I crossed the Thailand/Laos border on a motor canoe just before it closed. The sun was setting over the Thai side of the river and shone red off the surface of the water. The Laotian official on the other shore rewarded me for my troubles by charging $15 extra for my visa, and verified the price with a shit-eating grin.
Welcome to Laos.
In a later conversation with another traveler, in which we tried to identify the “evils of Communism” as they could be observed in Laos, this sort of border corruption was the only thing we could come up with. And that, it must be said, is not a phenomenon limited to Communist countries. The outward signs of Communism, such as it is here, have been limited to the odd red flag emblazoned with the hammer and sickle.
I was struck, that first night in Huay Xai, by how quiet the streets were. I sat outside a restaurant on the main drag and listened: aside from the occasional passing motorbike, I heard only the hushed conversation of a tourist couple to my left and some kids playing soccer a couple hundred meters away. Even the owner of the restaurant spoke quietly as she took my order in casual English. Every once in a while a dog would bark. I sipped my Beerlao, which goes down smooth and at least doesn’t bring the immediate headache peculiar to Chang in Thailand, and read my tattered copy of Roughing It, by Mark Twain, turning the pages as silently as possible.
I had almost stayed in Chiang Khong that night, on the Thai side, mostly because I didn’t want to deal with the border crossing until morning. The room I looked at over there was considerably nicer than the one I wound up with in Huay Xai. I saved myself 50 baht, but in exchange I gave up a view of the river, or more accurately, a view of anything, since my room had no windows. The ceiling fan was positioned underneath a bare light bulb and gave the room an unsettling strobe effect as it whirred and rattled around. I looked at the naked walls of cheap plastic panels, held up by a haphazard allotment of nails, and at a half-painted beam standing exposed from floor to ceiling, and berated myself for not spending one more night in Thailand. I rejoiced, at least, at the flush toilet — until I discovered that its flushing capacity was, alas, mostly theoretical.
One advantage of crossing the border that evening was that I was able to buy a ticket for the “slow boat” from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, which left the following morning at nine. Or so I was told — as it was, the boat left at noon, providing me with several hours to familiarize myself with it and to practice sitting patiently for the actual journey. The enterprising comrades of Huay Xai are full of such white lies. For example, our gaggle of tourists was informed that we would be spending the day on hard wooden benches, and therefore needed to purchase some cushions. These were readily at hand, in that very store, and cost a mere 8,000 kip. If you can’t appreciate the bargain we were so kindly being offered, that comes out to $1. As it was, our seats had been ripped out of minivans (dozens of them, it would have taken), and after having that irritating headrest removed, had been arranged carefully into rows. I say carefully because the things weren’t bolted down. Why waste time and money on such trifles when you have a boat load of fat tourist asses to keep the things in place? Occasionally, the passengers in front of you would go to the back of the boat to smoke or use the toilet, and if you tried to stand up with the aid of their vacated seat, you would nearly bring the whole seat down on yourself, and so would gain new appreciation for the ingenuity of the arrangement. In any case, the cushions were a nice bonus, but weren’t exactly necessary, accustomed as my tourist ass is to minivan seats.
The slow boat is aptly named. The journey to Luang Prabang consists of two full days on the Mekong River. The first day took about seven hours and the second one took nine. During the night, we stayed in Pak Beng, which was probably a sleepy little village a couple decades ago. It is still small, but far less sleepy now that its economic diet has been fortified with tourists from the river. The restaurant across from my guesthouse offered free Laos whiskey, made right there in the village. The boy making this pitch informed me that it was good and would make me grow big and strong. I asked if he had been drinking it. He looked skinny to me. He laughed and said no, so I decided to trust his endorsement. I did, however, catch him in at least one lie: he told me it was only 10% alcohol. I don’t know what sort of methods the villagers of Pak Beng use to measure alcohol content, but I would guess that either they don’t have any, or this kid’s English was (innocently, I’m sure) flawed. In any case, I’m not complaining. I enjoyed the Laos whiskey, and the Beerlao, too. In fact, I enjoyed a fair amount of both.
I made some friends that night, three of whom were from France and, I have to say, were the first Frenchmen I have really hit it off with. This may have been for two reasons: one, I was lamenting the state of my home country when they came upon me, a conversation they eagerly joined; and two, they had discovered the Laos whiskey, as well. Regardless, we had a good time staggering down the one street of Pak Beng, irritating tourist and local alike. I learned how to say, “I don’t speak French,” in French, and I am proud to say, I still remember it. They made me repeat it no fewer than 16 times before it was pronounced “good French,” and then they turned to the grave matter of how terrible the French is spoken in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. I apologized on behalf of my countryman for this injustice, and explained that considering the thematic importance of language in that film, and bad accents, in particular, that this was probably intentional. They had me, though, saying the character who most incited their outrage was supposed to be native French. Now that I think about it, however, I believe that character was in fact an Austrian Jew posing as a Frenchwoman.
In any case, I carried those memories with me the rest of the way down the Mekong in the form of a lingering hangover. I was lucky to make the boat at all, actually, since my alarm failed to go off and I happened to wake up with a half hour to spare. I sat next to another friend I made the night before, a Canadian, and we had an enjoyable time together, my hangover and frequent naps notwithstanding. Really, a boat or a ferry is one of the better ways to ride out a hangover, so to speak. You get a steady breeze in your hair and you don’t have to berate yourself for wasting a day of your journey.
I suppose I’ll split this post awkwardly in two rather than wait another day to finish it and post it as a unified whole. So, stay tuned for more on the trip up the Mekong, plus a sprinkling of text about Luang Prabang. Oh, right, I’ll add some pictures, too.
The Traveling Yokel 