December 17, 2014
Unpaved and Unhinged
Fording streams and looking for The Real Laos
Luang Prabang to Meuang Nan 31 + 16 (2 days)
Meuang Nan to Sayaburi 24
Dear little friends,
The American guy we met at the coffee place, Dan, told us the river route to Meuang Nan was a fun road but that it would be tough, with lots of ups and downs into creeks, some bridged, many not. The other route is about the same distance but follows Highway 13 out of town and then onto Highway 4, the road to Sayaburi. There are at least six other spellings for Sayaburi but I'm sticking with the easiest one, but if you see references to Sainyabuli, Xayaburi, or others, yes, it's the same place, both a province and a city. It is on the opposite side of the Mekong from the bulk of Laos. We were going to head that way and then go south to the Thai-Lao border that would put us in the wonderful (we hear tell) chain of river towns west of Nong Khai, Thailand.
We really like the Mekong.
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But should we follow the river road or take the highway? I don't think we really decided until the day before we left, and when we told Dan of our decision he looked a little concerned.
"We have a tent", we assured him. So off we went.
The road is paved for the first 25 kilometers to Kuang Si Waterfall, so that the tourists can get tuk-tuks out there for lots of waterfall fun. Then the road turns into a tolerable clay/gravel road that is nothing to complain about after our freak-show roads in Myanmar. The hills were steep, and sometimes we pushed up them. When the clouds burned off the views were gorgeous. And yes, we did a lot of roller coaster hills, many of them to unbridged streams that we forded with more or less dry feet.
But the ups and downs were wearing us out, so mid-afternoon we started scouting out camping places. The idea being that we would melt into the woods and hunker down until near dark and then set up the tent, which has been asking to be used since our second day of touring in Myanmar when we should have used it instead of trucking into Monywa. There are far fewer people in Laos than Myanmar, we just had to keep quiet and then snuggle down for the night. It's not that it would be awful to have people find us, it's just easier to sleep knowing that absolutely nobody knows you are there.
The teak plantation we chose had very few plants growing in the understory, there was just a carpet of teak leaves that are as big as shovel heads and dry as cornflakes, extremely loud and crunchy. We cleared a spot for the tent and for walking around but nobody was going to sneak up on us there, the leaves were as good as watchdogs. It was far from any villages, but guess what? People go to work in the fields and then walk miles back to their villages every evening, they were still going by in the dark. We could sort of see the road from our spot, so we kept watch and shushed up when we saw anybody. The last thing we would want to do is scare the pants off some tired villager walking home from a hard day's work.
We ended up setting up in the dark with little to no light, but everything worked out, we were exhausted and just wanted to sleep, and sleep we did. Until I woke up to the sound of somebody chopping down a tree. By hand. With an ax. In the middle of the night.
Laos is a very wild place still, it has the largest percentage of national park land in the world, yet it's a place with a lot of poaching and despoilment. For years I had listened for birds in the Lao jungles in vain, they had all been shot and eaten by hungry people. Remember, we Americans bombed the hell out of Laos during the Vietnam war, ruining much of the country for safe agriculture with countless millions of unexploded ordnance, development was set back a long time. This evening in the teak forest we heard many birds we had never heard before, with enchanting songs, it was delightful, it's a sign of more affluence that birds are returning. But the teak was next to the river and teak is like gold.
So in the middle of the night somebody within a quarter-mile of us is knocking down a tree, and we don't want to mess with that sort of person. I was petrified. When I thought I heard them coming closer I woke up Bruce so we could be petrified together. Fortunately they went off in a different direction and we both drifted in and out of restless sleep. It was a long night. At first light we were packed up and out of there, just in the nick of time as the first villagers walked by, this time with dogs, who would definitely have been in to investigate. Still, we found a place to sleep, we were safe, our tents and sleeping bags and mats were great, and I'm glad we finally got to use them.
We had peanuts and oranges and Clif bars, but water was running a bit low. Meuang Nan was only 15 miles or so away but with little sleep and not quite enough water, those 15 miles were hard, the roller coaster hills were sometimes extremely steep so we were pretty worn out when we got to Meuang Nan before noon. Now we were really out of the Laos tourist circuit, it seemed everybody in town had a stare or comment as we rode in out of the dust, you really knew you were somewhere where they see very few foreigners. But people are very nice and smile back and greet you, it's just a little disconcerting to constantly hear "falang, falang!" being called out as you enter a street. We usually try interacting with the babies first, once you have admired somebody's baby, and you should because they are gorgeous, you are now their parent's friend. Of course, my curly hair and green eyes have caused many a baby to burst into tears, too, and everybody gets a good laugh.
