Hanoi to Bangkok...and then some: Evan's Adventures in Southeast Asia: Cambodia to Laos - No looking back!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Cambodia to Laos - No looking back!

Anxious to maintain my now-pleasant memories of Cambodia, it was time to leave the country - quickly. That, of course, was asking a bit too much and I ended up stuck in the near-border town of Stung Tren for a very uninspiring day. Long story short, while I was happily SOLD a ticket to the Laos border and beyond, it became infinitely more troublesome for the transport company when they realized that I was the only one who had booked a trip that day. Embarrassed about the situation they had created, they refused to tell me the bad news until I finally dragged it out of a particularly smarmy slick-haired asshole (yes...asshole) after I had sat around for two hours waiting for my now imaginary ride to the border. Typically Asian - avoid the truth at all costs in order to maintain "face." There are many things I dislike about American culture, but our tendency towards straight talking and blunt honesty is not one of them. Ah well, another guy from the bus company stepped in and we qu

ickly came to an agreement - in exchange for a discounted room at their affiliated guesthouse, I'd spend the night in Stung Tren and hop on their fully booked bus to the border the following morning. That's all it would have taken (albeit two hours earlier) to rectify the situation. In the end, I soothed my anger by munching dragon fruit and watching back to back to back shows on the Discovery Channel and BBC (he threw in free cable tv). For the record, Stung Tren still sucks.

True to his word, first thing in the morning, I was loaded on an almost-full mini bus for the drive north to the (very) rural Cambodia-Laos border crossing. A wooden shack on the Cambodian side was separated by a 200 meter long stretch of no-man's land from another wooden shack on the Laos side. Occasionally, a random herd of goats would illegally immigrate from country to country, but that was about it. I had already arranged a Lao visa in Phnom Penh so, other than a bit of waiting and a one dollar bribe to each set of immigration officials, the transition was pretty straight forward. A short van ride and quick ferry trip later, I was on Don Det island, my home for the next couple of days. Welcome to Laos!

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SIGHT OF THE DAY

A lovely little roadside restaurant in central Laos had the following items on their very tattered menu: Food Frying With Fodder (choices included Food Frying With Chicken and Food Frying With Muntjak Deer (whatever that might be). There was Food To Hit (dishes such as Hiting Melon, Hiting Papaya, or just plain Hiting). You could also choose from Fish Sour Soup - Half Cooked, Fish - Half Cooked (semi-sushi?), Fried Meat Pork, Tom Yam Cuttle Soup, Fragrant Chicken (smells like chicken!), Fragrant Pork, Roasting Muntjak Deer (aha! it's deer), Roasting Wild Pork, Steming Potato, and last but not least, Mixed Cuttle Fish Salad. Mmmmmm.....I went with plain old Food Frying With Chicken
Roadside billboards around Cambodia imploring people to turn in their machine guns and hand grenades to the local authorities
Mole hair. Grown to incredible lengths and obviously groomed with care. I just don't get it.
Cambodian Independence Day falls on November 9th - still a few days away, but in the town square across from the internet cafe, hundreds of parade participants are out practicing their manuevers for the big day. There are they typical contigents of flag wavers, soldiers, and community groups carrying banners like you might find in any American city come the Fourth of July. In addition to regular marchers, there is also a column of probably 50 or 60 men wearing identical blue kevlar-laced outfits with minesweepers over their shoulders. They are being followed up by a dozen mine-sniffing German Shepards and their handlers. It says alot when your country recognizes the (on-going) work of its minesweepers on Independence Day.
Ok, this time it was me. When I left my room last night to head out for dinner, I intentionally left the windows open in an attempt to cool the place down. Unfortunately, I also left a light on which lured hundreds (thousands?) of little fruit fly bugs into my bedroom. When I got back the walls and my bed were crawling with them. Nothing to do but sweep them away and attempt to sleep - yeah, right. They instantly began to crawl all over my sweaty body - not biting, just bugging the hell out of me. In frustration I groped around in the dark for my bug repellant. In the half-light of the room I aimed the bottle and sprayed....directly into my right eye. It couldn't have been a better shot. I stumbled out of bed and spent the next 20 minutes under a running shower (as per the poison control directions) before returning to bed with the bugs.
As the rains continue to fall, all the foreigners in town inevitably buy up the local ponchos at inflated prices (mine was a steal when I bought it on a sunny afternoon in Hanoi!).The ponchos are all designed to be worn while riding a motorscooter - ie, you throw the front flap over the handlebars of your bike to keep your lap dry. In order to prevent the poncho from obscuring the bike's headlight, they all have a stitched in square of clear plastic that settles over the headlight. However, if you're not riding a scooter, the clear patch happens to fall right over the goods of the person wearing it.Picture dozens of tourists walking the rainy streets in their lollypop-colored ponchos...with their crotches properly protected and proudly exposed.
Vendors in Hoi An - particularly those promoting their tailor shops - have developed an efficient tactic for stalking their prey - me. Women (so far it's always been women) prowl the streets on motorbikes and pull along side of you, whether you're walking or riding your own bike, engage you in a little small talk and then make their pitch. It threw me for a bit of a loop the first time it happened at 30km per hour. They've all been nice enough and eventually throttle down when they realize that I'm REALLY not interested in a silk suit. Once they spot another potential target they zoom off in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
Lining a stretch of sidewalk near the Perfume River in Hue, several men assemble their outdoor pet shops early each morning. Wheeling impossibly huge fish tanks into position over broken concrete, hanging birdcages and their chirping occupants from nearby tree branches, and securely leashing a few small puppies and the occasional kitten to the nearby lightposts: Open for Business!
Among the hill tribes (montagnards) of Vietnam, many of the women sport a bee-hive hairdo that would put any Colorado City polygamist to shame. Vietnamese law requires that everyone riding on a motorbike must wear a helmet. Add the two together and you get a woman wearing a helmet that is fully 9 inches off her head. Hey, at least the doo is safe!
Most of the major (and sem-major) towns that I've been to have a large radio tower built on the highest chunk of land in the neighborhood - not unusual in itself, except that they're all replicas of the Eiffel Tower.
Riding a rickety Chinese-made bike in downtown Hanoi, deafened by blaring horns, choking on exhaust, surrounded by motorscooters, taxis, lorries, and buses, I suddenly pull into line behind another bicycle, the sight of which instantly calms me. I can't see the other rider because the load strapped to the back of his bike is several feet taller than he or she is. It's a lattice-type frame on which hangs dozens (maybe hundreds) of clear plastic bags filled with water and GOLDFISH of all sizes. So there we are at a stop light, chaos all around, and three feet in front of me are hundreds of beautiful goldfish just hanging out in their snow-globes, probably wondering what the hell was going on. It made my afternoon.
A line of matching bicycle rickshaws, stretching for over a city block, inching slowly through the downtown traffic mayhem of Hanoi, each carrying a sweaty, bloated, pale-skinned foreigner wearing identical white country-club outfits. Ahhh....just like the good ol' colonial days!