Laos is not your typical active
dynamic country so, other than gazing at mountains, rivers and some fantastic
scenery, there’s not much to do. Well, if you’re into straining yourself beyond
reason and subjecting yourself to some muddy mountain trekking in the hazy,
foggy, chilly morning and the most atrocious heat of midday (greatly enhanced
by the lush vegetation engulfing every sizzling atom of oxygen like a Lao soup
simmering the overcooked grains of rice), then you’ve got something to do (or
look forward to stop doing). Needless
to say you’d have to be borderline insane or a masochist to do so. But if
you’ve had one too many Beerlaos by noon, you’ll spare yourself such ‘treats’
and do the more sensible thing of shuffling on the only street in Nong Khiaw from
one overpriced restaurant to the next in search of comfy mattresses or hammocks to be used as home base for the next beer and the cheapest meals available.
The Luang Prabang bus to Sam Neua via
Nong Khiaw is your immediate goal as you eagerly want to spend some 10 to 14
hours getting to the east, but even the buses are ‘laid back’, ‘sleepy’ and
‘relaxed’ (as the Lonely Planet people describe everything in this country) so there’s virtually no fixed schedule.
There’s a rumour going around that the bus should pass through
Nong Khiaw sometime around 9 or 10 PM and, if you’re fit and watchful enough,
you just raise your hand and it will stop in front of your guesthouse but,
under no circumstances will it stop at the bus station. Hurray for the
guesthouse people, which make good business with tourists that just hang around
their place and, to chase away the boredom, will do the only thing they can,
this being consuming tourist-priced goods. The guesthouse people will be nice
enough to wait for the bus with you, mainly because they can’t go to sleep while you’re
just sitting there and because the Swedish dude who’s waiting with you (hey,
Mike!) and who’s ‘naturally loud’ (his words) has successfully gotten himself
enormously drunk on lao lao (and,
eventually, passed out on the mattresses in the guesthouse’s sitting
area/restaurant).
Basic
math:
- estimated time of bus arrival: 9 – 10 PM;
- expected time of bus arrival (from personal experience): estimated time + 2 hours = 11 PM – 12 AM;
- probable time of giving up waiting (mostly because the guesthouse people retired under their mosquito nets preparing for sleep, Mike started snoring like an neglected punctured car muffler, and some of your own toes have gone numb from the cold): expected time + 1 or 2 hours = 1 AM.
You retire to a bamboo-thatched room
like a retreating dog, tail low between his legs, only to make another attempt
the next day. Upon greeting the guesthouse guy the next morning, he’ll tell you
that a mere 20 minutes after you’ve gone to sleep the bus tumbled down the road
through the city and this little piece of news only adds wood to the fire of
humiliation burning inside. Still, you must try again, this time with the bus
scheduled at noon, so you post yourself, Mike and the bags on tiny bamboo
chairs in front of the guesthouse and fail to acknowledge the passing ‘bus’
(which, coincidentally, is just around 30 minutes late) because you normally
picture a bus as being this big square container on many wheels which can hold
up to 50 people (or, in the case of Laos, using the small plastic chairs neatly
arranged on the aisle so that any kind of movement is considerably diminished,
at least 10 more). The last thing you’d expect is what looks like a private
minivan smoothly driving by with a short honk and not even a glance back: that's the VIP bus around these parts!
With jaw dropping awe you stare at one
of the guesthouse people, who, by now, has run into the street only to see the
rear end of the minivan cruising away and who now tells you your chance of
leaving Nong Khiaw that day has effectively slipped between your un-waving fingers.
You take a minute to count to 10, to 20, to 5633, but the anger is somehow not
withdrawing, in spite of Mike’s reassuring ‘that’s travelling for you’s. You
resign yourself – better yet, you stubbornly refuse – to doing nothing this whole
new sunny day and you pledge to the world that you’ll get the next bus with
whatever costs, if it means throwing yourself in front of it or just
sleeping on the asphalt so that the bus cannot avoid stopping! You then restart
your usual routine of migrating from one restaurant to the other, Mike and the
beloved laptop in toll and you cheer yourself up with some Indian cuisine,
giving up your ongoing quest of trying to figure out how some south Indian
people ended up in that godforsaken place, just going through the motions of
another hard day of fierce travelling.
By 9 PM you’ve plopped yourself in
front of the guesthouse again, beer-less, sober and determined to not spend
another night in Nong Khiaw ever again! And, sometime around 11.30 PM your
persistence, hysterical sudden jerks out of the chair at the tiniest sound of
anything remotely similar to a bus passing, and incessant waving finally pay
off and the bus comes to a shrieking stop next to you. The guesthouse person
who’s kept a vigilant eye on you and on the road shovels your stuff unto the
bus, probably feeling relieved and released from the menacing new night of
having to deal with you. And, while you make yourself as comfortable as possible
on the crammed bus, you think: third time’s always a charm!
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