Savannakhet - Pakse

The worst possible thing that can happen to a touring cyclist is becoming disabled and facially disfigured in a bad accident, insurance doesn’t pay the medical fees and you’re left with no money, loads of debt, one leg and half a face. The second worst thing that can happen is being involved in an accident that results in a slow painful death. The 3rd worst case scenario is having men with guns, who don’t speak your language, ordering you out of your tent in the middle of the night which is closely followed by running out of porridge in 4th place. I guess dying instantly in an accident is the 5th worst possible thing that can happen to a touring cyclist.

I left Savannakhet with a stinking hangover. I’d only had 3 beers and 2 Johnny Walker Reds the night before but I’ve become such a lightweight since I became fit and healthy and I’ve rarely drank since I started travelling. I’m an embarrassment to my former self who wasn’t exactly a heavyweight drinker anyway. So like I was saying, I didn’t leave Savannakhet until mid to late afternoon due to my embarrassingly stinky hangover. I went a lot slower than I’ve being going lately had a break after 10km instead of my normal 35 and pulled up in an unused bit of land as soon as I’d passed the 30km milestone (does that make it a kilometre stone or is it still a milestone measured in kilometres)? Hmmmm….

The land I’d chosen was on the edge of woodland and the camping spot looked green from the road but on closer inspection was gravelly and too hard to get my pegs in, there weren’t any clouds so I wasn’t too bothered about making my tent waterproof. Due to my embarrassingly stinky hangover, I couldn’t be bothered finding a better spot even though half decent land was dotted about all over this area and there was still about half an hour left before darkness even though it was sunset. I got in my tent, munched on some bananas, had a can of tuna then tried to sleep. I still had a headache and a few thoughts in my head (not bad ones) so I decided to read. With my wind up torch squeezed between my chin and shoulder and my book in my hand moving from side to side to capture the light in the right place I read several chapters. Several hours must have passed and I was so engrossed in my book that I’d forgotten how rottenly stinky I felt and began to feel sleepy. It was then that I heard shouting maybe 30 metres away. My torch went out. 

The voices got closer and it became apparent that the person they were talking to was me. “For %$*& sake”, I thought, “I can’t be arsed with this; they’ll get bored if they think I’m asleep”. After a couple of minutes they hadn’t gone away and I could pick out at least 3 different voices. I didn’t have a clue what they were saying but could work out there was more than 1 man out there and more importantly, I could work out that they weren’t taking my non responsiveness as a hint and I’d have to do something about it. I’ve become aware over the years how well intentioned people with fear can become aggressive and that people are often scared of what is alien to them so when faced with people I can’t be bothered with in Asia I don’t do anything sudden, I’m not tall and muscular but I’m bigger than most Asians (and I’m hairy) so I try not to appear to intimidating with sudden movements. I make a peace offering (usually a cigarette) and smile a lot.

So I stuck my head out of the tent and feigned enthusiasm. “SabaiDEEEEEEEEEEE”. The men quickly shone their torches in my face. There was a momentary silence…. “Phalang” (foreigner) one of them muttered. He continued to talk rather loudly at me. I casually got out of the tent, lit up a cigarette and offered the men a smoke. Even though I had been reading, my torch is weak and my eyes weren’t adjusted to the light shining in my face. I could not see much but eventually worked out that there were no takers, I could see an orange glow; one of them was already smoking. They continued trying to communicate with me. ‘They really can’t take a hint’ I thought to myself as I shrugged my shoulders and stared at the light blankly. I went back in the tent, got out my phrasebook and some bananas, returned and said “I don’t understand”. I then looked up the phrase ‘Can I camp here’? I was an expert on Chinese tones after less  than a month but have not shown the same level of enthusiasm for learning Lao and opted to show the writing rather than try to speak it, as I usually do if the phrase has more than 2 syllables. None of them wanted my bananas either by the way, I don’t know why, they were lovely. 

