Some Quality Time with Nan

12/2/10 – 11/4/10
One night some time ago we met an Irish guy, who sat and described his philosophy to us. Not in a preachy, crackpot way, otherwise we wouldn’t have paid much attention. No, he explained that many years ago, after doing some basic calculations, he realised he was using only seventeen and a half percent of his income for living expenses, with the rest going towards work related expenses. So he got to thinking, that if he simply wanted to give up work, he only had to find that seventeen and a half percent somehow. He went on to say that by slowing down the pace of his life, he found he could reduce his expenses further, and that he also subscribed to this philosophy while travelling.

Sorry, you were waiting for the punch line? You want to know where he got that seventeen and a half percent? Join the club. Admittedly he was Irish, but after a year on the road we’d already reached some of those same conclusions ourselves, especially in regards to fuelling and maintaining the bikes. So lately we’ve been asking each other whether we should stick to our original plan – ship the bikes from Bangkok to India this year – or slow things down a bit and hang out in Southeast Asia until next year. Lucas really wants to see India, but Ann is ambivalent, especially after the Indonesian experience, so its not a straightforward decision. We have about a month to figure it out though, so right now we decide not to decide.

Crossing back into Thailand, our more immediate concern is negotiating the carnet thing again, which seems to be different almost every single time. This time the Thais want to stamp them, even though they’re not recognised here (they have their own import/export paperwork). So Ann hands over our two expired carnets, which the self-important customs guy proceeds to sign with a flourish.



Whatever.

During the next few days we decide to make our way north to Nan, a town we bypassed last time on the way to Laos. The road hugs the Mekong for a while, before heading vaguely northwest, up into the hills.



The atmosphere is very different from a month ago; the weather has started to heat up and the air is thick with smoke, which we assume at the time is blowing in from Laos.

We spend a night on the streets of Uttaradit after an eerie midnight ride through fire-ravaged forest, during which we discover for the first time, that much of the deterioration in the quality of the air is actually being caused by the Thais themselves. Outside the 7Eleven we observe bleary-eyed the setting up of the Sunday morning market, whose first customers begin trickling in around 4.30am.



This only reinforces our view that Southeast Asia is a region populated by insomniacs.

Arriving in Nan at last, we find it not unlike many other concrete Thai towns. Maybe its by government decree, but the Thais seem to design their buildings like a baker shapes cookies; there isn’t much work for architects here.



Nan’s appeal isn’t in its architecture however, although it does have one or two interesting wats.

What you do find in this largely farang-free town, is that the lazy pace of life gradually creeps up on you, until all of a sudden you realise you’ve been here several weeks. You meet long-term travellers who have succumbed to its charms and return regularly to escape the northern hemisphere winter, or likewise expats, who have made their homes here.



You find yourself slipping into the local rhythm of life - getting out early in the morning to do your thing, before escaping the heat of the afternoon under the shade, by the river.

You suss out the local food you like and where to get it. The Chicken Man just down the road, who also doubles as the Sticky Rice Man. The Sausage Lady. The Dessert Lady. The Pad See Ew Man, who practises his English with you. The Pad Thai Lady and her husband, who tease you because they think Pad Thai is all you ever eat. The Peanut Man. The Banana Lady. The Mango Lady...

Paer is a refugee from the Swedish winter, and every six months he and his wife bring back about fifteen kilos of cheese, sausage and wild mushrooms, which lasts them until they head back in the spring. They generously share some of their stash with us, atop slices of homemade bread.

Food is also a big part of any festival here. But what you really notice in Thailand, amongst the seemingly gentle and quietly spoken people, is the loudness of the music. Even at small gatherings, its super loud. Concert loud. Most Thais seem oblivious to this, or have industrial deafness, one of the two.

One night we find ourselves sitting on bamboo mats on the grass, eating street food with the locals. Beside the ruins of the old city wall, a school group plays traditional music to entertain the crowd. Its not really our cup of tea, just something different for a change, but when they finish the MC decides to put on a recording. He then proceeds to plug the source into a little loudspeaker, in front of which sits a microphone, which then feeds back into about five thousand watts of PA system. You can see where this is heading. After about ten seconds, the Thais next to us are holding their ears in pain. After another ten, people start to get up and leave. We look at our neighbours in disbelief, but they just laugh and shrug their shoulders in acceptance. The moral of the story? Always bring a set of earplugs to a Thai gathering of more than half a dozen people.

