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Published: January 30th 2008
I was the captain, my name is Harley
Nick, Fiona 1, Fiona 2, Gem and Greg on our luxury cruiserLaos is one of those countries that seems to attract universal rave reviews from the backpacker community. Nestled away in the womb of South-East Asia as it is, I thought however it might offer up the same sort of experiences that I’d been having in Cambodia and Vietnam, only in an isolated, landlocked kind of way. Despite these pre-conceptions, I couldn’t ignore that the famously laid-back, relaxed Lao way of life was to be seen almost everywhere as soon as we crossed the border from Vietnam. Arriving in Savannakhet, a key border post serving crossings into both Vietnam and Thailand, it was only natural to expect a thriving centre of commerce and trade.
What greeted us however was a sleepy riverside town which could almost have been described as deserted, were it not for the handful of people down on the bank of the Mekong watching the sun slowly slide down to the horizon. As we strolled down the empty streets under a broad blue sky, the people yelling at us to buy things and getting in our face to stay at their hotels (so much the norm in Vietnam) were strikingly conspicuous for their absence. “I like Laos” said
Marooned on the Mekong
Greg, Fiona, HJT and Nick on a random rock Greg as we sat by the river bank and enjoyed an ice-cold Beerlao. It was as though he read my mind.
After such a magnificent honeymoon period in the country, the relationship between myself and Laos soured quickly the following day. Cracks started to appear when we got to the bus station and saw the vehicle in which we were to make the six hour trek south to Pakse. The bus windscreen looked more putty than the shattered glass it was holding together, and upon boarding we found that the entire length of the aisle was stacked chest-high with boxes of cigarette papers. To get to our seats we were forced to climb the first pile of boxes and crawl down on top of them to our seat. Greg and Gem cleverly staked a claim to the seats behind the back door of the bus for the extra legroom, while I was forced to spend the harrowing duration of the trip with my knees brushing my chin. Some might have called it a bus, but I would have said it was more of a hot, dusty, loud freight container with a few seats installed at impossibly narrow intervals.
Rapid group shot
Fiona, HJT, Gem, Fiona and Nick In the six hours from departure to arrival, we must have stopped at least forty times. A feeling of relief and achievement swept over me every time we completed a ten minute spurt of non-stop driving, as these were few and far between. Most of the time I couldn’t figure out why we had actually stopped, other than to allow a throng of food vendors to come aboard to pass their wares around. The locals in these parts seem to enjoy most of their food in stick form. Everything from boiled eggs to whole flattened down chicken carcasses were passed around on sticks. Starving though I was, I couldn’t bring myself to sample one of their vile offerings that were clearly kept in a plastic bucket in the sun between the passing of each bus.
Relief engulfed me when we pulled into the Pakse bus station, only to realise that we still had another 10kms or so until we arrived in the centre of town. This stretch was broken up by another stop, literally 50m from the entrance to the bus station, where the ticket checker got off the bus for five minutes to spark up a durrie with
Fancy a swim?
HJT at a section of the Mekong rapids a couple of his mates on the roadside. By the time we arrived at our destination, I was well beyond the end of my tether and in by far the foulest mood since departing Australia almost eleven months earlier. It was without doubt the most unpleasant experience of my trip, but as we discussed later that night over dinner, these often end up providing the most treasured memories and detail-rich stories of all.
Moments later as I was enjoying my rogan josh, Fiona, an Aussie girl I had met almost eight months earlier in La Paz, walked into the restaurant. I knew through the magic of facebook that she was in the area but it was nonetheless a quite a coincidence. She had with her a typically humourous Scottish girl (also named Fiona - that made things easy) and after another day in Pakse we all decided to head down together to the Four Thousand Islands area, on the Mekong River right near the Cambodian border. As soon as we arrived at Don Det (the island on which we were staying), any lingering grudges I held against Laos from the nightmare bus trip melted away.
At the risk
Cheers mate!
HJT and Greg enjoying a riverside Beerlao of making a rash, extravagant statement, Don Det and the whole Four Thousand Islands area was my favourite of all the places I have visited in South East Asia, and very possibly my favourite place of the entire trip. Make no mistake, I will be back there at some (hopefully not too distant) stage of my life. I dare say that there is no more relaxed place on earth - it is even more serene than Bonnie Doon. After finding a room and dumping our bags, we set up camp at one of the restaurants with a balcony over the river and whiled the afternoon away watching life slide by at a near standstill pace. In one half hour stretch we watched three different snakes swim across the river directly below, and then about twenty minutes later we waved to a couple of blokes floating past in tire tubes. We may well have stayed there all night were it not for the sunset beckoning us to another balcony over the river on the other, west-facing side of the island. By that time our ranks had swelled with the addition of Nick (the first person I have ever met from the
Who said we aren't blood relatives?
This monkey thought this bloke was its mother Isle of Man) and a night of cards and laughter ensued.
