Life on the Road: Laos

[PhillyB]

If anyone is interested in traveling, as I know a few are, here's a blog post I wrote about my trip through Laos, part travelogue and part commentary on the lifestyle of backpacking. at the beginning of this particular blog i'd just finished a several-day journey rafting down the mekong river.

(pictures are sadly lacking because i have yet to find a computer that allows me to plug an SD card directly in, and i dont have a cord for my camera.)

if you manage to stick with it through the end let me know what you think!

[PhillyB]

My time in Laos was everything I love about international travel. I have found it almost impossible to recreate the spirit of my first venture overseas; it was wanderlust at its finest, it was raw discovery, it was freedom and joy. It's like catching lightning in a bottle - I'm at a different place in my life now, I've grown in many ways, and endless wandering alone is no longer an option. But my journey across Laos, even if for the briefest of moments, brought back that spirit.

Backpacking - you can't beat it. You really can't. When I first heard the term years ago, prior to my solo journey to Australia, I thought the term was limited to camping trips in the mountains, a verb to describe treks from point A to point B. I found out quite differently... it's more of a lifestyle. In most countries backpacking is a term used to describe the quasi-nomadic community of international travelers, usually between 18 and 30 years of age, far flung from the borders of their homes and familiarity, out exploring a world larger than their own.

The beauty of backpacking is its simplicity. Niceties are appreciated rather than expected; four-dollar-per-night dorm rooms in hostels are preferred to expensive hotels and luxurious boutiques. Luang Prabang was no exception. Our longboat docked against the shore, a plank was extended from the bow, and the passengers disembarked. A smaller group of us headed for Spicy Laos Backpackers, an upstart hostel that was rumored to be fantastic. Blake and Anney (my Australian mates from the boat) and I got a room for three dollars apiece... hard to beat that if you're on a mission to save money. The room was spare and the beds stiff, air conditioning non-existent and the fan broken. Slummin' it with the masses.

Luang Prabang itself was beautiful - an eclectic mix of old French villas from the colonial days and magnificent temples rising above the trees - but it was shockingly quiet. Much of this was due to the weather (by my second day in Luang Prabang I had not seen the sun in six days) but also the fact that, well, the Lao are some of the most lackadaisical people I've ever met. There is no point to rushing; you'll get where you need to go. There's a circulating joke that LPDR (Laos - People's Democratic Republic) means "Laos - Please Don't Rush." It's a philosophy widely adopted.

I found out, much to my disappointment, that one-way motorcycle rentals from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in the south were impossible to find. I had to alter my plans (recapturing that old wandering spirit, I suppose) and bought a plane ticket instead. My second night in Luang Prabang was to be my last.

And it was a good one. The hostel had filled up to its limit, and the owners announced they were throwing a barbecue. 25,000 kip (about 3 USD) bought unlimited plates of roasted chicken, vegetables, noodles, and a rather foul mixture of brackish rice whiskey and coke. I found I could swallow it if I shielded my nostrils from the odor first. The rest of the food was delicious and needed no such diluting.

The backpackers, of course, were what made it fun. At any given point my table was accompanied by a pair of Canadians, a couple of Brits, my Aussie friends, an Israeli guy, and an Irishman. The other table was English and German and Austrian with a handful of Lao tossed in for good mix. This is one thing particularly endearing about the backpacking community: the constant influx of difference. Different people, different upbringings and backgrounds and countries, all bound together by one unifying ideology - rejection of materialism and acceptance of the open road.

Nationalistic trivialities have no place in backpacking. It was a source of wonder among our chatter that each individual seemed to be slightly embarrassed at his country of origin. "We Brits are famous for being wankers abroad," stated one guy. "Always expecting everyone to speak English."

"Australians are the same way," agreed Blake.

"You never meet American travelers," I said. "We're all too xenophobic, few of us speak more than one language and we're not very well liked."

Piped in another: "You think that's bad... try telling people you're from Israel!"

And that's the beauty of it all. No one minds. Stupid stereotypes are rejected, and people are judged for the content and the strength of their individual character - not by their government or their race or their creed. Have you heard of the stereotype of French people laughing at people who try to speak French? Go backpacking. How about that Europeans hate Americans? Tell that to Germans and the Austrians and the Spanish when you go backpacking. (And they shave, too, and none of them stink.) How bout the "Americans and Canadians don't like each other" stereotype? I narrowly lost in the hostel's pool tournament's championship round to a guy from Montreal. High fives all around on the winning shot, and he split the prize - three free Laotian beers - between everyone there, myself included. We got along famously.

