The door swung open and a well-dressed woman approached us. Apart from the fact that she wore shoes, she looked like a typical Queenslander: blonde, tanned, and hungover. But despite her bloodshot eyes, the woman was polite and efficient, negating my theory about her Queensland origins.
“G’day girls, I’m sorry to have kept you. My name’s Louise. How can I help?”
I stared at a framed copy of the words to “Advance Australia Fair” on the wall while El explained that we wanted to register ourselves. “We were told we had to,” she finished.
“Well, you don’t have to,” Louise said. “But it’s a good idea. At least then we have an idea of where Australian citizens are when they’re in Laos. That way, if anything happens, it makes it easier to identify you.”
I winced. “Isn’t that a bit dramatic? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“It’s just a precaution,” Louise soothed. “If you play it safe, you’ll be fine. But if you start wandering off into certain areas, you could find yourselves in big trouble. Laos can still be a very dangerous, unstable country.”
“Well,” El said, “it’s not like we’re going to wander into the opium fields and start harvesting, if that’s what you mean.”
Damn, there went all my plans.
“Of course there’s that,” Louise said. “But that is a bit dramatic. What I mean is that we have posted a traveler’s advisory for Australian citizens on a few areas up north where there’s been some trouble. If you steer clear of them, you should be just fine.”
“Up north?” El asked with a twinge of anxiety. “We were planning on going to Luang Prabang.”
“I’d give that a miss if I were you,” Louise said. “The highway is too dangerous.”
“Why?”
“This actually hasn’t come out in the press yet, but in the last week, there’s been missile attacks on tourist buses by Hmong bandits.”
“What happened?” we gasped.
“Well, these rebels fire at the buses, y’know, blowing them up, and then come and raid what’s left for valuables.”
Apart from our lives, El and I didn’t have anything of value with us. But how were these gun-crazy hill tribers supposed to know that? Strike bus travel. But we were still desperate to get out of Vientiane and into Luang Prabang.
“How about along the river?” El asked. “Can’t you take a boat up there?”
“You can,” Louise nodded. “But again, we’d advise against it.”
“What now?” I whined.
“For a start, it’s the dry season and the river is incredibly shallow. The speedboats that travel up it wind up hitting mudbanks and crashing. There was an accident just a fortnight ago.”
“What about a slow boat?”
“I was getting to that. This is very much under wraps still, but there was an Australian citizen shot off the top of one of those slow boats only a few days ago.”
Jesus. And there I was thinking the worst thing that could happen in Laos was being forced to drink black coffee.
“That’s a disgrace,” I said, shaking my head. “But hey, what about a plane?”
El nodded at me and looked at Louise, who in turn was staring at us like we lunatics. “You guys really want to get up there, eh?” she said.
“Yeah, we really do,” I said. Five minutes ago, I hadn’t known where I wanted to go. But now, despite, or maybe even because of, the warnings against it, I was chomping at the bit to get to Luang Prabang.
Some say the glass is half empty, some say the glass is half full. I say, are you going to drink that?
—Lisa Claymen
“Well,” Louise continued, “let me give you some friendly advice. Don’t fly in this country. Don’t even go near an airport. Jesus,” she shook her head. “It’s totally off the record, but listen. Most of the planes in Laos are ancient Russian junk heaps. They’re supposedly maintained by the French but I wouldn’t go within a bloody mile of them.”
We considered our options in silence. We could stay in Vientiane, bored senseless but safe, the able-bodied envy of every cripple in town. Or we could risk life and coveted limb on the airborne equivalent of the Lada for a chance to see the “real” Laos. Ennui versus a fiery death. It was a tough call, but my completely warped sense of logic kicked in and I had my decision. We’d fly to Luang Prabang. At least if we died in a plane crash, we wouldn’t be bored.
“I say we do it,” I told El, whose smile told me she’d made the same decision. I hoped she’d used a different system of reckoning, though.
“Well, I think you’re both nuts,” Louise tutted. “But it’s your choice. Just fill these in,” she handed us our identification papers, “and let’s hope we don’t need to use them.”
