Week 19: Laos (Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw)
Hopped into an early van with eight other bleary-eyed travelers, arriving at the Laos-Thailand border two hours later. $35 USD in cash was required to secure a visa and the bills needed to be crisp. Any blemish, fold, or tear would eject unlucky travelers from the front of the line towards the border’s currency exchange a few meters away where a disinterested government agent seemed more concerned with her phone than the sulking tourists before her. We must have arrived during their lunch break since a different, disinterested government worker sat with our group’s passports behind a pane of security glass, shamelessly snacking on a corn cob while 50 travelers waited 30 minutes for her to finish. There was a cool looking visa that took up an entire page when I finally got my passport back so maybe it was worth the wait.
We were herded into the backs of pickup trucks, retrofitted with a roof and benches (Laos’ version of the tuk-tuk) once we successfully crossed the border. We arrived at the foot of the Mekong River 30 minutes later. Our slowboat sat before us, approximately 75 feet long with a flat roof and large engine growling in the rear. We slowly found our spots among the re-purposed bus seats comprising the majority of the vessel’s accommodation. Wooden benches lined the front and back of the boat and were mostly occupied by locals on their daily commute. The slowboat snaked down the river faster than its name implied and it was clear that steering the boat required a high degree of skill. Large rocks lurked beneath the surface, spelling a less-spectacular titanic-like fate for all passengers on board if our skipper failed to pay attention. Sometimes our captain would kick the boat into high gear and kill the engine, drifting around a particularly sharp bend before hitting the ignition again. Beautiful countryside surrounded us. Small beaches tucked away, between dense rock, river, and jungle. The weather was perfect despite the humidity, which was kept at bay by the breeze our speed generated. I found myself with a group of rowdy Dutch backpackers who were more interested in getting drunk than I was and ended up in a long conversation about reincarnation with a Brazilian woman who’d been travelling for nearly two years.
We arrived at our halfway point seven hours later at a small village called Pakbang. Pakbang’s economy is almost completely dependent on the money that washes up each evening when a new slowboat full of tourists arrive. Small children hound you for tips and food as soon as you dock. Shipowners are aggressively hospitable as they attempt to woo you into their bar or restaurant. Catching a group’s eye could net them enough money to get by for a month. I checked into a stuffy but clean guest house before eating dinner at a restaurant where 15 geckos clung to the ceiling above me, feasting on insects who played Icarus and flew too close to the light. I had a fun conversation with an American, liberal artist named Jack about vulnerability and masculinity in our lives. A local offered me an opium cigarette outside which I split with Jack before heading to sleep. Our group was back on board, bright and early, after a quick breakfast, I spent the entire day writing while the slowboat continued towards Luang Prabang.
Luang Prabang
Six other slowboats were offloading their passengers when we arrived, creating a backpacker Hunger Games. Hordes of tourists semi-casually rushed to catch tuk-tuks into town and secure a hostel bed or risk getting stuck at one of the many, pricier boutique hotels throughout the city. The group I was traveling with managed to find a half-decent place to stay after two failed attempts. We walked around the night market after dropping our bags off and accidentally hiked up the highest viewpoint in town thinking it was a shortcut towards a bar. We arrived a bit sweaty and ready for our first drink.
Utopia: between 1–2 acres large, with a low, wooden plateau in the lobby covered in cushions where patrons lounge about and chat over loud Top 40 (Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” has been inescapable on this journey and I regret immortalizing him further in this blog post). There’s an outdoor seating area past the lobby overlooking a small river shooting off the Mekong. A sand volleyball court is positioned at the rear of the property by the restrooms, which drain directly into the river. A maze of landscaping divides the outdoor areas into walkways and intimate alcoves, decorated with tropical plants and the remnants of rusted bombshells, a bit of historical tension that betrays the establishment’s name. Utopia, a bar serving those who decimated their country just decades ago. I wonder what the owners think about it, but politics seem to be the last thing on anyone’s mind at the moment.
I had been masochistically craving some kind of embassy experience, thinking I hadn’t really traveled until I’d been face to face with some sort of sterile, state monolith that would needlessly complicate my plans. I romanticized what dry, hypothetical interactions I’d have with government employees… the hassle they’d introduce into my life, the nightmares they’d weave for me to share with other travelers… So I visited the Vietnamese Consulate across the street and applied for my travel visa. It was actually super easy and I received my updated passport later that afternoon.
