Leaving Chiang Mai
So, I am still among the world of the living. I’m in the capital of Laos: Vientiane. I’ve had an interesting time since I left Thailand.
I was in Chiang Mai right up until my visa was nearly finished, and I realised that I really should organise a bus to a border somewhere since they usually seem to just miss the connection at the border so you have to stay in one of their friends guest houses. Maybe I’m being a little cynical, but they do frequently seem to miss the immigration office hours anyway. So I jumped on a bus from Chiang Mai the night before my birthday at around 8pm and headed to Chiang Kong on the border with Laos. I met some english girls who reminded me of Sima, and an Australian couple from Melbourne. It’s funny viewing Australians from an outsiders perspective. We have a reputation for being laid back and for travelling a lot, especially Melbournians I think for those people who notice, though I haven’t been away long enough myself to notice that. You don’t really notice the laid back thing until you spend some time around non-Australians for a while and then meet some Aussies again. We really are pretty laid back compared to a lot of other people, especially Americans I think, but also compared to plenty of other western cultures (I think Laotian people beat us though). And you do meet a surprising number of Aussies travelling considering our population, although S.E. Asia is pretty close. So anyway, I arrived in Chiang Kong at around 4am on May 1st (My birthday) and stumbled into a guest house which apparently was included in my bus fare. Then I got up around 6.30am with everyone else to go and cross the border into Huay Xai on the Laos side, which is done via a rickety old longtail boat (really long skinny boats which fit 2 people abreast and about 8 lengthwise, and have an old car motor on the back attached to a really long shaft off into the water for propulsion. They look like they have a really long tail. They also sit very low in the water and rock alarmingly whenever more than a 5cm wave hits it). Then through immigration and I met an amazing character called Caras.
He’s 88 but looks and seems younger than plenty of 50 or 60 year olds I’ve met. He has some of the most insane life stories I’ve ever heard. He looks after his adopted father who is now 111. He ran a Special Forces team in Burma during WWII and later spent time on several occasions getting interesting people out of countries where it’s no longer safe for them to be, like Cambodia as Pol Pot was coming into power. He spent years living with African tribes. He’s one of 7 people at the top of some kind of old school Celtic group of druid like things who have apparently been around for thousands of years. Anyway, basically he was a totally crazy old dude with so many crazy stories that you almost didn’t want to believe them all. But I never once caught him bullshitting about anything, including when we were talking about quantum physics and all sorts of other things I didn’t expect him to know much about. If he didn’t know something he’d just say that, so I think he was legitimate. So anyway, he was heading way up north into the mountains of Laos (well, the EVEN MORE mountainous region of Laos) to a place called Phong Sali to meet a friend and then head into China to find tea. As I had no plans of my own and didn’t want to spend the night in a border town (full of tourist traps) I went with him, he seemed interesting. So we jump on a bus that night at around 5pm to Udom Xai, got in at about 4am again and found a guest house for 2 hours sleep before getting up at about 6.30am again to get on another bus up to Phong Sali.
Phong Sali
Laos is full of mountains. And in Laos, Phong Sali is “Up in the mountains”. It’s a crazy bus ride up there on dirt roads on an old school bus with all the colourful locals. Tough little old hill tribe women with black teeth from chewing beetlenut and opium fed me steamed bamboo shoots, and some more of the locals fed me sticky rice and fermented fish... stuff. Laotians are so generous. We got in that night at about 5pm. Phong Sali is close to the Chinese border and their cuisine is heavily influenced by the Chinese. Which meant everything was made out of meat, and was dripping in oil. When I wasn’t clogged up it was only because I had the runs. And more often than not people didn’t want to serve me in restaurants either. All in all it was quite a strange experience. I have some spectacular photos though, see below. They grow a kind of green tea up there called Pu Fa which is really quite good, and they have endless rolling mountains as far as the eye can see in all directions.
Here's a photo of a truck on the way up to Phong Sali which has fallen off the road.
Probably the funniest thing which happened was when I climbed up to the top of the mountain Phong Sali sits on to the Buddhist shrine at the top. The view was stunning, and the sun was pretty low in the sky when I got up there with a big statue of the Buddha sheltered by the many headed Naga king, a traditional posture for the Buddha. Mostly I feel like crying in places like that for some reason, so I sat by myself and looked out over the town and mountains. But then I was invited several times by a bunch of in uniform police officers to come and drink Lao Lao with them (Local Laos whiskey, yellow, sweet, and very strong). So I did. They were all very drunk and immediately put me on catch up. Still, there wasn’t enough left at that stage to do much damage to my liver. Not many of them spoke English, but that was never a barrier to good times. Then they drove me down the mountain to my guest house (yes I got driven home by wasted in uniform police officers). Then I went out to dinner with one of them who spoke very good English, and Chinese, which was fun. The whole time I felt a little bit strange, if police ever want to fuck you up in any of these countries, they just can and you can’t really help it. But you can’t spend your life hiding under rocks either, so I just went with it and had a good time and it all turned out alright. Apparently there’s not much more for youth to do in country Laos as there is in country Australia, except get wasted and do stupid things.
