Plan B Part 2 Here

One of the great things about living out here is that we have three New Years -- International, then Chinese then Khmer. Or perhaps I should say ‘regional’ instead of 'Khmer'; because Vietnam, Thailand and Laos celebrate similarly and simultaneously.

My original plan to go via Battambang province in northern Cambodia, and thence overland to Thailand, fell through very quickly when I failed to get up at 5am to take the train. This was kinda excusable, however, as I had been up until 4am the previous night holding a strange semi-stag night for my friend John. After getting wasted for a few hours, he had expressed a sudden desire to eat at the Dusit, a mysterious Russian restaurant none of us had visited before. We arrived late in the evening, only to find that had closed down (for good) that very day; there was no food or drink and the staff were absolutely shitfaced. They went out and bought us vodka, cucumber and Dairylea triangles, which we all drank and ate together with them. It was very fine, and very Russian.

Then we went to Martini’s, the definitive Phnom Penh prostitute pickup place. I had been there just once before (for a quiet drink only, I hasten to add); on this occasion Jim Meadows and I managed to definitively prove our non-seediness by accidentally going to completely the wrong bar. When we finally made it to the right place, John and another friend were already several beers in and had seventeen underage Vietnamese tarts on their laps. Or something like that. Ended the night at the Heart of Darkness. As you do.

Anyhow, I was digressing... ah yes, Laos. Failed to make that early morning train, so switched to Plan B: bought a cheap flight to Bangkok, and left that evening. Arrived in Thailand, and jumped straight on the overnight train to Chiang Mai in the north. With some advance planning, I could have been in a very comfy couchette. Instead, the only space available was in 3rd class, standing room only. Rather like being on the Circle Line in rush hour, only it went on for about fifteen hours (so actually pretty much identical to the Circle Line, I suppose). It was quite a relief when the train broke down in the middle of the night, and we all got to wander around on the tracks for a couple of hours whilst they found a replacement locomotive.

The next morning’s winding ride up through the plains and hills of northern Thailand was really rather beautiful; I sat on the steps between two carriages watching the world go by and necked Mekong whisky with the train drunk (wherever I go, I seem to attract the local drunk; why ever could this be?). In a village further north, the train was joined by two British backpackers; I was utterly horrified to later wander down the carriage and spot one of them ignoring the people and scenery around him, instead choosing to listen to a CD player and read The Beach. Leo edition. Holy Mother of Christ!

In Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second city, I ditched the Brits and went hunting for a room with cable tv -- it being Grand Prix night, and me being sad. I was gutted to find out that the Hotel Fang did not have such a facility, and had to settle for the aptly-named Nice Apartment, although I had to tear the remote control to pieces before I could retune the TV to pick up the race. And how happy -- and hypocritical -- I was. After the champagne, I headed out for a nocturnal wander around Chiang Mai, grabbing some unspecial food at a night market and even watching Newcastle v Chelsea with a bunch of very enthusiastic Thais. But having caught my sport, I didn’t really want to be in a place with such omnipresent access to the outside world any more. The town was busy gearing up for its own New Year celebrations; I had other plans and was keen to move on.

The following day, I headed out on the bumpy bus to Chiang Khong on the northern Laos border, sharing a seat with a saucy Siamese schoolgirl and again enjoying some incredible hilly scenery. As this whole mission progressed, I was travelling deeper and deeper into mountain country, and it reminded me of how much I love such terrain (and how little there is of it in Cambodia).

Chiang Khong turned out to be a sleepy place on the west bank of the Mekong; across the murky waters lay Huay Xai -- a parallel town in completely different country (the river creates a natural border between the two countries for the most of the northern frontier). The Bamboo guest house afforded pleasant views of the other side, and was also interesting in that every single thing therein -- from the huts to the tables, from the ashtrays to the proprietor -- was made of bamboo.

I decided to cross the river/border early the next morning and take the first boat down to Luang Prabang, my avowed New Year’s destination. In the meantime I got drunk and sang, merrily, as the aged bamboo landlord played blues guitar, badly. I was surprised that the only other foreigners who had been with me on the bus -- two Japanese guys who had also chosen the Bamboo -- remained closeted in their hut. This was to be explained later, however. Much later.