“What melodrama,” I said to El as we strolled back out into the sunshine. “Old planes fly all the time, no big deal. Look at all those air shows, with planes from like World War II.”
“Yeah,” El said, hailing a samlor. (We figured if they had to pedal, they’d be less inclined to rip us off.) “But have you noticed how nobody ever goes to an air show these days without a video camera? People who don’t give a shit about old planes go, just to sell their film to the TV stations in case one of the aircraft explodes mid-air. You see it on the news all the time.”
“Oh come on. Is our plane going to loop-dee-loop? Are we going wing-walking? It’s totally different. Besides, don’t you want to go?”
“Of course I do. I’m just nervous about getting on some crusty old Russian deathtrap.”
“I’m not.”And I wasn’t either. I’d been to a psychic years before who’d told me I’d live till I was ninety-one. She hadn’t mentioned anything about El though.
“Anyway,” I said, as we climbed into the waiting samlor, “we should remember Helen Keller’s famous quote.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Life is a daring adventure or nothing.’”
That’s the last time I ever take advice from a deaf, dumb and blind woman—especially one who lived in a time before they invented malfunctioning ex-Soviet bomber planes. It was all well and good for Helen Keller to go around shooting her mouth off about daring adventures, but if she’d seen the rustbucket that we were supposed to spend an hour in at 6,000 feet, I daresay she would have taken dibs on that “or nothing” option.
Cracked, lopsided, and balancing on what appeared to be a pair of deflated tires, Lao Aviation Flight 643 looked more like a warning to pilots about the dangers of flying under the influence than any recognizable means of passage. Slouching beside a sparkling Thai Airways jet, our plane looked like the town drunk hitting up a society lady for some spare change, or at least directions to the nearest flophouse. It was not the most comforting imagery to spring to mind before taking to the skies.
Airport security didn’t make us feel much better. After ditching our luggage, we ducked through a metal detector, beeping all the way. The guard took one look at us, scratched his head and moved us along. No emptying of the pockets, no once-over with the electric wand. We could have been weighed down with twenty pounds of gelignite for all that guy knew. Maybe encouraging terrorism was their way of phasing out old planes.
Security on the tarmac wasn’t exactly watertight either. Smoking was forbidden in the lounge, so we were sent out onto the runway to puff. Made sense to me. Why choke up a bunch of passengers inside when you can explode a few fuel pumps on the airstrip outside? But it wasn’t just smokers wandering around out there. Uniformed men, who I guessed were maintenance crews, lazed in the shadows of baggage trucks, while random people in civvies strolled aimlessly around, examining the underbellies of planes and jumping up to smack the wings. A skinny dog trotted by, sniffed one of the flat tires of Flight 643 and kept going, eventually stopping to relieve itself on a median strip of grass. What a wasted opportunity, I thought. If I’d been allowed to cock my leg in public, I know exactly where I would have been aiming.
“This is just great,” I whined, squash
ing out my butt. “Not only is our plane a total piece of shit, but look at this airport. Anyone could go straight up to our plane, chuck a bomb in the engine and wham! A few thousand feet up and we’re screwed.
If we can even get off the ground, that is.” I lit another fag and exhaled nervously. “Don’t they normally have mechanics checking out the plane before boarding? Jesus wept, we would have been better off getting shot off the top of a boat.”
El turned to me, her sunburn vanished behind a pall of gray.
“Where’s that Valium?” she croaked.
The day after we’d registered with Louise, we’d gone into town to shake down Trev and buy our tickets to Luang Prabang. By the time we’d gotten to the Lao Aviation office, we were beaming like kids getting ready for a trip to Disneyland. But when they’d charged us double the local’s rate for our return tickets, all hell broke loose. El screamed, I glared, but to no avail. If we wanted to go, we had to pay the farang fares. So we did. Anything to get up-country, I’d told El afterwards. It’d all be worth it once we were there. But my soothing words hadn’t been enough to calm her ire, so we’d marched into a pharmacy and demanded a strip of Valium. It was out of date and crumbling inside it’s bubble pack, but it would have to do. I’d stock up on the real stuff later.