After our slothful first day, the next three days were filled with activities, although it would only be fair to admit that some of these were in themselves slothful. The boat trip we took to see the river dolphins wasn't so exciting for Greg, Gem and myself, as we had seen many more of them at closer quarters in Kratie. Checking out the rapids on the Mekong was worthwhile though, and I only wish my camera could have captured the ballsy fisherman who was standing in the river casting his net only ten or so metres above the largest drop. I almost couldn't bare to watch - I hope his family appreciated the mortal risk he took to put food on their table that evening.
The fishing trip that Greg, Nick and I took on the river the following day afforded me one of the most satisfying victories of my life. As readers of my 'Mountain to surf' blog entry would know, Greg is an expert and avidly keen angler. While Nick and I had no option but to use the rods and tackle supplied to us
All this stress is killing me
HJT wetting a line on the Mekong (we later discovered that Nick's reel didn't even work), Greg had his state of the art, carbon fibre travel rod, high tech reel, and his special travel tackle bag. I could tell that the two Lao blokes who took us out on their boat were impressed by the way they whistled when he unveiled his assembled rod, and then spent the first half an hour or so drooling as they inspected every single hook, sinker and lure in his tackle bag like kids looking at a toy store catalogue.
As pleasant as it was sitting in the middle of the river under a cloudless blue sky, frustration began to set in when after a couple of hours the first spot had yielded all of us plenty of green Mekong weed, but no bites from any fish. We moved further upstream closer to the bank of an island, and it was not long after that I used my guile and cunning to reel in a Giant Mekong Catfish. You may look at the photo and think that the adjective 'giant' is a bit of a stretch, but this was in fact the name of the species. It was a far
Waiting in vain
Nick and Greg trying to emulate my marvellous catch more impressive beast in the flesh. After giving him a kiss and throwing him back, I baited my rod and cast again, but from that point onward my focus was far more geared towards gloating than to catching more fish.
After ten minutes or so of reminding Greg that I'd never actually seen him catch a fish and therefore couldn't be sure that he ever had, I was horrified to see his rod bend over indicating that he had hooked something himself. As he reeled it in I could sense his relief at the fact that his catch would shut me up. Alas, with the fish so close that we got a good look at him, one of the Lao blokes came over to offer assistance and his line snapped, provoking dejection in Greg and howls of laughter from myself. Whether or not Greg needed to hear it at that moment, I reminded him of what he had told me earlier in the day: there is no point in talking about the bites you get if you can't pull them into the boat.
While I'd like to think that I had taught Greg a thing or two about
The catch of the day
By virtue of the fact that it was the only catch fishing that day (I even started addressing him as 'son' as I imparted my wisdom), he reciprocated by teaching me perhaps the most important skills of all when it comes to fishing - how to spin the yarn about the one that got away, and how to gradually increase estimates of its size. On first sighting his catch, he estimated it at around ten pounds. Moments after he had rigged up his rod and recast after losing it, it was pushing fifty. By the time we got back to shore and excitedly reported the day's happenings to a visibly disinterested Gem, it had crashed through the triple digit mark. At the time of writing it was approaching five hundred pounds. Watch this space people, cos it may turn out that Greg will get get a listing in the Guinness Book of Records for hooking the biggest fish in recorded history, and I was there to witness the whole thing. What an honour!
The satisfaction of outfoxing Greg at his own game buoyed me all through the night and to the following day, when we took bikes out for a spin to a nearby island. Proving that pride comes before
Yet another Mekong sunset
After a long day's fishing a fall however, I was forced to walk about 6kms back into town with my tail between my legs after my back tire punctured on the rocky path. The afternoon was far more relaxing when we got some tubes and floated down the river. As I laid back in the sun and thought about how I was drifting down one of the longest rivers in the world at a point where it swells to a width of 16km during the wet season, where two days before I had seen three snakes, and having read stories an hour earlier of river dolphins that had saved local villagers from crocodiles, I had one of those special moments. "This is what travelling is all about" I thought to myself, followed by "I would never have the balls to do this at home." Though this all felt very special to me, Greg and Gem didn't seem so appreciative when I reminded them about the local wildlife.
It was with a heavy heart that I left Don Det, but with less than a month left before I returned to Melbourne there was still a lot of ground to cover. After making it to Pakse,
it was also time to wave goodbye to Greg and Gem for the first time in over two months, as they still had more to see in southern Laos and had the time up their sleeves to do it. After making arrangements to meet up north in Vang Vieng for a "last hurrah" week, I boarded my transport to the bus station. It was the first time I have ever ridden in the sidecar of a motorcycle and it was a brilliant experience in itself. From what I gather, motorcycles with a sidecar are exempted from most rules and regulations of the Lao traffic code, including stopping at red lights. I made a mental note to thoroughly examine the Victorian Road Safety Act to see if any such exemptions applied or loopholes existed which, carefully exploited, could cut my travel time considerably upon return.
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