A few days off in Vientiane: Not entirely alone

December 16, 2014

Even though Dea and I had promised each other that there was no need for any such repeat of our first theatrical goodbye, the next morning inevitably brought a fresh wave of emotional pain amidst another tearful goodbye. It was almost a carbon copy in fact, as we loaded her bags into the back of another taxi and then held each other for one final time. This time there was to be no reprieve, this time she was really leaving. I squeezed her tight, not wanting to let go, but I had to. Into the backseat she climbed as a man watching nearby giggled. He was one of the tuk-tuk drivers that stood on corners looking for business, and not just tuk-tuk driving business. I decided I might as well be nice to him, so I leaned one arm on his shoulder as I waved at the back of the departing taxi, and encouraged him to do the same, and the two of us waved goodbye to the most beautiful girl in the world. The very thoughtful man then turned to me and asked "You want Laos girl now? Falang lady gone! You want Laos lady?"

I didn't really feel that much like sleeping with a prostitute, so instead I moved my things back to the cheap hostel and resumed my 'feeling sorry for myself' position. I maintained this position pretty solidly for the next couple of days, except for a brief trip to the Vietnam embassy to apply for a visa. Luckily that was a very simple visa to apply for, the process being simply to fill in a form and give them $65 and then come back in a couple of days to collect it. Everyone at the embassy was very relaxed about it all. So relaxed, in fact, that when I got the visa back I found that they had misspelled my name. Not to worry, when I pointed it out to them they just took it back and wrote the correct spelling over it in pen.

I'll be honest with you, I don't know what this is

Back at the hostel I continued my 'feeling sorry for myself' marathon and it was quite nice to simply do nothing for a few days. Except pretty soon I found out it was boring to do nothing, so I caught up with a bit of writing. I also checked Facebook regularly, secretly hoping that China might have f*cked up again and sent Dea back to me. As it happened they did f*ck up again, or somebody did, but instead of sending her back they trapped her in Beijing airport like Tom Hanks. After she took her rearranged flight to Beijing she then found out that she wasn't allowed to take the onward flight from Beijing to Denmark on account of the fact that she hadn't arrived into Beijing on the flight that she was supposed to have arrived on (that'll be the one that she wasn't allowed to take.) But naturally Dea took it all in her stride and, from the updates she sent me, she seemed to be making the most of her extended vacation time in Beijing airport. Eventually a flight was found for her that everyone agreed she could take, and I think she made it back to Denmark sometime before the New Year.

The view from my hostel, proving that I sometimes could be bothered to walk as far as the window

That wasn't to say that Facebook didn't have any other news to cheer me up with though. After a couple of days a very interesting piece of information cropped up on my newsfeed from Robin, the German cyclist that had bought a boat in Luang Prabang with brave intentions to sail to the Mekong delta. I'll be honest, I don't think any one of us that met Robin in Luang Prabang would be at all surprised by how it started: 'I crashed my boat.' And, whilst this predictable calamity was not in itself something to cheer me up, the fact that Robin was sufficiently alive to be able to post to Facebook did, his own survival having been of great concern to us all. What was better was that the message went on to say that he was 80 kilometres from Vientiane (perhaps he washed up on our private beach - quite a week for the cows!) and he would be cycling the rest of the way. I would soon have some company.

Lots of temples in Vientiane, and a lot of tourists. Too many tourists. I didn't like it that much

Robin arrived to Vientiane the next day, yet failed to follow my instructions to come and stay at the same hostel as me, and instead booked into a different hostel 'because it had a pool table.' We met at a little restaurant down near the Mekong and it was good for me to get out and meet a familiar face. I liked Robin. He reminded me of me, and not just because he had a beard and a bright orange t-shirt, but also because he seemed to be a little bit, well, I don't know, what's the word, you know, hapless. For example, in the present instance I wasn't eating, but Robin was, and we were in the touristy part of town, yet Robin hadn't asked the price before ordering. I felt very sorry for him when I saw the look on his face when he got the bill.

In order to cheer poor Robin up we walked to his hostel to play some pool. On the way I asked about the boating adventure and was very impressed that a) Robin had made it so far and b) that he was still alive, because it seemed he'd encountered a great many tricky situations including rapids and whirlpools and dams where he had to squeeze through narrow gaps of rapids and whirlpools. He'd finally succumbed to a patch of partially submerged rocky ground which, fortunately for him, allowed him to evacuate with his bike to the safety of land. Now that his boat was damaged and would be far too dangerous to take out on the river again, he thoughtfully gifted it to a young child, and resumed pedaling.

We got to Robin's hostel, the one which he had chosen because of the pool table, where he was very surprised to find that there was no pool table. "I thought there was a pool table!" he said. So we left again and walked around looking for one somewhere else, and instead found a little den of snooker tables, occupied by local youths. We got a table and, after I'd explained the rules, did our very best to play a game of snooker. The only trouble with this was that neither of us was very good, and snooker is a much more difficult game than pool, and consequently it took a very long time to get rid of all the reds, and about 80% of the points we accumulated were in fouls, and the biggest break was when somebody potted the black at the end.

We tried another game, but were both worse than we had been during the first. Robin tried to go for a long red, and needed the spider to help him reach, and still he couldn't quite reach, but he leaned in all the same. He hadn't chalked the cue, and so he completely skewed it and the white went in completely the wrong direction and he cursed and jumped up, and in doing so banged his head on the lights above him, and he cursed some more. I found all of this quite hilarious of course, and then, in the midst of my laughter I had an epiphany.

This man was completely hapless.

And his name!

His name... was Robin!

I'd found him at last!

20/12/14 - 33km (20km in Laos)

Today's ride: 20 km (12 miles)
Total: 34,951 km (21,705 miles)

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