Departure date from Luang Nam Tha: June 3. We returned to the bus station
bright and early that morning, and when we went to purchase tickets, we
were told to "Sit. Five minutes." Okay, so we sat and waited until 8:30am on
the dot. When the long hand hit 6, we jumped up and purchased out tickets -
the Dutch couple after us didn't manage to get seats which seemed curious to us.
But as we approached our bus, thanks to the lending finger of a sitting man, we realized that all of the locals who wanted to travel on this fine
Sunday morning had risen and arrived early in order to claim their seats. We
passed our packs up to a young fellow straddling the bus's roof rack, who added
our luggage to "the pile" and tied everything down. After two and a half
months in China, some 70 local and long-distance buses later, and only a single
encounter with A foreigner on them in all this time, our first bus in Laos
was a third full of 'em. We were definitely on the well-worn track through
Laos...somehow, my seat happened to be in the very back row, left-most
corner, and the only seat in the entire bus to have a permanently
fized-shut window. The bus was already beyond its capacity and a family of five was
my company in the back row. During the hour's wait for the bus to fill up (if
you could believe there was room at all), we watched as the Dutch couple
made it on, and, in fact, 4 other foreigners and 3 locals joined us as well.
Short - very short - plastic chairs for children were passed to the back of the aisle and "the leftovers" filed in for a bumpy ride. As this was being organized, a "disagreement" erupted between an Aussie and a local woman who had seated her children on top of the Aussie's things which were meant to indicate that the seats were already taken. Having been influenced by the Chinese's curiosity for anything loud, I craned my neck over the seat infront of me trying to find out what was going on. Of course, the Aussie woman tried to communicate to the woman that she had bought tickets and showed her the seat numbers. The local woman just stared her down, wearing a determined smirk on her face and her children sat silently and patiently. Meanwhile, the Aussie's husband, "Andrew," stood outside eating a ball of sticky rice in a plastic bag, completely uninterested and most likely the non-confrontational type, and left the arguing to his wife. The local woman ignored the Aussie, and as frustrations built over her stubbornness, the Aussie began speaking to the children, telling them, "Isn't your mother just silly...don't you just wish she'd stop being so ridiculous?" Not once did the Aussie consider that this was just how things worked in Laos, and fought incredibly hard to reclaim these seats at the front of the bus. Eventually, the bus driver was summoned at the Aussie's request and the problem was more or less sorted. The children were made to sit on top of the engine, which was a large raised platform with sort corners where hand luggage is usually placed and when tight for space,
people are placed.
A space was created for the original "Space-Taker" by the family sitting at the back with me when they were thoughtful enough to send their two
children to the engine platform as well. And I had the good fortune of having her sit next to me. She was angry, resentful, and very upset. I kept to myself on
this one, and became well-acquainted with the window next to me on the 7 hour ride. I had about two-thirds of my seat to myself, as the man next to
Space-Taker was rather large but also rather kind, and things only became more cramped when Space-Taker went to the front of the bus 2 hours in,
collected her son, and brought him to the back to her seat. And her space-taking skills didn't stop at this new action; everytime I went to
move my arm from behind her elbow or my knee from under her son's leg, she would fill the space and I was oftentimes left with my shoulder squished up to
my neck which made my straight arm jut awkardly in front of me, or if I managed to push my arm back into the stolen space, it became as good as paralysed,
but at least my spine would be straight in this position. Her son was not so awful, when his head wasn't sloping down his mother's arm and onto my
boob, but eventually she resolved to shove him between her legs so that her legs ended up invading the foot-wide space between her and the window that was
home to my legs. Luckily I was deeply distracted with thoughts of writing, so much so that I rarely noticed the discomfort once we were all settled. Space-Taker left us part-way through the ride, taking her 4 suitcases, 2
bags, and 2 children with her. The large man slid over next to me and invited his daughter, who was sitting on the engine at the front of the
bus, back to join us all in the back row. For the first part of the second leg of the journey, I found myself squished up against the window in a
half-sleep, half-wake state (though intending to sleep) with a middle-aged man cuddled
up to me and his head rolling biasedly towards the left.
