Off the Couch and On the Road

The 6-hour bus ride went quite quickly and by the time we arrived in Hin Boun near the border of Vietnam, we were refreshed and relaxed. We stayed in a village, relatively average sized in this area, of about 1000 people.

One or two of the kids knew a few words of English, but the majority didn’t – so we communicated in the international language of hopscotch, hand-clapping games, and a great one called ‘let’s look at Sarah’s photos and realise most of them are shit and are of boring things like trees, waterfalls and pigs. But it was great fun (don’t worry you will all get to play soon!).

Our local guide cooked us a meal of fresh spring rolls and tamarind dipping sauce as well as soup, rice and vegetables which was heaven. It was great to watch village life, and interesting to see how work and life is so intermingled in Indochina. People don’t choose where, when or how they work, it’s just what they do as part of their day. Street-side restaurants are within the living rooms of the family, undoubtably with a TV and a few kids sitting 2cm away from the screen watching Power Rangers (some things don’t change wherever you go). Kids also help their parents with the work as soon as they can walk, and you can see the young girls of 10 or 11 stop what they are doing and cock their head, hearing a baby cry, before going to see if they can settle it. They are also kids mind you, and then try to push each other off the blaconies. As you do.

We slept on mattresses in two huts, mosquito nets hanging over us from the ceiling like coocoons, and woke to roosters crowing before saying goodbye to our newfound friends and travelling a few hours to the Vietnam border.

We have been told that if Laos is a sweet friend sitting at a distance, then Vietnam is a stranger yelling two inches from your nose. But we are all looking forward to the challenge.

-Sarah

The essentials used to be keys, keycard, phone and Asthma puffer. Now, they are mosquito repellant, passport, cash and Tiger Blam – which can officialy cure any affliction known to man.

I wake up bruised, sore, bitten, hungover and tired most days, but not bored. Never bored. And I think the happy singsong voices of ‘Sabaidee!’ everywhere we go is a sign that money really can’t buy hapiness. Which everyone knows of course, but I don’t think many people actually believe it. After all, the villages we have visited have nothing in the eyes of most westerners, but they respect everything they have, which is more than I can say for most.

After a free day in Luang Prabang, spent relaxing in the town and catching up on internet and washing, we ended our stay with a  beautiful dinner lit by fairy lights in the gardens of our bungalow guesthouse. We all loved the town and didn’t want to leave.

Unfortunately we had to suffer a flight to Vientiane the next morning. I say suffer, because it was hell, and from memory those who go to hell suffer quite badly. It was a 40-minute flight with no air-con and most of us were quite grateful to be on solid ground when we arrived.

Vientiane was a strange Capital City (the term of which is a technicality, and not necessarily a descriptive one), quite a bit bigger than Luang Prabang and yet not as beautiful, more to do with less to see it seemed.

We played more cards and enjoyed drinks by the Mekong (the other side of which was Thailand) and planned our free day the following morning. Some of the group hired bicycles, and I walked. Nobody walks in Vientiane, and I suppose it would be like watching somebody crawl down George Street. But hey, a bike is a bike, and I don’t do bikes. So I walked.

After seeing temples and a replica Arc de Triomphe (the US gave Vientiane a shitload of concrete to build a highway after the war, and the Laos government stuck two fingers up at the US and built a structure to honour the French instead) we had a well deserved kindy nap and celebrated Marcus’ birthday with dinner and drinks at the pub, including a plate of marinated and fried crickets.

They were actually really good, although I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes whilst I ate them. Still, as a year for trying new things, I don’t think with a plate of insects I am doing too badly.

Tomorrow – a 6-hour bumpy bus ride on dirt roads to stay a night in the homes of villagers near the Vietnam border. Which means more bruises and mosquitos. Thank Buddha for that Tiger Balm.

-Sarah

By the time we were well and truly sick of playing cards, we arrived in Luang Prabang early afternoon the following day and travelled in tuk-tuks to the guesthouse. They were individual bungalows amongst beautiful gardens and a pond, and had electricity, hot water, real toilets, private balconies and a bar. Really not much more you could ask for, and it was clear this is a completely underestimated holiday destination.

Incidentally, apparently the Laos government decided to create a campaign called ‘Visit Laos’ a few years ago, but forgot to advertise it outside of Laos. They also couldn’t decide on a start date, so the campaign ran for two years. Bless.

More buffet-style Laos food and many many more Beer Laos later (these are served in 640ml bottles and are US$1, in case you wondered), we crashed and woke early the next morning to our breakfast being served on our balcony (have I mentioned Laos rocks?) before boarding our tuk-tuks for the 45-minute journey to, um, some random village in the middle of nowhere that I don’t know the name of. But it rocked, because it was in Laos, and I’m sure they had some piglets around somewhere.

