 “The spirit of Sid Viscious lives on in the youth of Laos.” LAOS George Orwell once wrote; “Fear is the element we swim in” and sure enough it doesn’t matter where you travel in this world, certain types of people will insist you’re not safe. A few years ago when I set out from Singapore on a cycle tour through South East Asia I was warned by a furrow browed taxi driver to beware of Muslim extremists in Malaysia. As a solo cyclist 12,000 km’s from home such words can echo forebodingly so with eyes peeled for extremists I cautiously pedaled into Malaysia. A few weeks later I entered the border with Thailand not having experienced one moment of aggression from the locals, only greetings and hospitality. At the Malay/Thai border I was warned by a concerned Malaysian family to beware of Thai/Muslim terrorists who are fighting for a separate state in the south. The warnings were dire so I put my head down and pedaled harder than usual to cover ground. There was no need. I reached the Cambodian border with no more than one or two trivial squabbles under my belt. A particularly animated and equally entertaining restaurant owner almost pleaded with me not to cycle through Cambodia. “They will shoot you, they will shoot you. Why you go. You look for cheap woman, I get you cheap woman, good woman.”
I thanked him for his kind offer and pedaled into Cambodia with, I have to admit it, more than a little fear in my belly. After all in the not too distant past the Khmer Rouge had slaughtered up to 2,000,000 of their own people and in terms of development Cambodia remained a good fifty years behind Thailand and Malaysia.
There was a moment in Cambodia when a large group of young men stopped me on a lonely mud track miles from town. They were carrying sickles and knives, their teeth resembled broken graves and they had that lean hungry look of desperate men in their eyes. At the moment I was about to fall to my knees and beg them for mercy one guy spoke up in broken English;
“Excuse me sir, can we take photo with you.”
I almost collapsed with relief. They were carrying sickles and knifes because they were field workers preparing land to grow rice. A tourist who had passed by some time ago had handed them a cheap automatic camera which to them was an item to be treasured like gold.
The world spins fearlessly through space at 67,000 km’s per hour but if the dire warnings of its inhabitants were to be taken seriously by Mother Nature the planet would come to a grinding halt and the sun would fade to flicker, paralyzed with fear.
At the Thai/Laos border town of Huay Xai no one warns me of the dangers that may lay ahead but a helpful tourist informs me that the border officials are pushing their luck and asking for backhanders on top of the visa fee which is $35. Because it’s Sunday they consider themselves to be working overtime and covering for absent colleagues.
As a result of bad financial planning I only just have enough money to get me through Laos and into Vietnam where my funds are stationed. With a swagger of mock confidence I stroll up to the passport official and inform him I’m under contract to teach English to the family of a party official named Keysorn, a well known cadre of the country’s ruling communist party. I hand him a made up telephone number and challenge him to call. He prefers not to take the risk, takes the correct money and stamps my passport without any fuss.
