The Goings and Comings

A post-Cambodian update. I'm in Laos and up until yesterday it was hardly as a-MAY-zing as everyone had built it up to be. After finally leaving the other tourists behind I've gotten a little slice of normal life in-country.

The problem with Laos, the biggest problem really, is that it is sitting on top of Thailand. Bangkok, the venemous mouth of southeast Asia, gobbles up tourists and spits them out in all directions. It just so happens that if you are touring, the most practical route to take starts in Bangkok, goes to Chang Mai in the north, crosses the border into Laos at Huy Xai, follows a river to Luang Prabang, then a road to Vang Vieng and Vientiane, and eventually takes one of several paths to Vietnam. Most of the people on this circuit are young Europeans on a post-college gasp for their last allowance of pure immaturity. Even in a green-and-red-uniformed communist country like Laos, the Gemini brothers of supply and demand ensure that these kids get what they want. And they want drugs.

At every guesthouse I've stayed at thusfar, Mary Jane is a permanent resident. It's really no way to travel. Don't get me wrong, if I was twenty I would be doing exactly as they - no doubt in my mind. But now, to me, it's a bit depressing. Yesterday in Vang Vieng (the self-proclaimed chill-out capital of Laos - and trust me, that's saying something because it's nearly impossible to not to chill out in this country) I arrived and walked out to the river. There they have a bunch of platforms and wooden beach chairs set out on the river bank. There are also floating platforms and innertubes connected to trees allowing you to float in place. Traditionally, people rent an innertube and get dropped off three kilometers upstream, then they float leisurely for several hours back into town. Along the way, children swim up to the floaters and sell them beer and hash and opium and whatever else these gap-year kids demand.

Well, apparently a group of people on the bank had made the trip, but after being retrieved from the river couldn't quite motivate themselves to get past the bank. I walked by and they narrowed their eyes at me and said, "hey" in the most energy efficient way possible. I felt like an apparition as seen by a group of paraplegics. I'm sure later they conferred with each other to confirm that I was indeed not a figment of their imaginations. Those kids looked like Trainspotting extras. I looked around. Everyone on the riverbank was either staring very deeply into space or trying in vain to make their lighter work. "Dude, let me see it." "Dude, it's just... the fire won't come out the end." "Whoa." "Yeah." I hope they're taking photos, because they sure as hell won't remember Laos first-hand.

I've had a fire under my ass since the Cambodian border, and thanks to the pristine state of the national roads here have been averaging 95km/hr across the country. Most of the south was very similar to Cambodia, thus delivering an unwanted familiarity that kept me from lingering. The north however is a different story. Vientiane is a nice city on the Mekong. The riverfront is crowded with pizza joints and expat bars, but around the market there are some really superb ghettos. The market itself is quite good too, bringing back fond memories of Vietnam. Unlike Cambodia, Laos has it's shit together.

A man named Goop at a motorcycle shop recommended to me an alternative route out of Vientiane. Although paved, the road lacked signage, and I quickly became lost. Being lost in Laos is a pleasure. It's so pastoral and lush. People are friendly and although nobody seems to speak English, they are pretty good about doing the sign language thing. I've had a couple funny incidents when asking for directions when my interogatee just didn't want to deal with me and just nodded yes to whatever I asked. "Ban Ka, that way," pointing. Yes. "Or THAT way," pointing in the opposite direction. Yes. "Ban Ka?" Yes. Okay. Next innocent villager please!

I don't think I ever found the right road, but I did manage to find the national highway again. Because the roads are so twisty my motorbike is the fastest vehicle on the road. I can tell you that this is a very good thing. The last thing I want is some big bus clammoring to pass me around a blind corner. Traffic is relatively light and the farther out I get the fewer vehicles I see.

After Vientiane I stopped for a night in the chill out town of Vang Vieng. They had a nice market with lots of weird stuff for sale. Gophers and live bats and stuff. They also had a decent bookstore. I bought War and Peace. I'm kind of on this Russian novelists theme. War and Peace is a burly book - it's got more chapters than the Jehova's Witnesses. It's a pretty good read though - sort of in the style of the modern night-time television drama series.

