Practical
information about the trip. This is stuff you have to know if you don’t want to
go crazy.
I always buy bus
and train services at the same travel agent, RD travel, just down the street
from the Benetton, right downtown. The staff there is efficient and speak
perfect French or passable English. When they tell you the tuk-tuk will be in
front of their agency at 7 PM, it will be in front of their agency at 7 PM.
So, to get to
the Bolaven you have to either fly or take the night bus to Paksé. This is a
‘VIP Sleeper Bus’ and your seat is a bunk which is already reclined. The
problem is that there are two bunks, side by each comme on dirais en Québecois,
and your individual space is very narrow. My heart sank as the bus filled with
Chinese workers desperately in need of a wash, smelling of stale tobacco and
each other. This time I lucked out and managed to get an entire berth, but next
time I will certainly invest in reserving both bunks. Price for one bunk is
160,000 KIP (20$US). You get to travel in relative comfort for 320,000 (40$US).
Coming back is a
different story. I caught the VIP Sleeper Bus out of Tat Lo as it wound its way
from Saravan to Vientiane. I bought the ticket from the old guy at the crossroads
but he was as helpful as a toothache. Be that as it may, the people who
designed that bus deserved to fail engineering school. There were no double
bunks; everybody had their own single bunk but it was so narrow you couldn’t
even place a hand bag on it. Your feet are trapped into a plastic tank at the
bottom of the bunk and your weight plus the angle of the bunk are continually
forcing you down. The television plays Lao hits – the singer sings and the
dancers dance – at a splendid volume and the overhead lights blare on and off
at unpredictable intervals all night.
In both cases,
Charlene was stowed with the baggage.
Arriving in
Paksé I headed straight for the buffet breakfast at the Hôtel Paksé, a
French-run establishment where the coffee is fresh, the toilets are clean and
the internet connection is fast. The latest edition of The New Yorker
downloaded effortlessly onto my Kindle and off I went, a new man. (Presently
reading “La Guerre d’Indochine”, by Lucien Godard, by the way…)
The ascent to Paksong
is not horribly difficult. You go up about 1,400 meters over a 50 kilometer
stretch. The problem is that it simply never ends. On the sides of the roads
are fruit stands. Fresh durian and mangosteen. The durian hang one by one in
the shade of the fruit sala; customers
come and tap the fruit, listening for ripeness. Between visits, the sala owners drowse or sit staring at the
floor. I am amazed by the Lao ability to simply sit, and do nothing, for hours.
No-one reads a book or a newspaper. Riding through the countryside I see the
same scene over and over again: if people are not working they sit staring at
ants on a table, finger steady on the off switch.
Of course I
never cycle in Vientiane – I don’t see the point in it, and at km 35 I was
paralysed by cramps. Look, if you want to give up, then give up. But all it
really takes is a rest and a walk using the bike as a cane and soon enough
you’re back in the saddle.
The afternoon
sky was darkening and my goal was the Tat Fane Resort at km 38. Paradise – a
waterfall, a comfortable bungalow with fresh sheets and a goodly breakfast. 20$
brings you the silence of the jungle and the roar of the water. Excellent
restaurant.
Paksong itself
is absolutely nothing to see. Many thanks go to Mr. Coffee Dick who provided me
with a lot of information about the Plateau on his website (http://bolaven.com/index.php).
We never got a chance to meet, however.
The sealed road
from Paksong to Thateng is easy and rolling. There is also a dirt road that
sort of goes in that general direction but a Korean coffee plantation manager I
met in Paksong told me it would be a very muddy affair. Next time, perhaps. How
he sat in that restaurant, his feet on the chair in front of him, throwing his
cigarette butts on the floor and screaming instructions in “Engrishi” to his
workers on the plantation was sickening. How can one man leave so much waste
behind him I do not know, but his advice was good.
The traffic on that
road was scarce and in the villages that lined the road people called out their
sabaidee with that smile and bit of
laughter that says, “You’re another crazy falang
and we’re glad to see you’re having a good time”. The children see you coming: falang! falang!
In Thateng there
are guesthouses and whorehouses. It seems that the life of the young in rural
Laos, especially along the sealed roads is all about wearing tight jeans and
spiked hair and listening to horrible music at high volumes. Anything they can
do to be passive receptacles of whatever noise someone else has manufactured is
OK by them and they seem willing to pour whatever money they may have in
perpetuating this slavery.
In Saravan I
stayed at the Phoufa Hotel. The gardens are magnificent and the rooms are
comfortable. On this trip I was able to make my acquaintance with satellite
television. Emmanuel TV is a treat: Africans with leg ulcers line up to be
healed by ‘wise men’ who tell them they are healed and they limp off raising
their hands in Halleluiah singing ‘I am healed’ but not once did I see a
post-blessing leg ulcer disappear. Another case was a woman who began
bedwetting after she got married who was saved by The Grace Of The Lord. Her
husband was relieved, as well. Many women were possessed by evil spirits and
they would roll about on the ground and foam at the mouth as the spirit was
exorcised from them. But my favourite was a pregnant woman who was past term
and visibly suffering. The wise man prayed and placed his hands and she shook
and Praised The Lord and stood up saying she was healed but as far as I could
see she was still very pregnant and not healed at all and I wondered just how
credulous people could be. All the while, a voice off in
Parisian French narrated, “Et maintenant
le Sage va lui soigner du mal qui lui habite…”. Is there no limit to what people can be made to
believe, despite the evidence before their very eyes?
Yes, the hotel
grounds were beautiful but no thought was given to the guests’ comfort. In the
morning there was no hot water for me to make a coffee and the
tight-jeans-wearing-punk who ran the place just sat there with a cell phone
dangling from a cord around his neck. The cell phone was open and playing a pop
song. No have hot water!
Dinner was BBQ
fish at the Hong Lek restaurant on the river. Fabulous fish, great service and
a lovely place to sit and watch the rain beating down on the countryside and
admiring the bend in the river; the sound of the pre-monsoon rain on the
thatched roof was all the dinner music I needed. The air turned ochre as the
rain threw the soil up into it; the river was red and blasted with the
pinpoints of raindrops. Like all rain here and in this season it was over by
the time I wanted to leave.
I am getting
lazy. There is no doubt about it. After my last trip up to the Golden Triangle
when I thought I would die from the effort I really just wanted an easy ride. A
pleasant au revoir to Laos before the monsoon kicks in and we would be out of
here for the summer. And so slowly, ever so slowly I rode to Tat Lo. My pace was turtle. I wanted to go no faster
and I could hear the chain on the teeth of Charlene’s gears.
Slowly. Inching.
PDR means ‘Please Don’t Rush’.
In Tat Lo I stayed at the Saise Resort, the
one just beyond the bridge to the left. Terrible and unfriendly welcome: I was
shown the most ratty bungalow in the place and spotted by myself a really
beautiful one. For $20 I had a fabulous room with a bathtub (!) and a veranda
overlooking a high-altitude tropical garden. Clean, comfortable, quiet – only
slightly within hearing distance of the waterfall and so I was gently lulled
into sleep and back into dawn wakefulness by its continual chant. The
restaurant, right on the waterfall, was excellent.
I arrived back
in Vientiane in the early hours of the morning and rode home from the station
near the University. The sleepy city shook off the dreams from its eyes as I
rode – restaurants were opening and cars were beginning to fill the streets,
shop shutters were being opened. I was home.
