which isn’t a big issue given the heat and you’re well prepared by having regular siestas during the day. The monks are definitely a tourist attraction, but there’s also genuine spiritual practice being practised. I mean you have to be humble to live off the donations of others. If people don’t show up, you don’t eat, so you also have to have a lot of faith in humanity. You also have to be patient to not worry about the intrusion of rude tourists in your daily activities which have been going on for generations since the 7th–8th centuries CE when Buddhism first came to the lands which are now called Laos.

We spoke to one of the stallholders we bought a few t-shirts off of at the Luang Prabang Night Market and he also let us know the important function of the Buddhist Monasteries in education in Laos. There’s not much in the way of education in small Laotian villages  – of which we passed a few on our slow boat journey down the Mekong River – so young boys become monks for a while and while at the monasteries get an education both academic and spiritual. Once they’ve spent a few years there they mostly leave the monastery to make room for the next cohorts. Much the same way schools and high schools function in Canberra. Girls in Laos have less opportunity for such an education, so the money tourists bring in, even though we all gawk at the monks collecting their alms, is probably not that bad, I guess, considering it expands the economy and what not. We did see many girls attending school near our hotel, wearing their communist inspired, but still rather smart, uniforms.

But perhaps the more important lesson visitors to Laos might take home is that maybe us tourists are too hung up on money and could do with just chilling out and observing a tradition dating back thousands of years, even if we are obsessed with taking photos of it.

I do believe it’s not polite to stick your cameras and phones in the faces of the monks and I always think you should consider yourself a guest in anyone’s country rather than prance about like a post-colonial colonialist thinking the native population should be at your beck and call. The lack of basic politeness was something I noticed a lot on my trips. Not with all, but with many tourists.

My wife and I ended up spending 5 nights in Luang Prabang. It was hot there in April. Really hot. It wasn’t as smokey as PakBeng though, which was a relief. We’d venture out in the early mornings, walking along the dusty streets watching all the scooters go by, with hardly one rider or passenger wearing a helmet, and then make our way back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta before heading back out in the evening.

Sometimes I went out for a massage once or twice but I didn’t find anything that was much chop on the massages in Thailand, where they give you a really good workout. And post massage they offered a horrible herbal tea which was for ‘stomach health’ or something like that, which mostly just had a pretty strong laxative effect. I learnt from the first massage to avoid accepting the offer of tea with subsequent massages.

Most mornings we frequented a very nice French style cafe a few blocks from our hotel. Talking of post-colonialism, it did have really good baguettes and some nice jam, plus smashed avocado which my wife had been craving for weeks. The coffee was pretty good as well. The Laotians had very nice coffee beans and I ended up getting a few packets to take to Mexico and Australia, including one at the airport on the way out of Laos, using the remaining Laotian Kip which you shouldn’t take out of the country as you can’t exchange them for other currencies in other countries.

We also had a nice brew one morning down the bottom of the Phousi Hill, after we climbed to the, I think World Heritage listed, temple at the top, which offers a nice view of Luang Prabang. I definitely recommend climbing early in the morning if you go in the heat of April. After you’ve watched the monks collecting their alms, which you do at a few spots, including the street where the Night and Morning Markets are.

I really loved Luang Prabang, there were plenty of temples well frequented by the local Laotian people, where you can experience, and be part of, more local activities. The local feel was something I felt was missing from some of the bigger monasteries and sites in Bangkok which were more accessible by boat loads of cruise ship day trippers annoyed the hell out of me at several spots and who should be banned from ever travelling. I mean if you only have enough time to go to a place for a few hours, you don’t really have time to travel and you should just stay at home and watch Netflix! See my Bangkok blog post for some frustrations with over tourism in Thailand.

We had a wonderful time on our last, or second last morning at one temple on the edge of Luang Prabang, down by the river, not far from another fancy French cafe where we had baguettes for morning tea. I felt a peace there I hadn’t felt for years. A peace I’m not feeling now, so much, but which doesn’t necessarily need a place, like a Buddhist temple in Luang Prabang, to be felt. Though, it doesn’t hurt to visit a Buddhist temple in Luang Prabang to get that feeling.

As Vietnamese Buddhist monk and writer, and now passed away dead person, Thích Nhất Hạnh writes in his book No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering, the peace of Buddhism can be experienced anywhere as long as you acknowledge the truth of suffering and how to transform suffering.

There were many intimate temples in Luang Prabang – that is, ones where you could find a space to meditate and experience local practices. I think we visited at least one every day we were there. We didn’t want to head out of the city after the slow boat, even though the tour operators and Tuk Tuk drivers incessantly tried to get us to visit waterfalls and elephants and sites out of Luang Prabang as we walked around the city. You get used to zoning them out, and can’t blame them given the money a tourist brings with them and the very low average wages in Laos. Google AI tells me that the average monthly salary in Laos is around 900,000 to 1,200,000 Lao Kip, which is about $100–$135 USD.

I’m glad we didn’t cave into the tour operators and just chilled in, and walked around, Luang Prabang. You don’t miss what you don’t miss when you just wander around exploring. That’s the good thing about travelling a bit slower.

We spent quite a bit of time in Luang Prabang not doing much at all. We’d get up. Find some place to have some breaky. Go to a temple up a hill, a temple on the river, or some temple down an alleyway. Then we’d have brunch or lunch. We’d rest in the hottest part of the day. In the evening, we’d mostly go down to the night market and try some of the cheap and delicious treats they had on offer before wandering around the market stalls. We hardly bought anything, just scoping what was on offer at the various stalls before, on the last night, getting what we thought we liked and was good value.

We visited the National Museum of  Luang Prabang. It has some really nice stuff in it, although it is a bit run down, especially the gardens. The place used to be the former king’s mansion, prior to the communist days I assume. There’s some spectacular gold gilded artwork in the main building and some American cars President Nixon gave to the Laotian government to gain their support during the American War (or the Vietnam War as it’s known in the USA). Also at the National Museum we saw a traditional Lao play/ musical which we enjoyed. Though the sound system was pretty dodgy and sounded very 1960s communist engineered, it was still beautiful. You can get tickets for that at the National Museum and it makes for a nice evening.

What else did we do in Luang Prabang? I don’t know, I mostly remember the night markets, temples and feeling more of a Buddhist than I had for years. Something I think I’d definitely go back to experience. A few Laotions did invite us back when we’re older and retired.

While I’m not necessarily looking forward to getting old, I’m very much looking forward to retiring and spending more time in places like Luang Prabang. I’ve just had 2 weeks off on mental health leave from my government job, this is my third week and I could really get used to the lifestyle of organising my days the way I feel most like doing – like writing blogs no one reads.

Meditating at a Luang Prabang temple could be a good start to most days.

And that’s pretty much it.

But before I go, I forgot to mention a hand crafted knife I bought at the Mekong Elephant Park in Pakbeng that I mentioned in a previous post.

Well, there were considerable dramas around that knife which were the result of going from Luang Prabang to Laos’ capital Vientiane by fast train.

I might give more details of that in my next post though.

Bye for now. Be happy.