Thailand
Lazing in Laos - Sunday, Nov-22
Tim, the owner of Baan Bua Guesthouse, arrives promptly at 7 o’clock in the morning to drive me to Chiang Khong on the Thai/Lao border. Tim, should there be any mistake, is a woman, elegant in her crisp black trousers and blouse, pale pink cardigan, and string of pearls. I couldn’t be more delighted to be in her company for the next two hours, driving through the beautiful northern countryside, past rice fields and wats and holiday homes for wealthy Thais.
I learn Tim had been married to an Englishman who passed away recently. He was an avid tennis player. She has a daughter named Emily. They lived for a time in Dallas, and traveled all over the US. She loved San Francisco, and I know that when people say that, they really mean it.
Adisak, the man who operates the boat tours that run from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, calls her to check on our whereabouts, and I let him know we are passing the golden temple and very near to the border crossing. I describe what I look like and what I’m wearing so that the riverboat guide can find me. When we arrive, Tim shows me where to go get my Thai exit stamp on my passport, and where to board the small, swift motorboat to take me across the Mekong to Huay Xai on the Laos side of the river. I can’t get a Lao visa without an exit stamp, and hasty travelers have had to turn back and do so before they are allowed into the country. I thank Tim for all her assistance, and most of all for her company.
“Til next year, Tim,” I say, and we hug before waving goodbye.
Upon arrival I am greeted by Phet, who will be our guide on the boat for the next two days. He takes my bags and leaves them in an open-air eatery where other travelers are also waiting, and walks me to the visa office.
Getting a Lao visa is a bit chaotic. You simply hand over your passport in one window, wait for what seems like an hour among dozens of other travelers until a Lao official holds up your passport and a helpful traveler near the window calls out your name, which is repeated by other travelers so those in the back can hear. Then, pay your $36 USD, more or less depending on your nationality, stand in another queue with passport in hand, get it stamped, and finally walk up the hill past a checkpoint. Phet wrangles a handful of us, presumably all traveling together, and a waiting songthaew takes us and our gear to a waiting boat.
The boat is a colorful wooden craft with a bright polished deck and fours rows of reclining coach seats. Behind the rows of seats is a long dining table with chairs all around, a little bar with refreshments, and best of all, a lavatory with a clean Western toilet. In the rearmost section of the boat are the living quarters for the captain, his wife, and their young daughter. This will be our transport for the next two days, but it is also their home. We push away from the shore, and Phet informs us that a speedboat is coming to join us with three more passengers, for a total of eight.
This is not the usual boat to Luang Prabang. The alternative is the public boat, which is just like this one but stripped of coach seats and with bare wooden benches, if you can get on the boat early and snag a seat. The boats are packed with at least ten times as many passengers, and often as many as a hundred, plus their luggage, too. To me, paying the extra $100 USD was worth it, and though I don’t know it yet, it will be one of the highlights of my entire trip.
Our group of eight consists mostly of retirees. I soon introduce myself to everyone, and meet Tom and Bob from Minnesota who recently were in Chiang Mai volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. They are pretty excited to have met Rosalynn Carter and had their photo taken with her. I meet a Dutch couple, Anna Lucia and Jake, who have planned to cycle from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, and Agneta and Fredy from Stockholm. And lastly is Mattias from Germany, who is traveling alone like me.
I couldn’t be more pleased with this boat trip. The coach seats are comfy and there’s plenty of room to move about and stretch. In the front, behind the captain’s seat, is a raised platform with a roof that slides open and seats that face each other, a great place to chat with my shipmates and enjoy the sun. But not now. This morning it is quite cool and foggy with a slight wind. I put my windbreaker over my fleece and wrap the pashmina around me. Phet asks us if we want coffee or tea, and we all huddle around the dining table, warming our hands around our hot mugs.
A little after the noon hour we are served lunch. The captain’s wife has prepared a tasty lunch of fried catfish, savory omelets with bean sprouts, stir-fried vegetables, and steamed rice, plus all the tea, coffee and fruit we can help ourselves to.
The Mekong is swift and rocky and full of dangerous eddies and strong currents. Our captain navigates the river with unsurpassed ease, even though this is the start of the dry season and the Mekong runs shallower now. The risk of running aground or scraping on some rocks is always a danger, but our captain maneuvers his boat without any effort on his part, coming so close to some rocks we can practically touch them. At times we sail down the middle of the river, and at other times we hug one bank or the other. The river is flanked by green mountains choked with jungle, and an occasional bamboo hut dots the hillside, yet without a road in sight to indicate how one is supposed to reach it. Not even a Jeep could bushwhack its way through all that undergrowth; a person on foot could, or an elephant surely, but the jungle is thick and unyielding. Each bend in the river reveals a landscape more stunning than what we leave behind in our wake, with mountains growing taller and disappearing into the mists. Other than the river and the mountains and the bamboo huts few and far between, there is nothing but the natural world all around us.
