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By Rolf Potts

July 8, 1999 | Bus travel in Laos (to use a word popular when I was in junior high) sucks.

Had my transit from Luang Prabang to Paklay been 30 minutes long and featured loudspeakers blasting Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," it might have been bearable -- even entertaining. Unfortunately, my breakneck plunge into the nether boondocks of Sayaburi province lasted all day and featured a nonstop barrage of Lao pop music that sounded like a racquetball court full of drunken little girls incoherently scolding pet chinchillas to a synthesized backbeat. I suffered woefully.

When I first boarded the small bus (actually, an old Russian truck with wood-slat benches) -- a vehicle which under any rational code of comfort and sanity could fit 15 people -- I was amazed to discover that the Luang Prabang bus authority had sold tickets to 32 people. Since there were no other Westerners on board who could share my dismay, I took out my notebook and wrote the number down: 32. Chagrined, I circled it for emphasis.

One hour later, there were 45 people (and numerous chickens) crammed into the bus, and I could no longer move my arms to reach my notebook.

Laos (a country the size of Great Britain) has only 2,100 miles of tarred roads. None of these tarred roads, apparently, are located southwest of Luang Prabang. Nevertheless, our bus driver navigated the dusty highway with a hell-bent sense of speed lust that would have been impressive if it hadn't been so terrifying. I found myself flushed with relief when (because there is no bridge) we had to leave the trucks and load into boats to cross the Mekong. On the other side, all 45 of us (not counting chickens) crammed into a nearly identical truck with a nearly identical driver.

If the peanut fields and hardwood forests of Sayaburi province are as enchanted as the pleasure domes of Xanadu, I'd have no way of knowing: From mid-morning to dusk, my day went by in a fish-tailing rush of billowing dirt, screeching chickens and blurred scenery.

Once I'd arrived in Paklay and checked into a guesthouse, I immediately staggered down to the river. Although I'd roughly been following the Mekong valley all day on the buses, I wanted to sit still for a moment -- to center myself with the quiet beauty of the water itself. The riverside was full of sarong-wrapped bathers at sundown; I stripped down and joined their ranks. The hills of the far shore glowed with late-day brush fires.

Paklay is an old French garrison town that owes its existence to the river. Located on the southwestern-most bend on the Mekong above Vientiane, it served for years as the point where land caravans from Bangkok unloaded their goods into boats up- and downriver. It was little more than a frontier outpost for the French, and it still wasn't much when I visited. "If commerce were in any way active," Bassenne wrote in 1909, "this poor village would soon grow. But it is still in an embryo state." Considering that Route 13 from Luang Prabang to Vientiane via Vang Vieng is now completely paved (thus rendering the river route impractical), it's likely that Paklay will remain in an embryo state indefinitely.

As I was splashing around in the gentle shoreside currents of the Mekong that evening, a couple of young Lao guys jogged down into the water and practically dragged me out onto dry land. At first I thought I'd been doing something wrong, but they soon made it clear that they just wanted me to drink with them. A bottle of rice whiskey was procured, and we were toasting each other's health before I'd even dried off. Considering that we were so close to the pier, I optimistically assumed that the fellows were river pilots who'd like nothing better than to take me down the river the next day. As it turned out, they were truck drivers.

We drank hearty anyhow. Since they didn't know much English and I didn't know much Lao, we prefaced each toast by counting in each other's language.

"Three, four, five, six, seven!" the truck guys would yell.

"Sam, sii, ha, hok, jet!" I would reply, and another round of high-octane rice whiskey ("a liquor so strong as to destroy the taste" reported Garnier in 1866) would go down the hatch.

I report with pride that I was the last one to vomit that evening.

Next page | "Still interested in going down the Mekong with us?"