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December 10, 2005
Taking the scenic route: Muang Vieng Thong
Thursday morning at 0640 Levi, Anders and I headed out for the bus station just 100m away from our guesthouse. (Sam Neua is on the small side.) It turns out that Anders is on a different bus to his destination, Luang Prabang, than we are even though Muang Vieng Thong is on the way. Levi and I pass our packs to the driver who loads them up on top of the minibus and then we settle into the back row of seats. After only twenty minutes or so we are moving off down Route 6 and then onto Route 1 after a brief stop in Nam Noen.
On one hand, the ride was fairly comfortable because the vehicle was not crowded, we had some fruit, and my nice new wool blanket kept us warm. On the other hand, Route 1 is in terrible shape. It seems to have been paved at some point but that can be frequently difficult to discern. Clearly, the single lane road must be hell to travel on during the rainy season—there were obvious signs of recently and hastily repaired land slides and many portions of the ‘highway’ were just plain mud. About halfway through the 35,000 kip five-hour journey we pulled over to the side of the road because the gear shift linkage had broken when our driver downshifted the poorly maintained struggling diesel beast. About twenty minutes later, just when I was mentally preparing myself for an hours long repair stop, the driver announced all was ok and to get back on the bus. Yippee.
We pulled into Muang Vieng Thong at about 1400 and grabbed the first guesthouse in sight, the 10,000 kip per person Souksakhone Guesthouse. Asian style toilet, cold shower, but that’s ok…we are having fun. Our first priorities were water, cigarettes for Levi and some real food. I had some mixed vegetables in a bag that turned out to be heavily loaded with red hot chili peppers. Levi had two meaty dishes that were of no interest to me, other than the funny way in which they were grilled. We both had a Beer Lao. While many soon-to-be-consumed H5N1-infected chickens were crawling around under our table, Anders’ bus shows up and he hopped out with his fellow passengers to grab a quick lunch. A few minutes later they were off again.
After lunch, we went over to the two looms under the same wall-less building we had our lunch in. A local woman had just started up her weaving again but refused to let us take any pictures. So, we settled on the adjacent loom with a partially finished weave in place. During the later half of the journey we saw many looms under people’s houses. Apparently, this portion of the country is famous for its weaving. (Mom: If you click on the picture you’ll see a full size image of an entire loom.)
About 1 kilometer away from the high street where our guesthouse is located there is a hot springs, as mentioned in our not-so-trusty Lonely Planet. We walked up there over a bridge to the springs taking pictures along the way. There were many children on bicycles riding along the way who shouted out ‘Hello’ and ‘Sabai Dii’. A few even stopped to practice there Conversational English 101 lessons with basic questions like “What is your name?”, “How old are you?” and “Where are you from?” Only two of these teenagers seemed to understand our answers so we tried to keep the responses simple. At least they aren’t learning French.
At the hot springs some western donor had build a bathing facility for the locals that made use of the hot springs water by capturing it in a cooling pond. There were dozens of children and a few adults bathing there which we passed while on the way up to the source springs themselves. I had brought along some soap, a 20,000 kip newly purchased razor and my trusty Nanning procured 2 Yuan Chinglish hand towel with the idea of shaving off a full weeks worth of facial hair. (I’d left my expensive Gillette blade, SFr. 8 comb and trendy-brand hair wax behind in a hotel in Vietnam on the Xin Man trip.) Complete disaster. The razor, despite the price tag, was complete shit. The blades became dull after shaving the right cheek, began tugging at my skin on the left cheek, and I had to salvage the effort with an asymmetrical, elongated goatee. Blah.
Just as I was giving up on the shaving, two small groups of children showed up at the hot springs with some roots and vegetables. The had some knives with them which they used to push the roots and veggies down into the bubbling water where they let it cook for twenty minutes or so. The girls gave us some sort of sweet potato and the boys a chalky tasting root. I had two carrots in my bag, so we cooked those and I returned the children’s gift. Levi and I also soaked our feet in the water and mud. Unfortunately, I mildly scalded the arch of my left foot. Ouch. After an hour or so later we headed back to the guest house.
That evening we hung out at our sleeping lodge and when hungry went down to a restaurant on the high street (aka Route 1.) The plan was to have dinner, but we ended up sticking to Beer Lao and two shots of Lao Lao. We were not too concerned about getting to bed early because our bus for Nong Khiaw was not scheduled to depart until 1400 the next day.
That next morning I left on a one hour long like up a road into the mountains for a bit of exercise and some photography. A few children along they way were absolutely stunned by the big, white strangely dressed foreigner and either said ‘Sabai Dii’ or burst into tears and ran for cover. Every now and then a truck or scooter would come down the rode with the drivers smiling and waving. The road was crap and almost difficult to walk on. There were grass huts, rice paddies, a few looms about, and many breathtaking countryside vistas. It was a really interesting experience and I wish there was more time to walk about.
Posted by stu at December 10, 2005 04:55 AM