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We found another 'umble guesthouse, and strolled around and ate some soup, but really there is not a lot going on in Meuang Nan unless it involves BeerLao. Which, we like BeerLao all right, but not enough to drink it every time we are invited to. We really just wanted a little joint to eat some rice at but for some reason we couldn't find anything. So it was a trip to the bodega and some cup o' noodles for us, fortunately the guesthouse had a hot water dispenser in the lobby. I broke my world record for earliest bedtime by conking out at 6:48 pm, thank you very much.
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It was nice to return to a real paved surface today, and we rolled along reminiscing about our last time on this road in 2008, when it was slop and glottle at the end of the rainy season, we helped push the songthaew out of some giant mud wallows, it was a lot of fun. A new bridge has been built across the Mekong and paving happened too because a huge noxious dam is being built on the Mekong so that Thailand can have more power to keep my Wall Cornettos from thawing. We flew down a Utah-style canyon onto the bridge, and looked down at the old road and ferry we took last time, that spur of the road is still slop and glottle.
Sayaburi was coming up when we heard a bicycle bell tinkling and we were overtaken by a young couple from Switzerland, who have been traveling by bike for over a year and a half. Apparently they had stayed in Meuang Nan also, at one of the other two 'umble guesthouses, perhaps the one sandwiched in between two busy auto body shops? They didn't say. But they did say that they had taken the same route we did along the river only they did it in one day, which shows that there are tourers and then there are TOURERS. It was fun to chat with them by the roadside, and then they showed us how it is done as they powered off ahead of us. We forgot to tell them that their planned route to Hongsa that they are taking has dust a foot deep with rocks hidden in it, or so we have been told. But they have ridden all the way from Switzerland, I'm sure they will take it in stride just fine. (UPDATE AND CORRECTION! Our source for this road information politely tells me that I am full of beans, so let me give the corrected road information. There is a road across the river from Luang Prabang that if you are foolhardy enough to take it to Hongsa, has the foot-deep dust and rocks and steep hills and torment. The road to Hongsa north of Sayaburi town is paved, as far as we know, but more research should be done. My apologies for the confusion!) For ourselves, we turn south toward another Thai border that is still some ways off but we already know that if the road sucks or the scenery is boring we will be thumbing down a songthaew and shortening the way for ourselves. There are tourers and then there are TRAVELERS.
I haven't talked much about Laos, maybe because Luang Prabang is not really Lao, it's more like Lao Disneyland. But now we are out in the real Laos and it has quite the Wild West feel to it. People are very nice, don't get me wrong. But Sayaburi is a boom town, I grew up in a dam-building town and I know who comes to work there, people who are shaken loose from other places for whatever reasons. A gaggle of noisy Vietnamese young people were being evicted from the room next to ours when we arrived, the Chinese are everywhere, and there are a lot of very expensive new pickup trucks plowing around. Our guesthouse owner back in Thailand had said thoughtfully, "The Chinese have already eaten Laos." She may be right. All these small SE Asian countries hang like ripe fruit for China to pick, teak, jade, rubber, gems, endangered wild animal parts, hydropower, natural gas, yum yum yum.
Like Myanmar, Laos was isolated and poor for a long time. Unlike Myanmar, the Lao have had a nonexistent education system for always, their government is maybe even more opaque and dictatorial, and they can come across as being pretty incurious and ignorant and completely apolitical. The Thais sneer that the Lao are lazy, and certainly you see plenty of people sitting around doing nothing, but somebody is growing that rice and climbing up those very steep hills to harvest it.
There are schools everywhere, many funded by World Vision or other NGO's. Some sit empty but there are teachers too, who look to be about twelve and probably couldn't tell you what DNA is or where Rome or Rio de Janeiro are. We see schools let out at all sorts of hours, children on their bikes going home for lunch at 11 and returning at 1 if at all. We know that all humans have a capacity for learning and that there are plenty of bright lights among all these children we see in their darling Lao school uniforms. People are drinking subsidized purified water now, have better roads, more access to health care, these are all great things. So, from here in the Wild West of Sayaburi, it appears that things seem to be slowly getting better and more prosperous.
I know this because the little birds told me.
Today's ride: 71 miles (114 km)
Total: 358 miles (576 km)
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