14 December 2005
If you look at a map of Thailand and Laos, Chiang Mai doesn't seem too far away from Vientiane, so why our bus went from A to F (for "Fucker!") just to get to B is beyond me.
I am not amused and turn up Metallica on the iPod.
We finally get to Udon Thani at 8:05, the 05 being crucial here because we miss the bus to the border by exactly that. Five minutes.
A helpful bus station manager points out that we should be at a different terminal the next day to get to Vientiane. He helps us get a tuktuk to a hotel that has the word "Palace" in its name so that we are excited to finally be staying at somewhere fancy. Our hotel turns out to be so fancy that it has showers underneath its sinks. (The water spills directly from the sink on to the floor. No such thing as pipes here.) This is where cockroaches come to die. I am still not amused.
We are up bright and early the next day, only to be told by Bus Terminal #2's Manager that we cannot get on the bus to Vientiane because we do not have visas. (The international buses wait just long enough for everyone to go through Immigration, but not long enough for everyone to get issued visas.) He says we should go back to the terminal where we were the night before and catch the bus to Nong Khai on the Thai border bright and early THE NEXT DAY.
A lot of desperate looks and pleading get us on the bus. It might have helped that there were only three of us without visas. Well, two really.
My travel companions, then Siargao residents, Debra Wennett from the U.S. and Susan Brandstetter from Australia.
They don't tell you this in the guidebooks but ASEAN-member nationals do NOT need visas. Although if you stupidly queue for one, they'll gladly take your $30 and give you a visa, thank you very much.
The crossing is quick and painless -- and cold! It's freezing!!! The girls make plans to buy beanies, jackets, and socks, while I just want a Lao skirt because, well, they look nice on the women at the border.
We are excited to be in this new country.
Our guesthouse has a wonderful courtyard with a cute little bunny that Deb renames daily so that it is confused and tries to eat a hat. (I'm making that up.) We have three beds in our room and our bathroom is actually big enough so we do not have to multitask in the shower, i.e. bathe whilst sitting on the toilet.
We're next to some wonderful boutiques where my credit card takes a beating. And, on our first day here, we are sitting along the river, having a fabulous Lao meal for 10,000 kip ($1) and are toasting to our new host country with our first bottle of Beerlao.
Internet file photo.
Until we get to the market, that is. The fabric for my Lao skirt is $35! ("But that's only $2 in Cambodia!") All of a sudden, Laos isn't looking too hot. And they're not coming down on the price either.
I stop to admire some fabric a local is holding up and when she turns to talk to me in English, I immediately collar her into helping me drive the prices down with the market vendors. She tells me the market across the street sells things for half the price so she takes us there and, while we are haggling, Sue and Deb disappear around a corner. My new English-speaking Lao friend gets me my fabric at $17, which is still too expensive but I have to have my Lao skirt -- although I'm not sure exactly why.
I find Sue and Deb sitting at a table with some market vendors, where the Beerlao is flowing and large amounts of vegetable hand rolls are being consumed.
It turns out that when Sue happened upon the women, they dragged her to partake of their afternoon snack, with Deb following suit. It doesn't take long before I am chugging along with them. We are loving Laos all over again.
The woman on the left was the one I accosted at the market. She helped me shop for my Lao fabric, which I had made into a skirt, which I don't think I have ever worn. She gamely joined us for beer and vegetable rolls with the other market ladies.
The girls finally procure their own fabric and one of the shop ladies takes a breather from the Beerlao to escort us to a tailor at the market. The tailor says she can make our skirts for $3 a piece but, for the three of us, she'll do it for $10. Right. She must have thought we were too drunk to do the math on that one. "Let's just do it for $3, shall we?"
When the girls bring back the skirts from the market the next day, they are total and utter SHIT. You do get what you pay for. So I nip over to the tailor next to the guesthouse and get my skirt redone for $10.
Laos (pronounced "La-wuS", as the locals do because, to paraphrase Eddie Izzard, it does have a bloody "s" in it, doesn't it? And the last-letter-impaired French did move out ten billion years ago), apart from being cold this time of year, is not as cheap as we thought it would be. Having gotten used to the half-dollar prices of Chiang Mai, we are surprised to find that everything here costs a little bit more than we are prepared to spend.
Laos is reknowned for its silk, which come from the worms on the mulberry trees. You can get scarves from the market for as little as $4, or from upscale boutiques for $35.
The country is also known for its coffee. When you can get a good cup, it tastes almost like very dark chocolate and it goes down well with the condensed milk that they like to use in these parts. But we have more cups of crap coffee than good ones, so we choose to imbibe Beerlao instead.
Vientiane, its capital, is chock full of old French colonial houses in various states of disrepair. You can almost imagine Catherine Deneuve in "Indochine", swanning about in her opium haze, inspecting her rubber tree plantation. The houses that are well kept, as in Vietnam, are government buildings or banks like the ADB resident mission, which actually looks quite spanking new.
There are also a lot of wats (spelled with a "v" here). Our guidebook cites one in particular, where nuns run a herbal steam bath. Excited by anything with the word "herb" in it, we pile into a tuktuk for Vat Sok Pa Luang.
As soon as we get there, we doubt very much that the place (a hut really, off the temple grounds) is run by nuns. Maybe because the fat, boisterous lady in charge makes a lot of jokes about running off with the male customers.
After stripping and wrapping ourselves in sarongs, we try to enter the unisex steam room, but it's so steamy that we can barely see and are pulled into the room by unseen hands. The hands turn out to be attached to two Laoatian men who, we find out, are regulars and come almost daily. (Most likely to perve on the western women who are scantily clad in their sarongs.) One of the men is panting heavily while applying various ointments to his body. At one point, he leans over me, I suppose to get the full force of the steam since I am sitting next to its source, and lets out a huge groan while vigorously rubbing his body. It's all very disturbing and we do not stay in the steam room for long.
There is a queue for the massages, and several men are hanging about the open massage room as well. I have nothing under my sarong and must have made them happy, flashing them several times while being manipulated by the masseuse.
All in all, while we did have an, er, interesting time, two days in Vientiane would have been enough. If you do not have much time to explore Laos, you may give its capital a miss altogether.
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