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Day 13 - Luang Namtha to Nong Khiaw
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Today was supposed to be an easy day. Up early to catch the 08:30 bus from the local bus station to Udom Xiay, then take a tuk tuk to Nong Khiaw.
Hmmmmmm.....
It didn't quite turn out that way ! ;)
We were REALLY tired after our 2 solid days of treking, so Katie was asleep by 9pm, and I wanted to update the travel blog and read about the England football victory in Russia, so went to sleep about 10pm.
We decided to get up early this morning to pack (especially as most of our trekking clothes + boots were soaking wet), and to get to the bus station with plenty of time, as we knew they were supposed to be pretty chaotic over here !
And so it proved !
It took us a long time to speak to anyone who spoke any English, who bluntly told us that the bus to Udom Xai was full, but another one left tomorrow !!
We had definitely spent enough time in Luang Namtha, so decided to try other solutions.
We worked out that we could get another bus to a different town which appeared to be closer to our final destination, the only problems were that it was longer (7 hours) and more expensive (a wallet-shaking GBP 4.50 for 2 tickets).
We decided to go for it, but unfortunately sat on the bus for an hour (which was nice) and finally off we went.
For the first time in Laos we were using a public bus so it was a) absolutely packed with people & equipment including MOPEDS on the roof !!! b) dirty and smelly - you should have seen the curtains, absolutely gross - and c) no air con, just a couple of fans and it was ab-so-lutely "scorchio"...
Every seat was full when we left the town, so we were rather surprised that we kept stopping every few minutes to collect even more people ! There were sacks of rice all down the aisle, so the new people had to climb over and sit on them. When the rice seats were full they were given small plastic stools to sit on in the aisle. They should try that on the London tube ?!
Our legs were much too big for the tiny seats, so Katie & I chose aisle seats so that we could stretch our legs out into the aisle. Worked well, for about... 7 minutes ! By then the aisle was full and there must have been 70 people on the 50 seater bus ! This was evidently going to be a F-U-N journey...
You'll be glad to know that playing your own music loudly on public transport is not just a London wannabe gangsta thing, it happens here too, but the music is even worse ! And the music doesn't blare out of mobile phones set inexplicably to speakerphone, the locals had their own small radios on full blast all over the bus ! There must have been about 10 of them spread around, so it was like being in some sort of musical hell on earth.
THANK GOD for iPods, I might write Steve Jobs a personal letter of gratitude for helping me escape !
With our music on we zoned out and tried to catch up on some sleep. Unsuccessfully.
All was ok until we reached the town of Udom Xai, when the bus stopped and people piled off, so we assumed it was a toilet/lunch break.
Obviously we had NO idea how long we would have to kill, so played it safe, grabbed some water, some rank bread, some rank crisps and some even ranker pastry thing and waited for people to get back on.
30 minutes later (!) we were off again, wishing that we'd bought some noodles/rice instead of our bread + potato crapfest.
We now headed up into the mountains, with our circa 1890s bus (maybe a slight exaggeration - moi ?!) really struggling to get up the hills. It was absolutely screaming in first gear, but we eventually reached the top of the first big hill and all let out a collective sigh of relief !
We struggled our way for about an hour before the bus had an automotive version of a heart attack, before eventually conking out half way up the next hill.
As you can see below, Katie was asleep at this point (nearly sucking in the curtains), so missed the hilarious / terrifying 30 seconds where we started rolling back down the curved hill road, while the driver screamed at the ticket inspector to jump out and find some big rocks to put behind the wheels to stop us !!
Nobody else seemed particularly bothered about this, and I think I avoided a stroke by pretending that I was Sid Owen in 'Carry On Laos' or something. "
Cor blimey guv we can't get it up... Nyooowe matron... Nyah nyah nyah" etc ;)
Eventually the ticket dude put what looked like half a tree behind the back wheels and we stopped, just before we hurtled down into the valley below.
Instead of having an absolute fit at this heap of junk we were trapped on, everyone seemed to shrug with indifference, suggesting that this was not an unusual occurence in Laos ?!
We all got off the bus and found some shade, while the 12 yr old driver & his mate ticket dude tried to fix the engine.
Cue Al seeing how many games he can invent with stones, trees, and a road...
I think my favourite was flicking up a stone with my feet, chesting it down, flicking it up to catch and then chucking it baseball style at a nearby tree. I got bored of this after about 10 goes, as the rest of the passengers worried for my mental stability.
