Travels in laos written from vietnam! sorry folks!
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2008
1
24
117
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Sunday, October 19, 2008
monday 06 october
ok so this morning another bad baguette breakfast, this time at manychan restaurant - these people for one, cannot seem able to serve anything other than sandwiches for breakfast, and secondly, they do not seem to do anything to shoo away these blasted guero-selling women, who seem to get everywhere! excuse me lady, but i can't eat and shop - they are two seperate activities, and so no, i do not want one of your gueros, bangles, beaded bags! aargh, such a pain! anyway, after being harassed for maybe the third morning in a row, we made our way back to the guesthouse, around the corner, to pick up the bike. unfortunately, for a time, rain seemed to stop play. sean wasn't riding around when it was wet, for fear of death - understandably! so we stayed around a while, and i made some headway into the book i was reading at the time, which i actually finished this week! oh yes people, I finished a book! and i recommend it too! it's called 'the caretakers' and was written back in the sixties by a dariel telfer. i picked it up at a restaurant in pai, thailand, and it's brilliant. about a mental hospital and the crazy world of the doctors, nurses and patients. ace! lots of backstabbing and covered up murders and rape etc etc! great! after the rain seemed to have stopped, one of the guys from the guesthouse helped us wheel the bike out, asking us if we had waterproofs. oh yes, we say, although we've left them in the room. the rain's stopped, we think. it was only a shower and there's no way it will be back so soon. how wrong we were! no sooner had we made our way, literally minutes down the road, to get petrol, and look for this blasted stupa from the day before, did the rain come down, and my god, did it come down! we were drenched, and only good for returning to manychan for some lunch. good day! anyway, it was after too much noodle soup that we met sean's 'brother', who we've met over and over since that day, but still to this day, i'm not sure what he's called. anyway, i say he was sean's 'brother' as they had basically lived exactly the same lives, born near swindon, into an RAF family, this guy was sagittarius not aquarius, but still had the very independent streak that you get in so many 'proper' travellers. he told us he'd wanted to be free and go see the world etc, and that his girlfriend hadn't, and simply wanted an easy life, living back in the same town she'd always lived, working and going on holiday for two weeks in the summer. sound a little familiar?! well, unlike me and sean, he and she split and so now he finds himself travelling the world, doing everything he ever wanted to do, but alone. he seemed happy enough though, but i guess that's how all these independent people seem. during our chat, some brash american came over to ask us about trekking. we said we still hadn't found a package we wanted to go for, due to lack of funds or time that would allow us to get right deep into the jungle. not that he probably cared. i think he was just after people to go with him to cut down the cost, like we should have done days before. but i guess that's americans for you. confident or arrogant, whichever way you want to look at them, but their upfront approach sure does get them what they want! after leaving our poor english 'brother' with the loud american, we picked up the bike, which we reserved for our new english friend, and tried a second time to get out on the road today. and after a few minutes, we find the stupa from the day before, exactly where we'd always been looking. the only problem being the road, which instead of being ready for tourists to walk or ride up, was still a dirt track, suitable for the diggers. so we peddled the bike to the side of the road, far enough away from the village, where it might get stolen, but close enough to where the monks resided, believing they wouldn't steal a bike, to make our way up to the stupa. and what a climb! my jesus sandals have never been so caked in mud. they were thick with it, and heavy. it felt like i was carting hobbit feet around with me, which sean found highly amusing! he couldn't stop taking photos of me pulling my feet up and out of the road, or what would later be a road! at the top of the hill, after realising that actually the stupa might not be ready, as there were still diggers and workers around it, and that being the reason why the road didn't have to be ready, we took a look at the amazing view over the main streets of luang namtha, laos - for all those people who have forgotten where i am now! - and trundled back down to the bike to ride around the outskirts of town. at which point, i being either more confident about clinging onto the back of the bike, or just very, very stupid, decided to whip out my camera and start snapping away, while on the move, as the best means to get pictures of some of the locals - not mini village folk, who need more privacy, but the town people, without fear of being cursed! and although it were a little risky, i and my camera both survived, and made quite a success out of my experiement! i managed to snap friends, chatting and riding together in groups, and some speedy monks! back at the guesthouse, after giving back the bike and getting ready for dinner, we met two groups of israeli travellers, all wanting to take a bus down to luang prabang. they'd arrived back at the guesthouse, having been out all day but having already checked out that evening, because they were of the thinking that they'd