Holy shit.
This is my first journal documentation, written or on the PDA since our last day in Bangkok on the morning of January 11, 2008. It's now 15:45 BKK time and I made it into Laos. 7 days and almost a full beard later.
Karrie and I are currently staying at a guest house (GH) on the main western road of Luang Prabang that hugs the river. I'm sitting on the semi private second floor veranda with a pen, large Beer Lao, and a lit local cigarette, looking over a riverside restaurant and peering through a row of palm and papaya trees at the Mighty Mekong River only a stone's throw away.I dig this place...and so do the other couple who just crossed the small road to inquire about rooms after seeing me up here chilling like a villain. Sorry kids, no room at the inn, too bad so sad.
inhale exhale...ahhh.
although its not really a word, "ahhh" is the simplest way I can express my initial sentiment towards my experience so far.
Our river taxi crossed the Mekong from Chiang Khong to Huay Xie on the afternoon of January 15. Chiang Khong was an 8 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.
I've been to Thailand before. Even though the northern towns are new to me, the country's commercial environment with it's brand name landmarks such as 7-11 and Starbucks makes it too easy to acclimatise.
Laos is different. Standing ankle deep in the dry riverbed sand of Chiang Khong staring eastward I see the Laos shore just one cigarette away. I actually felt different as I was now looking at a new border, that divides Thailand and Laos, and familiar to the unfamiliar, now I'm on vacation.
I was sweating. But in addition to the unforgiving rays of the siamese sun, I realized that it wasn't just a mess of unneeded clothes that I left in the Drop Inn in BKK. After madly unzipping both packs and sifting through the guts of clothes and gear, I failed to locate the passport photos the LP told me I needed to get into this formerly socialist country. To add chili to the pad thai, and speaking of LP, the LP Philippines housing the photos was gone too. fuck - they are gonna shut the door on me, or try to extort something stupid from me. Only one way to find out, so we crossed the river anyway. Plus, not trying would possibly guarantee that we don't get seats on tomorrows boat to Luang Prabang and wwe'd have to stay at the border searching for a passport photo booth of some kind.
We land, grab our bags, and make our assault to the top of the 30 m hill to the checkpoint. Considering the incline, there might as well be a wat up here too.
The border check comprised of two sets of windows. The first set contained a few office workers and a emotionless man sitting in his cave of an office, mouldy paint dying on the walls, and what looked like a poor soul being "questioned". Turns out it was Ellen from Sweden - probably because she mentioned earlier that she was planning to stay for a period longer than the standard two weeks. Once you get the stamp from this guy you proceed to the next set of windows.
In the second set of windows, sat a group of Laotian border guards stewing in their box doing the document check / staring you down routine. They were all dressed in military greens, but if you look closely you'll probably see the uniforms are all held together with red tape.
Karrie proceeds to the first set and does the border dance - fill out stuff, find passport, find money, get stamp go to the second set of windows and repeat. She inquired for me and luckily my handy photocopy of my passport has a usable photo. Welcome to Laos.
Rule #1 - photocopy your passport
Choosing not to ooohh and ahhh too long at the Laotian visa stamp collection in my passport, we grabbed the gear and bolted up another incline to the main road.
Immediately we found the BAP guesthouse / restaurant. You take a step down from the road into the sunken porch area. We pass some stone dining tables on a patio made of the same stuff. To the right is the wide bar which as it turns out is also the reception area.
At first glance it seemed like there was a studious troll woman's head sitting on top of the bar. But the woman behind the bar (sitting on a stool apparently) was obviously the captain of this ship after two seconds of talking with her...