As the torches moved from my eyeballs to the book my vision adjusted slightly and I got a glimpse of the men. The two closest to me were middle aged and one of them had a rifle slung over his shoulder. There were 4 of them. I pretended not to notice the rifle and opted not to look directly at the other two. Then the man who had done all the talking shook his head, pointed to my tent then to the path that ran parallel to the road, He wanted me to go with them and I didn’t want to find out if they would take no for an answer. For some reason it didn’t feel like a robbery, just a pain in the ass. They continued to read my phrasebook as I got my belongings out of my tent, slipped a couple of 50,000 kip notes into my pocket and tucked my money bag firmly down my shorts so that I’d have something to give them if it was a robbery and started dismantling my home. They found a picture of a temple in my phrasebook. That was what I thought was happening. I’ve seen men appear out of the woods before with hunting rifles. In many parts of Laos, the majority of the protein in the people’s diet comes from wild meat. I’d also met several cyclists who have been invited to sleep in temples although not by armed men who demanded they move. If they didn’t have guns I would have ignored them and slept in the field. 

I’d only been previously been disturbed once in my tent in Asia. A woman shone a really bright torch in my tent the night after I’d left Yuanyang and asked me if I was cold. I hadn’t had a good sleep the night before and was having an amazing sleep until she came along. I’d told her I wasn’t cold in Chinese then told her to **** off in English and let me sleep in peace. It was difficult to pack my bags in the dark, even with the help of the men’s torches. It was a short walk to the temple; I noticed that two of the men had guns. In the temple I was given noodles and then told to wash my hair by one of the monks. I got taken to the cleaning quarters where there was a toilet, a huge pale of water, toothbrushes, soap and shampoo. I wondered why monks would have shampoo then quickly decided to try and think about something else. By the time I’d washed myself the men who’d led me to the monastery had left. I was going to ask them to pose for a photograph with me. I slept beside the monks on a nice fold up mattress and even though I’d rather have not been disturbed, I have to admit, it was really unimaginably more comfy than the gravelly land I’d previously been lying on.

I was given more free food in the morning. I gave the monks my bag of rice to thank them for their hospitality. The remaining 209 km to Pakse passed by largely uneventfully. Embarrassingly stinky hangover lasted until mid-morning. I thought about the chain of events from the previous night repetitively when I took a break from the burning midday sun. I felt annoyed that something bordering excitement happened and I didn’t get an adrenalin rush and was slightly worried by this. People who don’t get emotional reactions in situations of danger (or the illusion of danger) are psychopaths. I thought about all the intelligent people I’ve met who claim Vang Vieng is full of crazy people but the people in Vang Vieng do dangerous things and get a rush out of it, crazy me, I get nothing; it didn’t even cure my hangover. It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes but I had no superstitious thoughts running through my head when I saw the guns and got told to pack up my tent and go with them. I didn’t have my life flashing before me. I felt pretty calm during it all but the excessive weed smoking days of my youth have robbed me of most of my memories anyway. My life maybe did flash before my eyes but it happened so quickly I didn’t realise it. Although I didn’t have a major upheaval of my values or worldly beliefs, the events that took place that night did make me think and change at least one of my misconceptions…I’ve come to realise that although I still prefer China, travelling around Laos isn’t actually as boring as I’d previously thought and if you stay there long enough, sooner or later, something interesting might happen. 

I cycled the rest of the way with real enthusiasm and concluded that this was my adrenalin rush. I’m not a psychopath, my reaction times are just a day or two late that’s all. I’m an idiot, if I do ever get taken hostage, all they need to do is give me unlimited food and smile a lot. It would be 3 or 4 days before I’d even realise I’d been kidnapped and wasn’t allowed to leave. I’ve never ignored a kid who has screamed Sabaidee at me as I pass them, even though lately I haven’t felt any enthusiasm for it. They are just children and it’s exciting for them to see me and I’ve always at least tried to fake a smile. My enthusiasm for waving, saying hello and returning their smile has felt natural again. “Sabaaideeeeeeeeee”!

The following night I pitched my tent at the side of the road and 3 men in motorbikes pulled up. One spoke English and told me there was a guest house just a few hundred metres away. I told him I camp because I don’t have much money and he then told me I could sleep at a temple for free. I told him I was happy sleeping here and he looked at me amazed. “You are not scared of ghosts”? I laughed and shook my head, “no” I replied. Bless the Laotians. The man the previous night had probably been shouting at me as I lay in my tent out of panic and concern for my wellbeing. Language is such a powerful but dangerous tool. What I could have interpreted as an angry call of “YOU, GET THE F*** OUT OF YOUR TENT WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD AND HAND OVER YOUR MONEY”, was probably a fearful cry of “HEY MAN, ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU MUST BE OUT OF YOUR MIND TO CAMP HERE.  THE GHOSTS WILL ATTACK YOU, GET TO THE TEMPLE NOW BEFORE YOU GET KILLED, YOU’RE SPOOKING ME OUT MAAAAN”. I’ve relegated men with guns to the 4th worst thing that can happen to a touring cyclist. Having no porridge is far worse. Bless them.

