We’re still half asleep but it’s a quick, easy ride to the Vientiane airport at 6:00 a.m. There’s a very nice Canadian (of course) guy in front of us at check-in who’s trying to reallocate his books and papers in order not to exceed the weight limit. Later, we have an interesting conversation about the weeklong international conference on UXO that just wrapped up in Vientiane. I learn more about the treaty (which the big players – the US among them – did not sign);  the use of bombies in recent and ongoing conflicts today;  and the manufacturing of “safe” bombies. It is a mind-blowing (no pun intended) concept to me.

We touch down in Bangkok a few hours later and Alan’s wonderful work rep is there to greet us. Phase Two  of our trip has begun.

After a series of cell phone exchanges, we meet the two women who the rep has arranged to “take care of” me. We have no idea how or if they’re related to Rep or their role other than “software engineer’s partner handler.” They’re both dressed very, very casually. Eung is 44 and looks 30-something, I think, and very pretty. Pink, as I call her because she is wearing rose colored, skinny jeans, is 59. “Harriet” is impossible to pronounce so we shorten it to “Hallee” and eventually to “Alee.” We meet. They proceed to talk only to each other. I’m thinking this is going to be a very long, awkward week.

Alan and Rep climb into the front seat of the SUV. Eung and Pink open the back doors and, like women everywhere, they think they are fat and indicate that I should sit in the middle on the hump. Of course, they are not fat at all. Pink still looks good in her skinny jeans. Eung is thin and 4 inches taller than me. However, after not having passed up a single grain of sticky rice all month, by the time we fly out of Bangkok, I will have made up the 4 inches in girth.

Within minutes, Pink opens a big Tupperware bowl of sliced fruit that tastes something like a mild apple with a less dense texture. Then she cuts open a yellow pomegranate with juicy seeds the size of peanut M&Ms. Eung explains that Pink is always eating, cooking or talking about food. Over the course of the week I will learn that this is an understatement. (Note to Marla, Richard, Gayle: Another sibling in Thailand?) Alan and Rep make small talk. The women talk almost non-stop. They are loud and rowdy. They laugh easily, often and loudly. Later, I find out they thought I was 10 years younger. Funny – I never thought of a gray ponytail and pair of Tevas as age-defying fashion.

We drive almost two hours on a 6-lane freeway until it narrows, lane by lane, and we find ourselves in the bowels of Pattaya. We drive through the ugly, traffic-clogged streets lined with tawdry hotels, German beer gardens, massage parlors, discos, billboards for cheap high-rise condominiums, souvenir shops and loud motorbikes that carry scantily clad, bulging, sunburned Europeans. The two-story  McDonald’s stands out as one of the most attractive buildings. Honestly.

I’m grateful not to have been in one of the minivans of our recent excursions, but I have been sitting in a tuk-tuk, then on a plane, and now on the middle bump and my ass is killing me. Rep wants to continue the driving tour through Hell and it takes another 45 minutes before we reach the waterfront restaurant. The first Singha is poured (over ice) and I realize that after less than half a glass, I’m already getting a buzz. I think I should at least wait until I get a little food in me, but the more I drink, the less I feel my aching buttocks. The first dish comes out. It is green papaya salad, this time with less lemongrass than its Lao cousin, but with more lime juice and chiles. Forget my butt; I can’t feel my lips.

It makes Rep and the women very happy that I can – and do – eat like a water buffalo. They are very pleased with Alan’s capacity as well, but we later learn that Eung can drink him – and pretty much anyone we know – under the table.

We pile back into the SUV after the papaya salad; cotton fish in garlic and ginger; delicate greens; rice; fish in spicy garlic oyster sauce; a heaping platter of huge crabs; another fish that’s poached with garlic, ginger and chiles in a rich broth and ends up in our soup bowls; salacca, another fruit with a slightly floral orange mango flavor, floating in a simple syrup; and probably a few other things, but I’ve been sucking down diluted Singha beers through my singed lips and can’t remember much at this point and have begun to pray we’re now on the way to our hotel.

