Advice for Swedes (and other folk) travelling to Laos

First, don't worry about the bad things you may hear. You will not get blown up by leftover American bombs or hurled over a cliff in a mudslide or contract malaria.

It's true most of the roads are made of dirt, or if they're paved they're in a pretty sorry state- that is, if you like sleek new roads.

If you like rainy jungles and villages where no one's seen a camera and boys play a volleyball game with a homemade ball using nothing but legs and head, you'll like Laos.

Also if you aren't too worried about getting muddy, getting leeches, or getting anywhere fast, you'll like Laos.

If you aren't worried in general but like sitting at the foot of huge forested mountains eating bananas in a thatched roof bungalo to wait out the heat of the day, then Laos is for you.

Have you seen the pictures of the Lantaen, the Hmong, or the Akha people? If you don't know who they are now, as soon as you get to Northern Laos you'll find out.

Lantaen people are more beautiful than any fashionable women of Paris. They come to town on the backs of pickup trucks.

Don't let their hairdos scare you or their serious mysterious faces. It's just that they live so perfectly well in the jungle they don't need the same things you do to reassure them.

They walk, tall and lean, in the robes they make themselves out of the cotton and indigo plants. They wrap their calves in white and cover their bodies in deepest blue-black with fuschia colored trim.

If you're not afraid of their stretched-out ears and their wide set eyes you will start to love them and follow them discreetly whenever you see them. You will notice their long, slender necks and you'll figure out the elaborate way they set their hair in a clinging halo that vines up the back into a glossy bun, pinned with a silver coin.

Don't buy from the Akha women trying to sell you opium.

Don't buy their weed but don't mistreat them either. They are old and worn like tough leather. Don't buy them the beers they ask you for.

The twenty cent bracelets aren't so bad, the women spin the cotton themselves on their little handheld spindles that look like tops or double sided buddhist stupas.

When you get to Laos it doesn't matter what you do here. As long as you give up your insistence on being right you'll get along fine. Lao people speak softly so don't raise your voice to them or you'll look like an evil spirit.

Most boys hit puberty and are sent to the monastery till they're twenty or so which seems to make them gentle and quick to laugh as they get older. They love the Buddha and don't eat until someone gives them food, so give them food. The Buddha taught them mercy so they don't eat meat, so don't give them meat.

If you ask them they'll quickly tell you all about their lives. They've been training for three years. They have two brothers and a sister. They've never left the province. No, they don't like the town, they'll say, because there are too many women here.

They'll quickly ask you as well about your life and the world, and if you're at a waterfall they'll ask you where the water comes from. How the rocks were born. Why there are seasons some places but not in Laos. What makes earthquakes.

They'll ask you to come to prayers with them in the evening just after the rain, maybe, and the barefoot kids will chase you halfway to the temple laughing and shrieking out SABAI DEEE!!

Floor to ceiling and top to bottom Laos is a beautiful country, so your route's really less important than your state of mind.

Many travellers make the mistake of arriving in Laos by airplane and hopping between cities with airports. This is understandable because the highways are often mud strips and prone to problems (landslides, impassable goopy ground), but don't go their way. Laos isn't in the cities.

Laos doesn't live in those places you can drink cappuccino. It's out there across the river, past the first ridge of mountains and into the hazy horizon, out in the viny jungle you're scared of, yes, with the elephants and the people who hunt with slingshots.

You'll catch glimpses of it, easy, as you ride the slow rickety boats down the Mekong; as you sleep in the grass roofed huts where the crickets are louder than engines.

Read all you can before you come so you can be an educated and respectful guest-- but of course, that goes without saying.

Know the taboos so you don't break them, pointing your feet at people and showing off your nice tan shoulders and cleavage.

Learn the basic history so you more keenly appreciate the warm reception you find everywhere. Today's tranquil Laos is not the Laos of thirty years ago. Its green resurrection after ten years of agent orange and clusterbombs is a testament to the goodness of the people and the land, and perhaps to the might of Lord Buddha.

If you're travelling awake and aware you'll find all these things out yourself. The more you look for the more you'll see.

Just come to Laos with patience and plant yourself like a tree, rooting down and listening. Receive what you get with both hands open, and soon Laos will be there like an unexpected blessing, and it will never leave you no matter when you go back home.