One More Day Everywhere

by Heggstad, Glen

  The more you reach out to Thais, the warmer their return embrace. Life is about sanuk — having fun — and enjoying the moment is ingrained in the national conscience. A stress-free pace of life and the wide availability of basic pleasures often seduces wanderers to linger. Everywhere sex is for sale. But eventually, the lure of the open road overrides my hedonistic lollygagging.

  The docile pace of Thailand is still the fast lane when compared to Laos, where life reverts to a passive shuffle backwards. Clearing Thai customs involved 20 minutes of stamping and joking followed by a short ferryboat ride across the Mae Khong River. On the other side, the lone Lao customs official had left for lunch. The old man left sweeping the floor advised me to return tomorrow for clearance. The immigration office was a few miles into town, down a non-descript alleyway. A talkative middle-aged woman dressed in frayed military fatigues issued a visa-on-arrival then forgot to stamp my passport.

  From the riverside town of Huay Xai, there’re two ways to reach the interior: via a chewed-up mountainous adobe track or on a slow, chugging riverboat. Experienced motorcyclists from Thailand had already warned me not to attempt the steep, rutted road after it rained — soggy, softened clay becomes like ice during storms. No matter his skill or equipment, every rider loses in mud. Even in dry weather, it takes eight hours to ride the 150-mile stretch. Anxious for either a waterway adventure or an up-on-the-pegs thrill ride, the steady all-night rain showers made the decision easy for me. Anyway, any trip to Asia is incomplete without a river cruise.

  Of the two government-contracted boats designated to haul tourists and supplies downstream, the first was full. The second, beached on the bank, had to sail anyway to pick up passengers at the other end. But being the only customer for the second boat, the skipper’s wife insisted I pay for the unoccupied seats. After an hour of haggling and bluffing, we settled on a triple ticket fee based on weight.

  When I was ready to roll aboard across a flexing wooden plank, three lounging dockworkers offered to help lift the Beast over a foot-high step-rail — for 12 dollars each. For the two-minute job, I countered with a day’s wages apiece. Sticking with their screw-the-foreigner attitude, they declined and walked away. But seeing my predicament, four muscular young European backpackers from the first boat lent a hand. Once the motorcycle was securely settled, we sailed downriver for Pak Beng, the nearest landing with a link to a passable road.

  After accumulating moisture further north, the churning, muddy Mae Khong flows down from the skyscraping Himalayas in a billion-gallon gush of whatever trickles off those massive granite shoulders. At the end of dry season, the water level is so low, expert captains and alert crews must carefully navigate the shallow sandbars. Alone we drift, propelled by a monotonous, moaning diesel, nudging us slightly faster than the current.

  The river ride is more like a two-day float to the final stop at Luang Prabang, but I’ll disembark after reaching the nearest strip of all-weather road. Six hours should be enough of sitting still and letting someone else steer. The hypnotic rocking and rolling with river swells past thatched roof villages offers an opportunity to relax. Jutting jungle peaks are concealed behind swirling morning mist enveloping the green towers above. With carefree laughter, small brown children splash naked in the shallows with little notice of the passing aliens. To feed their villages, scrawny, old, shirtless fishermen cast hand-strung nets from splintering wooden canoes, dragging in flopping catches of tiny silver fishes. Except for the variation in invading armies, little has changed for Laotians in the last thousand years.

  With Laos still in the grip of a communist dictatorship, we must stop every three hours for police checks. A scowling clipboard-wielding official breaks into a smile when I invite him to sit on my bike for a photo. Old war wounds and political dischord can still color the moment, but desperately needed tourist dollars offer welcome relief for a stifled economy.

  Downshifting into the bleakness of rural poverty means another rollercoaster ride concerning my nutrition and health. Tasty meals with protein are difficult to find even when you agree to pay more for extra chicken. My growling stomach is pacified with bags of flavorless cookies and stale potato chips chased by lukewarm bottled water. But as long as there are eggs in the morning, the day begins right. Further inland, I should find vendors peddling grilled river fish and fresh diced mango with sticky rice in coconut milk.