Eung, Pink and I take our positions. Eung asks, “You have enough?” to which I reply “Too much” and pat my bulging belly. Not five seconds later, Pink whips the top off the Tupperware and starts in on the sliced fruit again. The three of us burst into hysterics. Okay, I’m going to have a good time with these women.

ARE WE THERE YET?

We’ve been up since 4:30 a.m. It’s now after 2 p.m. Sattahip is about 30 kilometers south of Pattaya. I can make it another 45 minutes. Oh, but wait. Rep first wants to take us to their famous zoological gardens. It is a Thai Disneyland/botanical garden/zoo/“cultural center”/amusement park filled with everything from fields of fake pink flamingos to drugged baby tigers; model stupas, pagodas and temples; a forest built out of stacked flower pots; and two different shows of colorful dancers, traditional music, Thai boxing and elephants painting pictures, playing soccer and throwing darts. How many Singhas did we have anyway? Probably not enough.

We are thrilled to finally reach the Navy hotel in sleepy, peaceful Sattahip. The décor is nautical of course, but the color scheme is powder puff pink. There’s a Popeye statue out front. Vandenburg, it is  not.

About this time in our trip, we often start to have a little food craving for something back home. It’s usually a fresh salad or maybe something Mexican. This time, we’re really not craving anything, but we can’t resist the idea of ice cream sundaes on this warm summer night. So we walk up the steps to the brightly lit shop with a very familiar logo, and a smiling young woman in her sporty uniform opens the door for us. As we enter, the entire staff – we count 5 guys behind the counter, 4 girls running the tables, as if we were in an “It’s a Small World” ride/sushi bar – say in cheery unison, “Blah, blah, blah (rather “brah, brah, brah”)… sesanes.”  Translation: “Something, something, something… welcome to Swensen’s.”

Alan convinces me to spend the extra $70 to forego the “taxi to bridge to immigration to bus to second tuk-tuk to second bus to second tuk-tuk to Udon Thani (Thailand) overnight to tuk-tuk to airport” itinerary in favor of flying directly from Vientiane back to Bangkok. I succumb. I’m getting soft in my old age.

Purchasing our air tickets turns into a lesson on Lao women in contemporary society… and a counseling session of sorts. First, we’re quoted a price that’s lower than online. Then we have a little bonding moment over the need for reading glasses. So far so good. Forty-five minutes later we’ve learned about marriages, infidelities, divorces, Bollywood videos, self-sufficiency, teenage sexuality, and asthma. There is Kleenex involved. Long story.

We walk several kilometers to That Luang, resting place of the Buddha’s breastbone and the most important sight in Laos. It is impressive. Hundreds of booths are being set up in the surrounding area and we return later that evening to see them filled with clothing, cheap goods (a lot of shampoo, lotions, soy sauce and underwear), and carnival games. There are a couple huge sound stages, several gigantic blow-up “jumpies” and slides for kids, food vendors, and thousands of individuals and families strolling about. There are few, if any, farangs besides us. This is just the warm-up for the “real” celebration that takes place at the end of the month. After a couple of steamed pork buns for appetizers, we choose one of the streetside restaurants for a simple, but tasty, final dinner in Laos.

Click on the photo of the Buddha to see more from Vientiane.

PHONESAVANH

There isn’t a cheap flight. There isn’t a flight, period. Back on the bus. Seven hours. We can do this. We’re first to be picked up by a new-ish minivan and score the choicest seats. We’re psyched. Okay, well, we’re not psyched but we’re not in a state of total dread.

For six hours, we drive nothing but hairpin turns with one-room bamboo houses dotting the roadsides in what seems like the middle of nowhere. We stop once for a short toilet and snack break at a little village in the mountains. A young woman pumps out tuna sandwiches at twice the speed of your most efficient Subway employee. We stop a second time along with all the other minibuses, cyclists and buses for lunch in a little crossroads town. The “market” is maybe 50 feet long. The “bus stop” food is remarkably good and cheap. The toilets, however, are squats. Grateful that I have strong thighs…

The final hour, the road begins to straighten, the landscape changes to more gentle slopes; the driver dodges more little pigs and cows than chickens; the temperature drops. We’re close.

