Friday
We start the day by trying to find the office for Provincial Passport checks. An English bloke had been ‘helped’ by a local who guided him to the office, and told the officials that he’d arrived two days back, so a U$5 fine, thanks. Despite his directions (rather vague: opposite the port authority building and opposite the fruit market) we don’t find the office said to be nearby, however the Phounsab Hotel card has a sketch map that shows an “Immigration Office” in another part of town. It is right next to restaurant Vissoun, and turns out to be closed 12 – 2 p.m. So, lunch: fish in coconut milk, and yum!
At 2:30 we go next door, and pay the K100 fee. On the wall is a notice “Please speak softly and be polite to us”. There are no difficulties raised over our intended route, as the area is currently quiet. All we will have to contend with is the geography.
The other achievement of the day is to send some postcards, and buy at face value here lots of stamps that have finished their run at Vientiane, thus avoiding the philiatelic premium. Just for fun, in the evening I go back to the bus stop to see if it will again arrive twelve hours to the minute from its departure from Vientiane. Nope, nor even by 7:45 so my sense of what is normal is further restored.
Saturday
Overnight the fuse socket for the fan had broken its connection, but a few taps with a comb soon fixed that. Fortunately, it had been a cool night. After breakfast I get stuck in with a Bartholomew’s map and locate all but one of the boat destinations named in a schedule stuck on the wall of the lounge.
Rivers are the local roads, well-maintained by nature despite man’s destruction, whereas roads, poorly-maintained by man, are destroyed by nature. A US couple say that the tourist information office has declared the road to Phonsavanh unusable, due to damage and “bandits”. Certainly, the local hill people have only suffered from contact with the outside world, and have learnt that a good road brings logging companies which extract the valuable timber, leaving erosion behind. By the time the road needs major repair, they’ll be long gone. Anyway, we had passed that road’s turnoff on the way here.
Aside from boats up the Mekong to the Burmese border, there are also boats up the Nam (=”river”) Ou to Muan Ngoi which is on the road that would take us the long way to Phonsavanh. A slightly better route for us would be up the Nam Kanh to Vien Thong, but we’re told that that is not so popular.
Anyway, I annotate the wall list with the results of my analysis. The Laotian map nearby is almost impossible to follow thanks to different transliterations and vague locations: it is a map showing administrative areas only. Another hint: pronounce Vientiane as “Wien Chan”, and the locals will have a better chance of guessing what you’re jabbering about. Oh, and Laos is indeed pronounced as ‘Louse’. As I finish, on TV is a video of Anya’s Going Home, with a splendid steam engine puffing mightily along a rocky gorge. I’m a long way from home here.
We go out into a nice sunny day for once, so this is the time for sightseeing. In the centre of town is a hill called That Chomsi that has nice views and nearby are Wat Aham and Wat Wisuniat. Also nearby is the Vissoun, where I have fish in coconut milk again, with spring rolls too. Yum again. The foreigner management office remains shut, so no chance of a long look at their big map.
We stroll around some more, then Charles retires for a siesta while I start a letter after checking that the Immigration Office is still shut. My iced orange juice helps my patience as locals crowd around, impressed by my script. It is illegible to them, and strange, just as their graceful Lao script is illegible to me and strange.
After posting it, I encounter Charles, whose attempts at writing in the hotel had been disrupted by offers concerning a group to go and visit a waterfall. He goes to the P.O. while I retreat to wash my shirt and singlet, emerging at five to go to Wat Xieng Thong, the premier site in Luang Phabang. There I have a lengthy chat with some novices, or rather, they spend a lot of time looking at my picture book of New Zealand. This is some slight re-balancing of me always looking at them.
Back at the hotel, Charles is crook with a headache. Obviously, too much sun. We may not leave tomorrow, as although a fellow on the riverbank had said “Every day”, the friendly novices had thought Monday more likely. By 8:30, Charles is still laid out, so I go for eats, returning with a one and a half litre bottle of Chinese cider, which opens with a bang. Reasonable stuff, even at room temperature.
Read Part 3