Later on, and at her father's urging, the daughter, a shy 12-year-old with a mature face and thick black hair trailing her spine all the way to the
small of her back, slowly moved an open packet of cookies into my peripheral. I looked at the packet, I looked at her, then at her father, next to me, and
both of them nodded their heads and gestured with a free hand each for me to take a cookie. My immediate reaction was to refuse the offer, which I said
with a smile on my face, thinking that it indicated to them that I was fine, thank you, not hungry, but thank you for the offer. However, immediately
after refusing the cookie, I thought of how shy the girl was and how my refusal at her stepping out of her shell and into foreign territory
probably didn't boost her confidence. I also probably put too much thought into it, but in the end, I regretted not taking the cookie.
There were thunder showers along the way, and even a close call when lightening hit a telephone pole on the opposite side of the road as we
passed it, but our arrival at Luang Prabang's northern bus station (that resembled an unpaved, rural gas station) was a dry one nonetheless. That's
what the rainy season is here: small requests for intense spats of heavy rain that are met with the immediate approval by the clouds. And within
half-an-hour it has rained a centimetre, cleared up, we're back to 30 degree heat, and the roads are dry again.
We joined the Dutch couple in a tuk-tuk into town who were returning to Luang Prabang for the second time, which funnily enough didn't affect the
price per person, but at least this couple knew where the town's cheaper guesthouses were located. It was dark, but already I could sense an
atmosphere about Luang Prabang that I liked...we booked ourselves into a new guesthouse located down one of the many narrow streets, only wide enough
for the likes of tuk-tuks and two lanes of motorcycles, that branches off of the main street.
The next day, we were eager to see Luang Prabang. As one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sights, Luang Prabang has managed to maintain its colonial
architecture which remains intermingled with countless Buddhist temples. The Lao people speak French, and cafes and baguettes are as common as Coke and
7-Eleven in North America, but most importantly, you can find good cheese here which, as everyone knows, is essential to one's quality of life. Once
amongst the white-washed buildings going grey in the corners and with their wooden shutters, the tropical flora, and the French atmosphere, I found
myself only a cane, a one-eyed spectacle, khaki pants and a monkey on my shoulder away from being transferred into 1950's Laos during French occupation.
We stayed for 3 days and did nothing more than visit and revisit the night market, enjoy the cuisine, and worry about the fact that I had no money.
Of course, we hadn't prepared to visit South East Asia and here, Interac is only a thing of the future...we sussed it all out but I was a tad
threadbare by the time I came into my Visa inheritance. We went to exchange our books at a cafe, but mistook the "exchange" as meaning an "exchange" - what it actually meant was "exchange your book for one of ours but still pay
three-quarters of the price" so we exchange our books at another location where at least the money we paid would be going towards an orphanage
outside of town.
I do lie a little bit...we set out on our first day to wander the town and, not uncommonly, got talked into joining a collection of tourists in a
tuktuk on their way to "The Waterfall." Kuang Si Waterfall was paradise, in a nutshell. We walked and worked our way up from the bottom pools up to the
proper waterfall. Jessica leapt into the waterfall while I watched with a couple of locals and motioned to them that she was crazy by driving my
finger in circles near my ear. As for me, I was much more content with the rope swing and small waterfall jumps at one of the lower pools and we
easily made an afternoon of it (and had we not been so skint, we would have returned every day that we were in Luang Prabang).
While most people seek Luang Prabang out for its activities, such as kayaking and elephant riding, over the course of the three days that we
were there, we didn't hear any remotely good reviews about these activities and so decided not to waste our money here. Instead, we spent one hour of one
glorious afternoon treating ourselves to a foot massage. I know, why did I take the chance...why did I put my body at risk AGAIN...they're feet. So
we forked out the $3 and braced ourselves in some, if I might add, comfortable chairs. To sum up, if the man did not have a face, I would have fallen for
him right then and there. While I was busy thanking Buddha for blessing me with two feet (twice the pleasure), I realized that this was a whole meal
deal and didn't stop at just the feet. They massaged our knees - it feels surprisingly good, try it sometime - and sent us off only after giving us
a quick body massage! If I could have floated, I would have - my head was already in the clouds and I didn't want my clean feet to have to meet with
the insufferably dirty sidewalk.
