Ky Son to Phonsavan – Bordering on the Sublime

Near the border on top of the world.

The ascent to the Vietnam-Laos border at Nam Can may be the most astonishingly remote, interesting and beautiful ride in South-East Asia. It was a shame then that the thought of being beaten and robbed by men dressed like Albanian generals was somewhat distracting me from the virgin rainforest and startling views. This fear stemmed from a conversations I’d had earlier in Ky Son. When I told the hotel owner I was headed for Laos, he had eyed my old bike dubiously. He checked my papers and when he saw that it was still registered to someone called Tam Loc Nguyen, he shook his head.

“Not you!” He exclaimed astutely. “No good. Police, they take moto, take money.” He pointed vaguely towards the border.

This wasn’t welcome news but I wasn’t going to ride back to Saigon.

Visions of soaring over the border fence Steve McQueen style evaporated as my hands froze in the frigid mist as the road wound up from Ky Son. I struggling to co-ordinate throttle and clutch as I changed down for greasy corners with sheer drop-offs into cloud, wobbling and over-revving like an L-plater. Luckily there was no one around. And I mean no one – for miles I didn’t see a house or another vehicle on the smooth tarmac.

The only village between Ky Son and Laos.

            My worries were temporarily forgotten when I climbed above the clouds and saw the view. Immediately below me lay a deep valley with a tiny ribbon of brown river an impossible distance below me. Above that I had a 200 degree panorama of mountains peaking out of the clouds. Mist accumulated in small valleys and gaps like snow drifts. Everywhere was deep wet jungle drained of colour by the grey sky. As I stood snapping photos, clouds parted and moved, exposing new peaks and obscuring others. A procession of trucks began trickling past. Most were fuel tankers but a couple were painted olive green and full of khaki-clad men. I guessed that the sudden appearance of vehicles meant that the border had opened.

            An hour later, I reached the concrete arch that housed Vietnamese immigration. We were surrounded by jungle and at least an hour from the nearest town, but it was well-staffed and clean. Nervously I parked next to a vehicle observation pit and said hello to an elaborately uniformed official. He ignored me and pointed inside while he had a perfunctory look over the bike. Inside my passport was grabbed by a disembodied hand darting out from under scratched Perspex. Within a minute it returned and I was waved away. I was almost out the door, forcing myself to walk slowly.

“Stop. Motorbike. You pay.” An older guy festooned with medals and insignia waved me over to a desk.

Shit, I’m going to have to bribe him, I thought. I had some US dollars in my pocket in various bills.

“60,000 dong. You pay.”

“How much?”

“60! Vietnam money. Dong”

Just under three dollars. I paid him and he gave me a stamped customs document.

I crawled through no man’s land in second gear. The Laos border post was empty except for a friendly young guy who took me through all the paperwork in about ten minutes. He taught me some Laotian phrases and shouted in Vietnamese at a couple of impatient truckers.

Goodbye Vietnam.

A hundred metres into Laos the road deteriorated into a rutted track and I was soon despairing of getting anywhere. A couple of miles on, as though playing a trick on the Vietnamese, it reverted back to smooth tarmac and I whizzed out of the clouds and into blue sky, dry roads and warm sunshine. I stopped for a pee and as I looked out over the forest I realized I had made it. I was in Laos on an empty highway in the sun. I did a little dance, hummed a few bars of what I imagined the Laotian national anthem might sound like and sped down the road.

After an hour of leaning hard through perfect bends brought me gently down a curving ridge and into a green valley between tiny villages and rice paddies, I reached the first town. Laos was clearly less populated and developed than Vietnam and the town was a couple of dozen houses, a market, a bank and a gas station. I was low on fuel, had no food or water and held no kip, Laos' currency. Being Sunday the bank was closed and the gas station wouldn’t except dollars. I rode on in a more economical fashion, aiming for the small city of Phonsavan. The weather grew warmer and the road even better and I marveled at how empty the road was. I only passed a handful of trucks and some tractors loaded with straw. By the time I found a $4 hotel room in Phonsavan it was mid-afternoon and I had done at least 250km without refueling. The motorcycling gods were smiling at me again.

The reason you should buy a motorbike right now.

Phonsavan is a flat, dusty industrial town on a high plain and as I went in search of a money changer a dry wind was blowing from the north bringing cold air from China. I exchanged $50 for a wad of dirty kip and set about spending it at a tourist bar near my hotel. I congratulated myself on making it this far with a good coffee, a giant hamburger and a couple of bottles of Beer Lao – what I believe after a couple of years of thorough research to be the best beer in South-East Asia.

This part of Laos is famous for two things – the ancient and mysterious plain of jars, which is just a bunch of old jugs in a field, and the fact that you can’t take two steps into the woods without exploding. That’s because during the Vietnam war American pilots were ordered to drop all excess ammunition on this geographically convenient and sparsely populated part of the world. A lot of it, of course, exploded and wiped innocent villages off the map. But a large proportion didn’t explode as designed and has been killing locals ever since. The two groups most at risk are farmers, who hit the unexploded bombs with their ploughs, and young boys for whom the ball bearings inside the palm sized ‘bombies’ make perfect ammunition for their slingshots.

All around Phonsavan, American military hardware has been turned into building materials. Hammered-flat shell casings become shelves and fences while hanging plants swing from machine gun stands. When I sat on my hotel’s balcony to watch the sunset over another beer, I looked over to see a rusty machine gun with a stack of huge bomb casings stacked behind it – a reminder of stunningly beautiful, fantastically friendly, dirt poor little Laos’ tragic and undeserved history.

Rusting military hardware is everywhere in Phonsavan.