Border towns are rarely the most charming off places and Huay Xai is no exception.There's a small but continuos number of travellers that enter and exit this dusty town via the Mekong River. Prices are at least doubled for foriegners and hagglig is frowned upon so I haggle down the cost of a room from $8 to $5, sit on the terrace of my guest house and sketch a group of local kids using the back of a pick up truck as a climbing frame.  ‘In the border town of Huay Xai young kids use a pick up truck as a climbing frame while a backpacker spots the elixir of his travels, Beer Laos.’ At dusk I'm joined by an eccentric old American called Carl. Dressed in ethnic shawls and beeds Carls search for a hippy Utopia began when he dropped out of college in the 60's and ended several decades later in a modest apartment amongst the neon lit towers of Bangkok. A city he hates but tolerates on account of its convenience and the simple fact he's nowhere left to go. Time can be cruel to dreamers like Carl but he pushes through with a sense of humour. "Came to Laos back in the 70's when the Americans were bombing. They welcomed us in Vientiane for being American. They thought we'd come to fight the (communist) Pathet Laos in the north but we hated the Americans, we just wanted to smoke the opium." He picks up a matchbox, holds it in front of my eyes and pronounces: "That much opium in '1971' would cost $3." Carl is on a role. He leans forward, looks me in the eye as if to invite me on a trip down memory lane and begins to reminise. "You know where the first ladyboys came from?" "No," I reply. "Vientienne" I seriously doubt this on account of the fact that even today the most advanced hospital in Laos would struggle to perform the simplest operation of removing an ingrown toenail let alone slicing off a penis and creating an artificial vagina. But I'm having fun listening to Carl so I allow him to continue. "Back then there was a bar called The Rose. All the travellers went there. We'd take the opoium, sit back in the soft chairs and get served by topless waitresses. We had no idea at first but we soon found out some of these chicks had pricks. "So" I ask,"did you discover the truth (excuse the pun) the hard way." "What?" "I mean, did you ever take one of these chicks with pricks back to your room" With this the lines around his eyes deepen to crevasses as he grins mischeviously: "Just about everything I was told not to do I've done again and again." One of the good things about border towns is that they're easy places to meet other travellers. Later that night Carl and I are joined by a small group of University students on a one month whistle stop tour of northern South East Asia. They're exited by tomorrow’s activities. Everythings been pre-arranged by their tour guide, a middle aged Thai named Wit, who looks more than a little weary.
The young Americans are bursting with enthusiasm. "Wits the Man, Wits the Man," one of them hollers across the table as Wit introduces himself to me. Yesterday they went hill tribe trekking in Chiang Rai, tomorrow they're going elephant riding and after that they'll take the Mekong River down to the capital city, Vientiane. They won't find any opium down there but "Wit The Man" has told them about a restaurant that sells the best pizza's in South East Asia. The beers flow and the volume rises. Wit manages to speak out of earshot explaing how tourists have changed over the years. "Before they were always happy with the price. Today they just complain. Some tourists tell me they have no money. If I go to America I take enough money and if something is too expensive I don't buy it. But today the tourists complain when they think something is too much money" I suggest it may have much to do with the internet. The worlds getting smaller. Shortly before you arrive in a picturess village in Laos you can google it on the net, discover the cost of a room, a souvineer and an elephant trek. It's so cheap you decide to go there. But the website you logged into is so popular that hundreds of other people are doing the same thing, thinking the same thing and making the same plans. By the time you get there the locals have got wise and everything has doubled in price. "Tourists never used to complain so much,” laments Wit with an air of exsasperation. By now the party is beginning to resemble a scene from American Pie. A bottle of beer roles off the table wakes up the landlafy and sets the dog barking before Carl hollers threateningly: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someones not after you!" All eyes turn to Carl who has'nt said a word since the young Americans arrived. For a few seconds a pin could be heard to drop but there's no follow up statemnt from Carl. Finally, one of the young Americans starts laughing. This sets off a domino effect and before I know it I'm sitting in a room full of hysterical American kids, an embarrassed Thai tour guide and the enigmatic Carl who follows up his opening statement with; "Someone was following me for ten years once. Everyone said I was paranoid but I knew that guy was following me." By now Carl has to shout to be heard above the laughter. "No one was fuckin' laughin' when I got that guy." Carl motions the actions of one mad man strangling another and everyone disapears to bed. By Midday the rain is hammering down while a thick mist has swallowed everything but my front wheel and a few meters of pot holed track in front of me. Mud streams flow down the side of the road which continues to rise. A battered truck loaded with rocks and resembling something from Mad Max chugs past on a hairpin. Attempting to hitch a lift I grab at the back of it but its no use, my hand slips and through a break in the clouds I can see the road rise up into the mountains of Northern Laos. For a moment my spirits break and I wonder what the hell I’m doing. The twisting road from Mae Hon Son to the Vietnam capital, Hanoi totals over 1,000km’s of some of the toughest roads in South East Asia. The mountains of northern Laos reach heights of around 3,000 meters making them comparable to the Alps. In Laos the highways regularly disintegrate into mud tracks. During heavy rain it can be like cycling along a sandy beach, only there aren’t any sunbathers to look at and the gradient is invarioubly up.  “A tiny village sits dwarfed by a mighty limestone formation somewhere in the heart of Laos.”