The road out of Veng Vieng is spectacular. It snakes between huge mountains and emerald rivers. It climbs, reaching up to tiny villages whose thatch huts are perched on the road, above striking drop-offs, like birds on a wire. It's rare for foreigners to make this trip on a motorbike so the villagers are usually pleasantly surprised to see me. The mountains and the ravines are a bit like the most extreme parts of Yosemete. Then add these villages. Every 10km or so they appear, each one like an oasis, seemingly so remote, but really just a short hop along a long chain of neighboring hamlets. The men seem fairly well armed. I hope this is a holdover from the bygone days of banditry, but I doubt someone would shoulder the extra burden of a rifle if they didn't feel they needed to. Shit, maybe they were the bandits.

The memory card on my camera is full. I snapped so many photos on the way. Every photo felt like the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Then I turn a bend and find myself stunned at another show of natural beauty. These are the sorts of photos that really suck too. Like, you had to be there - it was majestic!

Today, I'm in a town called Phonsavan. It's claim to fame is a mysterious archeological find called Plain of Jars. I don't know why they call it that - it's just a group of empty fields with twenty or thirty huge stone jars tossed about. They don't know how the ancient people got the jars from the quarry where they were built to the fields and they don't know what the jars were for. Since my track record with local guides is dismal I opted to guide myself. The jars are located on three separate sites, but I heard that the most remote one was also the most interesting. I had a small map, an inset of a larger map really, and I had a desire, and so I was off.

Let me say something about maps. What is left out of a map is just as important as what is put in. For example, let's say that this road to the jars had about a million small, unmarked roads branching off of it in both directions. If the map only shows the road that goes to the jars, then I have no idea which of the stealth roads is mine. And what if there is a huge lake. If it's not on the map, then either - it's just not on the map, or I've gone so far that I'm past the boundary of my map. There were literally a twenty turns needed to make it to the Plain of Jars. Two of them had signs. My powers of dead reckoning and a homing-pigeon-like sense of direction brought me to my destination with very little pain. I had heard that the jars were a bit of a let down, but I thought they were quite nice. To reach them one must walk about a kilometer through a beautifully intracate set of stepped rice fields and grazing land. A very rickety bridge made entirely of bamboo and baling wire aids the approach. Finally, the jars are very understated. They are big and quiet. Some people speculate that they were burial vessels, and based on their solemn demeaner and their location overlooking a wide bountiful valley I would concur.

On the map, the road was a loop. By continuing in the same direction I would soon reach the paved road into town. Apparently I forgot to activate my powers of navigation. One wrong turn and ten minutes later I was on a bumpy cattle track getting lanced by razor like brush growing slowly into a canopy above me. Every hundred meters or so I would come upon another road. Then I would make a decision. Does this new road seem bigger or smaller. All I needed to do was find continually bigger roads until I was on a paved highway. The problem is that roads start big and end up small. Some roads get so small they disappear entirely. Some roads look like roads but are actually driveways. Some roads are not roads at all - they are drainage paths or animal tracks. It was 2pm and I figured that the worst thing that could happen was that I'd get really far from where I wanted to be, but I knew I would eventually get out. So I just kept going. Through rice fields. Through a little pine forest. Through mud. Deep mud - that sucked. I talked to an ox driver for a while. I talked to what I assumed was some sort of Laotian girlscout. When I was in the mud I talked to Jesus and asked him to deliver me unto solid land (which unto me he did). Finally, climbing a very steep mountain (this can't be right) I stopped and asked a stooped old man which way to town. He pointed one way. Then he thought a moment and pointed the other way. I thought maybe he was senile, but in fact what he was saying was that it didn't matter. I was so far off that any direction would get me closer. Kop jai lai lai! Thank you very much. The old timer grinned, obviously proud of his last remaining black tooth.

Tomorrow I'm heading out of the guidebook. Should be fun. I've been waking up at 5:30am lately, getting on the road by 7am with quick stop at the market for some morning noodles. By 2pm I'm road weary. Tomorrow, around noon, I'll start looking for a guest house in the small villages I pass through. It should take two days on the unpaved mountain roads running near the China border to get back to Luang Prabang. I'm hoping Vieng Thong has a place for me. If not then maybe Hong, or Homthong or even Thenchong. Can't some hong give a brother a crib?