The relatively new city has all the charm of a strip mall. It’s a hodge podge of neo-Lao concrete buildings, old wooden shops, markets filled with cheap goods from China, and a smattering of hotels and guest houses. Ours is off the main drag, behind what used to be an airstrip. Built by the owner when he was a child 20-plus years ago, the two-story French colonial home sits beside the restaurant/bar and a half dozen cottages. We’re lucky to nab the the last one. En suite bathroom. 60,000 kip. About $7.50. Score.

After checking in, we continue our education about Laos, the Secret War, and UXO (unexploded ordinances) with a visit to the MAG center. We drop some money there. Not enough. It can never be enough. We’re in the province most heavily bombed in the war. The US dropped more than 2 millions tons of bombs here — more than on Germany and Japan combined in WWII. Thirty-five years later, the bombing of this peaceful place continues with UXO being inadvertently detonated by farmers, scrap metal collectors, pond diggers and children.

In the morning, we take a spin through the market  to buy our picnic supplies and snacks for the day. We drive to see lots of bomb craters and our first UXO in situ. Here, our happy-go-lucky guides who speak excellent English from watching HBO, take a more serious tone. There is no animosity toward the U.S. now, but there is a very reasonable frustration that efforts/money to deal with UXO are slow and small. There is a well-founded fear that his own newborn daughter and her generation will likely live their entire lives as a potential victims.

SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES

Our first trek is to a quiet little village where bombshells have been used to build house supports, troughs, planters, fencing and more. There are scores of very young children around who attend school and/or take care of the house, younger siblings and animals while the older children and adults are busy with the rice harvest, several kilometers away.

The two Austrians, two Swiss, one Scot and one German-Scot, ein Berliner, the two from Uruguay and the two of us pile back into our minivans and drive to the start of our hike up to the waterfall. After our picnic lunch, I have my very first little leech experience. Both leech and experience are small. The hike is spectacular.

We end the afternoon at the Plain of Jars. We’re intrigued by the mystery of how and why these gigantic stone jars exist — as are archaeologists — and the jars themselves are pretty cool, but I am a bit underwhelmed by the site itself. There could, however, be dozens or even hundreds more jars. Again, the presence of UXO hamper the discovery process. With funding from NZAID, UNESCO and others, MAG has cleared 127 UXO and provided markers to keep visitors on safe paths through the site. Laos will remain a poor country until all the UXO are eradicated. It is impossible to develop without an infrastructure, and that requires building the basics like roads, irrigation systems, schools, shelter. 

Our tour concludes at the guest house restaurant  where Kong’s wife has turned out another fantastic meal for the group. Following dinner, we watch a fascinating PBS documentary about the Secret War and UXO. What surprises me more than anything is that we’re still using cluster bombs (“bombies”). I can make it through only half of the second video which documents the work of one of an Aussie-based recovery/removal team. I’m already obsessed (had you not already noticed). It’s not until the next morning we realize our tour coincided with Veteran’s Day in the U.S.

Click on the thumbnail of Alan examining the herbage to see more photos from Phonsavanh.When you have a few extra minutes (and surely you must if you’re slogging through this blog),please check out the MAG website to learn more about their life-saving work and mission to change the legacy of Laos. http://www.maginternational.org/

ROAD: TRIP

We’re well past our first hour of the road trip to the north, if you don’t count the 90 minutes of trolling guest houses for other riders, van driver negotiations, and passenger swapping at the northern bus terminal. The minivans appear to be relatively new Hyundais and Toyotas – except for ours – an aged, shockless, padless, 12-seater, belching diesel exhaust inside and out. Those of us in the back half have fashioned face masks from whatever we’ve crammed into our day bags, not that any of us would have thought ahead to pack air filters in our packs now strapped precariously to the top of what we think might be some passive-aggressive attempt at payback for the “Secret War.”

I’m feeling my age. I’m feeling we may need to fly to our next destination rather than make the 7-hour journey by bus. I’m feeling my bladder.

