[Rather than detailing a spectacular view or an unforgettable activity, this is an attempt to share my experience of transiting between two places while traveling in Laos. It's certainly not as glamorous as bountiful descriptions of well known touristy hotspots but it deserves a place somewhere as it occupies a lot of your travel time and more often than not gives you a better toehold on local life.]
The mountains have vanished and the landscape outside is a constant drone of level land. Hot and sunny weather intensifies the humdrum of journey. I am traveling from Thakkaek to Pakse, a distance of two hundred kms which will be covered in eight painstaking hours. Three days ago I had arrived in Vientiane - arguably the dullest country capital in the world, to apply for Chinese visa in the embassy there. In the morning I had decided to move to a cleaner and better hostel; in the next two hours I was sitting in a bus bound to Thakkaek. An hour was enough to check out the flight prices, sketch a new itinerary to visit China and Taiwan, and get out of Vientiane as soon as possible.
Thakkaek: Skimming the web about this place gives you an idea how unremarkable the place is. It's upshot is lack of cheap and clean places to stay, but the situation turned out to be grimmer than expected. With a few other tourists, I went to this particular guesthouse a little out of the town. Shaking our heads disappointedly we left the place to find something better in the town, only to come back after a couple of hours, tired and battered. The receptionist pointed at us and laughed hard before he let us in.
The town is situated on the bank of river Mekong, and riverside is a beautiful place to spend evenings and nights. While we were having dinner on the riverside, the city on the other side of the river looked brighter, busier and well constructed. We later realized it's Thailand (Nakhon Phanom to be precise, formerly a part of Lao). For a long stretch Mekong acts as a border between Thailand and Laos. As I expected, intrusion into Thailand from Laos is very common. A local guy sitting at the reception recounted some interesting incidents of the frequent incursion. People carrying cheaply obtained weed wade across the river and slip into Thailand where it's sold at a higher price. Intruders are occasionally caught and sent back to Laos after getting a nasty beating on their patootie and paying a bribe. If they are caught with narcotics, they're (unsurprisingly) jailed. Dissembling as a Thai, the guy himself had worked illegally in Thailand for six months.
Thakkaek acts as a base for the Motorcycle loop and Kong Lor cave. Like Vietnam, traveling from A to B in Laos is expensive and tedious. So I quelled my desire to visit the magnificent cave and decided to go cross over to Thailand the next morning.
The next morning: I am in a bus bound to Pakse, a big city (by Laotian standard) which acts as a base for exploring Bolaven plateau. Shelving my plan to leave Laos, I decided early morning to cross the border from Pakse after visiting much praised Bolaven plateau. Southern Laos is less craggy than Northern Laos and while a few places might possess staggering beauty, traveling across cities doesn't offer sweeping views of landscapes. So here I am, witnessing a prosaic countryside sitting in a bus driven by a person who is not intent on arriving at the destination at all. He doesn't hesitate to stop at every other bend or shop, and the bus trundles down the road most unwillingly.
Laos is a small country but with ill-equipped and limited transportation, journeys consume a lot of your time. And in my experience, you meet more people during traveling than you meet staying in a hostel. A vast majority of travelers are European/American students who have graduated. It doesn't happen very often but I feel a quick connection when I meet someone who also quit his/her job to take a break from work. And even less frequent is when you meet someone with whom you can have a conversation that goes deeper than just sharing itineraries and exchanging extended introductions. And it's a delightful detour from the generalized idea of backpacking when it happens.
Pakse: I get off the tuktuk in Pakse and the first thing I spot is an Indian food restaurant. I have come to believe there exists no place on earth that is touted as a tourist hotspot and doesn't serve Indian food. Traffic lights and coffee shops are signs of a well developed place. Mountains can be seen struggling for existence far away in the backdrop. There's hardly anything to do in the city itself but it has a certain positive vibe and is a good relief from monotony of Vientiane and unremarkable character of Thakkaek. I have found a good room at a reasonable price.
It's finally begun to rain after a hot and ridiculously humid day. I am going to give a premature ending to this post to enjoy the weather outside. The loamy odor from the first few droplets wetting the ground is too inviting to resist.
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