Sometime during the first few weeks in Nan, Ann decides she needs a change of colour. Lucas is pretty dubious, but she’s adamant there’s no way she’s going to India as a blonde. She makes one concession and lets him pick the colour, but he’s only ever known her as a blonde, so its a bit of a shock.

Its also during this time, courtesy of Jay and Tania, that we hear about an English teaching job in Laos. So we “apply” and are told we have the job, pending approval of the details by the company. Its a six month contract teaching the office staff of the newest dam project in Laos. Figuring the rest is a formality we wait to hear back, and thoughts of India start to fade.



Nan is so laid back and uncomplicated that we’re putting on weight, so we start going for walks down to the river in the morning before it gets hot. At one point Ralph and Laiad, the guesthouse owners, ask if we'd like to take their dog with us, so we’re joined by Dookdik the agoraphobic retriever, who starts at every sound, is nervous around all the other street dogs, and pulls us along like a freight train until she wears herself out.

She’s at home in the river though.

Did we say it was hot here? During the day, the thermometer reaches forty-three in the shade, and at night it remains in the thirties. We could switch on the aircon in the room for an extra $3.50 a day, but we tough it out. Hey, that’s practically our food budget for the day. C’mon...

Things are hotting up in Bangkok with the Red Shirts, so the local constabulary are on full alert. Its hard to imagine a Molotov cocktail being hurled into Nan’s local government administration compound, but the polis are ready just in case. It gets a bit annoying when we’re sitting in the bus shelter across the street pinching their wifi, and some overzealous cops lean over our shoulders to inspect what we’re doing. Sometimes we chat with them. Other times Lucas slams the cover down on the laptop to give them the hint.



The time to make a decision about India is way past now. In fact we seem to have decided by just letting things slide. Without actually making a decision. Syd still has no news for us about Laos, and the whole thing seems to have become embroiled in company politics, with some in the company believing the job should go to the local school instead. All very commendable, but almost without exception the local English teachers in Southeast Asia speak terrible English, so its doubtful that its the best long-term solution for their employees. Or maybe that’s just a case of sour grapes on our part. Nevertheless, the whole saga has dragged on so long we’ve also reached the point where our Thai visas are about to expire. So Plan B is to head south for Malaysia and hang out there for a few months.



With two thousand kilometres to ride, we figure a week should get us there in time, and so with a week to spare, reluctantly we get back on the bikes and leave Nan behind.

Within a couple of hours, our out-of-condition arses are protesting. Ann hasn’t ridden for seven weeks, and the longer we stayed in Nan, the less we rode and the more we walked. Over the next few days we establish a routine. Leave early, but only stay out on the road until midday, as the heat and the headwinds make riding feel like the interior of a blast furnace. Find a hotel as quickly as possible, dump our gear in the room, turn up the aircon, shower, then collapse for the rest of the afternoon – preferably face down, as we don’t have any of those rubber ring thingies handy to sit on.



The heat is unrelenting until Prachuap Khiri Khan, where the promise of sea breezes and some beach time detain us for a couple of days.

From here its a toss-up whether to head straight for the border near Penang, or keep following the coast down through southern Thailand to Kota Bharu. On the one hand we haven’t been this way before, but on the other our backsides silently protest the extra kilometres, and oh yeah, this part of Thailand tends to attract militant secessionist activists who regularly set off bombs in public places. But Kota Bharu wins out in the end, so we head south through countless army checkpoints, which are manned by serious looking assault-rifle-toting soldiers.

The countryside is refreshingly green after the dry brown northern Thailand landscape, but the feeling is all Malay. In fact if you’d simply dropped us into the middle of southern Thailand, we would have assumed we were in Malaysia. A fact which leads us to feel that we’re gently being eased out of one country and into the next...

Laos

20/1/10 – 12/2/10
Laos isn’t part of the carnet system, but customs insist on stamping ours anyway. Do we care? Nup. Sure don’t. Come one, come all and stamp the bloody carnets. We paid enough for the stupid things, and as long as it makes the bureaucrats feel better and makes our lives easier, they can stamp any official looking bits of paper they want.

Can we see the big yellow passports please?
“Sure. Here you go.”

On the way into Vientiane driving on the right is strange, but not so hard. Its much easier on a motorbike than in a car, and Asian traffic is generally so chaotic it doesn’t really matter half the time. That said, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Laotians are pretty poor drivers.

