by John Keeble
“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)
By John Keeble
Life is never dull when you use the buses and sawngthaews of Thailand and Laos... something is always happening because you are joining a travelling community, taking from it and enriching it with your strangeness at the same time.
Of course, you can use public transport just because it is cheap - it costs not much more than a UK restaurant meal to travel from one end of Thailand to the other on public buses. Or you could use it because it is efficient: on time, with crews of two or three who organise and run the buses as efficiently as airliners, often even down to giving you bottled water and snacks in with the fare.
Or you may just like it. The bustle of food sellers at main bus stops, the sights and photographs you would never enjoy if you were travelling by limousine, the feeling of being part rather than observing through the distortions of the tourist bubble.
And you can combine it with other transport, including cars sometimes, to get the best of the experience in any area.
Many of our best memories come from bus journeys. One of the funniest was when we were exhausted and leeched of blood after a rainy season jaunt in a Thai jungle area and we stopped for four nights in a beautiful four-star resort at Khao Lak (later badly damaged in the tsunami). We arrived by bus... and when we went, by then friends with the Thais used to less interactive package tour sunseekers, the reception got one of the elegantly uniformed baggage staff to wheel out our beaten-up bags and wait at the bus stop with us for the bus.
In Luang Prabang, the city of temples in northern Laos, we stumbled into another amusing incident. We had rocketed 300 miles down the Mekong on a fast boat and done the last 12 miles by sawngthaew (like a tuk-tuk but bigger to seat six or eight). We were windswept and not quite looking our best (to put it mildly)... we went for a room at the Villa Santi, the best place in town, and the receptionist said $40 a night... we said OK and moved in.
The next day they revealed the receptionist had thought us backpackers and was so shocked when we said yes to $40 that he had given us a room reserved for two guests jetting in within hours. We smiled, thanked them and said we’d move out... but they let us stay and found another room for imminently expected guests.
A little later in that trip, we were on a bus on Route 13. It wasn’t long after the army had declared the road safe from bandits, but no one was really sure about that. The bus broke down on a lonely mountain road and the crew of three set about repairing the prop shaft - the bus was carrying an amazing array of spares. As we sat in the sun, part of this fabulous environment, the hypnotically beautiful sound of a hill tribe woman’s song floated down from mountainside fields high above.
Then there was the caring Thai bus crew who would not let us off their bus when we picked a doubtful destination on Phuket...
And travelling with 20 tons of cement in a truck bus out of Pakse, southern Laos, after stopping a few nights in a converted palace...
Helping mend a woman’s rice bag which had split getting it on the bus in north-east Thailand...
Taking a ride from the Vietnam border to Savannakhet in Laos with 70 people on a 40-seater already jammed with such items as a mini-tractor engine and feeling, on the rough tracks, like being with Jean-Luc during a Borg attack...
Sitting in a monsoon storm after getting off a bus at Champasak in southern Laos...
Waiting for six hours or more at bus stations where no one speaks English, and we’ve no idea whether there will be a bus going where we want to go but, all the same, being enjoyably absorbed into the travelling community Laotians...
And all the stops on the way somewhere, the colours, the bleakness, the beauty of dawn in some remote place full of hill tribe people...
If you are tempted, try it. Best to start in Thailand, which is far better organised than Laos. Pick any destination that interests you, get a bus from one of Bangkok’s big bus stations, link with other buses in other cities or towns. Be adventurous: it will all work out somehow.
It is better to take bags that can survive a bit of a pounding (definitely leave your designer matching cases at home), pack your clothes in waterproof bags before putting them into your travelling bag - they might end up on a songthaew roof sometime, or you might be on a river and the spray soak them. Just the humidity can leave everything damp if not protected.
Dress like the local town or city people, just ordinary clothes rather than ‘hotel’ or ‘beach’ specials. Thailand and Laos are friendly and safe countries, generally, so just relax and take the routine kind of precautions you would in the UK, while staying open to the friendly people you will meet. Thais rarely tell you what to do, so be sensitive to their advice; they know the local conditions and you do not.
In Laos, medical facilities are almost non-existent and you should be aware of the UXO risk in many areas (though not in major tourist areas apart from the Plain of Jars); Thailand has excellent medical facilities in cities and many towns. Good insurance is vital, just in case of illness or accident.
Make sure you travel on the same transport as local people. In Thailand, that includes aircon VIP buses (well worth the few extra bahts for long journeys; you can just turn up but it isn't a bad idea to book a few days in advance if you are worried about time). Be cautious with tourist buses: in Nong Khai, up on the Mekong in north-east Thailand, we met a couple who had spent as much on a tourist bus from Bangkok as we had spent on three weeks of travel all through the region and they had seen very little.
