We met our Lao guides and a couple from Belgium, we’ll call them Albert and Rosemary, that would form our little adventure group. After our brief intro and the realization that there were no crash hats (this is what Matt calls helmets and I think it’s something that should be adopted into everyday language) and life jackets were optional. After about twenty minutes of paddling in fairly quick moving water, the river basically came to a dead standstill. Literally: parts of the wide, muddy river were actually moving upstream. At this point we asked the guides, who admitted that they were more than slightly hung over, when we would get to the rapids and cliff jumping. They looked confused at first, and then laughed. We quickly found out that kayaking on that part of the river happens only in the rainy season, south of the dam. We had the pleasure of paddling for four hours on a river that didn’t move until we got to the dam. Now don’t get me wrong: once we came to grips with the fact that we had been sorely misled, we actually had a great time. The scenery was gorgeous, and we got to stop for bar-b-que lunch at a family’s small rice and papaya farm. The worst part was that Albert was a complete jackass and kept going on and on about how glorious the simple, poor life is that the people of Lao live, while thoroughly enjoying his experiences there with his first world money. The other terrible part was that after about an hour I could barely lift my arms, and Justin definitely did most of the paddling!
To add insult to injury (or maybe I should say just to keep the joke on us), when we finished kayaking we were delivered to one of the pick up trucks with bench seats and a roof bound for Vientiane. I can’t decide whether the best part about this was that there was at least two hours of the drive left, or the fact that the truck already had ten locals and a dying duck in a plastic bag, or that there was all of our luggage and a motorbike on the roof. Oh and I almost forgot: the drive took three hours and we stopped at least twenty times. And the maximum head count is as follows: 15 Laotians, 2 Americans, 2 Belgians (I’m not sure what people from Belgium are called?), 1 Englishman, 1 dying duck, 8 massive bags of rice, 1 motorbike, 5 big backpacks, and 5 small backpacks. In a small pickup truck. Don’t ask how, it’s a feat that should never be recreated! Surprisingly, the first two thirds of this journey (before our bums were all numb and we were starving) were actually very entertaining. A local in the truck spoke exceptionally good English and we had a lot of fun talking with him, but I’m not sure he enjoyed talking to Albert and having his “third worldness” rubbed in his face.
All in all, the day was nothing what we expected but it really was a great experience that we would probably do again. There were definitely times when we needed to just sit and breathe and accept that it was going to be a very long day, but it was a lot of fun. When we finally arrived in Vientiane, we were dirty, smelly, tired, and hungry, and it was all we could do to find a room before we collapsed in a heap on the bed. And then quickly got up when we realized that our clean selves would be sleeping there later.
We met Matt for dinner and decided to treat ourselves to a nice French meal, seeing that it was our last night in French influenced Laos and we had had a very trying day. The three of us walked into the first air con restaurant we’ve seen in weeks and I have to admit that we were more than slightly under dressed and a little delirious. But dinner was wonderful, and by some miracle we all made it back to the guest house before sleeping very soundly!
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