It's on the Meter

by Paul Archer

  Fifteen minutes later Fred turned to us. 'They say it is not possible to fix this.'

  We were pretty stunned. 'What do you mean? Of course it is, the shock absorber just needs hammering straight.'

  'No, this is not possible,' Fred replied.

  'Yes it is, we just need a big hammer,' we said, looking around until we saw one suitable, 'look can we use this? Do you have a vice?'

  Fred spoke to them for another few minutes. 'No,' he said, 'there are no vices here. This whole street is tyre change only.'

  'But… this is a mechanic's, there must be a vice!'

  'No, they do not have such a thing.'

  Leigh and I walked along to the next workshop and immediately saw a chunky vice. We asked the mechanics if we could use it briefly, and two minutes of hammering later we had straightened the unfixable shock absorber. After the friendliness of the Indian people we had met, and their eagerness to help, the defeatist attitude on display here was something of a surprise.

  To be fair to Fred he was usually exceedingly patient with our unusual and sometimes demanding requests and, sure enough, three hours and much discussion later we also had a brand new bracket, hewn from a sheet of scrap metal, to hold the shock absorber in place.

  Our next stop was Chengdu, in Sichuan province. Fred was very excited by this prospect as he told us it was home to the most attractive girls in China.

  'They have big eyes, like whales, filled with water,' he said.

  Some of the most impressive feats of engineering we saw on our journey were the huge elevated skyways that sliced through steep winding valleys across China, cutting our journey times dramatically. Unfortunately, in southern Yunan we had arrived six months too early, and so a whole day was spent crawling up and down mountainous B-roads while staring longingly at the unfinished six-lane monsters towering high above us.

  Still, these slow routes allowed us more chances to meet local people, and we soon found the Chinese to be as welcoming as the Indians – if a little more pessimistic. We spent an enjoyable few hours being treated to lunch one day by a car full of young locals, who kept repeatedly calling Matt, 'Big Ham'.

  'Do you think they're calling me Big Ham because I'm sat at the head of the table?' he asked.

  'Dude,' Paul chuckled, 'they're calling you Beckham!'

  He wasn't too impressed.

  The final large city before leaving China was Kunming, home of a sprawling market that sold everything from live bugs, birds and animals to hand-made stone stamps. It even had an entire shop stocking surplus police gear including radios, weapons and fully kitted-out police scooters. We realised that we were now into our last few days in China and we had encountered surprisingly few problems on our extremely tight schedule of manic driving. However, we still had 48 hours left in the country before we could declare China trouble-free.

  'Stop!' yelled Fred. 'You must take me to hospital now!'

  It was lunchtime on our last day in China, and Fred had been pushed over the edge.

  Maybe Fred was used to overland expeditions with rich, middle-aged Westerners in roomy air-conditioned 4x4s and luxury hotels, because it had only taken 23 days with us for him to reach the end of his tether. Though we had explained about the shoestring nature of our trip before he signed up to be our guide, it seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other. He seemed to think we were deliberately torturing him with our small food portions and irregular stops, not realising that we were all sharing the same frugal conditions. On this day we had decided to have a late lunch to coincide with a telephone interview we were doing about the trip, but Fred seemed to think that the sole reason for the late lunch was to deny him food for a few hours more than normal.

  It was Leigh driving past a service station that provoked this outburst.

  'You must take me to hospital now!' he demanded again.

  'Hospital?' we asked, shocked. 'Why, what's wrong, are you OK?'

  'No, I am malnourish!'

  We spluttered in disbelief, 'Fred, we just told you we are stopping later because of the interview!'

  'No,' he shouted, 'stop now!'

  'I can't stop now,' blustered Leigh, 'we're on the motorway.'

  'Stop or I will tell police you kidnap me!'

  We were all relieved a few hours later when we reached the border, where we could say goodbye to our hysterical passenger and say hello once again to our freedom as Hannah crossed through the ostentatious display of wealth and power that was the Chinese border. A large shining arch with Chinese writing and the Chinese flag marked the spot where the road that represented communist superiority crossed into Laos… and turned into nothing more than a jungle track.

  CHAPTER 37

  VOLLEYBALL DIPLOMACY

  The feeling woke me up.

  It was the feeling of a million feather dusters tickling my entire body, coupled with the sensation that my skin had been flayed raw. A cursory glance in the mirror revealed that my entire chest was covered in a rash – a battalion of insects (or maybe one very hungry one) had feasted heartily on my skin all night long.

  I ran to find a shower, but soon I remembered that I was in a jungle shack a long way from running water. All I could find was a bucket of stale water to soothe my itchy, burning skin.

  I poured it on my head.

  Out of water and utterly unsatisfied, I tried to find something – anything – in the car that would fix me. The lads woke to a series of bizarre squawks, the sound a horse with Tourette's might make if it accidentally sat on a traffic cone. My frustration that no amount of scratching would sate the itch was escaping in uncontrollable blasts:

  'Eeerrrroooooo aaahhhhhhhnneeeeehoooo WHERE'S THE FUCKING ANTI-FUCKING-SHITTING-HISTAMINE!'

