The lush rainforests of Laos

Along with boats, butterflies, bears and cash problems

Rainforest, waterfalls with wild Hibiscus

Unfortunately the Pha Tad Ke Botanical Gardens, famous for being the first botanic gardens in Laos, are closed and will be until October 2024. The website hadn’t been very clear so I was in Laos before I knew they were closed. They explained in response to my email that they have not been able to open since Covid due to a lack of funding. It’s very sad. They are meant to be beautiful and their research projects into sustainable agriculture, eco-tourism, and into plants and their relationship with insects, particularly around insects as food, all sounded really interesting. Laos is noticeable poorer when arriving from Thailand and so this sort of work is vital.

Getting to these gardens was also going to be fun as it involved travelling by boat down the Mekong River. However, as I had just spent two days on the “Slow Boat” on the Mekong, I didn’t feel that I was missing out on that part too much. I had started at the Thai border, Huay Xia. Borders are strange places. This one was tiny and there was nothing there except a large concrete breeze-block type building. I stood in front of a small hole in the grey wall and handed in my passport, $30, a photograph and the two, very long, repetitive forms that I had just completed. The border officers seemed to take all this from me reluctantly, and then from the five others who had arrived on the same bus. Then they said that they were having breakfast and closed a curtain over the hole in the wall. We stood around for about 30 minutes whilst quite a queue formed behind us. Eventually the curtain opened and us five were just waved down to the next window. This was also blocked by a closed curtain. As you cannot knock on a curtain and it seemed a bit rude to shout in, we stood there for a while. Eventually I did venture a polite “Hello?” Someone shouted something back, probably about breakfast again. Anyway, after what seemed like ages, the curtain suddenly opened and a handful of passports were pushed out, fortunately mine included, complete with a lovely big elaborate Laos visa stamp.

I could see that there was nothing on the Laos side of this border post either. I had been expecting shops, ATM’s, somewhere to buy a new Laos sim card. But there was just a row of tuk-tuk drivers who directed us onto their vehicles, dividing us into Boat people, Bus people, Train people. Us Slow Boat lot climbed into one and were taken down a pot-holed road for about 15 minutes and then dropped off at what appeared to be a garage in the middle of nowhere, certainly no boat or even a river to be seen. We were just told to wait, so we sat around in the garage on boxes amongst engine parts, whilst gradually more people arrived; mostly young Canadian, Dutch and German backpackers, many of whom looked the worse for wear, everyone having risen well before dawn to get here.

Eventually a man in a well-pressed blue shirt stood up. In a commanding sergeant-major manner he started shouting, what appeared to be instructions, through an ancient, rusty megaphone. He was talking in English, but it was so deafeningly loud and distorted and his English so heavily accented, that it was virtually impossible to understand anything he said. Something about boat tickets, food and sim cards. I already had a boat ticket and a little food, but I needed to sort out my phone as there would be no Wifi on the boat. By this time there were about 40 travellers milling around.

I asked Megaphone Man if there was an ATM here so that I could buy a sim card, which, even as I was speaking, I realised was a ridiculous question. He said: “No problem, Use Thai baht or dollars here.” I had deliberately spent nearly all of my remaining Thai Baht in Thailand thinking how clever I was to use it up before I left. But I had plenty of dollars. I joined the sim card queue and eventually got to the front where the woman helped me put it in my phone and set it up for me. I gave her a $10 note. She examined it and handed it back: “Not good money.” She then pointed out a tiny mark on it! I thought that was a bit odd, but I got out another, I had about $60 in total, but she rejected that too and she showed me a minute tear at the top of the note; I could barely see it. Really? I thought. I gave her a third, after examining it myself; no tears or marks. But she handed it back. “What is the problem?” I asked her. She opened her very large wallet and took out a pristine note and indicated that this is what she wanted. Obviously I didn’t possess any such thing, having travelled with these dollars for 5 weeks. I tried to iron one out on the table to demonstrate how it had just been folded and was fine, but she wasn’t having any of it. I offered her British pounds but that was a no go. I started to feel a bit anxious and explained that I really needed this. Actually, as I already had it in my phone, I was at a slight advantage in this quandary. Meanwhile, I could hear the impatience of the growing queue of young people behind me, probably thinking why are old people so useless at this sort of thing. The woman shouted for someone and two men came over and asked to see all my dollars again.

