“Does anyone know a good restaurant round here?”
The voice is a low growl, powerful but indistinct, words forced through a mouthful of pebbles. It is Ged, the first time we have seen him, causing a tremor of excitement through the female backpackers despite his beautiful blonde partner draping herself over him. They, like us, are waiting for a minibus from Hue in central Vietnam to Savannakhet in southern Laos - for us, a mere 12 hours into a 36 hour trek that started with a noodle soup breakfast in Hanoi, 500km to the north. Ged has just got the same good news that we have been given: the minibus is going to leave at 9pm instead of the promised 6.30 and he needs a meal.
We - my wife June and I - leave our bags at An Phu, our favourite Vietnamese travel shop, and take a last look at the old royal city. Around 9 we are all back, waiting to go: two young Scandinavian women, an Australian traveller who looks like he has been on the road forever, Ged and his girl. Plus a crew of two, who jam in our bags and us around them. Great. But we then we’re off: it is easy to tell, because apart from the motion there is the usual headlights coming, head to head, straight at us mile after mile until, around 11pm, we stop for a drink and try to unfurl our legs.
Ged falls in beside me as I amble back a forth, leaving the others to drink tea and watching the night traffic roar past. We talk about the journey, about how long it might take, about where we have been and where we are going.
“You are French?”
No. English. Where are you from?
“Israel. Tel Aviv.”
I liked Tel Aviv when I was there.
“It is terrible. Industrial.”
Oh, it was 1976 when I was there last..
.
Ged’s girl slips across to him, feline grace, and drapes herself. He strokes her. I think I hear her purring. If she could speak English, it would be interesting to hear what she had to say about life on the backpacking trail.
We get back into the minibus and go head to head with the Hue-bound traffic until we reach Lao Bao, where Vietnam will jettison us into Laos. It is high in the hills, chilly despite the time of year. After a few false turns, the minibus pulls into a tiny, black lane. Why? None of us knows. The minibus stops, the driver gets out and tells us to get out: this is where we are going to spend the rest of the night. There is a choice: some can stay in the minibus, the others can sleep on thin plastic mats on a tiled floor in a small villa.
One of the Scandinavian women says she thinks we would be better off in the minibus: they would take the floor. And I suddenly realise how the youngsters had been looking after us, an unlooked-for kindness that makes us feel our 55 years but, also, appreciate how nice they are. We slip back into the minibus and take the two back seats; Ged and his girl entwine on the front seat. I know I will never get to sleep and slowly wake, hours later, looking into the curious face of some passers-by peering at the foreigners.
Twenty minutes later, we are in the main part of the village, waiting for the border to open. The crew has left us in the van to sort out something. And the first of the money changing touts arrives, a young woman who points and abruptly says: “You!” OK, she has my attention. “You change dong to kip?” No. She tries all the others. Then comes back to me. Then tries the others again. Ged changes some money. So does one of the Scandinavian women. I decide to wait and change money at the border: it is easier and I have totally lost track of how much kip I should get for my dong. Or my pounds. Or my US dollars. The journey is taking its toll on my brain.
The crew returns and we set off. As we pull away, we see where they had been - having breakfast with the traders, the border guards, the other drivers. Ho, hum. You rarely get what you expect in Vietnam, especially if you have paid for it. A mile further on, we stop again and watch as the border guards walk past. The Scandinavians and the Australian buy food; Ged and his girl have brought their own; we fish out the veggie spring rolls picnic we had bought from our favourite Hue restaurant and eat them messily. No one knows what will happen next.
We had been told the minibus would take us all the way to Savannakhet. But suddenly, the crew starts to throw off our bags. And, within a few minutes, we start to lug them to the Vietnamese border controls a quarter of a mile away. ‘’Shall I take one of those?” growls Ged, already carrying his enormous backpack and the smaller pack of his protesting girl. Thanks, Ged - I’m OK. He strides off easily. We approach the border control, fill in the forms.
June goes to the window first and the soldier, an officer with three million medals and badges, smarms her through; then he glances at my papers and nods without looking. And we being another ¼ mile walk to the Lao border crossing, fill in the forms, get out passports and visas examined with what seems like infinite care and finally we are free to cross, picking up a wheelbarrowful of kip in exchange for US$100 on the way.
Finally, we arrive at the point where the border posts end and the track into Laos proper begins...and a furious scrum of motorcyclists intent on getting us to ride to the bus station. A woman frantically tries to drag us towards a biker with crossed eyes and an evil grin. It is a couple of kilometres to the bus. We cannot walk it. The crush and pull gets worse; and one biker tries to drag a bag out of my hand.
