myrainasia

Since no one comments on my blog and e-mails are few and far between (with some notable exceptions who I have already thanked) I am considering suspending this effort and going back to my diary- where I have finally finished writing about Sydney, leaving me a little less than 2 months behind.  Shape up folks or the vicarious journey ends in Laos.

I promised to back up and write about Vientiane.  Unfortunately, when you are traveling, new cities replace prior cities very quickly and a week ago seems like months.  Another similar phenomenon (bit of a non sequitur here) has to do with remembering which new friend told you what about his or her travels.  When you start traveling your brain has enough memory space to hold each new friend and his or her story.  As you go on, this memory space seems to get used up, and while you recognize the people as you bump into them for the second or third time (there is definitely a tourist trail through southeast Asia) you know you remember the face, but it takes a while to sort through the various stories in your head and match the correct face to the correct story. 

So, after this brief detour, back to Vientiane.  I liked it a lot.  I seem to be one of 3 tourists who did.  I keep telling everyone I’m from NYC; I simply like big cities.  OK, “big” is probably an overstatement in connection with Vientiane, but there are different neighborhoods, i.e. the tourist section, the business district, the outskirts.  You can actually take a few hours and walk around.  Well, no, you can’t, because if you walked around for a few hours, at least in April, you would melt into a puddle like the Wicked Witch after Dorothy doused her.  But if it wasn’t 100 degrees out, you could take a few hours.

While there were definitely a lot of tourists in Vientiane, it was also clearly a real city.  Have I mentioned that there is not a single Mickey D’s or Starbucks in Laos?  Tourism is booming in Laos, so that statement will probably be outdated in another few years.  Can’t say I missed McDonalds, but I really could have used  a Starbucks or two.  Laos has a coffee industry and, much as I love Laos, I think the coffee is from hunger.  Aside from the fact that it’s very thick, fresh milk is rarely served with it.  They use condensed milk (in part, I suspect, because it does not need refrigeration to keep) which makes the coffee sickly sweet.  I don’t mind this in the iced coffee (which I drink by the bucket), but it sends shivers up my spine first thing in the morning.

Once again, I digress- back to Vientiane.  Some beautiful and important wats, but I won’t go into them in depth (partly because I have already discussed wats at great length on this blog, and partly because I don’t remember the names of any of them) and an Arch of Triumph which Lonely Planet disses, but I liked.  Also went to the Laos museum.  Much of it was quite fascinating and well laid out (not to mention pretty well signed in English).  The second floor had the modern history of Laos, with different rooms devoted to different periods in Laos history.  They kind of lost me on the Vietnam War era.  While I think the US was utterly wrong about Vietnam (doesn’t the “domino threat of communism” seem rather quaintly misguided today?) the part that irked me was that every time they wrote “U.S.” or “America” it was “imperialist U.S.” or “imperialist America” as if that was the name of the country.   France wreaked a lot of havoc and basically caused the whole mess in the first place, but the signs still said “France”  not “colonialist France” or “imperialist France”.

Another important digression here and that has to do with the land mines we blanketed across much of Laos during the war years, also known as unexploded ordinance (UXOs).  This has made much of the country uninhabitable and much of the very fertile land unarable.  They estimate it will take over a 100 years to remove these mines at the present rate.  Okay, seems to me, we put them there, we really should take them out.  Wow, what if some of the zillions we are spending in Iraq could go to cleaning up our past messes? (Won’t even pretend to guess how long it will take to remove UXOs from Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Back, yet again, to Vientiane.  Should mention that I took a hotel with a pool.  Cost a whopping $30 a night but worth it to me.  Also had an herbal massage.  When they showed me into the massage room and gave me loose shorts and a top I was definitely wondering how they do the massage.  So, first the masseuse beats you up a bit with her hands.  While she is doing this she has a pile of what look like large sachets heating up atop  boiling water.  Then she beats you up with these herbal (basil?) sachets.  Might have that spice wrong (having an olfactory memory lapse here)- but it smelled a little like getting whacked by Vicks Vaporub.  Felt quite nice though.  Have slacked off on the massages.  Too hot to have anyone touching my sweat drenched skin.

This hotel also had a buffet breakfast included.  As noted above, I can’t stand the coffee and I”m fast losing interest in cold eggs and cold bacon and cold sausage.  I don’t understand why they can’t keep the flame going under the chafing dishes- can’t be that expensive.

