T&A

The bus back to Luang Nam Tha turned out to be similar to a Thailand songthaew which was quickly packed full of people and bags of rice or grain. Along the way and older western man brought out a bag of candy. A local woman sitting on the floor of our ride quickly snatched it out of his hands and took it upon herself to spread the wealth. Little did the man know, she fully intended to distribute all of the candy. She gave a few rounds of candy to her friends sitting around her, and then some to everyone sitting towards the front of the truck. Tara and I each received a generous three pieces. Then she scooped about 3 full handfuls for herself, and the poor man was left with about five pieces, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He probably had a few more bags of candy with him.

We arrived in Luang Nam Tha about two hours later and found a guest house for the night. This gave us a chance to do some laundry. There are plenty of trekking opportunities in Luang Nam Tha as well as kayaking and bicycling, but during the two days we stayed there, it was extremely hot. We made an attempt to walk to a hill top pagoda, but ended up lost and had to turn back. We spent the rest of the time reading and drinking fruit shakes or beer. The last morning in Nam Tha, Tara ordered a banana pancake which turned out to be a small cake cooked in a pan with bananas. It was thick and delicious! We then took a local taxi to a long distance bus station which was 10 km out of town.

Signs at our guest house said that the bus times to the next city, Oudomxai, left at: 8:30, 9:30, 11:00, 12:00, 13:00. We arrived at 7:45 and bought our tickets for the first bus. It was a full two hours later that we realized two vertical lines written on our paper that might mean the bus doesn’t leave until 11. We ended up leaving at 12:20 when the bus was full. The bus this time was a proper bus, but looked like it had gone through a tough 25 years in China before being donated to Laos. It was in rough shape with everything falling apart. Three hours later we arrived in the empty town of Oudomxai. Although our guidebook deemed this town under-rated, we decided to skip it and checked into a guest house across from the bus station.

The next morning we woke up early to try to catch the first bus possible since none seemed to follow any sort of schedule. We bought our tickets for a bus to Muang Khoua. Since we had been some of the last to buy our tickets, all the seats where taken and we had to sit on small plastic lawn chairs in the aisle. We had to brace ourselves on every twist and turn to keep from sliding or toppling over. During the ride we ate breakfast purchased from a vendor in the bus station. We each had two freshly baked, small baguettes and a fried piece of dough that tasted more like bread than a dough nut. Another popular option was sticky rice cooked with coconut and packaged in a thin piece of bamboo. Three hours and one security checkpoint later we arrived in Muang Khoua.

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The only thing interesting about Mengla was the brothel across from our hotel. In fact, our hotel may have once been a brothel because in our bathroom was a tile with a picture of a nude woman, which was spray painted over at one point, but someone had curiously scratched the paint away. We caught the first mini-bus out of Mengla the following morning, and Adam sat next to two monks in the backseat. One of the monks had the newest Canon camera and was taking hundreds of pictures out the window as our bus drove towards the border.

Our driver stopped along the way to deliver several packages, a theme common in Asia (especially China and Vietnam). We forgot to mention in our post about the rice terraces in Vietnam that the minivan we took to get to Sapa was fairly empty. We started off and arrived 10 minutes later at a brewery. Every last bit of breathing room was filled with kegs of beer and some sort of bagged snack food. Of course, the goods were delivered before we arrived in Sapa which added on quite a bit of travel time with no discount in price. The road we took towards the border with Laos winded along hills and was bumpy despite being paved in most sections. We jumped onto a nice highway for a good 20 minutes, but then suddenly jumped back off onto another dirt road. Again, 20 minutes later we took a dirt ramp back onto the highway, enjoyed the luxury, and then jumped off again. It quickly became obvious that makeshift, dirt ramps had been constructed by the locals allowing us to use sections of the highway while avoiding the tolls!

We arrived at the Chinese Immigration building and were immediately swamped by money changers. One woman actually gave us a really good rate compared to what we had researched on the internet, but she then proceeded to use every trick possible to try to screw us into a bad deal. The money changer women first handed us stacks of 2000, and 5000 bills (some of the lowest denominations). To their astonishment, we proceeded to count all the bills, and check for damaged ones. More than a handful of bills from each stack were torn down the middle and taped back together. The women were very reluctant to trade them for good ones. The older women were angry, but we did catch a younger money changer laughing to herself. Since we were asking for upwards of 3 million Kip, it didn’t make sense to collect stacks of 1, 2, and 5 thousand denominations. When we asked for the larger denominations, the older women were angry. They wanted to unload all of their crappy, small bills on us. Luckily, the younger money changer handed us a few piles of larger bills. It seemed as though all of the women worked together. When we were still owed 250 000 Kip, they tried one final trick in giving us only 25 000, which is a fairly large difference. Once that was quickly sorted out, we walked away happy, and probably with more than a few fake bills. Luckily, we are in Laos, and these will probably be accepted everywhere anyway. The ladies were not impressed to see that we weren’t going to accept their rushed trade. More than a few times, they tried to quickly hand us all of the stacks of money and walk away.

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We arrived at the mountain town of Zhongdian, also known as Shangrila, to find that it was cold and raining. Government officials declared the town and county Shangrila after britissh writer Jame Hilton’s novel The Lost Horizon to increase tourism. The funny thing is that it has actually worked. We were hoping to find a town that not many people visit, but found everything from Chinese tour buses to backpackers. The old portion of town resembled that of Dali or Lijiang, and the massive influx of government support was evident in the rapid construction of new buildings everywhere. We spent a while walking in the rain to find a cheap enough hostel or guesthouse. Unlike everywhere else in China, the hostels and guesthouses where were not willing to bargain. We walked out of the old town area, away from the inflated prices, and finally found a hotel. At this point it was fairly cold with a temperature which had to be near 5 degrees celcius. Unfortunately, no buildings in the town seemed to use central heating; not even our hotel room!

We awoke the next morning to snow, and we certainly were not prepared for it. Tara wore 3 shirts, a sweater, two pairs of socks, and her rain jacket. Looks like we didn’t miss our winter after all. We went to a cafe for brunch and to wait for better weather. The cafe was not heated, but had a iron stove in the middle. The stove had a circular tube which held cylindrical, pressed chunks of charcoal, each about the size of a mini-soccer ball and with holes throughout to help it burn. Placed on top of the circular tube was a thin, flat stovetop which conducted heat. Unfotunately, the stove did not radiate much heat. Instead, the waitress placed a bucket of hot coals next to our table. The snow eventually turned to rain, but the weather did not warm up by the time we had finished our lunch and hot chocolates. We were forced to see the town despite the rain.

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