4. Laos – To the border and beyond

I failed to mention in our last post a couple of classic Jim & Claire screw ups. We were in a small town, but had decent wifi so planned on posting to our blog. I doggedly copy edited the draft, had everything just right then gave the iPad to Claire for final review. A few minutes later I hear “Ooops, what happened?” To make a long story short, we just lost, irretrievably, 6-8 hours of work! Then followed 2 days, off and on, of frustrating tech support with WordPress, with the final realization we had to start over, more or less, from scratch. In the end we will blame it on a software glitch. More serious though was the Lao Visa screw up. I would never want to assign blame, so just to say, one of us insisted, after much Internet research including the Canadian government website, that VOAs (visa on arrival) were available at our proposed border crossing. We did not confirm this in Hanoi and not until Dien Bien Phu, only 30 km from the border, did we find out (another complicated process) that they were NOT! What followed was a serendipitous but gruelling overnight bus back to Hanoi, get our visas, a same day affair, then another similarly gruelling overnight bus back to Dien Bien. What can you do? Just suck it up and go with the flow, it’s all part of this kind of seat-of-your-pants travel. Needless to say, as Tamara Lich said “Never trust the Canadian government “.

The early morning ride out of Dien Bien was glorious. Overcast, with a cool mist in the air and the rush hour traffic, a steady flow of motorbikes, was heading into town. The grade was flat and the scenery, dense and fertile market gardens, was delightful. But after 10 km of easy pedaling, the 20 km climb to the border started. Worse, a major new road project had trucks hauling gravel on our road. The road surface quickly degenerated and narrowed to a rough single lane of tarmac with deep, yellow, powdered dust on either side. At least a hundred dump trucks passed us in both directions. Empty trucks powering up the hill behind us and fully loaded bearing down. We would try to hold our own, on our sliver of tarmac , reluctant to turn aside and bog down in the dusty shoulder, and had to play a game of chicken with the oncoming trucks. Typically, at the last few seconds, they would swerve to give us room but just enough. It was tense, dusty, hot and exhausting. Never, have I wanted to see a gravel pit more. Past the pit, 10 km more of climbing in the heat but gloriously free of dust and traffic. Crossing the border was a breeze.

Google Translate continues to entertain. I asked a hotel staff when the gate would be open in the morning. Her reply “.the owner will open the garage for the victim”. We are now using the GT camera function to decipher menus. A Viet restaurant had “buffalo skin on rice” and “fried fingernails”. A Lao restaurant offered a selection of “Screw the machine in”, “Hit the horse quickly” and the particularly appetizing , “A stray dog”. Just today, we stopped at a roadside restaurant and I used the conversation function to ask the cook/server “What they had on offer for lunch?”. Her response “Don’t touch the rice”. Sounded good to me. I ordered the rice. Of course, the opposite must be also true, which explains some of the blank stares I receive when the locals look at the translation of some of my ‘perfectly clear’ questions. I think they’re too polite to laugh outright. Our faith in Google Translate is failing fast. I suspect it functions much better between languages of similar script and origin.

Yes, the world is a small place. We had done the long, 78 km ride to the village of Muang La knowing that, according to Google and MapOut, there were at least four guesthouses to choose from. To our dismay, the pandemic had closed all but one , and it was rundown and overpriced. No air con, a bucket-flush toilet, torn and stained bedding, with tiny ants crawling all over the bed. Oh well. Dinner that night was in a humble place with only noodle soup on offer, the sole dining option open in town. Surprisingly, the young owner spoke a little English and soon informed us his mother runs a Vietnamese restaurant in Powell River, Canada, of all places! Little ol’ PR. The town where my Father met my mother in 1948 and the prime destination of the great Squamigration. I assume there is only one Vietnamese restaurant in PR, so whomever, please pass on Esther’s (the owner’s year old daughter) love to her Granny, whom she has yet to meet.

Though expecting a more pronounced difference between Laos and Vietnam, we’re finding similarities. I’d be pressed to distinguish any stand out physical characteristics. We’ve seen so many ethnic/tribal groups and presumably mixes as we traverse the mountainous north, we are losing tract. Clearly, the difference in population density alone (100 million vs. 8 million in Laos) is evident – less intensive land use, less development, far less motorbikes. The rural villages appear far poorer yet gdp/capita is similar in both countries. The Lao society in general is said to be slower paced and the people more laid back both of which are, I guess, accurate but both cultures are welcoming, the people quick to smile, from what we’ve seen, honest and patient. We’ve never witnessed any anger, hostility or have had any security concerns. Certainly, the influence of China is ever present in Laos. At one point, we rode under what we think was a, still under construction, high speed train overpass.

The bottom photo serves to tell a tale. As we rode along, we came into an area with a pervasive, rank smell we couldn’t identify. An old man and woman were laying out what looked like Chinese steamed buns on the side of the road to dry. I stopped and mimed “Are those for eating?”. He looked at me like I was an idiot and vigorously shook his head no. It was globs of natural rubber. The bun-like shape reflects the std. collecting ‘bowl’ with which they tap the tree. As we rode along we saw hundreds of rubber collections, in varying states of drying. These bags are full of congealed, dried, rubber ready for pick up and processing into the more than 40,000 products in which it plays an indispensable role. Who knew?

Another strange tale. We had stopped for a late breakfast at a scenic spot along a river where an adhoc collection of thatched-roof huts indicated food was on offer. Claire’s stomach is still giving her some cramps so we ordered the reliable omelette on sticky rice. One of the young ladies running the stall had a fire going outside the hut and was ‘cooking’ chillies in a wok. Her small baby was under an adjacent hut and we were under the next. She left her wok unattended for a moment and it started to smoke. Moments later, we were gagging, eyes watering and leapt up to get away. Her baby, unable to move, was definitely in distress. We were being pepper sprayed! Mom came running out, took the wok off the fire, grabbed the baby, joined us upwind and tried to convince us how comical the situation was. We got back to breakfast and, lo and behold, she did it again! Helluva way to build your client base.

We are now comfortably ensconced in a very fine, upscale guesthouse in lovely Luang Prabang ($33/night). We are in the old quarter, a UNESCO world heritage site , that’s filled with funky restaurants, shops, accommodations, all a tired tourist could ask for. We’ll rest here a few days before tackling the next, and hopefully last, four days of hill climbing.