Really need to mention Buddha Park.  Sort of wild park about an hour outside of Vientiane.  Built by some guy who was definitely sampling the Happy Menus.  (See Vang Vieng entry if you don’t know what that means.)  Lots of large, really cool statues of Buddhas and assorted Hindu gods.  Unfortunately I had to  take a public minivan to get there which was, not suprisingly, extremely overcrowded.  The last 20 minutes was over an unpaved road.  I had not eaten lunch (because I had eaten breakfast),  so I was very hungry when I got there and went to eat.  Then I got up to explore the park and thought I would pass out.  My situation was not helped by the fact that as soon as I started to explore, I was approached by another of the many chatty monks who want to practice their English.  And you really don’t want to dis a chatty monk.  On the other hand, I really did not want to pass out or puke in front of a chatty monk  so I excused myself and went back to the restaurant area.  (Bear in mind that restaurant area is an outdoor area with wooden tables.)  Luckily there were some sheltered areas that are presumably used by people who bring their own lunch and I was able to lie down until I thought I could stand up without keeling over.  My dizziness was outweighed by my need to take another 100 photos or so, but when I was finished I knew there was no way I could go stand by the exit and wait for a minivan to take me back to town.  However, there was an air-conditioned tourist minivan by the gates and a batch of French tourists in the gift shop (again, I use that term loosely) area.  I launched into French and, essentially, shamelessly begged for a ride back.  One lovely woman went to ask their guide if this was possible and, grace a dieu, I got an air-conditioned ride directly to my hotel.  Merci French tourists.

That covers Vientiane.  The next day I packed up and headed south.  I was aiming for Pakse, where I am at present (for the second time) but I didn’t want to take the tourist VIP overnight bus to Pakse.  Being different, I wanted to stop in Savannakhet.  That was either a 10-12 hour public bus ride away or a 1 am drop off in Savannakhet.  I previously blogged my bus ride to Tha Khaek.  Not much to see there but I had a nice hotel room.  Then I had another 6 hour ride to Savannakhet.  This time the driver made no stops for the people on the bus, although he did stop to have himself a 20 minute lunch- about 5 minutes down the road from where we took a brief stop so food and drink vendors could sell us lunch through the windows.  When I realized he was actually sitting down to eat I led the charge off the bus.  I wanted to smoke, but more than that,  I did not want to be baked alive on a steamy, overcrowded, stationary bus.  When I started to head out, everybody followed me.  No bathroom stops on this trip but it’s amazing how little one needs to use a bathroom when all incoming liquid is being used by your body to stay hydrated.  My seatmate was a very sweet girl who spoke no English.  Her shyness evaporated as the trip wore on and she leaned her head on my shoulder as I was leaving to say goodbye.  The Lao people don’t do much intentional touching (being packed like sardines means a lot of unintentional touching) so it was actually very sweet.

When we finally got to Pakse I hightailed it to one of the high class joints in town.  Being Pii Mai (the Laos New Year) it was fully booked, but there were a few no shows and I managed to snag a room at the standard rate of $19.  Heaven!

Once again, I am running out of energy to finish my stories of Laos, and still a few cities behind.  I should mention that Pii Mai is a 3 day celebration which was 5 days this year because the first real day of the holiday was on Monday, so it unofficially started the Saturday before.  The holiday involves a lot of celebrating, drinking, dancing and, generally being very friendly and happy.  But, most of all, it involves water.  Lots and lots of water poured, dumped and thrown on everyone.  The concept comes from being purified (baptism anyone?) and most people participate with a smile.  The children participate with immense energy and glee, lining the roadway with hoses, buckets and waterguns.  The greater danger (:-) are the young adult males who have much better aim and do not scare off as easily.  Also, it seems that girls are supposed to drench boys and vice versa.  I, along with every other falang (foreigner) and Lao alike, spent much of the time very wet.  This is not such a  bad thing since the holiday is in the height of the hot season.  I accepted all of the dousings with affable good spirit until I got to Champasak- after the holiday was finished!- and the drenchings continued.  I started hollering at some little kids- “Enough already!”  They may not have understood the words, but they got the idea and backed off.  It was all fun.

Maybe I’ll finish writing about Laos from Cambodia.  Maybe this is my last post.  We’ll see. 

For those who were worried I managed to get out of Vientiane and arrived safely in Tha Khaek.  Even though I still owe an update on Vientiane, I had to write about the bus trip before I forget.

First of all, I learned that my absolute bottom line maximum for a hot sweaty bus trip is now 6 hours.  The time it took to get from Vientiane to Tha Khaek on the public bus.