In spite of the incessant jostling and noxious fumes or maybe because of them, we doze on and off. I am awakened by a collective shriek from the front of the van. Did we pass some dead animal in the road? I look up to see that the French Jimmy Fallon look-alike with black curly hair has buried his face in both hands. Did we swerve to avoid a chicken, a dog, a child? I didn’t feel any change of direction or speed. I look questioningly at Alan who says, “an accident.” Our driver doesn’t stop or even slow. We turn to look over our shoulder to see a small, 2-bench, open “bus” on its roof in a ditch with at least two people crawling out of the wreckage. The German girl who saw the entire incident unfold, explains that it was the vehicle that had been traveling directly in front of ours that for no apparent reason swerved across the road and flipped over. Jimmy Fallon had thought it was coming right at us. No wonder he is ashen.

I am grateful that we made a donation at the temple yesterday. I am grateful when we finally arrive at our destination hours later, exhausted, knees bruised, lungs bursting, backs aching, and alive.

NONG KHIAW

The further we drive from Luang Prabang, the more we feel like we’re in Laos. Open fronted shops give way to fewer wooden structures and then small clusters of bamboo and wood houses between miles of greenery and tiny villages. We don’t see the abject poverty we’ve seen in India or Madagascar, but it’s obvious Laos is a poor country where most of the population depends on subsistence farming. And that is complicated by the tens of millions of UXO (unexploded ordinances) littered throughout the country. (More on that later.)

The minibus deposits us more than two kilometers from the center of town, so in sweltering heat we begin our first “trek” toward the area with several  guest houses. We look at a highly recommended place on the riverfront but it’s much more than we want to pay. The little place next door doesn’t have the attached restaurant or pretty landscaping (yet) but has comparable rooms and is a quarter of the price. Unfortunately, it also has only a squat toilet in the cabin we like. We trek up the road and stop at a restaurant where I proceed to have a little heat stroke while Alan continues the search. The champion hunter-gatherer has scored us a  place close by, nearly as nice as the first, also on the riverfront, for a mere $16. He’s not a good bargainer so we’re likely paying an extra $6, but I’m happy to pay anything at this point.

It’s not much of a town but the setting is quite beautiful and the food at the tiny joint down the road is some of the best we’ve had. My simple “Lao breakfast omelet with eggplant sauce” turns out to be a large omelet with a lot of dill, a basket of sticky rice, a plate of greens, and an eggplant dish that tastes like babaganoush with extra garlic and chili. (about $1.75) Alan orders a banana pancake thinking it will be a small crepe with a few slices of banana.

Nong Khiew is a starting point for many boat trips up the river and treks to small(er) mountain villages. I don’t know that life has changed much for the villagers since our first trek/stay in the hill tribes 20+ years ago and, admittedly, our heartier, sleeping-on-dirt floor days are behind us, but we encourage the backpackers we meet to experience the homestays that are available these days. We’re told the villagers get a percentage of the “tour” fee. One can hope…

We spend a morning hiking to the dramatic limestone caves where Phathet Lao soldiers lived/hid during the war. Along the way, we meet only an elderly French couple who travel as roughly as any young backpackers we’ve known. They tell us about several nights sleeping on the floor of a boat as they cruised up the Mekong. We don’t complain about our ride out of town in an air-conditioned minivan.

LUANG PRABANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Forty minutes after leaving Vientiane, we touched down at dinky Xieng Khouang airport and waited around with all the other passengers while two guys – probably flunkies from US Airways – appeared to be sorting the bags one by one on the tarmac. Luang Prabang is small, but this seemed a bit too modest an airport for such a well-touristed destination and the map on the wall looked nothing like the one in our books. Yes, we had hopped off at the wrong stop. Fortunately, the baggage dudes’ pace allowed us enough time to walk back out onto the tarmac and reboard the plane which would eventually land in Luang Prabang. Security is a bit lax to say the least.

Cute. Charming. Sweet as Solvang except with French colonial architecture and better food. The heart of the UNESCO protected city rests on a peninsula between the Mekong and Khan rivers. We can only imagine what it looked like only five or ten years ago. Now, it’s filled with white table clothed cafes, shops with pinpoint lighting and designer accessories, wine bars, tour operators, guest houses, crepe stands, and the surviving older businesses that only five years ago were the norm. It is not the “real” Laos we’ve come to explore, but we confess to enjoying the Continental vibe at a developing world price nonetheless.

