Life in a year full of Saturdays: Vientiane to Huay Xai

Vientiane (Laos) to Huay Xai (Laos)

09.03.07

We decided to kick off the morning in quite a pleasant cafe that Jase had selected on account that he is quite anal, and felt in his being that he should need to prompt us daily with SMS status checks and all other fatherly-alpha male BS that had me wanting to shut him up quick smart. You see, everytime he decided to be a cock head on this trip, which entended up being quite often, well, I decided internally that I should call it out in this blog because I didn't do it at the time but I definitelty should have. In any case, JJ and I made our way down to the Bin Lao cafe, which was quite a pleasant place and was set in some nice gardens. We all enjoyed a nice breakfast and made the most of our final morning in Vientiane for the next few weeks.

After breakfast the four of us aimed to check out the morning markets and more by fortune than by design stumbled across a totally different area of Vientiane than we'd not had the pleasure of experiencing thus far. More of an upmarket I'd say, having that distinctly French/European feel. In a way it was fairly representative of Vientiane generally, a place that revealed itself slowly, wasn't showy at all but certainly had its own charms and that was something that you could easily warm to. It was at this point that Jase and I threw the girls out a challenge and decide to take the optional and creative route to the markets with just our own logical abilities of orientation to guide us. Now, when it comes to finding your way around a town without so much as a map to guide you, how do you think the female mind does? Very well actually from what we were to find out!
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Jase and I made it to the markets via good 'ole fashioned male skill and stubborness, truth be told however, the markets were as boring as all hell, basically the equivalent of Paddy's markets on any weekday, so your typical vanilla style, tourist driven shop trap, and that's ok too, just not what we were looking for this morning but a definite mental check in my book for a quick stop and go on the way home. After a quick spin Jase and I headed back to base camp and realised that we had made the young players error of still operating on KL time, not so bad in that it gave us an extra hour and hence additional time with out newest companion, the all too popular man of the moment, beer Lao.

Strolling back to the Dragon Lodge we deduced that the girls had also realised the fatal one hour vacuum, you know, that place in the ever existing continuous moment where time and space vanishes in a sea of cheesy knick-knacks. Never the less we settled back, yet again, for that Lao 'cure-all' and it really must be a 'cure-all' as it solves all time related, hygeine related and socially related difficulties for $0.80 cents a pop! A few down, a tuk-tuk ride later and a little weaving through Vientiane traffic and we were back at Vientiane International/Domestic, all ready to make the flight north to Huay Xai and our destination with the fire breathing Gibbons.

Now, let me just say this. Of the countless times that I've jumped on flights in my life to destinations near and far, you'd think that out of all things in my life I'd be cool with that it would be flying. Well no my friends, this is no longer the case. The fatalistic programme Air Crash Investigation has completely devasted my faith in all things that move at a height of greater than 5mtrs off the ground. In addition, I had caught a Lonely Planet show the year before and distinctly remember them commenting on Lao air travel and how they flight on instinct rather than by the use of any credible aviational/navigational instruments! I'd much rather have swam up the Mekong for a few months then take this flying rust bucket for a spin north, but hey, a scorecard of 3-1 means that you're taking it to the Lao skies where the tag line is, and I quote, 'You're safe with us'!!!! ...REALLY Lao Air??? Why the F*** would you need to tell me that? Shouldn't it be a correct assumption on my part that I will be safe without you needing to broadcast the fact? Coupled with the fact that Lao Air until fairly recently didn't have the greatest safety record going round, I've got to say that I was slightly apprehensive in taking to the Laotian skies, ever so blue, and extremely hazy. Air Maybe was either going to maybe get us there or maybe get us into the afterlife on an express pass. Here we go!

Air Maybe on the ground - Huay Xai - Laos

As Air Maybe thundered down the Vientiane motorway to the skies I rode out every bump and analysed every strange sound until we made it to cruising altitude,man, that's no way to live now is it? Still, perhaps in an anti-climax to the story, we flew a an uneventful flight until such time we poked out through the haze above Huay Xai and found ourselves hovering over the occasional cow that I assume could only be thinking that Air Maybe was disturbing their daily cud chewing ritual.
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Thankfully the twin prop plane had got me up and down in one piece and landed me on a piece of bitumen that really was in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't until a few mins after we had landed that JJ pointed out that one side of the runway actually slid off into quite a steep ravine on one side and any false move by the pilot in a Lao-Lao induced haze would have been quite the ride. F*** air travel, there's got to be a better way!

Huay Xai, on the border with Thailand - North-western Laos

Disembarking Air Maybe and looking around the joint you really did get the feeling that you'd been picked up and dropped off in the middle of oblivion, try and find that on a map! Aside from the smoke induced haze and the rolling hills around the runway the only building of any note was the shack which doubled as the domestic terminal. Knowing and seeing that we were nowhere and knowing that out excursion the next day was taking us into the Lao jungle, well, our next few days be deduction were going to be a long way from nowhere and I was really looking forward to that!

We jumped a tuk-tuk into Huay Xai and surprisingly found it to be a little larger than the single street town that we had anticipated. The town is directly across the Mekong from the Thai border town of Chiang(something), have forgotten the name but you can look it up yourself. There appeared to be a fair bit of tourist traffic from people border hopping and making their way into Laos after discovering the nothern part of Thailand. The place at a decent mix of cafes, internet cafes, general convenience stores and guesthouses. I mean, you wouldn't set aside days to deliberately visit but it was a comfortable place to use in order to get somewhere else, or, jump onto the Gibbon Experience whose headquarters were based there.

That evening we alled gathered for a little BBQ'ed Lao style chicken wrapped in banana leaves, which was fantastic, and hijacked a bottle of Lao vodka, which conversely was brutal.It was all to get us in the mood for the next day in any case. With dinner over and the night still young JJ and I left Jase and Audrey to their own devices whilst we cruised a little outside of town for some more Lao medicine before returning home. This however is only the beginning of the story, the next three days were to be, as they say, 'quite the experience'.