OK. Take control. I pick the two safest looking bikers, ask how much: 10,000 kip each (90p). June gets on, without camera bags but weighed down with her day sack. I clamber on, one big bag on the handlebars, the other wrenching my arm and balance, and the camera bags slung round my neck. And we rocket off, over rutted roads, June disappearing ahead, our back wheel sliding, gripping, slowing within inches of a 20ft drop from a makeshift bridge, and finally lurching into the Lao village where the bus is waiting.
We stop suddenly. The weight is too much and I fall off backwards, scraping my hand and causing a roar of laughter among the Lao onlookers. I forget to feel glad I am back in Laos.
Ged and the others are already on the bus...no, not a bus: a truck-bus, a Lao instrument of torture that does anything and goes anywhere. They are tough, old beasts that have about 40 Lao-size seat places jammed in and you share with 60 or more people, assorted livestock and huge amounts of agricultural and industrial goods. The bus pulls out with us and what seems like 58 other people; we have not discovered the name of the village and no one who speaks English has any idea how long it will take to Savannakhet.
The others from the minibus are dotted around, engulfed in the crush and cacophony, and the bus, without suspension, slams over appalling roads - except where the roads are too bad and then it goes over rough country instead. We think of Star Trek’s worst moments and know how the Enterprise crew felt.
In a quiet moment, a man sitting in front turns round and smiles; he wants to communicate, we want to communicate, but language defeats us before the next bout of slamming through deep ruts left by logging lorries. We stop for passengers, a few getting off, even more getting on; and we stop for goods: tonnes of fabricated steel, manhandled on to the top of the bus with the rest of the goods, including out bags; a live iguana-like creature; and enormous amounts of fruit and vegetables.
At one stop, the man in front bids us farewell and gets off - proudly taking, with the help of the sweating, heaving bus crew, his new Chinese mini-tractor engine that was just behind us near the door. And once we stop at a little village with places to eat and drink for those who can face it. The step down to still ground seems huge; and we speculate that compaction injuries have knocked off a few inches of our height.
Finally, unbelievably, eight hours after setting off, we reach Savannakhet and we ease ourselves, shellshocked, from the bus. By the time the crew get our bags down from the top of the truck, we find our plans have been overtaken by the good-natured young backpackers who have included us in their plans for tuk-tuks and hotels. ‘’We negotiate together,’’ said Ged. ‘’This gives us power. We can get better deals.’’ We do not especially want better deals: more a good shower and a comfortable bed, not necessarily in that order. But we like them and, even after the journey, we are fascinated by our inclusion into a backpacking world of which we had, for years, travelled on the edge.
So we end up in a tuk-tuk with Ged and his girl, following another tuk-tuk carrying the others. We arrive at the first hotel, look around it, shudder at the lack of windows in the rooms, the dreary surroundings - at 20,000 kip (£1.80) a night, it is not bad, we supposed.
“Do you like it?” asks Ged’s girl. Eh? Perfect English? No. We think it’s awful. She responds firmly: “I agree.”
Ged emerges, too, from the hotel.
“This is all right?” No.
His girl: “No.”
Ged: “It is for just one night. A good price.”
Suddenly the pieces fall into place. Ged had said she had not travelled like this before, but he had; he had cycled through Thailand, stayed at wonderful and wildly uncomfortable places. So, she enjoys him but not this strange way of travelling. She wants somewhere comfortable, maybe luxurious, maybe by a beach with cool drinks at hand. “No,” she says again, firmly, no decorative drapery at all. We agree with her. So Ged agrees to go on. The tuk-tuk driver wants more money. Ged pulls him up. We are so tired we do not care one way or another. “He told us a price and he must stick to it,” says Ged.
So off we go to another, slightly better, sleeping place. Ged likes it, his girl says OK; they are there for the night, as he says, and tomorrow they are heading into Thailand to find an island with sparkling seas and swaying palms.
We make our excuses and leave, sneaking off to the best hotel in town. We reckon we deserve it. It is not expensive by developed world standards but, in southern Laos, it is wildly extravagant: a huge suite for US$44 (£31) a night. It is wonderful...
First published in a special issue of VISA for the TravelSIG 'Travellers' Tales' event at the Annual Gathering in London (July 2001)
No comments:
Post a Comment