The evening saw us to the town's night market again, but on this night, our last night in Luang Prabang, I experienced one of the highlights of my
time spent there. Several of the stalls sell these massive slippers, they're bulky but unique. At one of these such stalls, we encountered a young
Aussie lad picking over the lot in an attempt to walk away with a gift for his niece and himself. We advised him on what would be suitable for an 8-month
baby girl, and as he moved on to select a pair for himself, my eyes fixed on this little 7-month-old baby covered in white patches who belonged to the
woman running the stall. The crouched woman was preoccupied with business and was struggling to hold the snot-filled baby who was clearly
uncomfortable on her mother's knee. Naturally, I sauntered her way to say "hello!" to Baby and the woman handed her over to me. For anyone who
knows me, this was just heaven for me...we had seen so many cute babies over the past 4 months, and because I'm me, it pained me not to be able to cuddle
them, and NOW, I had been handed a baby to cuddle. What's more was that this baby was just stuffed to the brim with cold and had an awful cough. As
soon as I held her, I could feel an intense, feverish heat radiating from her head and realized that the white patches were herbal patches and had been
dotted on her forehead, cheeks and chest in the hope that they would have some healing effect on her chest cold. As if I wasn't emotional enough at
the chance to hold the poor thing, she was very sick, extremely tired, and, since mom was working at 10pm, she was up too. She lay on my chest for 10
minutes before her mom had sealed the deal with the Aussie, and I reluctantly gave the baby back to her. (And then bought a pair of slippers
out of pity for the baby). She was grateful and so was I.
Naively, we had booked our bus tickets to the next destination, Vang Vieng, through one of the many travel agencies lining the main strip of Luang
Prabang. When we arrived at the bus station the morning of our departure we were enlightened with the Laos rules on transportation and I shall do the
same for you, reader: if there are enough people on the bus to justify making the journey, then the bus will leave; if not, then it will be
cancelled and the riders must wait for the next, supposed, departure time. Our 10:30am bus, which would have had us arriving when there was just an
ounce of daylight remaining, moved to 1:00pm and since this bus happened to be an "express" bus, we were obliged to pay an additional fee.
The bus wound around the mountain sides for nearly 7 hours with the only disruption during an otherwise peaceful (and almost normal) ride being the
occassional sound of the woman sitting behind us choking on her own vomit. Luckily, her choicest puke landing pad was the ground outside of the bus
which was accessed both through her window and by foot whenever it came to a halt. A plastic bag rang in at a close second for things to vomit into and
onto, and her baby daughter even got into the spirit and spewed her song for all who could hear it...
We'd intended on arriving in Vang Vieng town proper during the day to orient ourselves then travel to the village of Phoudindaeng from there, but since
our arrival was much later than expected, we arranged to be dropped off at the village on the way into town in the dark. On a dirt road. That we were
unfamiliar with. It was a good enough idea at the time and only caused us "some" confusion. In this village, a man named Mr. Thi had established an
Organic Farm and was always in need of volunteers, so we planned to work on the farm during the day and teach English classes in the evening. A
community centre, youth centre, and school had been built here seven years prior in the hope to unify the three ethnic groups that make up
Phoudindaeng. All of the community projects, including the English classes, were created and funded by a Korean group and effectively run by Mr. Thi,
who tries his best to keep volunteers streaming into the Organic Farm to, most importantly, provide English lessons for the village's children.
We got straight to work the following day doing exactly was was requested of us by the kind-hearted farmhand leader, Ong-Gel, who at 4'11" (there's
nothing wrong with that Aunty Mandy...) was mostly cute. Though not the most glamorous of tasks, the weeding had to be done, and while I wondered why
a) I was weeding in a foreign country and not at home where my parents could use the help, and b) why I was so slow at it, we suddenly heard an
eruption of squealing. We turned our heads over to the sty, just beyond our patch of pineapple bushes and "good plants" according to Ong-Gel, we saw another
farmhand, Pie, dragging one of the older piglets along the length of the farm towards another sty by its back legs.
So it was back to some good old fashioned fun. We ran over to the pig sty where there were still three piglets to be moved and if you couldn't have
guessed, Jess was eager to get her hands dirty. Forgive me, but I didn't quite see the appeal in getting my hands dirty with pig crap and took up
my camera to record the activity instead.
After a swim in the river and a quiet afternoon of picking "bad things" out of the ground, we were invited by Pie to feed the farm's 6 baby goats
their dinner. That day we'd been on the farm with a young French graduate, Jislain who nominally became France, and the largest man I've ever seen, Graham
who's 6'8" stature won him the very appropriate title of Mr. Big. Not surprisingly, the boys were not so keen to feed the goats, but France
joined us on the 5-foot-high stilt goathouse nonetheless while Graham leaned on the floor from below.