I chatted to a woman who lived in America for 30 years and returned to Laos to take care of her elderly mother. She spoke excellent English and was nice and lively. I got chatted up by two men…. He stopped his motorbike and waved me towards him. “You speak English”? “Yes”. “You want fuck me”? “No”. End of conversation. He toddled on. The other one was far less forthright and just sat across the table from me and fluttered his eyelids as I read my book. After 20 minutes, “I love you, you love me”???? “No”. He toddled on. I spent one morning clearing an ant colony out of my tent, I ate 4 cans of tuna, had leeches all over my feet from wallowing in mud whilst washing my clothes in just about the only river I came across that wasn’t dried out, I found a restaurant that sold things other than noodle soup, I watched dragon flies for half an hour, I spent an hour watching ants busy dismantling my leftover pasta and I stopped smoking for 3 hours. I won’t tell you about the thoughts running through my head immediately prior to me starting smoking again but if I did kill the waitress, it would have been her fault for not serving me quickly enough. Nothing much else happened. I fear Superbike may be terminally ill, it made all sorts of cranky noises for the last 150km. I had doubts about it making it to Pakse but here I am. 

Tha Khek - Savannakhet

I checked my emails in the evening, checked my emails in the morning then left Tha Khek. Sharing a breakfast of porridge, honey and bananas with a passing cyclist was the highlight of this leg of the trip. He is French, was on his way from Savannakhet to tha Khek and part of a group of 6, the rest of whom were staying in Tha Khak at the time. He did tell me why he had been in Savannakhet without them, I’ve forgotten. They spent a year and a half cycling from Buenos Aires to San Francisco, singing at restaurants to pay their way then got a boat to Hong Kong and have made their way south since then. In fact sharing my porridge with this dude was the only good thing about this leg of the trip. Nothing majorly bad happened but I can’t remember the last time I felt so down. Even though I am writing this just a week later, I remember nothing about this journey other than a shared breakfast, feeling alone, reading my book under a tree because the midday sun was just too hot, crashing my bike into a young girl and running over a fork. 

I crashed into the girl not long after leaving Tha Khek. She was about 10 years old and on her bike, she didn’t look as she crossed the road, heard me shout, tried to turn back and I went into her back wheel. I’d slowed down to the extent that I didn’t even knock her off her bike but she got quite a fright and even though it wasn’t my fault I was still apologetic and felt terrible about it. Laos people are super laid back. Baw pen yang is one of the few Laos phrases I’ve memorised, it means no problem. 

I ran over the fork just 10km outside of Savannakhet. It gave me punctures in both wheels. One of my adjustable wrenches broke and it was night time by the time I’d walked far enough to find a mechanic. He insisted I keep his wrench and a glove because I had oil on my hands and because I don’t use maps or know my way around the town; his cousin guided me for a few kilometres to a guest house that was recommended on Wikitravel. Unfortunately, a bit of the fork was still stuck in the rim and I got another puncture and lost him. I found the place anyway. 

The heat has been unbearable at times. I felt really drained and lifeless in my first night in Savannakhet although my mood did improve the following day. It’s amazing how much a few emails from my brother and a skype conversation from a friend can transform my mood. I had a sore knee and sore bum from all that mileage so lounged around Savannakhet for 4 days. It is the most boring town in the world if you want an itinerary that is full of excitement but I really like the sleepy pace. I spent some time on my computer, lots of time acrobatically trying to kill all the mosquitos that were buzzing around my room, I wrote my first poem in Chinese and spent many hours strolling around town, admiring the crumbling colonial buildings whilst scoping out good places to eat. The food outside of major towns in Laos is so bland and repetitive that good food is my number one priority in its cities. The majority of westerners I chatted to were people living in Thailand who were doing visa runs in Savannakhet. I met a young couple, Ryan and Anna, who got engaged just a few days before and the 3 of us had an impromptu engagement party the night before I left. I really like that town. It’s the first place in Laos I’ve spent several days in and was not itching to get out.

