Nestled in the Ruanthai Guesthouse in Nongkhai, we kept procrastinating our visa run to Laos. Thailand is quite strict about visa overstays and fines are substantial so we knew that before the sun set on December 30th we needed to cross a border, any border. We weren’t sure how long we would stay in Laos but we did a lot of counting days on the calendar because our last day in Thailand will be the flight out of Bangkok on February 29, unless we are summoned home earlier by our little twin grandchildren.
All is well with my daughter’s pregnancy and I get almost daily updates and conversations with her and lots of belly and ultrasounds photos. They appear in their black-and-white images to be stunningly cute and healthy. But I would be lying if I didn’t mention that every day I plot how I would get to Bangkok and back home if necessary. We are lucky to be in Thailand where transportation options are extensive and efficient.
So, back to our visa run. We wheeled out of Nongkhai with one wrong turn but no big deal, and checked out of Thailand with no problems. Then we were ready to cross the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, the first bridge built over the Mekong. This is one where cyclists can actually ride across, on others you have to put your bike on a bus. So we were actually pretty shocked to see that our allotment of space on this bridge was pretty narrow and because there is a rail line running down the middle of it most vehicles aren’t keen on moving over onto the rail line (although they are able to) so we had some very close company at times. We would feel a gust of cold air from the air-conditioned buses, that’s what I mean by close.
Therefore we booked it across that bridge and came down to the place where you go from left lane to right lane and then on to Lao Immigration. We’ve crossed here several times but it’s been 11 years or so since we last did so we had forgotten the non-intuitive chaos that reigns here. Kind people got us sorted out (not Immigration employees) and my USD were rejected for tiny little rips so I had to fork over a spanking new $100 but all in all it wasn’t bad.
Bruce, true to form, stops in the middle of a dangerous bridge to give you this “Welcome to Laos” billboard from, of course, BeerLao. You can thank him when you see him. As you see, I kept going for dear life.
It’s a bit of a haul into Vientiane and the first part is enhanced by all the sand in the shoulder, and of course the loaded sand trucks doing their part to increase it. I had mapped out an alternate route but it turned out to be a dud with bumpy Myanmar-grade rocky roads so we bailed and went back to the highway.
We used to like Vientiane for its frumpy down-home capital vibe. But 11 years have passed and the vibe feels very different and we were not feeling the love much. Prices are higher for food, our guesthouse’s customer service was one grade below tepid and one grade above passively hostile and that’s all I’m going to say about that. Our room was adequate and did the job.
There are still a few colonial-era buildings left in Vientiane for you to sink some dollars into. We have no idea what the red things are, if they were flower buds or fruit. They were kind of squishy like there was something inside.
This is the National Library which as been turned into a... coffeeshop? I think the revenue helps to maintain the library because heaven knows the government isn’t going to. We stopped by here in 2005 and there were chickens running around the parking lot so maybe this really is an improvement. In any case the beautiful building is being preserved so I’ll shut up now.
Okay, so this just pisses me off. We used to important handmade textiles from Laos and this is a machine-made knockoff of Hmong embroidery, probably from China. Infuriating to see this crap flood the market and see the handmade items and traditional craft die right before our eyes.
There are some of our haunts that remain, like Nazim’s Indian restaurant and Wat Sisaket that we enjoyed, and some new haunts like the little coffee joint where the owner spoke flawless English and kept bringing us ice water and encouraging us to stay at the window bar and work on our journal. Travel to us is all about the people we meet and we talked to a young monk at Wat Sisaket for over an hour. He is Khmu, one of the upland tribal groups in Laos, from a very poor family, and was educated at a temple and learned English by watching Youtube videos. He comes to the temple to meet foreigners and practice his English, was smart, curious, and very sweet.
The main temple of Wat Sisaket has these awesome canted pillars and precious murals inside, which we aren’t allowed to photograph.
Bruce’s favorite temple, Wat Sisaket, has hundreds of little niches with small Buddhas in them, and a gorgeous collection of large bronze Buddhas that are quite old.
If we had entertained notions of staying more days in Laos and possibly going on to other locations they were dispelled by our stay in Vientiane, even though we know of course that Vientiane is no more typical of Laos than Washington, DC is of the United States. We went to bed by 9 on New Year’s Eve and in the morning headed back to Thailand.
There was an enormous New Year’s event being staged at the grounds of the National Concert Hall sponsored by you-know-who. We passed.
The heat is definitely back now and we had a bit of a headwind going toward the bridge but we booked it again, only pausing slightly when we were startled by the enormous new United States embassy, which we had missed during our ill-fated “shortcut” on the way in. This was the same day that the US embassy in Baghdad was surrounded by protesters and we waved at the guards and flew on by. Embassy security would have been very high and no sense inviting ire by stopping to photograph it. Incidentally, I worked with a teacher who grew up in the old embassy in Vientiane in the 60s and 70s, whose family had to evacuate at the end of the war. Vientiane was a placid place in those days and still was in 2002 when I first was there, with few vehicles, paved streets, and one stoplight, the only one in the country.
The biggest industry in Laos besides selling rare animals/teak/river power/young women/land to the Chinese is making beer. BeerLao is a huge industry and while we kind of love it too, the scale of BeerLao is kind of unnerving. One of the breweries spans the road into Vientiane and the enormous lot behind it holds thousands of the iconic yellow cases that you see in every nook of the country. I haven’t personally traced the ownership and provenance of BeerLao but it is probably safe to say that somebody in the upper up owns it. Transparency is not rampant in Laos so one can only speculate. It is no secret that virtually every other large enterprise we encountered in Vientiane such as the enormous new malls and office buildings being built all had Chinese characters on their explanatory displays.
Where the BeerLao magic happens. These buildings are on both sides of the road.
Bruce LellmanTo Ron SuchanekThe exchange rate is 8800 Kip per US$. So, for less than four bucks you could stand by this machine and slam four of them babies. Reply to this comment 4 years ago
We passed several ongoing New Year’s Day celebrations with groups of people day-drinking and listening to pulsing morlam music which is super-cheerful and we adore it. I did one-handed rage motions as we passed and folks returned with the rising note whoops that interject nearly every sentence when life is running good, or at least liquid.
On our way out of Vientiane we stopped so Bruce could buy a sticky rice basket big enough to serve a party.
Stamp, stamp out of Laos, book it across the bridge again but this time far less traffic because everybody in Laos was still hungover or still partying or asleep. On the bridge some Thai tourists waved at us and shouted hellos which I must say was a marked contrast to the general dolefulness we had been encountering in Vientiane, on down into the outskirts of Nongkhai where the sky was bluer, the birds louder, the scent of flowers stronger. I don’t know why this is, but it is and can’t be denied. We headed straight to our tray food place but it and a lot of other places were sealed up for the holiday so we didn’t get to go back there after all. We have thirty more days in Thailand to eat tray food and it’s great to be back.
This we can say: there is no substitute for traditional Lao coffee, black as coal, dolloped with sweetened condensed milk, served with a tea chaser.
4 years ago