“El, are you sure you want some?” Despite my yearning for the pills, I was holding off until I could get some not marked “expiry August 1997.” Besides, if the plane did go down, I wanted to be alert enough to get out my camera. El was right. There was big bucks in this plane crash stuff.
She nodded, growing paler by the minute. Judging by my overwhelming sense of nausea, I’d say I wasn’t far behind her, but I had my psychic’s prediction to fall back on. Granted, this was the same psychic who’d told me I’d have eleven children by the age of twenty-eight, but maybe she was speaking figuratively. If I was going to cark it in a plane crash, I’d know about it.
“Here y’go,” I passed El two blue pills and my bottle of tepid water and she gulped them down like a woman possessed.
“Aaaah,” she said, as I eyed her cautiously. Well, at least she wasn’t dying of chemical poisoning—yet. Things were looking up. If only the plane would stay in that general direction, we’d be fine.
A few moments and a last, rushed cigarette later, our boarding call came through over the scratchy speakers. “Well,” I said, giving El a hand up. “This is it. Let’s meet our maker.”
I ’ll never forget the time I was offered a banger at 30,000 feet. I mistook the intentions of the attractive male flight attendant and replied that I wasn’t quite ready yet to join the Mile High Club. His eyes registered horror and all semblance of professionalism vanished in a heartbeat. Cheeks aflame, he then cleared his throat and placed a dish before me containing the weenie that he had actually offered me. I decided to research the inflight Scottish breakfast specials before opening my mouth next time.
—Michele Fontaine, “On the Road to Carnal Knowledge”
People always carry on about wanting to die with dignity, but to our fellow passengers on Lao Aviation Flight 643, this was obviously not an issue. With only about fourteen people on board, death would indeed be a private affair, until the networks got hold of the footage, but there was no way one could hope to expire in a courtly or ennobled manner. Resplendent in peeling wallpaper and greasy windows, the cabin was suffocatingly small, which I suppose was appropriate as it matched the seats. Only just big enough to squeeze into, they had neither reclining lever nor room to stretch out, leaving us to sit bolt upright with our legs crossed tightly. We somehow managed to look both stricken with diarrhea and as if we had poles jammed up our arses at the same time. But the Laotians seemed happy enough, relaxing their tiny bodies in the burlap chairs and chatting easily among themselves. If I’d had enough room to comfortably exhale, I would have sighed in relief. Sure, I told myself, these people probably fly all the time. If they’re not concerned about the tatty state of the plane, why should I be?
“I’m definitely not scared now, El,” I whispered. “The Laotians look cool with this whole plane business, and they should know the score.”
El just grunted and I looked over at her. Her eyes were jammed shut and she was biting her lip to a new shade of white. “El, you should open your eyes. It’s fine, check out all the happy people.” She just shook her head and continued to gnaw her lip. “El, truly, just open your eyes. The first thing you see will be a bunch of chilled out people, same as on any normal flight. It’s a good omen, I swear.”
With her eyes still clamped, she stood up to stretch and then carefully lifted her lids, staring towards the front of the plane.
“Jesus!” she yelped, slapping her hands over her eyes and collapsing awkwardly back into her seat. “Thanks for the omen,” she barked. “Great portent.”
“What?”
“Just look up front then give me another Valium. Omen, my arse.”
I unbuckled myself and peered up at the front of the plane. Whoops.
Wedged between the cockpit and the front row of seats, an old man lay gasping on a hospital stretcher, with dozens of tubes stuck into every available bit of loose flesh. He looked like a dying fish. He looked like death.
“Oh shit,” I said, strapping myself tightly in. “O.K.,” I muttered, scavenging through my bag for the pills. “I retract every statement about omens. That guy is not an omen.”
“Just give me another pill,” she said woozily. I handed her one and she swallowed it dry. “Whoa, yeah,” she sighed. “Now that really is better.”
As El went back to devouring her lip in silence, I busied myself by plaiting my hair into Princess Leia hoops and looking out the window. I hoped I’d see something more auspicious than the dying old man, but all I could see was that same mangy dog pissing on everything.