  Bang.

  I'd kicked the car, which was rather ineffective at stopping my chest from itching, but served as an excellent way to make my foot hurt.

  'Nneoooood-assoooooo-fucking itchy.'

  'In the med kit, mate.'

  'WHERE'S THE FUCKING BLOODY MED KIT AAAAHHHHNNNNGGGHHH.'

  'Here…'

  It was sat just in front of me.

  I ripped it apart and rubbed an entire tube of cream all over my body and chomped down five times the daily dose of antihistamine pills, made a few more noises, decided now would probably be a suitable time to clothe my near naked self after my bucket shower and sat down.

  Johno calmly looked over: 'Looks like you got some bites, mate.'

  We had been in Laos for less than 24 hours.

  Laos's official name is Laos PDR. Ostensibly that stands for People's Democratic Republic, but we had heard people say it should be Pretty Damn Relaxed. Needless to say we had been excited to experience a proper taste of the South East Asian vibe. Although we were well versed in border wild-goose chases, the sunny jungle backdrop made this one seem so much better than the drizzly murk of the Eastern Bloc.

  We had paid for and collected our visas and everything seemed to be going swimmingly, until we went back to the immigration window and found the office empty and closed. We quickly spotted the immigration officer, along with the rest of the border staff, fooling around on a tired volleyball pitch that had been cleared from the jungle undergrowth.

  'Time is now four o'clock: you pay overtime fee!' he informed us when we finally dragged him away from the game. He pointed to a hand-written notice hastily propped behind the window. When we refused to pay the fine, the officer brought down a barrier in front of Hannah and padlocked it so we couldn't get through. Though he was only asking for a few extra dollars, we weren't prepared to give in to this sort of lowlevel bribery.

  Taking matters into his own hands, Paul challenged the staff to a game of volleyball. Paul has a fantastic ability to push things just slightly further than the average person would be comfortable with – cringeworthy to watch at times, but it wasn't half great for getting things done.

  'Right!' he announced defiantly. 'Here's the deal: I'll play all of you together and if I win you'll release our c
ar!'

  The Laotians slowly gravitated to the other side of the tattered net while Paul held the ball at arm's length and sized up his serve. It was as the ball sailed straight into the net that I remembered that, like me, Paul has no sports skills whatsoever.

  The Laotians won hands down, but Paul wasn't about to give up so easily. Insisting on a rematch, Paul flailed out at the first ball to come his way, sending it over their heads and deep into the vegetation. The guard's smile flickered into a grimace as he rooted around the bushes for the ball, and when he finally found it and restarted the game, the same thing happened. It was almost as if Paul was trying to hit it as far out as possible.

  Eventually his strategy worked, and his skill, or lack thereof, broke the will of the guards who finally agreed to let us through in exchange for a quiet, bush-free life and a chance to enjoy a proper game.

  It was virtually dark by the time we got to the first town. With torrential rainstorms forecast we didn't fancy camping, fearing our single-skin tents were not up to the task. This was less a town than a crossroads with a few houses, and the four of us ordered random food by pointing at a menu and secured some beds in a guesthouse of sorts. It was nice to be away from Fred; there was a feeling of freedom akin to being home alone as a kid, of being allowed to do whatever you want away from your parents. We were back on the road again, the three of us and Matt, getting into scrapes and trouble, and everything was better. That was until we had to order from a menu of unidentifiable food and we realised how valuable having a translator had been.

  Still caked in anti-itch cream, I decided to drive for the morning to take my mind off the continual desire to roll across spiky gravel just to soothe my screaming bitten torso. The track into Laos from China gradually became what you could call a proper road, and was only built by the Chinese in exchange for Laotian timber. Although we no longer had to persevere with driving through mud, the latest problem was that the road wound through the mighty, mighty jungle.

  The Asian monsoon moves gradually east from the Indian Ocean. It hit Mumbai two days before we set off across India, moving at approximately the speed of a black taxi across the country. We had finally left it behind as we rose up into the high Himalayas, but it had caught us up in China. Reaching Laos just before we arrived, it was still doing its best to deposit the majority of the Indian Ocean over the jungle that clutches inexplicably to the sides of the Laotian hills. Bushes and trees grow out of almost vertical hillsides and create a beautiful and impressive, if a little intimidating, landscape – until the monsoon arrives. Their untenable position then becomes highly precarious as the soil becomes loose and the whole hillside slides away – often on top of, or with the whole road. Large earthmovers had been battling valiantly to either flatten or move the landslides, but they still left massive piles of mud to negotiate. Everything that wasn't a four-wheel drive was getting stuck and, even with seven months' experience of negotiating terrible roads, we found we would slide around next to steep drops before eventually finding solid ground and plodding onwards to do the same at the next slide a mile down the road.

