Advertisement
Published: November 10th 2006
As I left Laos, the country seemed determined to get the final say on it's interesting notions of public transport.
Our transport to the Northern Bus station came from a friendly, business-minded school sawngthaew driver, who stopped his already teeming truck when he saw us looking expectantly at the (sparse) flow of Pakse traffic with our full packs. The bags went on the roof and we went on the back - some of the kids moved enough for us to find some bum space with our feet hanging out the back, the kids chattering away in the back. I only know a few words in Lao, but I always pick up "falang", which means they are talking about me or Jen. Call it paranoia, if you like. In ones and twos, they got off at their respective stops. And the driver parked us outside the station. We took our bags off the roof, and the driver noticed that one of the girls had left her gaudy, pink schoolbag. Perhaps I should have taken this as the omen it must have been (there's that superstition again).
We showed our ticket to the friendly but incompetent woman in the ticket office, who told us the bus would be going at maybe 7.30 or maybe 6.30, we should just wait on the bench over there for it. We got skeptical and she told us that someone who knew about it would be along shortly. This was going to be a long journey, so I stocked up on a huge bag of sticky rice. After a few minutes another guy came into the ticket office and told us the bus was over there, what were we doing on the bench? Hurry up! We grabbed our bags and hurried up.
It still sat there for half an hour before filling up and moving out, anyway. I think the freight consisted mostly of lemons this time (pointless side note: citrus fruit here is always green - limes and lemons are all but indistinguishable in bot appearance and taste... oranges are bigger and rounder but still green). The only pair of seats we could get had a bar behind one of them, so it wouldn't recline. We agreed to swap a couple of times in the night.
The bus eventually started up. Someone put a Vietnamese comedy VCD on (you can tell 'cause Vietnamese writing uses roman script, even though the language is even tougher to understand than Lao and Thai - also it didn't look shabby enough to be Lao) and the bus moved a good 100 metres before stopping to let more people off and on. We went another 100 metres before stopping to pick up the rest of the freight. Jen, me, and a Japanese traveler we’d sat next to and got talking to watched in amusement as more and more things were carried on, though Jen became more and more annoyed as the gangway stared to full. She took a final look when they finished and cried "oh, for f***'s sake!" We had 3 strange big black buckets to climb over to get on and off.
The comedy went on - and on, and on. Most of it was the Viet version of Morcambe and Wise, though lacking the carefully perfect comic choreography of their sketches. Didn't understand any of it, obviously, except for a few lines in English every now and then for some reason (and Vietnamese people don't even know any English). It was replaced by appalling pop videos after a while. I was glad of my iPod.
At one point, I noticed that things kept sticking out of the holes in the top of the buckets for a few seconds before going back in. Communicating with a bloke nearby, mostly with signs, I discovered that they were all full of snakes (it was him miming cutting the head off and drinking the blood that did it - I know people do that in this part of the world - he made a face like "mmm, delicious"). Jen said "What, is it eels?" I told her yes, definitely. She's afraid of snakes (though I've since admitted the truth - I felt bad about lying). I watched in fascination for a while at the snake heads coming up for fresh air, and found that I was reasonably calm about having a bucketful of snakes in arms' reach.
After a long, mostly sleepless, night we arrived at Lao Bao - the border town. We had to walk a couple of kilometres to get to the immigration point. Waiting for the office to open, a guy with long, manicured nails and an expensive-looking gold ring approached with a handful of passports, each with money sticking out of it. He informed us that it was 2 dollars to have our passport stamped. Yeah, right, we said. We refused to pay and he refused to take them. He gave us a look like "you stupid foreigners, you're filth" and walked off. We stood near the office window, and a crowd began to form next to it. Everyone was waving passports with money in them, though we noticed they seemed to have 1 dollar in each. Most people piled their passports up with the money in them just inside the windows. The office was still empty. Nobody in Laos understands the virtue of an orderly queue, not realising it won't change when they ge3t to their destination - they’ll have to wait for the bus anyway.
We kept hold of our passports - we didn't like the idea of trying to get hold of them again amidst that crowd when people started to return them. Fingernails elbowed his way to the front and placed his pile of passports further forward than everyone else, with an elastic band around them. He pocketed one dollar from each. Eventually the officer came in and started typing at his computer. It was like the calm before the storm. Nails pointed out his pile and the officer started to look through them. Tried to tell us we were at the wrong window too, but didn't count on the fact that we could read (the writing was English and Lao). After some deliberation, we decided we'd put a dollar in each, as everyone else would and we didn’t want to be done last and miss the bus. Jen waited for an opportune moment and thrust them through the window while the officer was looking. To our surprise, took them and did them before the rest of the shifty bloke's pile. To me it looked like an act of small rebellion in the face of the mobster's passport-stamp racket. Seems he didn't like the obnoxious little man either.
So against the odds, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, we beat the crowd and set off for the Viet border. At about the halfway point, probably right on the border itself, I noticed that the shabby-looking Lao buildings to the west were in stark contrast to the great arched pagoda-gate, adorned with communist logos, on the Viet side. I was going to take a picture in each direction, but it was here that I noticed my camera wasn't with me.
Yup, by the time we reached Hue at 12 noon, I'd ascertained that my camera had indeed gone missing during the journey. We walked for a while with our Japanese friend before eventually giving in to the horde of persistent motorbike taxis that wanted to overcharge us in the midday heat, trying to take advantage of our recent arrival in the country. I swear, they are worse here than anywhere else. This was our first taste of the aggressive style in which the Vietnamese conduct their business.
First things first, we ate. Then I slept for 3 hours, woke up feeling disorientated and groggily made my way to a little vegetarian restaurant for tea. Had cold crispy noodles and fake meat and Vietnamese spring rolls and the food was simply delicious.
Today was spent traipsing around the city, visiting no less then 4 different police stations, each pertaining to an ever-so-slightly different division of the force over here. They were generally the friendliest and most welcoming people we've met so far, though the whole day was wasted and we didn't get the police report I needed to claim insurance on my camera. Maybe it was the complicated beaurocracy and strict weird jurisdiction laws, or maybe they were hoping for a cash incentive (I wasn't willing to offer one as I wasn't confident I could do it diplomatically enough and so risk causing offence). We both got very frustrated and I went to sulk for half an hour or so in our hotel room while Jen went for a drink. Bit of a low point, really.
But it takes low points to make a great adventure, right? I'm already looking for a new camera, and I've got over the photos I lost (all of the Lao ones) - I've still got the best on the blog (in slightly reduced quality) and we've got Jen's. Tomorrow we're going on a motorbike tour of the DMZ - the demilitarised zone. Plenty of old war stuff there.
It'll be my second time on a motorbike - the first was the ride across town here. After the first 2 minutes of terror, it was great - the wind in my hair was very cooling, and the bikes took the scenic route around the Imperial Palace (which we'll go and see in a day or 2).
Anyway, love to all. No pictures until I get a new camera, obviously.
Sam
Advertisement
Tot: 0.147s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0716s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mum
non-member comment
terrible to loose our pics but it could have been worse- you ahve memories and of course camaras have got a lot more sophisticated in the last 2 years so you will probably end up with something bettter!