Vang Vieng - Tha Khek

I started my blog partly to store my memories which photographs can’t, partly to keep my family amused and partly so I could direct people to my blog in response to the same questions I repeatedly get asked, rather than repeat myself in the emails I type. One of the questions I repeatedly get asked is ‘Your trip sounds awesome, are you having the time of your life’? Or a very similar question with maybe a subtle deviation…… Yes. Another question I regularly get asked is ‘Do you not get lonely’? Lately I seem to get asked the latter question more than the former. I don’t know why.

I felt lonely in China only when I was bored and I was rarely bored. I mostly travelled alone and it did not bother me. By the time I got my bike I could have basic banter in Chinese and I did not mind not speaking my native language for days or weeks at a time. I’ve felt my general wellbeing gradually deteriorating in Laos. In northern Laos I only felt this when in Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng to Vientiane was less than 2 days travelling; it was over before it started. I chilled out in Vientiane for a few days, met some really interesting people then Vientiane to Tha Khek was one big long lonely cycle ride that seemed to drag far longer than it really did. I did a visa run to Thailand, amusing myself and the immigration official when I registered my flight or other vehicle number as ‘SUPER BIKE’. The sticker on the side says it’s a Super Bike, she can’t argue with that. I then did 80km in an afternoon. Were it not for a morning of rain I would have done 150km the following day and I did 130km the day I arrived in Tha Khek. I’d envisioned the journey through Southern Laos to be a warm pleasant gentle ride along the misty, tropical, elusive banks of the Mekong. The road has been flat the whole way. I’ve barely seen the river. I was initially pissed off about this but it’s a good thing that there isn’t a road running all the way down. If people like me were capable of seeing it all then it would cease to be elusive. The only thing that I’ve been looking forward to lately has been something which seems crazy, at times seems totally unattainable and is completely out with my control.

I don’t view anomie as a bad thing, it’s inescapable, an inevitability, just like the rising and falling of the sun. It rises because it rises, it falls because it falls. At times I’ve felt Nihilism of the worst sort as I’ve cycled South of Vientiane. I’ve felt a complete lack of purpose or conviction about anything, just aimless rotation of the pedals. Some of the sights were interesting but I had nobody to turn round to and say ‘hey, check that out’, or share thoughts and laughter with at the end of the day. For that reason, at times I lost interest in even looking to see what was on the horizon, I wasn’t interested….. Aimless rotation. I guess increasingly, I’ve been writing my blog because I’ve had so many countless good experiences and this is the only thing I can share. Feeling down has however given me an insatiable appetite to write music again. I haven’t written or produced anything in a long time and I can feel a burgeoning bout of creativity inside me. It will get released when it is ready to be released. My laptop has the software to produce music but not the hardware for me to hear it. I don’t even know if music will be the vehicle, I’m just assuming. I’ll stop now. I don’t want to make this topic too long. It would unjustifiably make my life seem shit which it blatantly isn’t. It’s difficult at times, but when things are going well, and they usually are, things are phenomenal...... Recurring questions answered.

I could say it’s time to snap out of it and pull my socks up, but I try and be resourceful and pulling my socks up might stretch the holes and I don’t want to buy a new pair until I really need to! I’ll snap out of something.

Vang Vieng

Not all psychologists like psychopaths but every psychologist is fascinated by psychopaths, even the ones who don’t admit it¹. After hearing all the horror stories about the decadence of Vang Vieng I was expecting it to be to sociologists what psychopaths are to psychologists. Collective insanity. In a nation with stringent drug laws, Vang Vieng is the only place where authorities turn a blind eye. Magic mushroom pizza, weed and opium are mainstays on the menus of the numerous bars and restaurants. I was prepared for debauchery on an unprecedented scale.