Eventually the engine spluttered into life but not before I'd managed to sit in a patch of tar (Ray !) and then worked out that the most comfortable spot to sit or lie down was the roof of the bus, because the mopeds had been removed back at Udom Xai. Result ! Clearly the peasants below were jealous of my new penthouse position and looked up longingly... Or something ;)
We all got back on, and made it around the corner before breaking down again.
This happened sporadically for the next hour or so, with one of our fellow passengers who was amongst the rudest people I've ever experienced eventually shouting at the clowns in charge and storming up the aisle to fix it himself.
He memorably inspected the engine without extinguishing his cigarette (which he shouldn't have been smoking on the bus anyway), and we were all convinced that the bus would explode and shower us all over the northern Laos rural area ! The access panel for the engine was next to the driver's seat, so he just pushed the driver out the way and leaned down, fag in between his teeth !! Unreal.
Miraculously somehow this bloke seemed to fix the problem, so I nearly gave him a standing ovation back to his seat despite his gruff manners, and we sailed up the next 3 turns like Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo.
However, our luck didn't last, and we were soon stationary again, and I was back on the roof, this time trying to hit birds with bits of metal which were peeling off the roof ! I was beginning to wonder if we would ever make it to our destination, we must have lost 2 hours by this time.
An Israeli couple we'd met in our guest house the night before were absolutely seething but managed not to shout at anyone, and between us we hatched a cunning plan. We decided to get our big backpacks off the roof, and flag down the next passing vehicle and ask for a lift to our destination.
It was a bit like that scene in the film Babel where Brad Pitt tries to flag down a van in Morocco ?!
On about our 4th attempt a van stopped, we offered the guy money, and being an entrepeneurial sort of chap he agreed, 15000 each to the next town. Obviously this was a complete rip-off, but we had no confidence in ever getting there if we didn't make our own destiny.
Katie had previously suggested that we start walking to the town because "it can't be that far away" and after some pretty inept translation work with the ticket dude was trying to convince me that our destination was "only" 14kms away, which was "definitely walkable" ?!
I had blisters on my feet from the trekking and didn't fancy the long walk, especially as it would be dark in 90 minutes and we would have been screwed if we hadn't made it to the town by then.
Thankfully she acquiesed, so we took the Del Boy Express to the nearest town. It actually took us AN HOUR at 50 mph, so thank God we didn't try to walk it, we'd still be there !
We were very relieved to get to the town, but then had to haggle with the next group of rip-off merchants in order to secure a tuk-tuk to our final destination, which was allegedly 25 km away.
I was sceptical about this distance because people in Laos seem to have about as much clue about times and distances as the average Chelsea player does about winning European Cups !!
And so it proved, as we eventually arrived in Nong Kiaw over an hour later, after a pretty white knuckle ride, thundering along in this rhino of a truck at ridiculous speeds in pitch black, with people, houses & animals on the very edge of every road.
We shared our journey with 6 large bags of kids candy, 10 huge bags of rice, and 2 families, in a small pick-up truck !! It was quite an experience, like being an illegal immigrant in the back of a lorry of tomatoes or something...
We passed through many villages of wooden shacks, the only difference between them and the hill tribes seemed to be that most of these shacks seemed to have electricity. Some even had pool tables in, but I guess these were the bars.
Upon arrival we remembered some advice our friendly Ozzie co-trekers had given us, to cross the river because the guest houses were much nicer over there. The rather non-plussed Israelis followed us over the bridge,
and the advice was spot-on, thanks guys ;)
Despite the darkness, we could see the outline of mountains all around us, so we knew there was a good chance that we were in the middle of some pretty spectacular scenery, or at least we hoped so...
We looked at a couple of very basic guest houses (outside shared toilets, no thanks), and for once I was the one advocating a move up-market, even to the borders of "luxury" ! I MUST have been tired ;)
We passed a place called the "Riverside Resort" which Daniel & Anna had also mentioned that looked great but was expensive, but after a bloody awful day of travel and 2 hard days of trekking I figured that we deserved a treat and Katie was obviously never going to disagree !
The rooms were individual wooden huts on the river banks, with toilets, mossie nets, nice showers & a good fan, plus a balcony, so we agreed on the relatively exorbitant US$22 and chucked our packs on the bed and went to the restaurant for dinner. We were starving.
One expensive but delicious meal later (including a DARK Beer Lao, mmmmm, beer...) the day was ending much better than it had started, and we were able to laugh about our earlier misfortunes.
We almost collapsed into our nice big double bed, set our alarms for 10am and decided to have a day of R&R here tomorrow before taking a boat down to Luang Prabang on Monday.
Phew, what a day ! ;)
lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
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