Day 37, Summer in Asia, going to Laos
The hotel breakfast was chicken and rice soup made by the number 2 cook of the restaurant. The father of the owner of the hotel had spent a year in New Zealand and was the only one with any English. He said they only started getting English speaking people this year since they decided to start listing on Booking.com. But even so, they rarely get tourists here. That’s not likely to change soon. There really isn’t anything much to do, see, eat. No draw to this town.
Hotel man was very interested in me being a “half-blood.” Don’t think I’ve ever been called that before. The part that’s being counted is the Asian part. He explained how most half-bloods are from the American soldiers or Vietnamese soldiers who occupied this area. My impression from his was that there’s a stigma attached to being a half-blood. He said most people would assume I’m a daughter of an American soldier and Thai woman and ended up in the States and married an American. I told the girls they’re a bunch of quarter-bloods. They thought it sounded like a new breed of vampires. That makes Paul a zero-blood. Not sure how he’s even getting by.
Today we are taking the bus to Laos. There are a number of little transfers, especially getting into the country itself. Hopefully, there won’t be any interesting twist at the border. We need a Visa on Arrival.
At the bus station there was a special Monk coral, seating area surrounded by an orange fence. Paul’s buddy wasn’t in there, so no Ask a Monk will be happening today.
The bus ride which was supposed to take 5 and a half hours took 7 and a half. For the first few hours everyone was sitting on the one side of the bus, everyone. the bus was leaning to the left. A bit unsettling until the magic stop when others came and balanced out the bus.
The bus driver was accompanied by his wife for the trip, who jumped out to get food every couple of hours. She would feed her husband fish balls, and clean the wipers. This was one of the stops where she hopped out to grab some food for the driver.
When we finally arrived at Udonthani, I went to get my black bag out from under the bus and I didn’t recognize it because it was brown with dirt. When all the bags were out and none were left the woman zipped my bag open to show me it was mine and we both laughed our heads off.
From that bus station, we caught a van that takes you to the border for 80 baht (under $3). We got stamped out of Thailand and then had to take another shuttle bus to the Laos immigration station. We learned later that many people cross into Thailand to buy groceries. That made sense as many of the people on this bus had bags of them.
We bought our voa (Visa on Arrival) and took a van to our hotel. The man had no idea where our hotel was located, and didn’t understand the gps map or the address. Our hotel was the Central Boutique Hotel and his plan was just to drive around the center looking for it. Seems reasonable. Except that our hotel was located slightly off center. We eventually found it by Paul pointing right or left at certain streets, using Google maps. We later learned that directions here are done according to the smaller villages within the city. If you don’t know the village and only the address, you won’t get there (the hotel told us this halfway through our stay with them).
While we were lost and driving around the city, the van driver was playing music videos of Boney M from the 70’s; Rasputin, Rivers of Babylon, Bahama Mama, I Wanna Go Home, in a 4 song loop from hell. We actually found the exact videos he played on Youtube. They are “Boney M – Rivers Of Babylon/Rasputin y Bahama Mama [Grabado en Rusia en 2013 Disco 70’s]” and “Boney M – Gotta Go Home (Long Version, 1979)” If you’d like to get a taste of our experience, play those two videos in a loop on a TV in your car and drive around your city for an hour or so. After the third repetition, it felt like a sophisticated type of music torture.
We were so ecstatic when we finally reached our hotel. The front desk people were helpful and showed us to our rooms. No animals were harmed or imprisoned in the following elephant encounter. Something to have a clear conscience about.
Before collapsing into some very typically hard Asian beds, we went out for dinner. We had a Thai meal with live music and some very attentive waiters, who refilled our water every few sips. The live music, was actually very enjoyable, and I hope it was culturally appropriate to tip them because we did.