Whilst they were minutely scrutinising, and then rejecting, each of the notes in turn, I was thinking: no phone for the next two whole days on at boat on the Mekong river in Laos. No contact with the outside world. Will I actually survive that?! When was the last time I had no phone? Probably not since I had a landline. I have become completely reliant on a mobile for everything since being in Asia. I asked them: “Is there an ATM in Pakbeng?” (That was the overnight stay village). I thought I could last a day and then get cash out there. Yes, they said. Ok I thought.. “But no Sim Card shop.” She said. Good grief. Surely I cannot be the only person here who has no Thai Baht and crumpled dollars. If I am panicking about not having a phone for two days, what about all these young people; how could they cope?

Rejected dollars

I needed to stand my ground, so I said to them, with as much authority as I could muster: “This is all good legitimate money. I got these actual notes myself from a reputable bank in the UK.” (Hulme Post Office). “And I cannot do without a phone. I have to be able to contact my family each day.” One of the men gave me a long, immensely sagacious, look. I wasn’t sure whether this was encouraging or not, but I went on. “Also the Laos border guards took the same notes and they were fine with them. I need to book things and places to stay…..I will be really stuck without a phone… ” Either this worked or they just got fed up with me going on, but in any event, they went through every note again and grudgingly accepted $10. They gave me the $3 change in Laos Kip. I was back in touch with the world! I had food, water and a little cash; what more could I want. I just now had to trust that the ATM in the overnight stay place was working so that I could pay for my room, or that they wouldn’t be so particular about my dollars there.

Shortly after this Megaphone Man started bellowing again: “Quick! Quick! Boat Waiting!” We were marched along in “Two Lines” as he instructed, down the road and there, round the corner, was the long brown Mekong River. It was down such a sheer bank that it couldn’t be seen from the road. We had to descend very steep steps, rucksacks aloft, and onto the Slow Boat.

Another Slow Boat on the Mekong

It was a long, narrow wooden boat, complete with old bus seats which weren’t bolted down but just slid about on wooden ski-type blocks. Fortunately the river was calm and still. I found myself a good spot; I had read it is best to sit at the front and as far away as possible from the noisy engine and the smelly toilet, which were both at the back. At the very front were only hard benches so I was very happy with my old bus seat.

Backpackers on old bus seats on the Slow Boat

The Mekong is one of longest rivers in Asia at nearly 5000 meters. Its source is in Tibet and it flows through Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and out to the sea via the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. In Loas it is broad, flat and a rich, light brown colour from the sediment that it carries. For much the journey wide, sandy banks ran along each side, from which thick, lush rainforest drifted up into the hills. I couldn’t identify the plants by name from the boat, but you could see palms, pines, and various large deciduous looking trees, some at precipitous angles.

View of the rainforest from the boat

There was little human activity to be seen enroute, apart from fishermen in long pointed canoes, hanging nets and fishing rods over the yellow rocks that thrust out from the water. These rocks became increasingly large and prominent over the journey, and at times the boat had to navigate through quite narrow craggy corridors. Children stopped their playing to wave at us as we went by. Water buffalo came down to have a drink. I had read that sometimes you would see elephants coming into the river for their baths, but unfortunately none came on our journey. Despite the heat, the boat was sufficiently shady and there was enough of a breeze as we chugged along to make it all very enjoyable.

Children from the Mekong villages

Not a bad journey if you are happy to do very little for two days apart from look at the scenery, listen to music, read, write, chat and doze. Thank god for the sim card! I had heard and read all sorts of contradictory reports about this journey before I embarked on it, with some describing it akin to a “slow two day torture,” whilst others loved it. I had imagined the people who hated it were those types who found it difficult to sit still and do very little. It’s not called the Slow Boat for nothing; it is quite slow! And you are on it for at least nine hours each day. Others had grumbled about other passengers. I suppose hell is generally other people, and if you were stuck sitting next to Mr Annoying that could be bad. But I was fine. As my energy levels were right down post-fever, sitting watching this very different and interesting world go by was ideal for me.

I had plenty of time whilst I was on the boat to do some research into using dollars in Laos and the whole issue about potential counterfeits. I read that not long ago, a shopkeeper in the city had noticed small marks on some notes given to her by a Chinese trio buying clothes. She had immediately called the police who had promptly arrested the shoppers and, it was reported, were holding them pending investigation. Blimey, there had better be an ATM in this village as I really didn’t want to be apprehended for trying to pay for my accommodation with suspect dollars!