Vang Vieng is in an idyllic setting. There are green, spiky crags jagging out of fertile plains. It is very similar to the scenery around Yangshuo. Unlike Yangshuo, the star attraction isn’t the scenery, Vang Vieng’s star attraction is tubing. You basically rent a rubber tube, float down the river, stopping at bars on the way to drink unbelievably cheap alchohol, and consume pretty much any concoction of drugs that you can imagine. There are zip lines and huge rope swings with little to no safety regulations. I was told by a drunken Scotsman who works in one of the bars that 28 people died tubing last year, some drowned whilst out of their faces, others let go of the rope swings at the wrong moment and fell into shallow water and hit rocks. I’m allergic to rubber dinghies and can’t swim very well either but wasn’t feeling it; I didn’t bother with the whole tubing phenomena.

I managed to find a cafe in Vang Vieng that neither had Friends nor Family Guy playing on repeat. The next day I got a bed with Wi-Fi and spent a ridiculous amount of time in my room, writing long e mails to friends, relaxing, eating fruit salad, meditating and sleeping. I lay in bed one afternoon and closed my eyes. Images of all the faces I’ve seen on my journey started racing through my head. I saw smile upon smile upon smile and heard shouts of ‘ni hao’, ‘hello’ and ‘sabaideeeeeeeeeeeee’. The images in my head made me laugh so much I had tears rolling down my face. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I’ve met some crackers.

I also did lots of research on what my options for the near future are and how best to go about them whilst every other foreigner in town was out tubing. It’s quite complicated. Bangkok is the major transport hub for South East Asia but I don’t know when I will arrive there. I’ll get a 15 day Thai visa but some of the applications for countries I considered visiting could potentially take far longer to process than the 15 days I’d have in Thailand waiting for the applications to be processed. The world just isn’t cut out for people who like to do things on a whim. A more complicated issue than border restrictions was deciding what I wanted to do in the short term future. What is rational, what is feasible and what my heart says are all at odds with one another. I decided to leave proper decision making until Vientiane.

I felt very lonely whenever I was out of my room. I had envisioned the SE Asia backpacking scene to be full of artisans, writers, musicians and poets and have found it to be full of what I term consumerist hippies. They are obsessed with buying all the accessories to make them look free-spirited and avante garde but there mentality is very similar to the materialistic, conventional western one. They live structured, predictable lives; they do not seek adventure, just token gestures of it. They do not seek to learn about the world, they seek to reaffirm their beliefs about it. I’ve found it very difficult to find people I can relate to. They just seem to do what ever the Lonely Planet tells them. As a touring cyclist, I've become an anti consumerist in my quest to travel light. I look at my bundle of possessions and instinctively ask myself, 'hmmmm, what do I have here that I don't actually need', 'how can I have less'? I enjoy washing my clothes in the streams, it's the most therapeutic time of day for me. I know that there are musicians, writers and poets out there but it’s just hard to find them amongst the crowd of mindless louts when everyone looks the bohemian. 

I went out for a wander one night and bumped into Nicki (whom I met in Yangshuo) and her friends from Hong Kong who were doing a mini tour of SE Asia for the Chinese New Year holiday. I had one beer, used a slight niggling feeling in my sciatic nerve as a justification to smoke some opium then went home. All the opium did was make my breath taste like I was 15 again. The following night I had two beers with the aforementioned Scotsman who works in one of the bars. His day job is at the river, his evening job is to pull his kilt up to reveal that he’s a true Scotsman then tell the revellers which bar he thinks they should go to next. He loves his job. He’d only been doing it for 5 days. His methyl amphetamine addicted colleagues who’d been doing it for a while seemed less happy about their position. One of the girls reminded me of the sort of people I grew up with. She looked gaunt, depressed and unhealthy but there was still a hint of her former beauty despite the enthusiasm for life having been long sucked out of her. It was quite sad to see. The stories of Vang Vieng being a cesspit and haven for moral decadence didn’t really ring true with me. The aggressive drunks and drug addicts felt too familiar, and in fairness to Vang Vieng, the ‘aggressive’ westerners, weren’t even THAT aggressive and the 'moral decadence' is known as a night out where I come from. I got told by the Flashing White Sergeant (I apologise for the terrible Scottish pun) that the Laos gangs who control the drugs trade (and the police) show no tolerance for yob behaviour and show little restraint in their heavy handed treatment of those who don’t treat the locals with respect. Fair enough. I didn’t get into the swing of the Vang Vieng party lifestyle. I found myself just sitting there, not really speaking to people, not fitting in and struggling to think of things to say on the odd occasion I did chat to someone. I was happiest when chatting to friends and family online. I had no motivation to get drunk and try my luck with any of the beleaguered, drunken bikini clad western women staggering about the town with their bottles of Beerlao in hand, despite the fact that my porridge making skills alone could have seduced at least 30 or 40 of them.