This was the beginning of our mountain trek that would end in a swim at the waterfalls and it was a great morning – the scenery was amazing and it was good to stretch our legs after two days in a boat. Legally, we were supposed to trek with a Laos tour guide, but they wanted to charge us a small fortune, so the local village girl that saw us off joined us for about an hour beore heading back. Our tour leader had done this trek hundreds of times before and was adamant that the tourist police would not travel a few hours out of their way to arrest a bunch of tourists in the forest, which made sense, so we continued on alone.

We arrived at a sign saying ‘Danger: Do Not Enter’ near the end of our trek, blatently ignored the sign and exercised whatever rock climbing skills we had to climb down to Sakai’s hidden swimming spot. With no tourists around we were able to swim in crystal clear waterfalls, butterflies and exquisite bird calls in such abundance we couldn’t help but reenact a few Herbal Essence ads. It was so perfect I couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else in the world at that time.

After a final swim, we made our way back up the cliff and continued on to the less-than-perfect-full-of-tourists waterfalls, and were almost there when we were stopped and told we had to have our photos taken. By the tourist police.

Obviously the pissed off tour guide had tipped off the police and they wanted to take Sakai down to their offices for questioning. Which he refused to do. They probably would have decided not to bother, until the tour guide, who was waiting at the entrance to the waterfalls with the police, mentioned he didn’t have any of his paperwork about our group on him (obviously on purpose) which meant we really shouldn’t have been there. We all kind of glanced at each other with a mumbled round of ‘fuuuuuuck’ before being led to lunch by Sakai and our tour guide. And the tourist police. By this time the clear blue sky had been replaced with menacing black clouds and the sounds of thunder could be heard drawing closer by the minute. Our rice arrived when it hit – like Buddha had decided to finish off the day with a storm to prove he couldn’t just do perfect waterfalls.

The girls closest to the edge of the hut decided to move to the other end of the table to avoid the rain, about two seconds before the massice straw-covered wooden planks that made the roof collapsed spectacularly with the force of the wind. Right where the firls had just been sitting. After another chorus of ‘fuuuuuuck’ we huddled under what was left of the hut, scoffing down our rice and piss-bolting into our tuk-tuks for the open-air journey back to the guesthouse. In the storm.

It was one of those moments where you laugh histerically, because it was so funny, and yet it was nervous laughter, because it was a very close call, and we didn’t particularly want to see the inside of a Laos hospital. Needless to say, we all arrived at the guesthouse safe to see Sakai being led away by the police.

His passport safely hidden in the boys’ hut, he kind of casually called out that he would be back soon, and that he had alays managed to talk his way out of arrests in under an hour. A look of panic crossed everyone’s faces, until the guesthouse manager confirmed that our dinner and tuk-tuk were already booked. Phew, we would still get dinner then. We settled into a game of cards and a few beers when Sakai wandered back in. After telling the police he didn’t mind spending a night in jail, they realised the whole debacle wasn’t worth their time and Sakai negotiated the fine down to US$30 (and in only 35 minutes, his best time yet).

That night, toasts were made to bravery and sheer luck in the face of falling roofs and communist police, and we settled our shaken nerves with a few more beers until well after midnight.

-Sarah

PS: Photos are coming…probably when I arrive in Bangkok in the next few weeks. Anticipation is everything, you understand.

We officially left Thailand and crossed the river into Laos the next morning to board our boat for the two day journey to Luang Prabang. We stopped off at a village on the way, offered salt to the village chief as a gift, and lost all interest in the village once we discovered had pigs, with little black piglets running around the huts. We were all taking photos of the pigs, and not the village or view across the mountains, which the village people were quite amused at. I suppose it would be like somebody taking photos of our letterbox. But still, piglets!

We went for a walk around the village, defferred a few marriage proposals (“Umm, no. We are married. All of us. To each other”) and continued our journey down the Mekong. From here on in there would be little or no electricity and hot water and definitely no western toilets, although I am a pro at squat toilets by now, it’s all about foot placement. We stopped at a guesthouse and enjoyed a Laos feast by candlelight – made up of sticky rice shaped into a scoop, using our hands and the sticky rice to pick us the various dishes on the table. Delicious. I don’t know how I am ever going to go back to eating shit food after this trip – which is kind of like saying I don’t know how I am ever going to drink again when you have a hangover, because everyone knows junk food rocks. It’s just whether or not you admit it.

-Sarah