In the evening, I went with Jack (the New Yorker I met in Pakbang) to a cafe screening illegal bootlegs of Oscar-nominated films. We watched Del Toro’s latest film, Shape of Water, which was entertaining and thematically progressive but (like most of his films) felt overly-encumbered by its stylistic elements (it hadn’t won Best Picture yet when I first wrote this). We were back at Utopia shortly after, but the true highlight of the evening was just beginning. As Utopia closed at 11:30, a swarm of tuk-tuk drivers descended upon buzzed tourists offering rides to the local bowling alley.
An outdoor archery range greeted us when we stepped off our tuk-tuk. Drunk tourists fired arrows into distant targets as the guys running the range haphazardly collected them after five or so shots. The entrance to the bowling alley was to the right of the range. The lanes were packed with groups drinking and laughing under a a thin haze of cigarette smoke that lingered just above the crowd. Locals were enjoying the lanes too, which closed at 4am and seemed to be the de facto late night spot. My group alternated inside and out, shooting arrows and drinking beer, until a lane was ready for us. We bowled a full round, getting progressively drunker and/or stoned on the sub-par weed we purchased from a driver outside. After one last round of archery (Jack won three packs of cigarettes and a beer), we piled into a packed tuk-tuk towards our hostel. Jack and I decided the roof would make for a more enjoyable ride, so we climbed atop the moving vehicle and enjoyed the breeze as the struggling scooter carved its ways through Luang Prabang’s quiet streets.
After shaking off our hangover the next morning, Jack and I teamed up with some other travelers from our slowboat group and rented mopeds. Our destination was Luang Prabang’s famous Kuang Si Falls an hour away. This place made me question reality. Small pools collected near the base, a cerulean blue that looked chlorinated, smooth rock surrounded them reminiscent of the artificial tide-pools you’d find at Disneyland. The waterfall itself, a natural masterpiece, perfect in its composition. How? How?! And why can I only describe the beauty of the natural world by referring to its human-made counterparts? We hiked to the top where yet another calm, picturesque lagoon invited us in. We swam for a bit before I spotted a snake commuting through the water and decided it may be best if we enjoyed the pond on land.
We wound down at Utopia once again, where I met two Oregonians who brought out a cornucopia of snacks for the group to enjoy while we talked ourselves into complete exhaustion. Jack and I woke early the next morning to catch a minibus towards a more rural village.
Nong Khiaw
Nang Khiaw was much quieter, filled with less tourists and surrounded by giant mountains that stared you down from all sides. I stayed with Jack in a small bungalow that had a balcony overlooking the river running through the middle of town. Loud construction took place just meters from our room of me as a crew of men casually threw together infrastructure for a second story bungalow that I’m nearly positive will block the view I was currently enjoying. There’s a fair amount of trekking to do around Nong Khiaw, but I opted to take it easy for a few days and file my taxes (an endeavor that had haunted me since I was at my ashram in India).
During a particularly solitary walk around town, I recognized a quiet polish woman from my minibus named Sylwia. We exchanged contact info and met at a small restaurant for lunch. We talked for a few hours before hopping into an empty slowboat on the river and watching the sun set. Small bats whizzed around us, weaving in and out and between the roof’s support beams as we got to know each other. Sylwia’s a recent cultural studies graduate living in Iceland with a deep passion for cinema. She was almost published in a major journal as an undergraduate for her analysis on metaphysics in film. We had a similar penchant for deconstructing culture and drinking Beerlao (Laos’ dominant beer brand) and found ourselves hanging out on my balcony’s hammock well past midnight. We accidentally skipped dinner before trying futilely to find an open restaurant. I even offered a shopkeeper double to whip something up but had to settle for the crumbs of some bamboo chips after being declined.
I spent most of my last day in town hanging with Sylwia. We talked for a while, but could also sit quietly with each other and read, which felt like a real luxury for me while traveling when I usually feel the need to be on around other travelers. We drank until nightfall again, this time grabbing dinner before it grew too late and sharing one last beer on the local bridge under a nearly full moon before parting ways. I missed her the last day, quietly waiting for the insanely speedy minibus that would whisk me back to LPB in half the time. But this was travel, and it wasn’t the first time I had to say good bye to a kindred spirit along the way.
When I arrived in LPB, I killed a few hours with the help of some margaritas at Utopia before catching a tuk-tuk to the airport. After moving through security and doing a few laps in search of a power outlet near my gate, I recognized a woman I’d seen at Utopia and Nong Khiaw and introduced myself. Her name’s Gaia, an Israeli traveling the world for six months after finishing her two year stint in the IDF. Within 10 minutes we were talking politics and agreed to travel together, a commitment of at least six days decided in less than half an hour. Our itineraries aligned and I had been looking for a travel partner for Vietnam. We boarded our flight and were in Hanoi within an hour.
