Vientiane to Australia – Home Jeeves

The Mekong river at Vientiane.

Although only a couple of hundred kilometers apart, Vang Vieng and Vientiane couldn’t be more different. Well, I suppose they could really. If Vang Vieng was the term used to describe that feeling of melancholy and regret one feels after paying to watch a Bruce Willis film and Vientiane was, say, a variety of orange, then I guess they would be more different. But you get the point, they’re a bit different.

            As astute readers will infer from the above paragraph, three weeks riding a motorbike through the rain followed by three days partying in Vang Vieng had done strange and probably long-term things to my brain. Fortunately Vientiane is a likeably boring place, a good place to wind down. It’s not drink-Windex-and-pierce-your-own-nipple, Adelaide-boring or anything, just quiet and restrained, with a smattering of colonial-era French buildings, pretty parks and the muddy Mekong flowing past.

            After a lie-down and a little deep breathing, the first order of business was to offload the bike. I only had a couple of days in town and it had to go. I stayed at the same guesthouse as I had a year before when I had sold my previous bike after riding from Saigon, through the Mekong delta, into Cambodia and up through southern Laos. I bought that bike from the same street in Saigon that I had got this bike from and now I was selling it at the same guesthouse in Vientiane. Viewed on a map, these two trips would make an unbroken loop through Indo-china. The symmetry of it pleased the map-nerd in me no end.

Over 4000kms through three countries on two motorbikes.

            I festooned the bike with for sale signs, posted some more ads on the internet and spent the next couple of days sitting in restaurants with the bike parked conspicuously and waited for the phone to ring. One morning as I lingered over a coffee, I watched an old lady poo into a public rubbish bin. I was tempted – when in Rome and all that – but decided against it. I’m not in Kansas anymore, I thought.

            By the afternoon before my train left for Bangkok, the only offer I’d had for the bike was from a taxi driver who offered to swap it for a ride to the train station – haha. I drank a beer and wondered what to do. I was resigned to riding it to the train station and gifting it to someone when my luck turned. A couple of middle-aged American ladies looked interested. I wandered over and gave them my best pitch. After a brief but terrifying riding lesson I had my asking price of $300us. Those of you who’ve been paying attention will know that that is a $70 profit. Oh yeah.

Not fast, not pretty, but look where she got me.

            The following afternoon I jumped in the back of a little truck with a bunch of other backpackers, stamped out of Laos and boarded the party train bound for flooded Bangkok. It wasn’t advertised as the party train, but when you put enough lonely backpackers together and sell them beer, things kick off.

The train was one of the usual Thai specials with too-cold A/C and arm chairs that turn into bunks for the overnight trip. On the way the to the station I had been espousing the wonders of the Thai dining car to my fellow passengers and once I had chained my bag to the luggage rack I headed in that direction. Beer ordered, I watched the sluggish Mekong pass slowly under the Laos-Thailand Friendship bridge. Not far into northern Thailand the sun set and the backpackers emerged. Unlike the freezing sleeping carriage, the dining car was had open windows and was full of warm tropical air. I had a very decent Massaman curry, begged a cigarette and kept the Singha flowing. When we sped through a village the car filled with the smell of woodsmoke and cooking. Through the flooded paddies it smelled warmly of mud and stagnant water.

Soon eight backpackers had taken over and we set about emptying the ice box. It was like a budget murder on the Orient Express. Only without the murder. Or nice clothes. There was a Belgian, but he had no moustache and his sleuthing abilities were substandard (I hid his beer in a luggage rack but, disappointingly for both of us, he never found it). As well as Herclueless Poirot, there were four Frenchies, an Irishwoman who lived, like most Irish, in Sydney, an Englishman and a Yank. The great thing about meeting people like this is that you know you’ll never see them again. You have about seven hours to conduct an entire relationship. This makes people completely mad, which is fantastic.

ACME Insta-Friends - Just Add Beer.

Except for the Belgian, everyone there was a perfect stereotype. The American was fat, southern and enthusiastic. The Brit’s first name was Conningsby. The Irishwoman was incomprehensible but great craic. One of the Frenchies had just stolen something. Ok that last one’s a bit mean. But she had just been released from a Laotian prison. Apparently the Gallic quartet had come from Vang Vieng to Vientiane with a bagful of leftover weed which they’d smoked in the park. Soon after two of the girls found themselves admiring a clock on the wall of a busy Vientiane café. One of them nicked it. Unfortunately for her the café was owned by the son of a government official. Oops. After two days in jail and a 1000 euro fine she was told to leave the country and never come back.

“I don’t want to go back anyway. It’s a sheet ‘ole.” She told us diplomatically.

The night got louder and drunker as we trundled south through farms and villages. At midnight the attendant told us to stop being silly and go to bed.

Flooded fields north of Bangkok.

In the morning I watched the sun rise over flooded farms north of Bangkok as I nursed an instant coffee and a spongy brain. The extent of the flooding was amazing. For miles the raised train line was the only dry ground. The tops of rice paddy dikes stretched into the distance and islands of dying trees broke the surface. Some houses were on raised ground and surrounded by sandbags, others were window deep and abandoned. Closer to Bangkok the stagnant water had formed motes around apartment buildings and filled streets. People were expecting the water to rise for another week at least and there wasn’t a house without sandbags at the door or newly-built concrete wall.

At the station I shared a tuk-tuk to Koh San Rd where I met Alicia. We spent a day walking near the river watching the water stream out of the drains and over the city streets. There were hardly any tourists around. We boarded the sky-train to the airport under ominous skies and as the doors hissed shut the sky unleashed on the flooding city. It was a good time to go home.

A river-front bar in Bangkok. The water rose for another week after we were there.