My early-rising, border-crossing, river-boating plans ganged seriously fucking aglae when a monsoon started in the early hours of the morning, and continued well into the following day. The Japanese guys, who were on a similar route to me, briefly emerged from their hut to decide they would stay another night. I was determined to achieve something that day -- however small -- so in the afternoon braved the drizzle to leave Thailand, take a little boat over the river, enter Laos and check into a guest house in Huay Xai. Following a straight line across the river, it was perhaps 500 metres away from the Bamboo. I hooked up with a couple of young French travellers, who like all young French travellers were called Ralph and Stuart. We strolled around Huay Xai for a few hours, enjoying the contrasts between this town and its Thai counterpart.

Laos was already more chill, more beautiful and more poor. And the beer was a billion times better. Beer Lao is almost certainly the finest ale in Asia.. I had drunk it a few times in Cambodia, where it is rare and expensive. In Laos it is omnipresent, and costs less than a dollar for a huge bottle. I drank a lot of it during my week in Laos. A lot. We also had our first crack at Lao Lao that night; the local firewater (confusingly, the Laotian word for whisky is Lao, so Lao Lao means Lao whisky). It was really rather industrial and unpleasant, and quite possibly laden with fatal toxins. Got you pissed, though, and I developed a bit of a taste for it.

The main topic of conversation in Huay Xai is boats. Most travellers come over, like myself, to head down the Mekong towards Luang Prabang. There are two options: either catch a cargo boat that takes two days and is reputedly very chill, or catch a speedboat that takes six hours and is reputedly very scary. Norwegian Nora, whose travel tip I was following, recommended (read: insisted) that I try and get a speedboat: "you'll fucking love it".

Jim, by contrast, had urged me to take the slower option: "you wouldn't catch me in one of those fast things, they're fucking lethal". Others, like the old Mama with the Lao Lao, were similarly cautious: "no take speed boat... no water... very bad" meaning that, it being the middle of the hot season, the river was at its lowest and therefore most rock-strewn. A British expat in Chiang Khong had regaled me with tales of Great Mekong Speedboat Deaths. Ralph and Roger, with furrowed brows, thought the slow boat sounded nice. That settled it.

Pausing only to get some kip (due to typical commie inflation, the going rate is currently one dollar to 7,500 kip, and most notes are in very small denominations, so changing a hundred bucks effectively doubled the amount of luggage I was carrying) I charged off early the next morning to catch the speedboat. I was probably the first of the day to get to the departure point, but had to wait for a few hours for others to turn up so that we could negotiate a group deal. This gave me the opportunity to check out the boats. The pessimists had not been lying: these things were essentially punts with Toyota car engines bolted on the back. I watched one leave and head off down river; the noise was brain-shaking even from the bank, and the fucker had disappeared over the horizon within half a minute. Lawks.

They took a maximum of six passengers: I found four other insane travellers (an Irish couple and a Dutch couple), we fixed a price and clambered aboard. The boatman issued us with life jackets and crash helmets. I donned the former (turned out very useful when it later got cold) but declined the latter (I figured that in the event of an accident you'd probably be pitched into the water at high speed, in which case the helmet would be more likely to snap your neck than save your head). As he cranked up the engine, I stuffed my ears with bog roll, tied a krama round my head and sat back to enjoy the ride.

Words cannot express what it is like to negotiate the twists and turns of the middle Mekong in a punt at 80mph. And the photos have turned out pretty crappy too. Whenever we hit turbulence the whole boat would lift out of the water and slap back down with a series of spine-crunching impacts. The river was filled with sudden rocks and huge whirlpools; the usual way of negotiating these was to head for the rocks at full speed, then turn sharply at the very last minute and skirt round the top of the whirlpool... any slower and you'd be sucked in. Such moments were indeed pretty trouser-browning. But on the whole, I found it to be immensely chill.

The landscape we passed through was absolutely awesome... towering, misty mountain ranges extending as far as the eye could see in every direction, luscious tropical jungle, deep gorges with bizarre rock formations. And the people of the river, fishing with nets and huge levered bamboo poles, or just hanging out and filling themselves with opium. Groovy.

We motored in this manner for about three hours before pulling into a small floating village for a spot of lunch and a few Beers Lao. Here, at the halfway point, we bid a fond farewell to our driver (not that we’d exchanged many words with him; far too noisy to speak) and clambered into another boat to cover the second stretch. Our new driver was a sulky fellow, unhappy that we were just five in the boat. And we were none too happy ourselves when, about half an hour downstream, he hit a rock.

Plan B Part 2 [Hint: I didn’t drown].

© 2000 The Author