arranged a bus for 11pm that night. unfortunately, wires getting crossed, as they inevitably do abroad, the guesthouse had understood that the bus had been arranged for 11am that day, and when the groups hadn't been around for that time, the buses had been cancelled. so now, we, who believed that maybe we could jump in with the 13 israelis who now stood, cursing the guesthouse owneres, had to figure out what to do about buses. we could go with the guesthouse in the morning or arrange another bus with a different tour agent in town. as it happened, we'd already arranged a too expensive option down the road, for 9am the next morning. however, with the news that we might be able to get a bus with some of the israelis for say 4am, we thought why not? get into town earlier, get an entire day earlier. unfortunately, these israelis did seem a little scatty, and after a while, even we didn't know what the plan was. no-one was going with the guesthouse, we were booked onto our 9am bus AND now the 4am bus, and before we knew it, on a 10pm bus around the corner. we just had time to pay for our meal before we had to be back at the guesthouse, paying our bill and packing at a speed of knots, if we had any hope of joining some of them on this 10pm bus. but we did it! and found ourselves outside the tourist information, backpacks lugging behind us, money out to pay, the driver strapping our bags onto the roof aided by ropes and a tarpulin, and in with a whole bunch of israelis all on their way down to luang prabang as soon as possible, to catch the jewish festival going on there! and for all those people who know me and my fascination with the jewish faith, would know that i was in my element, talking jewish food and festivals. although i never made it obvious that i was such a big fan! so i learnt all things jew and they learnt that not all english people talk with a royal accent and that the only good fish 'n' chips are made in england! i was not having them take the piss out of good old angleterre! anyway, before long our bus was back out on the rocky roads of laos, clinging on for dear life, and looking forward to maybe getting some sleep, though as you will come to hear soon, there was little of that achieved, especially by sean and i...
tuesday 07 october...
and so it's about 3am, and i am pissed off! after making our last stop for the toilet, me and sean decided to swap seats because he could no longer stand being stuck between the driver's USELESS wife - who we all thought was supposed to be there to watch over him, though all she did was sleep in one of the most roomy seats on the bus - and a guy who couldn't keep his sickness in where it belonged! and not being a fan of sick, although who is, sean had to move! so, now i'm sat between these two, sean's back in the seat i'd been in, which was a fold-out seat, surrounded by a handful of daysacks, the wife is still fast asleep, her legs laid up and out infront of her, the guy thankfully having stopped being sick, but the driver now deciding that maybe he was a little more knackered than he'd made out and so wants a sleep! so, practically everyone else is asleep, sean and i are sat up not being able to sleep, the driver is asleep, his pain-in-the-arse wife is asleep, and i'm sat thinking at any moment bandits might throw themselves out from within the bushes and ransack our minibus! and take our passports, which cannot now be got by me as i stupidly hid them too deep into my backpack, now strapped to the roof! NOOOOOOO! well, after half an hour later, the driver wakes up, and we're off again. i think it's about now that i manage to get a little shut eye, but am rudely awoken at about 4.30am by the bus swerving all over the road! oh yes, the sleepy minibus driver was, and still is, absolutely knackered and in no fit state to drive! and the wife is still dozing, everyone else seems quite unaware of our predicament - although the only american girl, we later found out, was actually very awake herself and holding on for her life too - our wingman infront has dropped off to sleep, and i'm asking sean if he thinks it would be a good idea for me to wake the wingman to tell the driver to slow down, and i'm deciding to take it into my own hands and shake the wingman and tell him he MUST get the driver to slow down - although said wingman looks at me like i'm crazy! and all this time, the wife, now awake, is looking at me daggers, like i've called her bloody husband an underage sex tourist or something! oh what a ride! but, at about 5am, when the driver's calmed down a little, and the sun's just about coming up, and we get to see the local village folk are already up and going about their business, and we can finally see the rocky landscape around us, we come to realise that even though we could have lost our lives on any given corner - maybe i exaggerate a little, i never thought we'd die, though overs did - we got to see a lot that we might have missed coming through in the day. for example, the drunken man walking through the pitch black village at about midnight, all alone, singing and strumming his guitar! or the man laying fast asleep in the middle of road! or the kids all up and about, going to school, at about 5.30 in the morning. or even the buddhist monks walking around luang prabang at 6.30 that morning we arrive in town, picking up food from the locals. all of this we would have missed had we waited for our sensible 9am bus. saying that, never again! and that's another reason why we decided to pay for an hour flight through to hanoi after so many long and windy, horrendous bus journeys. but i will get to hanoi later... or maybe in a decade! now back to laos!
