This is a place were you cannot be in a hurry. Things take their time and if you rush them you will only get upset. Buses planning to leave at 20.30 and arrive at 1.00am, leave at 21.15 and arrive at 4am. They break down along the way, stop wherever there are people waiting at the road – not as often as you would think – and have to bypass every dog, cow and goat that chooses to squat the road. Not that it matters. Whether you arrive in a town at 23.00 or at dawn you will find the same buzz. Namely, a very loud snore since the streets are deserted and the lights are out. Sundays are even quieter if that were possible, even if that is the day weddings and funerals take place. I saw both along the road from the southern city of Pakse, towards the east, to the Bolaven plateau where they grow coffee and green tea and the little hamlet of Tadlo.
For the privilege of getting here I had to get acquainted with a number of the local buses. It’s been worth it.
First, there was the bus from Vientiane to Savannakhet. This was the disco queen. This beauty comes out at night. As you get on the bus, the area along the sides, jut below the overhead luggage area looks like the disco floor of “Saturday night fever”. Red, green, blue and yellow squares light up randomly and all the windows are adorned with matching blinking Christmas lights and curtains with little blue ribbons. I joked to a young man beside him that this was like a disco – and he very seriously looked at me and said “of course! It’s to attract the customers”. I would have thought that being the one and only bus going to our destination would have been incentive enough. To be fair, once all the customers were lured in and we got going, the lights were off.
Next came the bus from Savannakhet to Pakse. That one was a fossil. Creaking and with all the ironwork exposed. But it did have fans on the ceiling and it was absolutely huge inside. They don’t make them like that anymore.
Then there are the VIP buses. VIP buses do not stop for passengers on the road. This is largely because they are filled with foreigners already. Of course that was in the North. In the South there are no foreigners. They have all gone to Vietnam or Thailand. So much so, that to get from Pakse to Tadlo I had to hire my own private tuk tuk.
Can the South be less developed than the North I asked myself before believing it to be impossible. Yes, it can is the answer.
It’s beautiful, untouched; and very, very poor. It is not Africa only because there is water everywhere and nature is bountiful and lush but people truly have nothing. Kids run around naked, thankfully playing and being kids. People live in one room huts. Pigs, goats, dogs and cows are everywhere the people are. Mud is everywhere. Yet people smile and greet you everywhere. Not to try and sell you something but to say hello. Even if they do try to sell you something they only ask you once and take whatever you will give as an answer with the same smile. Kids have their picture taken just to see the result and explode in laughter. It’s not the lack of goods that shocks me. It’s the lack of options. What could they possible dream of growing up to be. What is it with this North and South divide that it is so consistent across the world?
Tonight I am sleeping under a pink mosquito net, in a hut on stilts over water, in a village right next to waterfalls surrounded by coffee plantations. It’s great and I absolutely love it! But, only because I don’t have to do it everyday, for the rest of my life.