The sun was setting in the dusty, orange sky just before we arrived in the village and by the time we had climbed up the endless steps, it was virtually pitch black, there being no street lights. Long shadows danced on the street from the flares of the street BBQ’s where people were cooking chicken. I trudged up the hill to discover that, thank God, there was a working ATM. Whilst most of the young lot trapsed off to a hostel, I managed to find a room to myself; rather cell like, with a cold bucket shower, a fan, one strip light and a window onto a walkway, but the bed was clean and comfortable enough. It would do for one night and I could pay in Laos Kip.

Sunset on the Mekong River

The second boat day was even slower in that we stopped numerous times to let locals on and off with their goods. They seemed to appear from out of the forest as you could never really see the villages; sometimes there were steps up from the river and a sort of boarding platform but nothing more. Groups of children jumped on the side of the boat at these stops, selling hand-woven bracelets which went down well with the young backpackers.

Selling bracelets on the Slow Boat

It was good to eventually arrive in the bustling city of Luang Prabang; again it was dark when we got there. But I couldn’t stay more than one night as I had promised to be at a Butterfly Park in the hills the following day, where I was planning on doing voluntary gardening work for a few weeks. Although the Butterfly Park was only about 15 miles south of the city, as there was no public transport I had to pay in excess of a normal rate, despite haggling, to get a “taxi” which was a sort of little truck really. It took nearly an hour and we weren’t going slow. To avoid the potholes the driver seemed to spend at least half the journey on the wrong side of the road, far too closely, in my opinion, to the other street occupants, and closely dodging motorbikes, children and chickens.

Established by a Dutch couple, the Butterfly Park was set up to conserve some of the more threatened butterflies of the region. They have a created a small, but idyllic, garden around a river and waterfall with a large netted area to contain some of the rarer species. The garden was bright and cheerful, with brilliant orange and pink Lantanas, scarlet Hibiscus and crimson Acalyphas; all loved by butterflies of course. I had bought a lovely burnt orange Lantana for my roof garden a couple of years ago, but it didn’t survive a particularly harsh winter. In Asia they are thriving everywhere.

Hibiscus sp.

Despite being completely exhausted by the time I got there, which wasn’t helped by the dreadful pollution from the surrounding burning fields, I more or less got straight to work, although not as a gardener (which they said then they didn’t need) but as a guide for the visitors! I spent the afternoon trying to identify as many of the 40 butterfly species as I could, between talking to tourists about metamorphosis etc. Despite how little I knew, I sounded like an expert to some who seemed to have absolutely no understanding of the lifecycle and looked at me very sceptically when I explained it and showed them the caterpillar and the chrysalis. There were two other volunteers there and one of them could speak Spanish and overheard a Spanish visitor saying to her friends that the Chrysalis that I was showing them were fakes and that I was lying!

Chrysalis in the Butterfly Park

Butterfly on Lantana

It was in a tiny hamlet really; just one road lined with huts, and some little lanes off each side with more huts behind. There was obvious poverty here and many of the women sat in their porches smashing rocks with a hammer; hard, laborious work, the purpose of which I didn’t discover. My accommodation options were either a very basic hut with a cold bucket shower for the equivalent of about $7 per night, or an enormous posh hut, set back from the road, which you got to via a little bridge over a river. Hot water and even a bath tub at $14 per night (which is really quite a lot for Laos). After my one night in the depressing cell in the Slow Boat village enroute to Luang Prabang, there was no way I could survive three weeks in something similar, so the posh hut it was.

View from my posh hut

After a couple of days, when the Butterfly Park was closed, I went for a walk up to Kuang Si national park to see the waterfalls in a proper rainforest.

Kwang Si Waterfalls

I had read that you could swim up there, so I had gone prepared but was not anywhere near ready for how stunning the pools were. The limestones turns the water a milky turquoise. Apparently if you leave your shoe in the water for a year it will turn to stone.

The pools where I went for a swim

After my swim, I spent time enjoying the trees. There was the enormous Toona ciliata, known here as the Indian Mahogany tree; in the Mahogany family it was previously grown for the valuable furniture that was made from the lovely dark red wood. I have read that this tree used to be common in the subtropical forests of Australia, where they called it the Red Cedar and the wood Red Gold, but the forests are mostly cleared now and the species is commercially extinct. So it’s good to see this tree preserved so well here. They are protected in Laos and can reach 60 meters so hopefully there will be plenty of very large Toonas around over the next few hundred years.

