Ah, lazy Laos. Never before have I found a sword as double-edged as this one. The Lao lifestyle is a relaxed one to the extreme. So relaxed, in fact, that something as simple as ordering a beer can take ages to be accomplished. While beers are usually located in a refrigerator no more than twenty feet away, the server must first go chat with his/her sibling, maybe have a smoke, pass by the fridge to pet the dog, pass back by the fridge to go see who just arrived on a motorbike, stand around pointing at things with that person, walk past your table on the way to take a nap only to be rudely interrupted by you reminding about the beer order. Then, and only then, may your request be fulfilled. Needless to say, life runs at a much slower pace in Laos.
Watching rice grow is the Lao national pastime.
There are fouler things than Orcs in the deep mud of the world.
As nightfall was approaching on the first day and we were about ten or fifteen kilometers from our planned stop for the night, my bike broke down. Something had hit the chain guard, detaching and mangling it in a way that interfered with the chain. Unfortunately, my riding companion was ahead of me and failed to notice my absence. After waiting next to my bike for about an hour (and watching as all the very friendly, but entirely unhelpful Lao pass by now and then) I decided nothing good was coming of me standing there helpless, so I set off to walk to town. After a few kilometers walking in dark, with the pitch black jungle to my left and the violent flashes of lightning from an all-too-near storm to my right, I finally came upon a small village. Unfortunately, their mechanic seemed busy drinking and they pointed me onward another few kilometers. I later found out that a few kilometers was closer to ten. Luckily, like a barrel-collared St. Bernard, my companion soon came riding back to fetch me, with a beer in hand awaiting my consumption. The next morning, I had my bike fixed for about sixty cents and we set off on the second leg.
The "mechanic" at work.
The second day would have been a pretty straight-forward and pleasant ride, had we followed the correct route. It starts out on a less-than adequate mountain dirt road that's just muddy enough to be a challenge, but not so that bikes need to be carried. After stopping for lunch, we came to a crossroads and asked for directions to the next town, Nahin. Walking up to a woman, I asked "Nahin?" while pointing down one road, and then "Nahin?" again while pointing down the second road. Upon the second one she nodded vigorously and replied, "Nahin! Nahin! Nahin!" This second road looked far more dismal than the first option, but we had thought the manager of the guest house had said there would be "no road" on this part of the journey. In fact, he had said "new road," but we didn't find that out until much later. Not until after we had spent two hours navigating mud up to my knees, and puddles deeper still. There were stretches of road saturated so heavily that you'd lose traction and slide out just by thinking about turning. Finally the road devolved into little more than a riverbed, with our only hope of not getting stuck in two foot-deep mud being following the flow of water through rocky channels. After all of this, the road opened up to a grand vista of a valley filled with a lake. This same lake is where the road led directly into. For clarity, this is how the scene played out: road->road->road->road->LAKE. There were a couple fishing huts along the road as it terminated into the lake, and after ignoring our first few pleas for direction, the fisherman laughed and said, "Nahin," while pointing back the way we came. We had no choice but to return all the way back, up stream beds, through mud deep enough to lose small children in, and to the intersection where the woman had so nicely pointed us in the completely wrong direction.
MUDMUDMUDMUDMUDMUD
We eventually arrived, filthy, exhausted, late, and without having seen any of our intended sights, at the guesthouse in Nahin and fell promptly to sleep. The following day we woke up early and rode two hours in the rain to the largest cave in the region. I really oughtta invest in some waterproof apparel. The cave was worth it though, and we hired a boat to take us through what is essentially a massive underground tunnel where a river flows through a mountain. Really spectacular stuff, and by the time we were ready to leave the rain had cleared up and we set off on the 200km trip to home base. It was a helluva trip and exhausting to the bone, but an incredible way to see the Lao countryside. I'm now in Vientiane, the capital and largest city in Laos. It's as charming a city as any and a good place to pamper myself for a couple days before heading onto Vang Vieng where I'll be volunteering with a sustainability program. I still see mud when I close my eyes at night.
Three days later, the bike resembled Tim Robbins towards the end of The Shawshank Redemption.
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