The guesthouse in town has a bit of character and the people here seem more interesting than your average tourist. Real travellers. Which is all just as well, because it rains for the next three days.

Walking the damp streets one night we discover something which comes as quite a surprise. Something which gives our naive perspective of the world a little bit of a shake. You see we thought Laos was not only a communist country, but also one of the poorest places on earth. And we thought the Aston Martin DB9 was a Footballers’ car. Something, even in a western country, you’re more likely to see on an episode of Top Gear than toodling down to the shops. But here one is. And a Skyline GTR, a Ferrari F430, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo.... and so on.

The fact that cars like these exist in this city is incredible enough, but what’s even more astonishing is how anyone with any sort of common decency could actually drive one through town. Its like flipping your middle finger at the majority of the population. Fuck you pal, I’m rich. Comin through. I’ve milked your government for every cent and ferreted it away offshore. Get outta my way.



Its also a little surprising to see how some of the monks and novices live when we’re invited one rainy afternoon into the living quarters of one of the city wats. Pulling back the curtain of a monk’s room reveals a Sony home theatre, Toshiba laptop and LG flat panel TV. Oh-Kaaay. Realigning our perceptions yet again, we back away from the room. Obviously there are degrees of austerity.

The rain finally starts to clear and it doesn’t take long to leave the (relative) congestion of Vientiane behind. It takes a full day of riding on the wrong side of the road for things to start to gel, by which time we’re rolling into Vang Vieng.



Vang Vieng. How to describe Vang Vieng? Well for starters the original town is no longer in Vang Vieng, having instead moved north a couple of kilometres. Why? Because Laos has adopted the Thai model for tourism and gone completely overboard with falang restaurants and guesthouses. Everywhere there’s a hint of tourism potential, the old is knocked down to make way for the new. The falang move in and the locals move out.



Ok, so nothing new there. The reason this place is on the backpacker map comes down to three things. Cheap beer, cheap drugs and a stunning limestone karst-lined river, on which you can float your cares away on a rubber inner-tube. Preferably smashed, or stoned, or both. In fact its almost obligatory to come here and get shit-faced.



The main street is lined with cafes serving falang food laced with weed, mushies, heroin, or something whipped up in a lab. Inside these cafes are rows and rows of crash cushions, facing big-screen TVs playing endless reruns of Friends or Family Guy. The complete setup is a well organised machine. Falang come in, hand over the cash, get wasted for a day or three and move on. Replaced by more falang.

Now if you think we’re passing judgement on all this, like we’re a couple of old fogies or something, you’d be right. The whole thing is pathetic. Half-naked, wasted twenty-somethings, staggering up the streets, or pigging out on happy burgers while glued to an episode of Friends like it was a remake of Macbeth. Couldn’t you do this at home people? Why did you come all the way to Laos to do it?



For Laotians, like the Thais, face is everything. They wouldn’t be seen dead making fools of themselves in public. One can only imagine what they think of all this. Sadly, as long as the falang keep flashing the cash, probably not a lot. The police obviously ignore the whole thing; overzealous cops are very bad for business.

Take Daddy’s credit card and go home children. You’re an embarrassment.



Leaving the lameness of Vang Vieng behind we head north through some spectacular countryside towards Luan Prabang.



On the way Lucas somehow manages to pull out of a massive tank-slapper, courtesy of some water running across the road. Its those god-awful Bridgestones again, because Ann sails through as if on dry bitumen.

.. babom.. babom.. babom.. lucky.



Laos is still leaving us feeling a bit disoriented. Down the hoity toity end of Luan Prabang you can almost imagine yourself in some European city. In fact the line-up of hoity toity boutique restaurants and hotels would put many cities to shame. This, on top of four days in Vientiane and Vang Vieng, is starting to make us pretty disillusioned about the whole Laos experience. Put it down to naivety again. Obviously we’re ten years too late, Laos having been discovered by the herd long ago.



The herd are mainly French. Again. What is it with the French, anyway? Is there anyone actually back in France, running the place? Because Asia is literally crawling with these guys. Ok, so Laos was a colony, but still. It wouldn’t matter. They’d be here anyway. Hi Richard.

They’ve certainly left their mark on the architecture of the place. Compared to the boring concrete towns of Thailand, Luan Prabang is almost beautiful.