And music. This one resonates with me in particular. Every time I see a guitar I can't help but pick it up and play. One of the hostel's employees kindly let me take his guitar and jam on it for a while. Horrendously out of tune and lacking any real vocal talent I led the hostel in an impromptu sing-a-long session. We harmonized on Green Day's "Time of your Life"and bellowed out "She Hates Me"and everyone clapped to the beat of "Hotel California" and "Under the Bridge" and "Yellow Submarine" (even though I couldn't remember the chords and it was a big muddy mess.) Music is powerful, it is a unifying tonic - take ten people in a room, traveling separately, having never met before, and then throw in one guitarist with a small acoustic and a couple of basic songs that everyone knows, and suddenly everyone's best friends, singing along and trading stories of roads traveled and ones ahead.

[PhillyB]

So it was with some sadness that I left the next morning, bidding farewells to community away from home which had, for a few days, been mine to enjoy. My plane to Vientiane, a twin-engine turbo prop, leaped off the runway and roared south. I was a little geeked out - riding propeller-driven aircraft was a bit of a novelty, and after countless jets my attention was riveted to the throaty drone outside my window. The weather, too, was halfway decent, and through sparse cloud cover I could see the muddy Mekong winding through the hills.

My arrival in Laos' capital was uneventful, and I caught an overpriced taxi into town. I booked a guesthouse room for two nights, and went off in search of a motorcycle to rent. I hadn't been able to bike cross country but I was determined to do some touring of the southern hills anyway. After finding that the city's two most reputable dealers either had stopped renting them or were out of everything but massive dirtbikes, I located a small cardboard sign pointing down an alley announcing moto rental.

Cardboard sign? This should've been my first warning. "We're out of Japanese bikes - all we have is Chinese. Not very good." There was my second warning. "I'll take it," I told her, paying 50,000 kip (6 bucks) for the day's rental. I learned briefly how to drive the thing - the shifting mechanism was a bit different from what I'd ridden before - and then plunged out into the city streets.

I quickly discovered that I was driving the worst motorcycle in Laos. The battery was dead, so I had to kick-start the thing. And it wouldn't stay running in neutral, for some reason, so I had to put the key in the perfect condition (the starter was broken too) and kick it up to second gear (first gear wouldn't go past a tenth of a mile per hour) and pull back on the throttle so it wouldn't die when it started and THEN stomp down as hard as I could. After about ten times doing this the engine would roar to life, pop into gear, and lurch ahead, leaving me to hastily lurch onto the seat and get my bearings. In traffic this got a bit hairy.

I'm not done describing the bike. The body was full of holes, and the speedometer was broken. The mirrors had giant cracks in them and were barely usable - my neck would eventually get sore from constantly glancing behind me. The horn was broken (a big deal in Southeast Asia) and, perhaps worst of all, the front of the handlebars was adorned by a giant wire basket. Utterly humiliating - how could I possibly be taken seriously as a hardcore cross-country rough rider with that thing? My image was shot.

I took a jaunt through Vientiane for an hour or two, and discovered something else wrong - the gas gauge didn't work. The bike insisted I had a full tank of gas, even when I sputtered to a halt in some random village. Cows plied the dirt roads, and nobody spoke English. Using the best Lao I could muster I managed to find out that nobody had gas for sale and I'd have to hike to the station. After twenty minutes of walking, the first guy I'd asked about it zipped up on a bike and motioned for me to jump on. He had an empty water bottle. He drove me the rest of the way, I bought enough gas to fill it, and he drove me back, helped me fill it, and get the thing started. He refused payment, despite my insisting otherwise, and I drove away thankful for the simple generosity of the Laotian people.

I rose at dawn the next morning. Wearing long khaki pants and a long-sleeved shirt to fend away any rain or cold, I crept out the front door, spent ten minutes trying to start the bike, and finally roared out to the main road. The streets were virtually empty. I had little trouble navigating, as highway 13 North was the only big road in the area, the entire way north to Luang Prabang. I set my sights on Vang Vieng, a popular backpacker's region nestled against the mountains and a lazy river. It was 156 kilometers from Vientiane.

The trip there was uneventful, if painful. The bike's seat was definitely not meant for long distance travel, and I found my breaks became more and more frequent. My rear end went numb more than once and my shoulders, oddly positioned by my posture and grip of the bike, exploded in a pain eased only by gently rotating my arms and stretching. Wanting to preserve myself for the trip back, I stopped roughly every forty-five minutes. The scenery was what kept me from focusing too much on my bodily travails; the first half of the journey stretched across lowland farming territory. The second half wound, serpentine, up into the misty foothills. A good third of the journey was through hairpin curves and slippery drops and rises. The road was fraught with peril, between sudden rains that made everything slippery, massive potholes spotted at the last second, a bone-jarring punishment when they were seen too late, and massive, gravity-defying trucks barreling through the roads, taking up both lanes when often there was only one to begin with.

Arrival in Vang Vieng was joyous - partly because my body was exhausted, and partly because I was starving, but mostly because it was surrounded by humungous karst peaks. They rose like massive columns from the flat earth, vertical, no slight angles to reach them. Fog obscured the titanic fissures between them, rivers flowing at the bottom - truly stunning topography. I regretted that I had to leave so soon; I would love to have explored and done them justice with my camera.