Rory, a 19-year-old Brit who'd been teaching the English classes for 3 weeks when we met him but didn't know where the "farm" part of the farm was,
having not yet set so much as a foot on it, and had only just learned the name of a Korean woman, Young-In, who had been at the farm for 10 months
and accompanied him to the classes every night. It wasn't that he was entirely in his own world, but Rory was also volunteering some of his time editing
English articles and letters for an organization fighting child prostitution in Laos. This meant that he spent much of his time cycling between his
work in town during the day and Phoudindaeng for the evening English classes.
The English classes were split into two groups. The first hour was devoted to children aged 3-13. We happened to have arrived on Fun Fridays and so
played "Thumbs Up, Seven Up!" (talk about the good times...), but normally, the lesson would be taught by one of the older children from the second
group, aged 14-19, who were on rotation and would spend the class having the children recite the letters of the alphabet. These classes were voluntary,
and so the throngs of kids who turned up at school every night after either a day of work on the land, at home, or at school if they were so lucky,
had me thinking.
Of their own volition, the children were attending the classes in the hope that their possession of an old language with a new purpose would give
them access to a better future. However, many of the older kids cannot afford to go to university as their families still need hands at home, so I'm hoping
that someone from somewhere will create a scholarship program at some point.
I left the classes with such a strong feeling of community that I inquired with Young-In the next morning at the Community Centre, at the Saturday
study group that the children had organized themselves to review their week's lessons before beginning the next ones (and explain the lessons in
Lao to those who didn't understand), about the project. She asked Jess and I if we could correct afew written pieces she'd completed for the project
and left us to pick over her work before we set out to the farm for the afternoon, where we weeded again and made goat cheese at the end of the
day.
The Youth Centre provided space for community planning and an area for the local girls to sew and teach sewing on the weekends in an attempt to
maintain this traditional art and to make some profit. The Community Centre housed a library on its left, and a computer room on its right. Among the
activities organized by some of the older youths of Phoudindaeng was Saturday dance classes, which included both traditional Lao and hip-hop.
We were invited to watch or join in, depending on how confident we were feeling, and were instructed to come between 5:00 and 6:30 - Laos time,
like an elastic bank...but we arrived to empty grounds. We played badminton instead, as we waited for the kids to show up. We'd planned to move into
town that night for a few days and had arranged to meet Mr. Big, France, and Rory at an Indian restaurant there. When I rolled my ankle quite badly, we
decided that we ought to head into town and I ought to wrap it in a liquid bandaid, but just as we were leaving - okay, we were crouched
inquisitively over a Timon & Pumba-type grub - Pie leaned over the makeshift fence behind us and held out two pieces of cake, one for each of us. Pie was always
laughing, we're not quite sure at what, but we're quite sure why. We thanked him for the cake as we passed him on our way back to the farm to pack our
bags, and our waves were responded to with a one-armed frontstroke swimming action that gestured for us to come join him as he rang in the weekend
with the country's unbragworthy breed of alcohol, Lao Lao.
Sadly, we were in a rush and declined his offer, but determined before we tuk-tuked into town that we must return, if not for the friends we'd made,
or for the mulberry pancakes and goat cheese sandwiches, to finish weeding what we'd started on the farm. We're ridiculous...it's funny what a
little hot air and a whole lot of cheap whiskey will do to you.
It had been a clean week which became dirty as soon as we arrived in Vang Vieng. Being that it was low-season, we'd been guilted into staying at one
of the farm's employee's guesthouse a 5-minute walk out of town. That part was true, and Bob, who'd spent 12 years living in Toronto during some
unstable years in Laos, kept his promise to give us a reduced rate which met the rates of some of the guesthouses we'd found in town just to have our
business.
