Crossed into Laos from Chiang Kong to Houay Xai. Chiang Kong was a nice sleepy Thai town, Houay Xai was even sleepier. Crossing the Mekong was short (5 min) and cheap B20 (50 Cents). The name Mekong always rings loud, all those Viet Nam war movies. So to be on it’s banks was kinda nice.
Next morning I took a “Swang-thaew” some times referred to as a bus (read pick-up truck with a one foot/30cm wide plank down either side) to the next town on route to Muang Sing. The town/village of Vianphoukha lay only five hours ahead of us. As long as there were no “unforeseen delays” (read: axle falling off, engine dropping out,radiator overheating, flat tyres, swollen rivers, fallen trees, trucks stuck in the mud).
The journey was much as one would expect, pretty uneventful except that you were in the back of a pick-up truck on “country roads” (read: a series of pot holes connected by mud and gravel) bouncing (read: nut cracking, head bashing) up and down. The occasional truck stuck in the mud, a few swollen rivers with steep banks, and the odd rock slide and fallen trees.
As Laos are law abiding people, we left the “bus station” (read:…you get the idea) with the regulation ten people in the back. The seats were built for ten Lao backsides not ten folangs (westerners), so we sat cheek to cheek. The “bus” was to leave at 8am. I, ever the early bird arrived, at 7:45. At 9 we were told we were going, so we all jumped in raring to go…
9:20 and no movement, with the exception of the driver changing from one foot to the other as he squatted down talking to his co-“workers”. We all piled out, shortly thereafter the driver got behind the wheel and we all scrambled back in. We’re off…to the gas station.
After gassing up and the driver talking to a few more co-“workers” we preceded down the road. Hung a couple of rights, a couple of lefts, stopping to deliver a few letters on the way. Something looked familiar…we passed the “bus station” again. Oh well, at least we were moving.
The “bus” wasn’t bad. Most pickup trucks have four sets of shock absorbers, one for each wheel. Ours was equipped with ten sets…the cheeks of us “folangs”. The original shocks had passed their use-by date a few decades ago so the truck bottomed out on every hole in the road. Which the driver was incredibly good at finding. Lots of practice.
Oh yeah, back to the law abiding Lao driver. Needless to say we picked up extra passengers on the way. We arrived at our destination with 17 people and a tied up piglet.
A scream came from the front end of the back of the “bus” (a short distance in feet, a loooong way in people). An English woman was pleasantly surprised to find she was having her toe sucked by the piglet….Mama. She speculated it would be the closest she would come to sex on the trip.
Five hours passed and we arrived at Vianphoukha, our destination. The Lonely Planet said it had a guesthouse, which is important as by law in Laos “folangs” cannot stay anywhere but in official guesthouses (like Russia in the old days).
So you can imagine my bewilderment when the owner of the guesthouse came out to greet us and wave goodbye to the driver as he was telling us…
“Full…special glupe, NGOs lent guesthouse”
I just kinda stood there, watching the dust settle on the “road” as our “bus” got lost in a self made cloud. Then the owner pointed down the street. A “new” guesthouse had opened. So much for the Lonely Planet.
We sauntered over, an English couple, a Canadian guy and moi. After “checking in” (being given a key to a one inch square padlock hanging on the outside of a bamboo hut) I crashed out. Half an hour later I awoke with a pounding headache. I guess after bouncing around in the back of the truck for five hours, my brain being as small as it is, rattling around in my skull being as hard headed as I am, caused some minor brain damage.
After I’d reached a certain level of consciousness I realized I’d fallen asleep in my clothes. There was a 3 mm layer of red dust sitting on me. The only part that wasn’t covered were two white spots where my elbows had been leaning on my knees. Fortunately the “room” had two beds.
So off I went to find the shower. It didn’t take me long to figure out I had to join the locals in the river. The main river was quite crowded. Laos are very clean people. In the countryside around sunset, the locals congregate at the river to do their ablutions. They meticulously scrub themselves for a half hour, men in one part upstream from women. With a few cattle interspersed and a guy washing his four wheel drive up from the gals. I decided to wash in a tributary at the back of the “hotel”. It was just me, an albino water buffalo and the sunset.
The “town” had electricity for about 90 minutes in the evening. My room shared a fluorescent light with the next room. The tube passed through the wall (3mm thick woven bamboo). Privacy isn’t big, I guess. But I had the light switch on my side of the wall! A sudden rush of power came over me. Unfortunately I didn’t get to exercise my power as I was out of the room when the electricity came on. Fortunately for my neighbour the switch was left on.
Why, you may ask, was I out during the period of illumination? Well, dinner. Or should I say, looking for dinner. The town was pitch black with the exception of a few houses and “restaurants” connected to the national grid. Most used candle power.
The other three “folangs” who alighted with me were vegetarians. That made the search a little more interesting. You can usually find something made from pig’s heads, cow’s innards, duck’s arse’s. You know, everyday fare. I even saw on one menu, “cow’s innards cooked in urine”. I don’t know if some “folang” was taking the piss but that’s what was typed on one menu.
Anyway, back to the plot. We eventually settled for dinner by candlelight, with the smoke from the open charcoal grill inside the room wafting past the yellow rays of light that creeped through from the neighboring restaurant’s 25 watt bulb.
We saw them unload the eggs. Omelet with tomato, noodle soup (noodles and water). The girl in our party was a little perturbed as the water on the boil for the soup was brown. She was afraid they had boiled meat in it. I asked her if there was any grease floating on the surface. She said no, so I assured her it wasn’t boiled animals. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the water came from the river we had bathed in.
I guess they get that urine in, any way they can…