Here are some photos of the top looking down over Phong Sali, but none of the cops unfortunately.
Then Caras left with his friend Yani, a 28 year old Chinese girl who had crossed into Laos illegally for a few days to meet him. They went up to China, and I hung around for another day for my stomach to feel better before catching the bus back down the hill to Udom Xai. Caras was a very interesting character to have around. Very inspiring, he’s the sort of person who makes the world happen around him, like a catalyst. And hanging out with someone that old who I still related to so well really put some perspective on my own age.
In fact here is a photo from a high point in Phong Sali with Caras in the corner:
Vientiane
I’d hung out with German guy by the name of Bjorn of about 30 in Phong Sali as well, but not as much as with Caras. On the way back down to Udom Xai we got chatting a bit more and turned out to be really quite similar. So we hung out together on the track to the capital of Laos: Vientiane. We both needed to get visas, he was moving on to Vietnam, and I just wanted to go back to Chiang Mai in Thailand where the food is so healthy and good, and everything is so cheap. His English was amazing (no surprise as he wants to become a teacher of music and English). We shared a room with air conditioning. It is so hot over here at the moment, you have no idea. I can barely think. I’ve got to go put my head under the tap every little while to stave off the headaches. Everything is warmer than body temperature, the water I drink, the air the fan blows, the floor, the walls, everything. Even the locals are saying this is crazy hot. Anyway, so we listened to a fair bit of music which was nice, he was interested in all kinds of music, and also loved Terry Pratchett books. So we basically hung out in Vientiane and ate western food, interspersed with the odd trip to respective consulates to organise visas. I seem to be a culinary traveller at the moment, everywhere I go seems to be rated on how much I like the food I can find there. Laos food I found to be basically uninspiring. They don’t really seem to have much of their own cuisine, although sticky rice is ubiquitous. They don’t really do street food so much either, just a few carts kicking around the place. I guess it’s a much poorer nation than Thailand which means people don’t eat out so much. Hence street food is correspondingly more expensive. The only times I really enjoyed the food was because it was foreign food. But they do that quite well, especially French bakeries, baguettes, cakes, and deserts. And we found an Italian place with really great pizza and some amazing imported beers like Leffe, Duvel, and Chimay. That was a highlight as I hadn’t really had any great beers over in S.E. Asia yet. A bunch of food vendors also set up tables and chairs and cushions on this construction site on the banks of the mighty Meekong, which is a good place to eat for relatively cheap. They string globes around, and build tables out of every raw piece of wood they can get their hands on, and serve some quite passable food. And somehow they end up making this construction yard into a really great place to sit and hang out as the sun goes down. Here's a couple of photos of said construction site, one with Bjorn's pretty face.
We had a third bed in our room which we fairly quickly filled with Lily, an English girl who also needed to get a Thai visa. We all really enjoyed each others company. What with Caras in Phong Sali, and those two in Vientiane, Laos turned out to be a time of intellectually stimulating conversation. Which seems to mean I feel like writing a lot less in my blog, perhaps I get a bit starved of meaningful conversation sometimes. We went to the French Embassy one night to a Swiss movie called “Vitus” as part of a European Film festival they were having. It turned out to be a great movie, touching and funny.
Oh yes!!! And here's some porcelain porn I found in a very fancy craft shop in Vientiane. It's a bit blurry because I was trying to snap the photos a bit surreptitiously. I don't think the owners would have liked it.
One interesting thing about Laos is that the living costs are really high! An average meal will cost you $3-$4 dollars (without looking too hard for alternatives). To be honest I did spoil myself in Vientiane, but my living costs per day went up to around $30 from $10-$15 in Thailand. Amazing considering how much poorer the country is.
So that’s basically that. I’m now over the border in Nong Kai in Thailand once again in a guest house run by a woman with a totally maniacal laugh. I’ll make my slow way back to Chiang Mai and probably put my feet up again with amazing curries and hill tribe coffee, and get some more programming done. I'm sorry this is a bit rushed, I'm feeling really crap at the moment with this heat.
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