It wasn't as bad a place as I had envisioned, it just seemed a bit out of place seeing that sort of behaviour in a country where the norms are so different. I was glad to get back on my bike.

Luang Prabang - Vang Vieng

I estimated the journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng to take me 8 days, despite it taking 3 for other cyclists. I wasn’t far off. How can a journey that other cyclists take 3 days to complete take me 6 and a half you may ask yourself? Quite easily really….

I stayed up until 5am the previous night writing and woke up at 12:30 the following day, half an hour after checking out time. I was in a lethargic mood and slowly packed my things and made breakfast. At 2pm the owner asked me if I was staying or not, he seemed happy either way and didn’t seem annoyed that I hadn’t let him know earlier. 2 hours late by Laos standards is nothing. Laos people are super chilled. I felt a bit low as I left Luang Prabang. I’d been looking forward to having company further south…..blah blah blah…. I won’t bore you with details. I had let myself look forward to something that wasn’t a definite prospect. I should know better. It wasn’t all bad things going on in my head when I left Luang Prabang. I miraculously managed to double the size of my infinitely useful elastic band collection and was over the moon with that. I really was over the moon.

I only rode about 8km out of the city before stopping to make noodles. I could smell wild coriander from where I had parked and spent about half an hour hunting for the source. I gave up and went another 2km or so and went to a market (that sold rats as well as coriander) and bought some groceries then gave an English lesson on the request of the vendor, because I had nothing else to do. My enthusiasm for teaching was thin and after asking my name, age, etc she soon ran out of questions. I found her discomfort at the awkward silences quite amusing and made little effort to break them. I don’t necessarily find long silences to be awkward but do find them to get a bit boring after a while. Besides, it was getting late so I explained that I needed to leave to find somewhere to camp. One of her customers overheard and invited me to stay at his family home. Having worked for 6 years in an outdoor adventure company he has acquired excellent English. He also has a name, he also told me what his name was and I thought to myself ‘that will be an easy name to remember because it sounds a bit like an English word’. Yes, he definitely had a name. We spent the evening browsing through my laptops music folder. Although he was disappointed that I didn’t have any Westlife for him to transfer to his mp3 player, he was thrilled to bits to add Rod Stewart and Runrig to his impeccable collection. The wooden huts have no mosquito protection but I wasn’t bitten once. From inside the hut I could see quite clearly the village life from within the gaps in between the woven leaves that make the wall. After day 1 I had cycled a phenomenal 13km. 13km, I really did.

I can’t remember much about what happened to the other 5 and half days. I remember perking up on day 2 and doing a huge, big, steep and treacherous, death defying 15 km climb with just 2 short tangerine breaks and having a rest at the top complimenting my improved stamina. I was given elevation maps from an Australian couple going in the opposite direction and was well chuffed with myself for climbing the height of 2 Empire State Buildings so relatively effortlessly. There was a shop at the top, I bought myself a can of coke, took some photos then sat and had a cigarette on one of the huts that overlooked the valley below and admired the view. From behind me I heard a big vehicle pull up. From the blacked out windows appeared a van full of monks. Even though I don’t think I’ll ever become a monk, I do admire the simplicity of the monk ethic. I looked around me and felt a bit embarrassed to have my needless possessions that I’d acquired, my camera, cigarettes and can of coke sitting around me. I tucked them out of the way and watched the monks as they did their thing. They took some photos of the view, bought some juice, chain smoked a couple of cigarettes then gave their balls a good tug to get them in a nice comfy position in preparation for continuing their long arduous journey to wherever. Despite not believing in reincarnation, it appears that myself and Buddhist monks share a lot in common. I’ve got no intention of becoming one but should really try befriending one. I really should.

The rest of the road to Vang Vieng consisted of lots of climbs, hot weather, lovely Karst mountains and the company of Al and Jess, an English couple who’ve lived in Thailand for a year and are cycling around SE Asia before returning to England. Oh and I forgot to mention, lots of noodle soup. Really, lots of noodle soup.