“Lady and gentleman, please fasten seatbelt. We will take off soon.” I tightened my belt until it nearly cracked my pelvis and grabbed my knees, a mix of fear and strange exhilaration made a rapid departure with the starting of the engines, the violent trembling of the plane paving the way for total domination by fear.
If you’re one of those women who gets their jollies by sitting on an operating washing machine, then Lao Aviation has a treat in store for you. You want vibrate, they got it. Thanks to the roaring shudders of the old engines, we vibrated so wildly that I could feel my nostril hairs curling as my spine went numb. Sadly, so did everything else. I never was one for cheap thrills anyway.
“Hold on, El,” I shouted above the din of the engines. “Here we go!”
She looked at me through the narrow slits her eyes had become. I must have looked like a psychopath with my juddering head, bug eyes, and braids bouncing all over the place, but I suspected anything would look good to El after her last venture into the realm of the open-eyed. Besides, she was finally, blissfully, stoned. “Princess Leia! You look so cute I could punch you.” She said with a dopey smile, and promptly passed out.
Hanging on for dear life as we began convulsing down the tarmac, I felt about as cute as Chewbacca, and nearly as eloquent. Between low moanings, I unconsciously dished up a word salad of curses, blasphemies, and vague promises to a long-neglected God that would have thrilled anyone researching the phenomenon of speaking in tongues. At least Chewie always kept a firm grip on his vocab.
Then, somewhere between a particularly vulgar string of obscenities and a since-forgotten vow to lead a more chaste life, the plane took off. It panted and heaved like a huge asthmatic bird, but somehow, we actually became airborne. I peered through the grimy window and watched as Watay Airport began to shrink below us.
“El! El! Wake up! We’re in the sky!” I shoved her arm but it just fell limply on to her lap. If expired pharmaceuticals could knock out a panicking person sitting in the world’s most uncomfortable chair, I might have to rethink my policy on superannuated medication. After all, 1997 wasn’t that long ago.
But I decided to stay awake. It was a lucky thing I
did. Otherwise, I never would have seen the cabin fill up with smoke ten minutes out of Vientiane. Or felt the grating of the plane’s wheels as they came down mid-flight. Or watched the dying old man get beaned by falling hand luggage as we banged down in Luang Prabang. No, if I’d taken Valium that day, I wouldn’t ever have become the neurotic freak that I am today. And what a shame that would have been.
Tamara Sheward lives in Queensland, Australia. In addition to being a traveler and journalist, she has tried stints at being a toy spider salesman, Guinness packer, slum lord’s subordinate, Rugby World Cup streaker, and smut peddler. She is the author of Bad Karma: Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in South-East Asia, from which this was excerpted.
GINA BRIEFS-ELGIN
Cherub
Who was that dastardly criminal?
AFTER MY MOTHER’S MEMORIAL MASS, A YOUNG FRIEND confided that my mother had taught her an important life lesson: never serve cantaloupe on an orange-colored plate. I could just hear my mother: “Oh! Not that color, dear,” my mother would have told her, deftly switching the cantaloupe slices onto Mexican blue glass. “My first thought,” said my friend, “was who cares what color the plate is? But later I saw. Your mother taught me that beauty counts. She taught me that it matters how things look.”
It mattered to my mother how things looked one drizzly morning on the island of Capri after early Mass. My eighty-six-year-old father had died suddenly in Italy, and my mother, as a distraction from grief, had taken two of my cousins and me on a trip she had originally planned to take with him. My grief was still dormant. The four of us—three giddy girls and my widowed mother—boarded the ferry from the sleazy, criminal docks of Naples and got off on the magical island of Capri, where my mother would commit her own crime. Capri is famous for being one of the most beautiful islands in the world. Travel guidebooks tell me I should remember steep stone streets, whitewashed walls cascading with roses, crimson bougainvillea, yellow broom, and from every viewpoint, the luminous blue sea lying steeply below. An enchanted island! Instead I remember only three brief unenchanted scenes, each I fervently resented then, each my cousins and I love to remember now, thirty years later.
The Thong Also Rises Page 3