The rainstorm changes from humdrum to epic as I finally reach the top of the next mountain pass. Thunder roles across the mountains of norhern Laos while the rain falls so hard I have to squint to make out the road from the verge. Gripping my brakes I role slowly down the mountain, cautious not to overshoot a hairpin and holding onto three thoughts; “Keep going, keep going, keep going.” Night accommodation in rural Laos usualy consists of a well worn mattress on the floor and a fan. Washing is a quick affair. The normal practice is to fill up a bucket of cold water, tip it over your head, have a good scrub down and wash away the grime with another bucket of cold water. Lunch is invarioubly noodle soup with pig gristle and if you’re lucky the fan will wade off the humidity till 10pm, when all electricity cuts out. In Paul Theroux’ The Great Railway Bazaar the auther describes Laos as, “a motineless place where nothing was made, everything imported; a kingdom with baffling pretentions to Frenchness. What was surprising was it exsisited at all, and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed like a lower form of life, like the cross eyed planarian or the squashy amoeba, the sort of creature that can’t die even when its cut to ribbons.” Paul Theroux is one of the world’s great travel writers but this descriptin relates only to the socialy crippled state of the nation as a result of the Indo China war and bears no relation to the the landscape of this ‘squashy amoeba’.  “Laos, the squashy amoeba boasts what could well be the world’s shortest airport watchtower.”
The following morning the skies are clear and the mountainous landscape, impenetrable with forest stands before me like the beating heart of South East Asia. The landscape of Laos is unforgiving for the cycle tourist but the rewards are unending. In village after village I pass through kids appear barefoot from behind the woodwork and race toward the road laughing and shouting “Sabadee, sabadee” welcome welcome. More often than not I’ll stop to drink water. People will look over with curiosity but it’s against the nature of these shy people to become too imposing. They’ll allow me my privacy and only communicate if I make the first move. In these villages there seem as many black hairy pigs as people trotting about and with the general economic boom sweeping through South East Asia the shops are certainly more loaded with produce han they were when I first visited Laos, five years ago. In one village I’m beaten by heat exhaustion, my water supply is down and the corner shop, a wooden shack has no supply. No one has any idea as to the state I’m in. Sweat is seeping through my pores, my features are hollow and I’m mimicking a lunatic dieing of thirst but still I can’t get through. Eventualy I spot a young child drinking water from a jug under a chapoy adjoining the villages only stone built house and point to the child. In an instant they get it and for the rest of the afternoon I settle down in the living quarters of that family. They have a fan, a TV and a copiuos supply of water. The father owns the only gas station for miles. By Laos standards business is booming. He’s even able to afford the latest movies from China. One of which he puts on for my benefit. Heads fly across the screen, beautiful princess’s weep and heroes with supernatural skills save everyone from a fate worse than death. The blood and gore is so extreme it becomes comical but the young kid, who sits wide eyed watching the heads of evil men being severed from bodies must wonder where all the tomatoe ketchup comes from. Landlocked Laos, slightly larger than Great Britain with a population of around 6,000,000 is bordered by Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and China.With the exception of Burma all of these countries are experiencing an economic boom. When I visited five years ago Laos was a network of depressed towns linked together with mud tracks. Today the towns are still depressed but as a result of huge road projects funded mainly by the Chinese great swathes of forest are being ripped out and highways are linking the countries 17 provinces together. On my fourth day following a trail east toward the border of Vietnam I’m struck down with a bout of food poisoning that left me vomitting ten thousand scorpions on the periphery of the devil’s kitchen. Or at least that’s what it felt like.  “The green hills of Laos, a soothing sight for sore eyes” |