Latest food discoveries: pork-stuffed bamboo; banana stuffed sticky rice balls with coconut; fried bread puffs with sesame. “Stuffed” seems to be the operative word here as that seems to be often how we feel. And just to be sure we keep up the momentum, we’re taking a full-day cooking class tomorrow.

Oh, spectacular sights too.

Click on thumbnail of the temple for more photos from Luang Prabang.

MONKS AT THE ZOO

The books all talk about the hundreds of monks in saffron robes, streaming forth from dozens of wats each morning with their “begging” baskets. The alms they collect from people who rise at dawn to make their daily offering of rice is all the monks will eat for the day. It is supposed to be both a moving and humbling experience for participant and observer alike.

Some acquaintances of ours said they had decided to forgo the experience because, not being practicing Buddhists, they felt it would be disingenuous. Secondly, they had heard about monks becoming ill from inferior rice sold to tourists. We were of the same mindset and decided we would be passive, respectful observers, keeping a quiet distance and bridging it only with our telephoto lenses.

We rose before dawn and strolled a few short blocks from our guest house to the main street. We expected to see tourists like ourselves. We were not prepared for the spectacle of minivans unloading scores of tour groups; pre-set offering “stations” (Santa Barbarians, think blankets and chairs on Solstice Parade morning) and guides shouting instructions about how to bow and give rice; people standing quite literally in the path of the monks or just a few feet from them with cameras cocked. It was quite literally a zoo. Appalling.

COOKING SCHOOL

Nine of us boarded the tuk-tuk to the market with our instructors Leng and Phia. We buzzed through the market more hurriedly than we would have liked, but another Taiwanese-Dutch woman and I peppered (no pun intended) Leng with questions. We returned to the school for a little tea and bowls of fabulous sweet, salty, spicy pretzel-like things while the instructors prepared for class.

Their accents were nearly impossible and these guys do not have the personality to be on the Food Network or even local cable, but they can cook. They demonstrated a few dishes at a time, and then we returned to our respective stations and to recreate each dish. Alan and I worked surprisingly well together. He did all the measuring, of course; I did all the slicing and chopping. He made sure we followed the recipe precisely; I did the plating.

We consumed five dishes (plus sticky rice and the best chili paste we’ve tasted anywhere in the world) for lunch and dinner. Click on the thumbnail of us to see more photos of our creations and classmates.

SHOPPING

The night market is clean and bright and goes on for blocks. We buy our dinner along the crowded “buffet” alley. An all-you-can-heap plate costs us $1.20 which we complement with another dollar’s worth of grilled chicken and Alan’s diet soda. We are fully sated and can well afford to shop. The young sellers talk amongst themselves or on cell phones and start their prices too high. The older Hmong women understand the economics of volume selling and their ROI. My favorite just keeps heaping the goods and dropping the price each time I look toward Alan who doesn’t have to work at feigning disinterest as he reads a book on his Droid. We do the requisite schmoozing – “I make this one” “Ooh, very beautiful” “Special discount, Madam” “Just looking tonight” “This one lucky for you” “Sorry, I’m a stingy bitch and my sister doesn’t want another scarf” – but quickly move into serious negotiations. I score well. The old woman has had a good night compared to the other couple hundred merchants selling pretty much the same stuff.  Click on her photo to see more from the market.

MONEY MATTERS

Because of the exchange rate (1 kip = .00012 U.S. dollars; 1 million kip = $125) and they don’t drop all those zeroes, it’s at first a bit disconcerting to get the dinner check. Our second dinner in Laos, which included three dishes, sticky rice, an amuse bouche, and a bottle of lao lao, came to 85,000 kip. The following night, we ate at a place that was more upscale, heavy on atmosphere – quite charming actually – but light on quality, for a whopping 100,000 kip. It just wasn’t worth the extra $2.75. Still doing the math? Divide the number of kip by 8 and move the decimal point 3 places. Easy, eh?