Just take your Lonely Planet to help you identify bus station locations and routes, and some idea of hotels. And pack your sense of humour and patience. If you smile a lot and try to communicate, you’ll have a wonderful time.
One problem is that Thai and Lao local buses are built for smaller people than many Westerners ... if you are taller than 5 feet, expect to be a bit cramped unless you can get the back seat. On air conditioned long-distance buses, there is plenty of room.
First published in VISA 69A (Oct 2006)
By John Keeble
It cannot exist: it is just a place of dreams and you know, deep down, that you will never find it, never taste the tantalising promise of stimulating peace and relaxation. But then, unexpectedly, it is there – still dreamlike but real, suspended between paradise and the modern world.
This is Luang Prabang in the north-west of Laos, a tear in the reality of a country of poverty caught for centuries at the nexus of international and regional greed and state violence. No theme-park design; no crude anything-goes-for-tourist-cash town. It has been shaped by Buddhist monks and kings as the City of Temples; by French colonialists, leaving architecture and baguettes; by Lao government hunger for foreign currency; and by the modern world’s tsunami of leisure travellers.
Timeless, apart from the occasional monk with a cell phone glued to his ear, and an old-fashioned charm masking its subtle, sophisticated efficiency in serving the needs of everyone from backpackers to the very rich.
I came to Luang Prabang – not for the first time – down the Mekong, two days in a slow boat with other tourists, stopping overnight at Pak Beng, a staging-post village that wakes with the evening arrival of the boats plying on the 500km stretch of river between Huay Xai (opposite Chiang Khong, Thailand) and the City of Temples. Even then the waking is short, intense, with a police curfew in place at 11pm and sleep, in the peace of the isolated, until the dawn of the port’s working spasm.
The silt-laden Mekong, which rises in Tibet and meanders more than 4,000 kilometres to the sea, is punctuated by rocks jutting from its bed, working silt terraces farmed and washed clean by monsoon floods and tiny sandy coves where local people travel, trade and live. It is home to the world’s largest fresh water fish and, further south where Laos falls off the edge into Cambodia, there are pink Irrawaddy dolphins, now said to be more numerous as their population recovers from the murderous attacks on them by the Khmer Rouge.
Luang Prabang announces itself with the cliff-face shrines at Pak Ou, where people worshipped the river spirits for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years before Buddhism edged into the metaphysical consciousness. Today, throughout Laos and Thailand, Theravada Buddhism is part of the living spiritual environment that includes spirits that protect or threaten the human world.
Maybe half an hour later on the slow, powerful flow, the town of Luang Prabang comes into view… a gentle wash of colour and shape as the evening sun lingers, lighting up the temples, looking strange as the boat heads into it after 12 hours travelling east before the river contorts to a confluence with the Nam Khan, boundaries of the old royal city.
The headline facts when anyone speaks of Luang Prabang are the 30+ working temples and maybe several thousand monks and novices, who take to the streets in huge phalanxes every dawn to complete their historic ritual and duty of giving the people an opportunity to make merit. At one time, only devout Buddhists were there, waiting in the cold to witness the bare-footed monks holding their bowls for tiny offerings… today, they are outnumbered, in the tourist season at least, by trigger-happy snappers from a score of countries, many kneeling in peculiar obeisance to get the best shot.
The private media frenzy can be so great that one prominent Laotian figure proclaimed that many visitors who go to Luang Prabang think they are on photo safaris – and the monks are the big game. There is some truth in that, but I saw generally well-behaved visitors and monks who had seen it all before and faced their ritual’s trials with blank indifference.
What is less talked about, but certainly appreciated, is the UNESCO world heritage town itself – the historic quarter between the rivers, with the residential and working areas stretching far out where visitors go by accident or pass through, eastwards, on the bus to the playground of Vang Vieng and on to Vientiane or west to Huay Xai and the ferry into Thailand.
Luang Prabang gently gets a grip on you, slowing you, easing you into a relaxation with its pace of life, its temples, its places beside the rivers or in the town where you can drink coffee or eat wild dishes… sparkling, spicy noodle soup with peppermint and lemon tea for my breakfast… baguette with brimming filling and coffee for you?
You find yourself walking through the town’s quiet streets of French-style buildings, flowering trees and palms, dignified monks and smiling, welcoming, local people – everywhere you look, there is something of stimulating interest or beauty set in an aura of tranquillity.
And it finally dawns on you that you cannot stay more than four or five days. Or you may never leave again…
First published in VISA 101 (Feb 2012)