  Off-loading the bike in Pak Beng is a replay of the same hassle again. Ridiculous demands for money from natives before an international crew comes to the rescue, as six of us wrangle the Beast onto a rocky beach with a steep, soft sand climb to the road above. Disappointed locals stand idle as I spin my tires, sending up rooster tails of fine sand, while panting backpackers push from behind. At last, I’m on solid, level ground!

  Gliding on a ribbon of graying asphalt into the vibrant Lao countryside is a plunge into moto-ecstasy. As monsoon gloom turns into sheets of flooding rain, villagers invite me into their huts for a taste of rice whiskey and leafy aromatic greens I thought only cows would eat. Within minutes, inquisitive schoolchildren crowd inside carrying tattered English books, requesting proper pronunciations. Outside the crudely built shelter, darkened skies erupt with a crackling thunder deafening enough to shake the uneven brick walls and set the porch dogs howling. Content to find what I had been seeking, we settle onto bamboo mats for an evening of swapping languages and life lessons.

  Soldiers

  May 13, 2005

  Vang Vieng, Laos

  Monsoon season in the tropics means that whether it is raining or not, a suffocating humidity constantly soaks your skin. For a motorcyclist, the only thing to do is to keep moving. Spinning up and over jungle mountain passes, villages of bamboo huts and flooded rice paddies color the landscape. Roving broad-horned water buffalo and frantically waving, giggling black-haired children set the pace of the day. As I putter by, puzzled toothless elders can only gape in wonder.

  Jungle temperatures, sizzling hot climbing one side of the empty mountain summits, become smothering black fists of storm clouds on the other. Like the ticking hands of a wind-up clock, raindrops plunking on my helmet warn me seconds before torrential downpours send me fleeing for cover. With storms thundering in so quickly, there is seldom time for rain suits, but there is usually shelter somewhere nearby. In the midst of the pummeling liquid onslaught, people are temporarily stranded in whatever dry spot they can sprint to. In this afternoon’s downpour, a wooden shed under an overhanging corroded tin roof affords sufficient relief for the front end of the Beast and me if I stay plastered against the sides.

  Barefoot teenagers in ragged olive shorts indicate this is a military outpost, while a pudgy female commander wags her finger at my camera. No photos. Propped in the corner as if holding up the rough, sawn hardwood wall, the only symbol of authority is a rusted old carbine. Both weary and wary of foreigners, Lao people lack the giddy warmth of Thais. After suffering at the hands of various intruding foreigners, older natives recall only fear and domination.

  For a hundred years, from the colonizing French to the brutalizing Japanese, to the persistent French again, tribes of forlorn peasants watched bewildered as invaders re-carved their boundaries and mismanaged their future. In a final affront, American forces weeding out Vietnamese soldiers in Laos had pulverized the pristine countryside with the largest sustained aerial bombing campaign in history. During 580,000 sorties, two million tons of ordinance tumbled from the skies — one-third of it never detonating. Once rich, eastern farmland is now useless. Laotians are still waiting for someone to clean up the mess.

  Indifferent to political ideologies, patient country farmers struggle to feed desperate families. Seldom further than a drought-year from starvation, commerce to these people is trading sacks of rice for cooking oil. Today, under communist military rule, laborers stand and stare as the outside world zooms ahead. Yet, traces of a fledgling entrepreneurial Asian spirit seeps in. Along the
tourist trail, innovative villagers cautiously welcome hordes of marauding travelers trekking in the daylight and guzzling Lao beer by night. In backpacker ghettos of bamboo-hut bars and Internet cafés, Western college kids stumble drunkenly through the dark.

  Foreigners occupy Laos again, but this time they’re sightseers and businessmen whose affluence tempts the natives into gouging. Prices vary according to the seller’s mood and whatever they can get away with.

