It’s too early for this… I thought as I tried to fill out the visa documentation, making blunder after blunder, my answers quickly becoming indecipherable. We were rushed across the border in a minivan, then a bus, and then the back of a truck. We were forced to pay 40 US dollars as well as other random payments – the purpose of which was far from clear to us. Every bill was scrutinised. The whole thing stank of corruption.
Crossing the border would have felt like a triumph had we all made it through together, but of course we had lost half of ourselves. Caesar was still cripplingly sick, languishing from what can only be serious food poisoning in one of the gloomiest cities I’ve ever been to, and Caligula was back there looking after him – well, keeping him company anyway.
Tiberius and I trudged down a rocky bank, following a line of people who were boarding a long battered boat. Already the thing was horrendously overcrowded. By the time we got on there were no proper seats left and I had to sit in the engine room at the back.
The boat set sail across the lime-brown water. This was the beginning of a two-day journey to the city of Luang Prabang (or “Prang Shebang” as Caesar originally called it).
We sailed past sandy beach banks where cows flicked their tails in the sun, children did headstands and cartwheels and waved from the rocks. The roar and hum of the engine drowned out almost all other noise and filled the room with the heavy stench of exhaust. The room that I was stuck in for the next 6 hours.
The sun was setting when the boat pulled in. We crossed to land via a small plank and made our way up a steep slope. There were tuk tuks waiting to bring us to the hillside village of Pak Beng. A boy – who can’t have been much older than 13 – took our bags and hauled them onto the top of the tuk tuk as we clambered inside. He was the strongest looking kid I’d ever seen. He was then almost run-over when the engine of the vehicle cut out and the wheels slid, the tuk tuk rolling backwards towards the edge of the bank. The kid threw himself sideways before he was mown-down and the riverbank rushed towards us.
Luckily, the driver got a grip on things and I did not meet a watery fate in the Mekong River. Undaunted, the kid ran behind the vehicle, giving us a final push as we trundled up into the village of Pak Beng.
Pak Beng appeared to be nothing more than a single winding street high in the hills. The children of Pak Beng craftily crowded the ATMS, holding out their hands and demanding money – they weren’t asking or even begging; they were expecting.
It was a huge relief when I learned how to say thank you in Loatian because it’s worlds easier to remember than the Thai (Khob Khun Kap”) which I fucked up almost every-time during my two-week stay. A simple “Khob chai” does the trick over here.
‘Khop Thai,’ I said, as my first meal in this new country was set before me. The chicken noodle soup was milder than the ones I’d been having in Thailand. The noodles were much thinner and somehow, it tasted more “British” to me. It was probably all the black pepper they put in it.
I also got my first taste of Laotian beer, very aptly named BeerLao. Everyone kept saying that Changs were nicer, so I was pleasantly surprised when I finally began to swig the stuff. I thought it was just as good if not better. But more importantly than that, it cost only 15,000 Lao Kip – the equivalent of about 75p.
I sipped my soup, swigged my beer, and made conversation with a bunch of people Tiberius met on the boat. A hunky lad called Jay who told me about his outrageous vomiting in Pai and the gyms of Chiang Rai; his “Mrs” Megan who was good at taking charge when it came to the bill; a guy called Toby who unfortunately defecated himself on the boat, his girlfriend who gave us a rundown of the Thai islands, and an exuberant Scottish couple.
It feels good to have left Thailand. But the future is murkier than the Mekong river. One minute we’re hearing news that Caesar is getting better, the next minute we’re hearing news he’s worse than ever before. With our flights booked to Vietnam in just over a week, and having no idea when the group will reunite or even IF the group will reunite. Things have never felt more uncertain.