  But we did finally get to use the winch. Its fitting caused untold headaches, weeks of delays and cost over £500 and God-knowswhat in fuel due to the extra weight, but it was finally put to good use when we rescued a small truck from one of the larger landslides. It had slid out and found itself positioned perpendicular to the road in two feet of sticky mud, blocking all traffic. Leigh and I wedged the taxi into a giant lump of mud, built stones around it so it wouldn't move and then clipped the winch to the truck's rear axle. We pulled it back into the tracks and it eventually caught traction, and made it across.

  Covered from head to toe with mud, and having lost our flipflops yet again, we were triumphant with our good use of the winch. Johno, in his self-appointed position as photographer, clambered in almost spotless from a tiny dry patch of the road.

  Just before we set off, I nipped into the bushes to have a wee. It felt a bit weird and when I looked down I discovered to my horror… It wasn't just my torso that the insect had feasted on.

  Some idiot was bearing down on the cab in some sort of ancient car. Right in the middle of the road, he just drove at us, honking his horn. Slowing and pulling to the side to let the imbecile pass, it gradually dawned on us that this wasn't just some old car – this was a 1928 Graham-Paige.

  We had bumped into Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang in the middle of the Laotian jungle. To add to this, out hopped the von Trapp family, a perfect line of tallest to smallest. Our amazement about coming across a Depression-era roadster in the jungle was equalled by their bemusement at coming across a black cab. We exchanged stories and took photos.

  They were an Argentinian family who had been driving that car for 12 years. Having driven across the entire Americas, they were making their way up from Australia. Their three children, born on the road, had never known a home. When the final child arrived, limited for space, they simply got a coachbuilder to extend the length of the car's cabin. We could have chatted all day long with these fascinating people, but they had to make the Chinese border to meet their guide and when we told them about the landslides they started to look concerned – compared to their wooden-wheeled car, our taxi looked like a positive off-road monster. The dad clutched us in a strong, sinewy handshake; his casual and relaxed manner and perma-smile gave the impression that this fellow was probably the happiest man in the world.

  Either that or he had been driven truly mad by living in a car for 12 years.

  We were just starting to settle into the day's driving when there was a sickening scraping noise and an obvious pull to the left. We coasted to a halt and set about our diagnosis. It was the brakes. Again.

  Jungle roads tend to either be unbelievably crap or surprisingly excellent to drive on. Full of potholes or smooth as a Radio Norwich DJ and we discovered that in Laos the best ones tended to occur in the middle of nowhere, away from the daily wear and tear of people and their various loads. The road we were stranded on was smoother than an ice rink.

  Two small parts had snapped in the front left brake and gone spinning off into the steaming undergrowth at some point in the morning. This meant that the brake pads had slowly wormed themselves out of position and were now wedged against the front brake disc. We took the wheel off and pondered the problem for a while before concluding that the only thing for it was to replace those lost parts. But where would we find two retaining pins and clips for a 1992 Fairway Driver in the middle of the Laotian jungle?

  'See what you can do here, and we'll go and see what's around the corner,' I told Leigh and Matt, as Paul and I set off down the road.

  After a mile or so we came to a village and at the far end, much to our relief, stood a grimy shack with an old car wreck next to it. It had to be the town mechanic. The mechanics looked surprised to see the two of us: a skinny white guy in denim cut off shorts and bright blue plastic sandals, and a tall topless man covered in a rash and carrying a large chunk of rusty metal. I approached the older-looking of the two and set about trying to explain with hand signals and pantomime what we needed.

  'No.'

  'No? You mean, what? You don't have them? Damn. Well, can you make them?'

  He shrugged, 'No.'

  'Um, well… can I,' I looked around the cluttered workshop for inspiration, 'can I make them?'

  He waved me off and turned away.

  The floor was covered with metal off-cuts and ancient tools. We eventually found an old discarded coffee can that looked about the right thickness and cut the parts by hand as best as we could. By the time I was finished, the mechanics were actively helping us, suggesting tools and even bringing us some tea in chipped and stained cups.

  When we trekked back out of the trees, Leigh was lying on his back under the car fiddling away. A small gang of kids sat on their haunches a safe distance away watching him silently.

  The part worked exactly as we had hoped and soon we were back on the road, stopping o
nly outside the mechanic's to wave a cheery thanks as they stood open-mouthed, cigarettes stuck to lips as a London cab passed them by and re-entered the jungle.

  CHAPTER 38

  IN THE TUBING

  Of the 25 days in China, we – four sweaty lads and a flatulent Chinese guide – had driven for 23 of them, often from dawn until past dusk. Although not actually falling out, by this stage we were pretty bored of each other's company so Matt insisted that we check out 'tubing' at Vang Vieng.

  'It's a tiny village with one street and a couple of guesthouses and restaurants – all of which play Friends on repeat on the TV. It's super chilled out; you can get a tuk tuk up the river, hire a tractor inner tube, and float down on its gentle stream, stopping at a few small bars on the side.'