  Alone among the soldiers, my time waiting out the storm passes in awkward silence. Normally locals congregate, filled with questions; today, it’s just eyeing from a distance. The mission of this particular stranger is unimportant; they know only that he’s a foreigner heading for Vang Vieng. My uneasy moments with the soldiers ends, and before the squall subsides, we bid a meek farewell. As the Blue Beast growls to life, startled chickens scurry from the roadway, seemingly happy the alien is leaving. Passing the last curve out of town, in my rearview mirror the settlement returns to normal, with watchful residents likely wondering what the next invaders will bring.

  Vientiane

  May 16, 2005

  Vientiane, Laos

  With no industrial base and little traffic to speak of, travelers have the fresh open spaces of Laos to themselves. When I rode a bicycle through Vientiane in 1987, there was only one paved road; now, concrete suburbs and pop-up businesses fan inland from the edge of the Mae Khong River like the fingers of an expanding delta. By Asian standards, the capital is barely a village, with a population of 162,000 people.

  Beside the Soviet architecture, a variety of colorful, gold-fringed Buddhist temples and snow-white stupas blend with budget hotels and Internet cafés. Along with their recipes for baking bread, the French left behind a reasonable tradition in gourmet cooking — the restaurants are good as long as you don’t bring too big an appetite.

  Even a liberalized communist bureaucracy can’t stop limited free enterprise — evidence of prosperity is slowly beginning to appear across town. Not counting three-wheeled rickshaw taxis, rush-hour traffic means a dozen automobiles per block. In poorer countries, motorcycles are the equivalent of family cars, and sales here are booming. Mom and dad buzz out for an afternoon with children dozing on their laps while teenagers team up for cruising. With one hand on the throttle and the other clutching decorated parasols of pinks and yellows, petite Lao girls on step-through scooters cruise the tree-lined boulevards. Shaded from the penetrating tropical sun, dainty girlfriend passengers sit sidesaddle, with cell phones pressed against their ears.

  Yet it’s still a city of accelerating lifestyles. A simpler version of country culture awaits me further south. After a day of quick-scanning city temples, completing Internet business and doubling up on meals, there is not much else to do.

  It’s Saturday night in Vientiane, and as prowling travelers fill the crowded bars below, I spend the evening alone. In a colorful gleam reflected off the timeless Mae Khong River, the psychological sanctuary of Thailand beckons just a half mile away. Drifting through snapshots of mangled memories, from the riverside rooftop of the Orchid Guesthouse it’s possible to see everywhere I have been or ever hope to go.

  But even the euphoric solitude of paradise has its price. As a fluorescent silver moon slips among the monsoon clouds, from somewhere down an echoing brick-cased alley, Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias croon about lost romance. Long after lyrics from “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” fade into folded chairs and locking doors, I chug the last of my warm beer while lamenting the one girl I loved. And in the stillness of this melancholy haze, it becomes painfully apparent how far away home will always be.

  The Bolaven Plateau

  May 18, 2005

  Pakse, Laos

  A visa is required to travel from Laos to Cambodia, but local embassies are closed for a four-day weekend, and waiting is not an option. At Thai borders, visas are issued on arrival, so plan B means riding as far south as possible, to Pakse, before crossing back through Thailand to reach the bone-jarring route across Cambodia to the ancient temples at Angkor Wat.

  From Vientiane on, the road straightens into flat rural farmland beset with swarms of waterborne insects. Restaurant stops become bug-slapping massacres between gulps of spicy noodles. But it’s worth it because the next best thing to a lazy riverboat cruise is a lazy motorcycle ride next to one. Here, the graceful life along the water is unhurried. The slow, contagious flow of the Mae Khong sets the meandering pace of the nation. Laos is not so much a destination but is a quiet place you pass through on your way to somewhere else. With just one main highway running its length, moving from one end to the other is simple enough, unless you want an unfiltered peek into the lives of its people. Yet as monsoon storms continue to arrive, the minor roads must be reevaluated daily. Are the bridges washed out or have landslides blocked the way? The only way to be certain is to ride them.

  With three days left on my visa and hungry for a deeper view of Laos, I opt for a dirt track loop heading due east toward Viet Nam. As long as there’re no other foreigners, the countryside should be more interesting. Spiraling upwards into dark, swirling clouds, the Bolaven plateau rises a chilly 4,500 feet above the steamy Mae Khong lowlands. In this region of lush coffee and rubber plantations, indigenous hill tribes have had little exposure to tourists.