We had scrub-down, rush-job showers and pulled the "Lao time" excuse when we finally did arrive at the Indian Restaurant. During his time in Vang
Vieng, Rory had managed to make acquaintance with an exceptionally short Lao local, Addy, the owner of a grafitti-tavern with a desperately skewed pool table
and amusingly tall bar which, if you stood on the other side of the bar, you were barely able to see Addy's eyes as he mixed drinks from behind the
counter. This tall bar required tall swivel chairs, of course, and so Jessica employed her previous climbing experience and I called on my
high-jumping past, hoping to land on the "soft stuff" coming down (I know, high jump was a poor choice for a borderline midget but I was always a
lofty dreamer). After suffering a few too many biased losses at pool, we decided to play away from the table and when Rory received a bottle of Lao whiskey
after requesting another beer, we went to the high whiskey-flooded hills in Addy's and drank up before closing. Onto our second bottle of whiskey
between us all and in need of somewhere to sit and sip on it, we meandered over a bridge crossing the river - I remember it on the way back - and
took up temporary residence in a small, open, bamboo stilthouse housing a few hammocks with some new British friends we'd made, Craig and Dan, on our
way through town as the bars closed. Jessica walked out with one of Graham's freak-sized sandals on one foot and her own on the other, at some point
trading with him again for the walk home which WAS long. It wasn't an easy 5-minutes, I'll tell you that much.
We'd been fortunate, by this point, not to have encountered a single drop of rain during our stay in Vang Vieng, so we'd made a plan to enjoy the sun
while it was around and go tubing down the river on Sunday. By then, we'd amassed a mid-sized crew for the day's event, and agreed to meet at the
Simpson's bar.
Other than for the tubing, Vang Vieng is known for its TV bars. On the small kilometre strip that constitutes the "town" - in fact, along the 300 m of
it that is remotely interesting (translation: there are a few restaurants, bars, and cafes) there sits 3 bars that play reruns of Friends around the
clock, competing for hungry viewers, and one that plays Simpsons, strictly. Though these programs make for easy listening, and I admit, for the first
time I was sucked into the Friends plot and got stuck for 3 hours one morning waiting for Jessica, it's just not justifiable to lie on a soft
bench lined with pillows placed there specifically for your, the customer's, comfort and watch Friends while you're in Laos. I spoke to one friend,
Caroline, who stayed for 2 meals and watched for 12 hours. It's just evil...
So we breakfasted, rented out tubes, and tuk-tuked, tubes atop, back to the Farm, which just so happened to be the "drop-off" point. It was 11am, and
already we were mildly concerned about the small amount of time we could now afford to be on the river. The 3km stretch would take approximately 3
hours to ride if it weren't for the countless bars and rope swings that distract happy tubers innocently on their way downstream to a peaceful end and
sober sleep. One Beer Lao = free jumps at the first bar, which was a zip-line jump into the river so we had a few gos before floating 50 metres downstream
into the bamboo pole arms of the next bar owner. Accustomed to the endless shipments of drunken tubers, many bars have their people stand at the
water's edge or in the water bearing 10-foot bamboo poles which the rider wraps their water-logged fingers around in order to be pulled ashore. They
take the tube, hand you a drink, and convince you to jump off a 15-foot high platform.
The first few jumps were bearable by my fearful standards, and over a game of volleyball, a few drinks, and a half-decent (we're getting closer,
folks) hot dog, I gathered my nerves for the "Last Bar" where an enormous, 30-foot high rope swing awaited our inevitable arrival. It was inevitable because
there were Buckets of Fun - a fine concotion of half a bottle of whiskey, Red Bull, and Coke that arrives at your thirsty lips in, quite literally,
a bucket - for only $2.50. We did NOT need dragging in on this one. Jessica took the first jump with Graham, and let me tell you: you have never seen
a giant jump so gracefully...there was vitually no splash...France and I jumped next and while I let a blood-curdling scream most of the way, it
was actually exhilarating. So much so, that I jumped two more times! As the darkness encroached on our fun - Buckets of Fun - a mud fight ensued and
there wasn't clear eye or a dry eye about following that one. What were we thinking going up against Mr. Big?? But Jess was the one who really
challenged him. When he threw sand at her, she threw it back harder; if he gave her a dead-leg, she gave him one back, and vice versa. It was clear
enough in my dizzy, sand-packed head that there was some serious flirting going on...when Jess will fight you, you know you've got a place in her
heart ;)
France felt it too, and when the time came to make some headway for the river's end, still an hour-and-a-half away, I left Jess in Graham's
trustworthy and frighteningly large hands and under France's semi-sober, watchful eye since I was already on my tube and floating. I had believed
that we were all going when Graham picked up a tube and yelled, "Okay, let's go!" but as I floated downstream I spotted him back up at the bar and
there was little I could do so I joined the hand-holding line with Dan, Craig, and Liz and we sang our way through the dark for an hour to the river's edge.
It wasn't the convenient end, the one that brings you back to into town, but the mosquitoes were getting ravenous and we were starting to chill in the
water.
