I discovered the Laos I like on the road, away from the major towns. In the countryside, the unhurried cheerfulness that makes the cities so sleepy becomes an asset. And the land truly is beautiful, mountainous and lush in a way that I expected of Southeast Asia without even realizing I had any preconceptions.
Immediately north of Vang Vieng, the highway was rotten with military. I tended to view their presence as a good thing, but my cycling partner was made uncomfortable by all the guns. I could see her point; the Lao military looked hopelessly unprofessional. Most of the troops wore flipflops along with their tatty uniforms. The rest wore knock-off tennis shoes, baseball caps, and sunglasses. They slung their rifles at careless angles across their backs, and waved goofily when we biked past. Their main job seemed to be extracting payments of cigarettes from truck drivers.
The Lao children, on the other hand, behaved exactly as children should, giving generously of high fives and smiles. Some were all business, lining up by the side of the road and slapping my hand with a seriousness of purpose that indicated they were well aware of the burden of responsibility conveyed by their cuteness. Others treated the high five like a dare, planting one foot forward and cautiously leaning out as though teasing a bear. Which they were. Grr.
That day we biked 105km and, more to the point, climbed 1150 vertical meters, a record for me. Our reward at the top was the Chiher guest house, the sole hotel in Phu Khun and an interesting case study in the effects of monopoly on price and quality of service. The number of dead bugs in our rooms could have filled an entomology exhibit at the Smithsonian. The odor from the bathroom indicated it had last been cleaned before the French left, taking all their maids with them. Best of all: no shower. We were instead pointed to a barrel of rain water out front, by the side of the highway.
Although the second day’s ride was half the distance of the first and significantly flatter, I simply had no energy left. On one excrutiatingly slow climb, I distracted myself from saddlesoreness by playing a game in which I biked for as long as possible with my eyes closed. I got up to “twelve one thousand” before falling softly into a ditch.
North of Luang Prabang, weaving villages stretched out along the highway. Women spun thread, boiled plant roots to extract the indigo, and worked treadle looms. Men knit together fishing nets.
We began climbing again, this time into real jungle. The highway was overhung with vegetation, from which issued a racket of bird and insect noises. Brief, hard afternoon rain showers became frequent. At the first hint of rain, all the village children stripped off their clothes and raced up and down the road. I was tempted to do likewise, but the Lao mellowness doesn’t extend that far. Instead, I contented myself with occasional dips in the river.
I suspected that there was interesting food to be eaten in Laos, because I’d found a few interesting items in street stalls: soft tofu served hot in a ginger broth; sweet corn tamales; soup so thick with coconut milk that it was practically a bisque. Nevertheless, restaurants in northern Laos refused to offer me anything other than fried rice and noodles, no matter how many ways I asked, and no matter what forms of exotica the other patrons were eating.
Days later, I reached Boten, the last town before the Chinese border. For a dollar, I stayed in a hotel with a floor of packed earth…and satellite TV. It is rare to see a village so poor that it doesn’t have at least one satellite dish, with a cable snaking into a thatched hut. The dish is usually communal; when the good programs are on, everyone crowds into a single hut. I can’t fathom what goes through the mind of a villager while watching an episode of “Sabrina the Teen-Aged Witch.”
In the morning I biked into China, and was promptly ejected back into Laos…