  Each village along the way offers unique markets with fruit and vegetable stands and scented arrays of specialty dishes ready to sizzle the palates of the bold. Breaks for sticky rice and sweet rambutans end in photo sessions with dazzled children anxious to see their images on my camera’s digital playback screen. Eventually, teenagers join and take turns studying my GPS and grilling me about motorcycle specs. Gloomy gray skies serve as regular reminders that it’s best to ride while it’s dry — rain alters riding surfaces and never for the better.

  The first half of my loop was paved as anticipated — after that, the locals call it the “Red Road.” That means clay, and riding over clay during monsoon is an exercise in slippery frustration. The question was, did the last week of rain erode the roads enough to render them impassable? I flag down an oncoming jeep whose driver confirmed that there were some swollen rivers to ford ahead, but the road was still open.

  Crossing rivers is dicey. You can study the rippling currents for shallow spots, but you’re never sure about slick rocks or dips underwater. After three hesitant hours, I crossed the first hundred-meter stream twice — advancing and retreating. Once on the other side, after a fatiguing half-mile test of gooey black clay and one over-the-handlebars face-plant, I took stock. Inching along foot-paddling through more of the same meant covering the next 60 miles would likely take days. This was confirmed when some Indian aid workers stopped to help lift the Blue Beast because my feet kept sliding out from underneath. Even parked on a gentle slope, their four-wheel drive truck slipped sideways. Wet clay is difficult to walk on, let alone ride over.

  Up to now, my wide-strap camera harness has worked well in avoiding neck pain and keeping my camera ready at chest level to capture those unpredictable shots. But today, plunging directly over the handlebars, a fixed position only served to guide my new Sony digital straight into the muck while sliding face-down. At least it wasn’t water. It was time I retreated.

  Skulking back along the Red Road left me only an hour of daylight to return to the main highway. A rustic jungle guesthouse at the mouth of Tadfane Gorge presented an inspiring scene of cliff-side waterfalls and vine-tangled forest. Buzzing in deafening cycles, jungle insects were like an orchestra of high-pitched power tools competing with each other, but their anticipated twilight attacks never materialized. Perched on a stunning overlook, the spiritual serenity of a glorious morning meditation could not subdue an urgent desire to visit Cambodia.

  Khmers

  May 20, 2005

  Siem Reap, Cambodia

  There is little that is certain about adventure travel in developing nations — especiall
y when factoring in political stability, changing weather and road conditions. With no pavement leading away from the borders of Thailand or Laos, those attempting to reach the Cambodian interior are subject to the whims of nature. Even if recently graded, a few days of monsoon can easily erode an otherwise tolerable dirt track and undermine its surfaces, washing out critical bridges.

  There was an even split regarding information about a little-known border crossing not appearing on maps or the GPS. When I phoned ahead for advice from a friend in Thailand, who was barely audible over the roar of water cascading down on the rusted tin ceiling of a tumbledown frontier café, Robert was adamant that if it was raining, it would be best to exit Cambodia and ride further south in Thailand and find a more widely used commercial route. But tomorrow is a new day. The storm subsided at midnight, leaving the Red Road to Siem Reap dry by morning.

  Winding through the jungle over deteriorated improvised bridges and rice paddy levies led me through impoverished Khmer villages and muddy unsowed fields. At my first meal stop, I understood why the locals never stray from the road to till their fields. Three of the five young men at the next table had artificial legs, presumably from stepping on one of hundreds of thousands of remaining land mines planted during 30 years of harried civil war. But everyone shares in sorrow.

  Even given their own misfortune, when a hobbling old beggar woman approaches, the legless men dig deep to share a few coins. As Cambodia slowly emerges from the aftermath of genocide and famine, the bodies of the people are scarred but not their hopes. A simple gaze into the tormented eyes of docile peasants reveals a forgiving sincerity and a bashful, heartfelt smile. Like Latin American campesinos, it’s always the kindest who suffer most.