I headed back. This time the rain came in droves, and I sped south, certain of my course and desiring to reach the fringe of blue sky ahead. I reached it and did not stop, except to occasionally take pictures, and roared ahead. My goal was going to be to try to stop only once on the journey home... a goal I knew would take a toll on my body, but I wanted to be back well before dark, and certainly early enough to drop the bike back off before the shop closed.

I dropped out of the mountains as a slight rain came, well ahead of schedule and feeling fine. Zipping through the mountain curves had been exhilarating, by far the most fun I'd had on a bike. I was enjoying the return of the rice patties when suddenly the rear wheel felt mushy and began skating wildly behind me. I slowed my speed and drifted to the side of the road. Sure enough, my tire was completely flat. I tried nursing the throttle, inching along the side of the road, but it was impossible. The back end yawed out to either side on the deflated rubber and steering was perilous. The bike was done, and I noted soberly that the roads were wet and my speed had been significant. Losing control was a very real possibility and the results would not have been pleasant.

[PhillyB]

I was in the middle of nowhere. I kicked the bike up on its mount and inspected the tire. I couldn't find anything wrong with it - no nails, puncture holes, or anything. There was definitely no fixing it myself. All I could do was wait for a truck to come along, flag it down, and pay someone to drive it into the nearest town where it could be fixed, or all the way back to Vientiane. I was weighing my options when I noticed someone waving at me from across the street. A middle-aged Laotian man was standing in front of the one building visible for miles. I pointing to my back tire and shrugged. He motioned me over. I eased the thing back onto the pavement and across the road, and as I pulled into his lot I spotted tires and brake equipment. My heart leapt - had I really broken down in front of a tire repair shop?

I had. He mounted my bike on its stands, popped the rear wheel off, and within five minutes had removed the puncturing object, located the leak on the tube, and glued a patch on. With a lighter he lit a chemical on top of the patch and it burned, melting and fusing to the tire. He threw it all back together and wheeled it out to the road. Enormously grateful, I opened my wallet to let him pick out how much he wanted. He had me by the horns; in my situation he could've charged something outrageous (and I honestly expected him to.) Instead he pulled out a 5,000 kip note and thanked me. It was only seventy-five cents.

Thanking him profusely (this was becoming a habit) I kicked the bike to life and took off south, refreshed and thankful - overjoyed, really - and thanked God for taking care of me in the situation. I was encouraged and invigorated, and (perhaps foolishly) ignoring the perils of my earlier encounter picked up a good bit of speed and sped south. I decided not to stop and ran the last 75 kilometers or so without a break, no small task on that horrendous seat. As I got closer shifting my position on the seat became more and more painful and I drove even faster, desperate to get home. I closed in on Vientiane and, thankful I was in Asia and therefore not subject to driving sanely, blasted through traffic like a Grand Theft Auto junkie (or a Thai teenager in Bangkok.) It was great fun. I weaved in and out of traffic, blasting between lanes of oncoming trucks and cattle, getting alternative stares and waves from the locals who had seldom seen foreigners (let alone ones that drove like locals.) At one point I blasted past a motorcycle cop. He laughed and waved me along. Why can't that happen in America?

Finally I screeched to a halt in front of the rental place and gingerly disembarked. My body was racked with pain. Back at the hotel I looked at myself in the mirror and barely recognized what I saw. My hair exploded from every direction of my scalp, and my face was covered in road dirt. My beard was caked with sweat and grime, my once-white shirt now a dingy shade of solid brown. My shoes and pants were equally adorned. I knew I was going to need to do laundry once I got to Cambodia; I was out of clean underwear, and, being a guy and therefore gross, I had relegated to flipping them inside out and doubling my supply.

I was dirty, I was sore, and I was exhausted, but I was joyously happy. This is my life. This is life on the road.

[Hawk]

awesome....sounds like so much fun, I am envious!

[PanthaSan]

Good writing!

I only have one question......no Russian Roulette Tournaments? :D

[thefuzz]

Sounds really cool man.

Have fun and be safe.

[sharkkiller]

Very interesting story. If you keep a journal or a blog about these travels, you may be able to sell it to a Travel mag or website. You have a natural talent for writing. Keep up the stories.

And watch out for the ladyboys over there. lol

[PhillyB]

ladyboys are EVERYWHERE in thailand. same in laos.

(and no, i didnt)

[Johnny Rockets]

PhillyB = my favorite poster on the huddle.

You are living life the right way my friend! Keep the updates coming.

[Cat'sGrowl]

I dream of being able to do this kind of thing with regularity some day Phillyb! Enjoy it!

[Squirrel]

Sounds like fun keep us updated.

[LiQuiD]

Speaking of ladyboys, he sure didn't include any stories of the nights he spent with them.

[PhillyB]

Speaking of ladyboys, he sure didn't include any stories of the nights he spent with them.

...

ladyboys are EVERYWHERE in thailand. same in laos.

(and no, i didnt)