Arrived at the Vientiane bus station at around 10:30 this morning.  The Vientiane bus station is nowhere near the actual downtown of Vientiane.  Grabbed a tuk tuk and arrived about 30 minutes later.  However, this tuk tuk driver actually had a schedule for fares- first I’ve seen- so it was one of my cheaper rides (cheap being a relative term since nothing costs more than about $5 max).

The driver landed me right by the bus going to Tha Khaek but I went to the window because I thought I needed to buy a ticket- I didn’t. Then I went back to the bus where people were milling about and the guy who appeared to be in charge told me to wait.  By the time I decided to stop waiting it turned out that the only seats left were the small plastic stools that would line the center of the bus.  Not interested in sitting on a plastic stool for 6 hours.  Tried to figure out if there would be another bus (the schedule said every hour until noon) and the best answer I could get was “maybe”.

By this time the stool aisle was full and the bus was now going into standing room only.  This is approximately where the “maybe” turned into “no more buses to Tha Khaek”.  I refused to panic or to pull one of my NY hissy fits. (If no one understands what you are screaming you look more like a madwoman than otherwise.)  Instead I went over to the table where they seemed to be selling the tickets that I had been told one didn’t need and started pointing at the other buses and asking where they were going.  One was heading to Pakse- a ride of about 12 hours on the VIP bus and about 17 hours on the public bus.  However, Tha Khaek is on the way and there is only 1 road so I asked if it stopped in Tha Khaek.  First told it did not.  This answer did not satisfy my highly logical NY lawyer mind.  I perservered.  Turned out that they only sell tickets for this bus for Vientiane to Pakse.  Now it hit me that this was a financial issue.  Time to play wealthy American.  Offered to pay the full price to Pakse (about $10) if they would let me off if Tha Khaek (a $7 ticket).  Done deal. 

It was now 11 am and the bus was close to full.  I went to smoke a cigarette and the driver sent me onto the bus to put something on a seat.  Brilliant move.  I spent the next hour watching all the seats fill up, then out came the plastic seats, and then the standing room started.  Turns out that the bus schedules are very loose and take off time depends on when you think you cannot squeeze on one additional passenger.

We started around 11:30.  And kept picking up passengers- kind of like putting clowns in a little car at the circus.  The bus was an unairconditioned airconditioned bus.  A puff of moderately cool air came from the vents but not enough to do anything so all windows were open.  And most people had their jackets or sweaters on.  And I was the only one who was drowning in my own sweat.  Status quo.

After stopping for gas, and food supplies (loads of vendors at the windows and hopping onto the bus), and more passengers, we actually hit the road.  The driver hit the horn every 3 or 4 seconds and never for just one beep.  We watched Thai television the entire time- either singers or this comedy act. I don’t know if it was videos of 1 popular show, but I am now fully familiar with that cast of characters- no need to really understand Thai.

First stop was about 2 1/2 hours on.  (For those who don’t like toilet stories, skip ahead here.)  The stop was in the middle of nowhere but there were large trees and much foliage on both sides of the road.  Amusement from all of my bus neighbors at my look of puzzlement as to why we were stopping.  Still happy to have an excuse to get off the bus and have a smoke.  Decided I could hold it in.  Then realized when in Rome was a much better plan.  Followed the smart ladies who decided the other side of the road was more private.  Unfortunately, don’t wear the long Lao skirt which makes a much better privacy cover.  Figured it all out nonetheless.

Tried speaking to the woman sitting next to me who didn’t know a word of English and was not overly sharp at charades.  She didn’t get the universal I point to myself and say “Myra” and then point to her and look questioningly.  So we gave that up.  We did share food and friendly looks.  I offered my cookies to all of people near me and my neighbor was the only one sharing.  As the hours wore on, it got to be a joke- I would offer everyone and then make a show of how no one wanted my food.  By the time I got off, everyone took some Certs or gum with a lot of smiles and laughter.

The ride was long and hot and not something I want to do every day.  But I loved doing it.  There is a perverse streak in me that says do exactly the opposite of the other tourists.  It may turn out to be a misery, but it will turn out to be an experience.

Did I mention that I am charmed by the people here? I am.  Still loving this country.

I will try and get back to the story of Vientiane from Savannakhet, the next stop. Hope you can wait. 

So much to tell; so little inclination to actually write.  First off, it's hot as hell in Laos right now.  My best guess would be mid to high 90s daily.  When I planned this trip I was thinking how nice ... [Continue reading this entry]

OK, that title could use some work, but I seem to be stuck on the alliteration thing.  Besides it works for me. Still being utterly charmed by Laos.  Every place I've seen has been beautiful and the people are, for the most ... [Continue reading this entry]