Its a shame, but it seems the Playing With The Bikes thing is back, something we’ve not seen since Indonesia. Having both become a lot more assertive during the past year, some dickwad fiddling with the bikes is more than enough provocation. So far we’ve stopped short of actual violence, but have spoken to at least one other biker who hasn’t. Our reactions tend to be loud, aggressive and confrontational, leaving said dickwad in no doubt as to the error of his ways, language barrier or no language barrier.

Sometimes the deciding factor in whether to stay or move on is simply the guesthouse. Ours starts out fairly peaceful, but deteriorates rapidly over a couple of days to the point where we decide that Luan Prabang isn’t special enough to detain us any longer. Its a close call though. You can get a wicked foot-long baguette with the works for a dollar something here. Je vous remercie beaucoup la France.

Nong Khiaw is one of the main stopping off points when taking a longboat north from Luan Prabang. The main highway to Vietnam also crosses the river here, over which the Chinese have built quite an impressive bridge.



This accessibility coupled with the beauty of the area, has landed Nong Khiaw squarely on the tourist map, and it leaves us wondering if we’re ever going to find an ordinary falang-free Laos town to chill out and do nothing for a couple of days.

Vieng Thong is such a place but fairly limited, more of a stopping off point for places further east. On the way here the road is treacherous, due to heavy rain the night before.



The mountains are shrouded in mist until the afternoon and its quite eerie riding through the small Hmong villages perched high up on the passes. Visibility is poor and yet the children lining the road (there are always children lining the roads) all wave and yell after us as we pass. Sabaidee! It reminds us of Timor Leste and we’d forgotten what a buzz it is to ride right hand on the throttle, left hand waving at the kids.



After passing through the mist layer the next morning the day clears, cold and bright. The Hmong people out here live extremely basic lives, possibly unchanged for centuries. Draughty bamboo house, wood-fired stove, poor nutrition, health and hygiene. Little or no education. In short, the poorest of the poor we’ve seen in Asia. We count ourselves lucky to have been born in an affluent western country. The kids here have very few opportunities.



But is it really that simple? If not for the obligatory village satellite dish, would these people even have anything with which to compare themselves? If they’ve been living this way for centuries, how bad can it be? Are they happy? Or rather were they happy, before realising the rest of the world in TV Land lives in a two storey brick and tile house, with a pool out the back and a convection microwave in the kitchen?



Is that even the question? What are all these NGOs doing here? Obviously lining the pockets of the few judging by the proliferation of Toyota Prados - the UN’s vehicle of choice, and a completely pointless vehicle in this environment. And are the do-gooders on the ground equipping these people with skills, enabling them to deal with that big steamroller called progress, before it arrives and mashes their way of life into oblivion?



Sam Neua is the capital of this province; a modest, but reasonably prosperous looking place. These days we tend to judge prosperity by the number of dual-cab 4x4s we see on the streets. We call it the Hilux Index.



It has a great little market, an amazing Vietnamese restaurant across the river, the hotel is cheap and quiet, falang are very scarce and usually attached to an NGO, god... we might even stay a couple of days.



Nearby Vien Xai is quite an important area in Laos’s recent history. The future government and most of the army sat out nine years of US bombardment in the limestone caves near here.



The mandatory guided tour is ridiculously expensive for falang (doubled in the space of three years), but an interesting and atmospheric experience nonetheless.



We wander through villages strung out on the road to Vietnam, stopping short of the actual border. Its all a little bit brown at the moment, but must be quite beautiful after the rice is planted.



So its kind of a shame to leave Sam Neua for Phonsavan, but the thirty day visa clock is ticking and we have a long way to go.

In a picturesque little section of river on the way, we spy something which seems quite unusual, so pull over and clamber down the bank for a closer look.



Most of us never have reason to question where our electricity comes from. You plug something in and it works. That’s it. But it appears that the village just upstream is drawing their electricity from the DIY hydro-electric power station right in front of us. Built from planks of timber, the water is diverted into channels, at the end of which sit a bank of little generators, capacity unknown. Countless wires run up the bank to power poles, which line the road all the way to the village.



We’ve been convinced for years that micro-power generation is the best solution for household electricity, so are blown away to see it in action here in a remote corner of Laos.

Phonsavan. Dusty wintry Phonsavan. Brown. A northern Laos halfway town nestled between Thailand and Vietnam, kick started in the past few years by tourists in search of an exotic new destination. The mysterious Plain of Jars... oh sorry, you’ve read all this before haven’t you?