Another interesting species in the forest is Alstonia scholaris, commonly known as the Blackboard Tree because it is used to make pencils; or the Scholar Tree, because in parts of India the leaves are handed out to graduates; or the Devil’s tree because it is poisonous and can cause harm. Although like so many of the plants that I have been researching here, the Alstonia has a range of medicinal uses despite its toxicity; the bark is used to treat bowel problems and the roots to treat fever. Although I am not sure I would have accepted a prescription of Alstonia bark when I had the fever, knowing what I know now. But it was so encouraging to read about all the conservation work that is being done here in Laos to try and preserve these special trees and maintain the important layers of the forests. Rain-forests have four different layers; the emergent (which are the tallest trees), the canopy, the understory (smaller tress and shrubs) and the forest floor, and each need to be thriving for it all to work.

Also of interest were the giant solitary trees, Ficus altisssima and the wild Euphorbia pulcherrima, or Poinsettia as we know them, which are common to give as Christmas presents in the UK. I was particularly pleased to see Selaginella; an ancient non-flowering plant, not a moss nor a fern, but a fern ally. It was growing on this planet 400 million years ago, so great to see it still going strong in Laos. It is in a family of its own with no other Genus but there are 800 species. I used to look after quite a collection of them in Kew, but obviously I have never seen it growing wild before.

Ficus altissima

Euphorbia pulcherrima (Poinsettia)

Selaginella sp.

There was also a small bear sanctuary there where rescued Asiatic Black bears and Moon bears, who had previously been abused, were now being cared for and slowly prepared to be let out into a wider protected area. A Moon bear stood up on its hind legs and held up a very large paw. I waved back. Was this a trick that it had been taught in captivity? It all seemed very sad but they did have space here and were no longer at risk of harm. These bears had previously been poached for their body parts; paws, claws and gallbladder which had been used to supposedly help with treating liver and gallbladder conditions in humans. Poor bears. I learned that as well as poaching, deforestation and human development have meant that there are very few wild bears left in Asia, but at least Moon bears now have protected status.

Moon Bear

Asiatic Black Bear

I walked up to the top of the waterfall to see the source of the river Nam Si which joins the Mekong not far from here. The source was a green pool and despite the height, you were still in rich and profuse rainforest.

After my walk I returned to the village and then started to think about money. I had found out that there was no ATM in this village, or anywhere near here and everything was cash only and some people were suspicious about dollars here too. I was going to have to return to Luang Prabang city in order to get enough money to pay for the room for the following night. Despite having withdrawn a million Laos Kip, a great big wad of notes, and which seemed to be stretching a long way so far, of course I hadn’t properly planned for the accommodation costs, at 282,000 Laos Kip per night. I could really only pay for three nights. Even if I moved to the $7 room, which I really didn’t fancy, I would have to trek back into the city to pay for that before long. I couldn’t believe how badly organised I was being since I had come to Laos. Nothing was straightforward. Especially out in the sticks.

The thought of having to go back and forth, village to city and back, suddenly made staying here much less appealing. Moreover, I was feeling a little claustrophobic, despite it being so beautiful. I love the countryside but generally prefer being in the cities, or at least next to the sea, especially when out here in Asia. That is why botanic gardens are so great; a green space in the city. When I thought about the possibility of actually just going back to Luang Prabang and staying there, I noticed my mood start to lift. It had definitely dipped a little, which I had put down to a lack of energy. As I walked back down the hill, trying to decide what to do, a decision was really made for me. I was squeezing into a wall at the side of the little lane which led to my hut, to let a minivan past. As he drove by, the driver called out, did I want a lift back to the city! I could barely believe it. Had he been reading my thoughts? Is this fate? "How much?” I asked, and “Can you wait 15 minutes? I have to get my stuff.” He said he could wait 10 minutes at the most as he had people to pick up further down the road. And $3. I didn’t stop to think but rushed into my hut and threw everything into my rucksack, thrust the cash into my landlady’s hand and was in the minivan within 10 minutes back on the road. As we trundled along, I had a sudden panic; did I bring my passport, my chargers? A quick rummage through my bags confirmed all was fine. I phoned and apologised to the Dutch couple who were very laid back about it all. My energy, and my motivation for travelling, suddenly returned.

Thus, my brief visit to Laos did not result in much of the way of gardens or gardening, but I did get a bit of an insight into the great conservation work going on, for plants and also for animals and insects. And certainly a visit to Pha Tad Ke Botanic Gardens on the Mekong is on the agenda for one day in the future.