Mattias is a photographer, too, and we point out good shots to each other. He is shooting film, so he doesn’t have the instant gratification of seeing the results so he asks if he can browse my photos. He is particularly taken by a picture of Avalokiteshvara that I shot in a temple in Yaowarat in Bangkok, and asks if he might obtain a copy. I give him my card and tell him to email me any time.
In about five hours we arrive in Pak Beng, our halfway point. We will be spending the night here before embarking again and continuing to Luang Prabang, where we will arrive tomorrow. The boat pulls up to the shore, but there’s not really a boat landing or anything, just some loose and scrabbly shale and some concrete steps far above that. But first, we must maneuver up the bank with our gear, which makes me wish I had only a backpack, instead of a large daypack and a wheeled carry-on case. There are boys eager to carry our gear for us, but Phet warns us that they will demand $4 USD. As I disembark, I feel little hands grabbing for my case, but I hold on to it and instead carry it up myself, which is going to be a challenge. A small slip on the loose rock could be disastrous, and I wonder how many travelers have fallen on the dangerous riverbank and gotten hurt.
Once we pass the loose rock and reach the steps, it’s still a bit of a climb until we all reach the top. Phet rounds up our group and we walk a short distance to Villa Salika, the guesthouse that is included in the cost of our boat trip. The passengers on the public slowboats must wrangle their own accommodations upon arrival.
Pak Beng is little more than a dusty frontier outpost with a few guesthouses and places to eat. It grew out of a need to provided food and lodging to travelers on their way to Luang Prabang. Other than being an overnight stop, there not much else to do here. There is no electricity in town, except after sundown when the village fires up a few noisy generators until 11 pm. Then it’s lights out. A flashlight is essential, if only to pick your way along the dark, rutted unpaved main street.
After we settle our bags in our respective rooms, Mattias and I invite Phet to dine with us, and agree on a time to meet in the lobby of the guesthouse. Until then, Mattias and I go for a walk eastward on the main street until it gets too dark to take photos, then return to Villa Salika, where we find Tom and Bob enjoying a tall Beerlao on the veranda overlooking the river. I invite them to join us for dinner, too. Eventually, we meet the rest of our group and we all dine together at the bakery, which serves tasty Lao and western food. We ask Phet a lot of questions, and I get him to teach us a few Lao phrases, like sabaidee (hello) and khob jai (thank you.)
Mattias asks me what brings me to Laos, and I tell him that I love Southeast Asia and had always to visit this country. “But really,” I added, “I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to come. I booked my trip so impulsively, but now I’m glad I did.”
“I think you’re here for healing.”
It makes me highly uncomfortable when someone peers too deeply into my soul, but he is right. I didn’t know it at the time I booked my trip, but there is something I need to take care of when I am here. I lean closer to him so only he can hear, and I tell him my story:
Exactly one week before I left on this trip, I was standing inside my garage with my partner Richard when we heard a huge, loud thump. When you live in a city, you get accustomed to loud noises, so you tend to tune most of them out lest your senses get overloaded with so many stimuli.
When we looked outside, there was someone lying in the street not 12 feet away from us. Now this scene in itself is not cause for immediate alarm. Regrettably, it’s not uncommon to see a misfortunate drunk who has passed out on the sidewalk and conked themselves on the head, requiring a call to 911 so the paramedics can take him to the emergency room for treatment. But this wasn’t a street drunk; it was my neighbor. He had jumped from the roof of our four-story apartment building. It was a horrible thing to witness, to see someone die in such a violent way and know that here is nothing we could have done to help him. For days I was very much tormented by the endless loop playing in my head: the sight of his last breath, the blur of policemen and paramedics, the growing pool of thick blood that left a stain on the asphalt. Could we have saved him?
“Go to a temple and make him an offering,” Mattias suggested. “Ask him if he will accept it first, and then he can go on his way.”
We all retire soon after dinner, though it isn’t even 10 o’clock at night. In any case, the generators will get turned off at 11 pm, and unless you’ve got a flashlight, your day is pretty much over.
Villa Salika is decent but basic. My room has two twin beds and a thermos full of hot water that I can use for tea or for bathing in the morning, depending on which urge is most pressing. I choose the bed away from the window, and peer under the mattress to scan for bed bugs. The room doesn’t look dirty but it is pretty no-frills. I want to ensure that I’m not sharing my bed with any unwanted guests. Under the thin, hard mattress are many leaves, quite possibly an insect repellent because my little bed is clean and bug-free. I take a cold shower, saving the hot water for the morning, put on my earplugs to muffle the noisy generators, and crawl into bed.
Totally Thailand - Saturday, Nov-21
Today is my day off, which means I have no plans at all but to exchange some money, pay my bill at the Baan Bua Guesthouse, and visit Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple. I know, that sounds like a lot to do, but it doesn’t involve trekking or riding a bicycle for four hours, so as I see it, it’s an easy day.