Its a shame in some ways to be in Phonsavan. The mountains north of here are more beautiful, the people more innocent, the rhythm of life more gentle. But seeing as we are here, the Plain of Jars beckons.



And because no one seems to know what they’re all about, you can’t help trying to figure it out for yourself as you wander around.



The obvious one is burial chambers, but supposedly no human remains have been found nearby.



But some of them still have their lids intact, so you assume they all must have had them at some stage.



So they must have been used to store things. What then? You make up your own minds.

This whole area was heavily bombed during the second Indochina War, and many of the craters have been left unfilled. Its all part of the history of the place, and seeing some of the massive granite jars split in two right next to a crater is a stark reminder of what this country endured all those years.



The path through the jars winds its way between red and white markers. White meaning cleared of UXO (unexploded ordnance), red obviously meaning not.

Riding out of the main site, we have every intention of going to another one a few kilometres away. But earlier in the morning we’d seen a few bulls being led to a nearby village, and on the way back it seems a large crowd has gathered just off the main road. Thinking it might be a livestock auction, we detour up a side road to have a look.

It doesn’t take long to figure out this is no livestock auction, especially since we’d already seen something similar in Sulawesi. Lucas takes one look at Ann “I’d better move the bike hadn’t I.”



The bulls are led out onto the arena, and if a little reluctant, given a bit of a poke with a bamboo stick.



If there’s an obvious mismatch, or one of them just doesn’t want to fight, its led away and the next contender is trotted out.



Most of the spectators are from the surrounding villages and, unlike the Sulawesi buffalo fights, don’t seem to be gambling, but there’s the odd bigwig, phone glued to ear, taking bets. Chatting to one of the locals about this, we’re told only rich businessmen place bets on the fights. He said American, but most of the money around here seems to be Chinese.



Apart from the act of organising the event itself, there’s no obvious cruelty. Its bull against bull, not bull against matador.

These once a month bullfights seem like they’ll go on all afternoon, so deciding we’ve seen enough blood sport for one day, we head off down the road to find a shady spot by the lake. However, once again it seems Lucas has parked the bike in the way of the local livestock. “I’m not moving the damn thing again. It can just stay there.”



A man leads two stubborn buffalo right past the bike to the water. For whatever reason (these are water buffalo for chrissake), one of them just doesn’t want to take a bath. So Ann decides to lend a hand.









The plan from here is to head south to Pakxan and roughly follow the Mekong all the way to Cambodia. That’s the plan. Unfortunately it all goes pear shaped and we find ourselves back in Phonsavan a few days later, feeling like we’ve had a bit of an adventure overdose.

The little Hyundai pulls up outside our old guesthouse just on sunset and the kind guesthouse owner drives out with us to a vacant lot a couple of blocks away to help unload the bikes. We’re a mess. The bikes are an even bigger mess.

We’d like to stay here and do nothing for a few days, especially Lucas, who can only hobble around. But the bikes need fixing, cleaning, and after meeting Adam, an Israeli mechanic who shames us into doing some maintenance, some ah... maintenance. Unbelievably Adam, who has ridden from Nepal on his HP2, is carrying a BMW diagnostic computer. Maybe if you like I could plug it into your bikes and check if everything’s ok. He suggests. We think on that for about a nanosecond before agreeing.

In the end we spend several days slowly getting organised. The bikes are clean-ish. They still need a couple of hours each with a gernie, but are now minus a few kilos of mud. The air filters are clean. The chains are lubed. The engine and ABS systems check out ok. So after getting a local workshop to hammer out Ann’s pannier frame, we set off in the general direction of Vientiane where we hope to get a new bolt machined for the pannier.



Vang Vieng is still the same as when we left it. The best thing we can say about Vang Vieng is that, like Luan Prabang, you can get wicked foot-long baguettes here. Great for an attack of the munchies.

Vientiane is still here too, along with the same guesthouse. A rambling old house with a relaxed atmosphere it seems to attract interesting people, many of whom seem to camp out until a room becomes vacant. The manager Air is a great guy, and with his help we have a local workshop machine us a new pannier bolt, which they make out of an old valve stem. Its probably ten times stronger than the old one, maybe even too strong, but after a bit of fiddling Ann’s left pannier looks like a bought one again.

So that accomplished, and another oil change out the front of another helpful bike shop who won’t accept our money, leaves only the painful process of getting new Thai visas before we can move on. Which we do, two days later, heading west, not south, back over the bridge to Thailand, leaving Cambodia for another time...