Laos: Getting There

I left a classroom full on noisy misbehaved children on Wednesday and walked out to the highway to catch a ride. It was noon and I was about to begin my long trek across the country.

I took a minibus from Mae Sot to Tak, somehow snagging the most coveted seat in the front and sleeping most of the hour and a half through the mountains.

Buses are greeted at every station by touts: mainly motorcycle taxi and tuk-tuk drivers and representatives from various bus companies. “Where are you going?” they scream in your face in Thai. I mention my destination and get escorted to a ticket counter where I buy a ticket.

I wander off to buy lunch and when I come back, get shown to a rickety old bus with no air con or fan. Meanwhile, another bus, newer and with air con, is leaving for my destination with plenty of extra seats. What just happened?

An hour and a half later, we finally roll out of the station, and none too fast, either.

My next stop is through Sukhothai to Phitsanouluk (pronounced: Piss-on-you-Lok). It’s about 2 hours. I sit in the back, next to an open door with my feet stretched out, enjoying the rush of wind through my hair. To the left of the bus, the sky was a deep purple and the wind through the window smelled like rain and the promise of lightening. The rice paddies stretching away to the right of the bus were blissfully bathed in sunlight with white clouds racing through blue sky towards the mountains.

I read segments of a book by Alice Walker, pausing every few pages to savor the story and enjoy the view. Nothing reminds you of the wonder of living in Thailand like speeding through it on a bus full of wind.

The rain hit and all the bus windows got closed, but the coolness had entered the bus, making travelling a pleasure. Until a drip developed over my head, that is. Luckily there were plenty of seats.

I have only been in Phitsanouluk twice, both times in transit, both times I arrived at 6pm, as the national anthem was playing and everyone stopped everything to stand at attention.

This time I looked around and saw two counters offering tickets to my next stop, Udon Thani. The 6pm bus hadn’t yet arrived and was running late, so I sat down with some snacks and felt glad I hadn’t gone with the first counter I saw, advertising a bus at 8pm.

But by 7pm the bus still hadn’t arrived. When it did, the driver needed to eat, so we didn’t roll out of the station until after 7:30pm. We drove fifteen minutes down the highway to a gas station to fill up.

At first no one got out of the bus, we were all eager to get on our way. But after 15 minutes a few people got out. After half an hour, I joined them to stretch my legs. After an hour, the driver finally announced what was going on. The gas station was out of gas, he said, and we had to wait for more gas to arrive… from Bangkok.

Pretty much everyone got out, including one old monk and two nuns in white. I circled the pumps endlessly while others circled the aisles of the 7-11. Finally we were off.

Four hours later we passed through Loei and at 3am rolled into Udon Thani. I couldn’t even use the washroom as everything at the bus station was closed and deserted. Never the less, the bus was still greeted by a crowd of touts: all motorcycle taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. I climbed into a tuk-tuk with three others and headed off into the night.

The tuk-tuk dropped me by the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. I sat in front of a fruit stand for about an hour looking hopefully at each bus that went by, hoping for one headed to Nong Khai.

I fell asleep on the bus to Nong Khai, which was only an hour long trip. When I woke, it was sunrise and I was on the border. I watched the sunrise through a rabid swarm of touts who chased after each arriving bus like maniacs.

I got dropped off at the actual border about ten minutes before it opened and spent the time in a nearby shop getting more visa pictures made. The crossing was easy, although slightly manic, the large portion of early morning crossers being fellow visa-fiends like me and eager to get across and get to the embassy.

The Friendship Bridge connecting Thailand to Laos across the Mekong River is about 2kms and so there is a mandatory bus to take travelers across. Therefor, no matter how quickly you get stamped out, you still have to wait for the bus to be full before continuing.

On the Laos side, applying for my visa on arrival (cheaper for Australians than for Canadians and very very expensive for Americans), the manic feeling only intensifies. I’m surprised no pushing or shoving has taken place.

That feeling of desperation seeps under my skin a little. After all, it is Thursday and if I don’t get my application in to the embassy that morning (the embassy accepts visa applications from 8:30am until noon or something like that), I will have to wait all weekend to pick it up on Monday, which will mean that I will spend a lot of money on hotels and food and be very late for class on Monday.

I grab a minibus for the trip from the border into Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I was told the visa was on the route into town, but the bus keeps going and going until I am at the bus station. I fling my money down somewhat angrily and go looking for alternative transportation.

My driver pulls up in front of the embassy and immediately a man tries to sell me a visa application form. I look past him at the crowd and that nervous desperate feeling is almost palpable.

At this point I have two choices, I can get in the back of the nebulous “line” and wait for hours with the crowd, or I can be pushy, like most people who are closer to the gates of the embassy than the road. Most of the time, I would just stand back and wait, even as I watch others push ahead.

But it wasn’t one of those days, and besides, I needed a visa application form from the desk. So I excused my way to the front and just as I was about to ask the guard for a form, the gates open and people madly spilled into the embassy compound. What could I do but spill with them?

I spilled my way almost to the front of the line where I still had plenty of time to grab a form and fill it it. That’s how, within moments of the embassy opening, I was paying my visa application fee and heading out into the all too hot Laotian morning.