I meet Monika, my neighbor at the guesthouse, and we exchange plans over coffee in the garden. She asks if she can join me, even though she had been there yesterday on a field trip with the children from her school. I adore her company and am delighted to have a friend to spend my day with.
She and I walk to the bus station and negotiate a songthaew to take us to Wat Rong Khun, 13km south of Chiang Rai. A songthaew, which literally means “two rows,” is a small pickup truck with two rows of bench seats facing each other. You can pick one up at the bus station or flag one down in the direction you’re going, and the fare is pretty inexpensive, depending on how far you’re going. Up here in the north the songthaews are blue, but they’re red in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, and I hear the yellow ones go farther out, sort of a long distance commuter vehicle. I’ve been on some pretty crowded ones with folks standing on the rear bumper and hanging on to the roof rail, and things get pretty comical when a monk gets on board and everyone has to rearrange themselves so that he’s not sitting next to a female passenger. As a rule, a crowded songthaew costs less than an empty one, but since it’s just Monika and me, we end up paying a couple of hundred baht to get to the White Temple, which is still cheaper than a subway ride in San Francisco so I don’t give it much thought.
Within a half hour or so we arrive at Wat Rong Khun. Chalermchai Kositpipat, a Thai artist who funded construction of the temple at his own expense, built Wat Rong Khun, and it is still a work in progress. A successful painter in his own right, Mr. Kositpipat wanted to create an elegant temple to honor Buddha’s purity, but the temple is unique in both its look and symbolism. The temple is unlike any in Thailand. It is a radiant white, and decorated with tiny silver mirrors that give the temple complex the overall impression that it is made of spun sugar and icing, accentuated even more by the curling, spiraling ends and sharp terminals that decorate the temple and statuary. Among sculptures of demons and angelic figures, it includes a Boschian sculpture of hands reaching up from Narok, the Buddhist version of hell. One of the hands flicks you the middle finger, its fingernail painted bright red. Even the carp in the adjacent ponds are white. Inside the temple, murals depicting an apocalyptic end-of-days feature pop culture imagery such as Neo from The Matrix, the Millennium Falcon, Superman and the alien from Alien. As Eleanor, my Kiwi friend might say, it’s so OTT. Even the toilets are ornate gilded pavilions.
Monika and I take it all in and then visit the gift shop where we peruse the artist’s prints for sale. They are really quite a fantastical lot. I buy a t-shirt for my older brother of a demon devouring some other being. It’s the kind of thing he’d wear when he’s performing.
Monika and I sit at one of the cafés nearby and talk and people-watch for the next two hours. I love her company, her gentleness, her gorgeous smile and her Amélie haircut. We discover many parallels between us: our fathers we merchant seamen; we are one of three siblings; we’re both born under the sign of the serpent. We talk and talk, our words flowing endlessly, mostly about love and sex and relationships. It’s almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and we decide it is time to find our way back to Chiang Rai before it begins to get dark. We walk the 500m or so to the main highway, and sit next to a police kiosk until we see a songthaew coming our way. We flag it down, hop on board, and eventually return to the bus station.
Monika and I regroup at eight o’clock. It is chilly tonight, so we go to the Night Market and buy ourselves cashmere pashminas. I find a brown one, embroidered with pink and green flowers, that matches the rest of my travel wardrobe, and pay around $12 USD for it. It will come in very handy during the remainder of my trip.
We walk to the Peace House where we meet Matteus, a fellow from Pittsburgh, USA of Polish parents whom Monika had met a few days ago. When he’s not around, Monika chuckles over his unusual Polish accent, but right now we are all speaking English. Matteus has a degree in Asian studies and is trying to get into the Foreign Service. He’s taken the test twice already and failed, so we all all wish him good luck and hope the third time is a charm.
Tonight, Aob and Gauthier are tending bar, and I share some of my photos from last night’s concert and get some photos of them so I can remember their faces. Aob comes over with a hollowed out bamboo section that he’s taken from a large terrarium. His pet hedgehog is inside, and we take turns petting him, but only in one direction else we end up with a bunch of quills sticking out of our palms.
Monika, Matteus, and I go to Coconuts Bar and I order fish and chips, my first farang food since I arrived. I thank Kevin, the Irish bar owner who, like everyone I’ve meet in Chiang Rai, is friendly and makes me feel quite at home.
By now it’s 12:30pm, and I must return to the Baan Bua Guesthouse to pack up my gear. Tomorrow I go to the Thai/Lao border to catch a slowboat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. The two-day journey leaves in the morning from the border crossing at Huay Xai, Laos. After a lot of research, I found a tour operator who runs trips to Luang Prabang in a more comfortable alternative than the public boats. But the best part, Tim, the delightful owner of Baan Bua, will drive me to Chiang Khong on the Thai side of the border. I’m a little bit sad to leave Chiang Rai, and especially sorry to say goodbye to Monika, but I know another adventure awaits me down the river.
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