Our friend, dTan is from Laos, and works at the little coffee shop in the cafe area of the BSC. If you've ever eaten at the BSC, you've probably seen her smiling, laughing or sitting down at the tables during lags to talk with people. She is so sweet, and is also the only believer in her hometown.
She invited Claire and I to spend some of our Christmas holiday in her village (Yes, I do mean "village"). She left before Christmas and we followed her a few days later. It was our first "big trip" without a Thai guide, and needless to say, I was a bit nervous. dTan had given me some general directions: take an overnight bus, and then take a songtaew, then a van... I think. I could only follow about 75% of her directions. And in all fairness to her, Claire and I really didn't know what to ask, either. Everything happened so quickly, one minute we were at Immigration buying a re-entry stamp, the next minute we were making trips back and forth to the Mo Chit bus station to get our tickets (Yes, trips. It took us three tries... We were such newbies).
We boarded the overnight bus to Ubon, the only farangs, and left promptly at 8:30pm. This really was the last point during the trip when time really mattered. After this, time became a blur... and in true Thai/Laos fashion, irrelevant also.
Claire and I dosed up on our sleeping pills (I'm not going to become an addict, don't worry Mom) for our 8+ hour ride. I'm so thankful for one of my new friends here in BKK, Joanna, who warned me that the overnight buses stop periodically throughout the night for mandatory "get off the bus and stretch" breaks and "noodle stops". Without her heads up, Claire and I would have been completely at a loss when we were awoken from our drugged slumber every two hours with shouting and bright lights. Because we were the only foreigners, no one bothered to explain anything in English... so we never really knew what was happening. Halfway through the night, true to Joanna's words, we stopped for noodles. Buses full of people, dumping out in this little pavilion where stands were set up serving noodles and sausage balls. We tore off the stub of our ticket in exchange for a bowl of noodles and proceeded to stumble to a table to slurp down our noodles before being herded back into our bus. That's not actually true. There was no one herding. And no one head counting. Which, to my American thinking, was quite disconcerting. But Claire and I always made it back to the bus, and eventually we arrived at Ubon.
I wish I had taken a video of what it was like to get off the bus at Ubon. It was still dark and there were at least a dozen men, some in ski masks, crowded around the entrance of the bus. My sleeping pill had not yet fully worn off and as I exited the bus, trying to collect my thoughts, I was assaulted by "Hi, where you go??" "Tuk tuk ma'am?" "Where you going?" "I take you, only *** baht." Frantic, and overwhelmed, I looked around for Claire, clutching my purse and backpack tightly. I didn't see her. Walking away from the bus, some of the men followed me, repeating their questions. I could barely retrieve enough Thai from my foggy brain to respond to their barrage of questions. Finally, after realizing I would not be scammed by their over-priced transportation offers, I located Claire and we started to walk around to figure out our next step.
I knew we needed to get to Chong Mek, but wasn't sure how exactly we would get there. A nice Thai man directed us towards some vans which were 100 baht to our destination. I vaguely remembered dTan mentioning a 100 baht van, so we happily climbed in, ready to get to Laos. The van ride was not particularly comfortable, but it was (thankfully!) uneventful. The only delays were passport checkpoints by the police on the roads and letting passengers off.
At Chong Mek, we were again greeted with a barrage of transportation scammers, but still being in Thailand, we were able to keep our heads about us and avoid them. Chong Mek was where we expected to get our Laos tourist visa and cross the border. However, the place we were dropped was just a normal bus station, and no one spoke enough English to help us. They just kept telling us to walk down the road or get on a motorcycle. With all of our bags, we didn't want to brave a motorcycle, and there was no way we were walking. After checking my meager directions from dTan, I decided that we were at the "take a songtaew" part of our journey, as we'd already taken a bus and a van. This was the final mode of transportation until we were reunited with her (or so I thought).
We found a songtaew that took us to the border for 20 baht, went through Thai customs, crossed the border (through an underground cement tunnel), and proceeded to buy our visa stamp in Laos. (Which, should have been $35 USD, but as we had only baht, it cost us 1,500 baht, equiv. $50 USD). We also didn't have extra passport pictures, but they let us off the hook for an additional $1 USD. Sigh. Hello Laos. That should have been warning enough about how Laos people view farangs... as walking money bags.
We looked around for dTan... she told us she knew where we'd be dropped off and would be there waiting for us at the Laos Duang Market. I try to engage some people to find out the name of the nearby market was. Of course, though, we're in Laos, so they speak Laos... not English or Thai. Without going into detail about all the looks and head shakes I got, there we were. In Laos. No dTan, no phones, nothing.
At this point, I'm starting to panic. Which may be why I let the first Laos man to approach us help us... as he spoke a little Thai and brought a woman over who let us use her phone. We called dTan's house number and her dad answered. He spoke a little Thai. From our conversation, I could only understand "Pakse, dTan... Pakse." So, going on a limb, I decided we needed to find a way to Pakse. The woman who let me use her phone offered to get us a taxi. I should have been suspicious about the whole operation, but being a little lost and a lot concerned, I was just happy to have someone take care of things. We boarded the taxi and she informed us that it would cost 1,000 baht. For comparison, the most I've ever paid for a taxi in Bangkok is 200 baht... and things in Laos are much cheaper than Bangkok. Immediately, I realized we'd been totally scammed. Unfortunately, at this point, we felt a little out of options. So, after talking her down to 700 baht, we departed for Pakse.
Once arriving in Pakse, we called dTan's dad again and had him talk to the taxi driver in Laos. The driver dropped us off at a bus stop and informed us that our friend would be there soon. Then he left. We had no other options, so we set our bags down and waited, hoping that dTan was indeed on her way and that she had not given up on us coming and gone back home. Thankfully, though, she arrived in no time, and after apologizing for our tardiness and re-capping the journey, including our expensive taxi ride, and learning that there were 100 baht vans that made the same trip every 30 minutes (whoops) she took us via tuk-tuk to her cousin's home nearby to rest before heading to her village.
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| [A: Mo Chit, B: Ubon, C: Chong Mek, D: Pakse] |
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