Monthly Archives: November 2023

Back when I was looking for an affordable flight to Asia I tried for the first time the travel services offered by our credit card company. After searching via Google Flights, Skyscanner, Kayak, and all the other sites, Capital One Travel came up with the most economical and easiest journey via Hainan Airlines, a company I hadn’t heard of and that none of the other portals included in their search results. Not only was it considerably cheaper than the others, but it came with a guarantee to refund the difference if the cost went down after booking. Sure enough, a week later the price went down and I was credited $100.

Based on that good experience, and facing hotel rates in Luang Prabang higher than our budget normally allows, I applied the $100 credit to a six-day stay at a historic hotel in a deluxe room with a balcony overlooking the street where we could watch the sunrise procession of monks for the daily alms-giving.

When we arrived in Luang Prabang our slowboat company drove us to our hotel and it was as beautiful as we hoped, nestled on a shady street in the quiet historic district. We will be living within a UNESCO World Heritage site and we were thrilled.

Not so fast, said the travel gods. The hotel did not have our booking. I showed the manager my confirmation. He shook his head. “I never heard of that site,” he said, indicating Capital One Travel. He showed me the reservation list. No Schulz in evidence.

We were tired and hungry, sweaty from climbing up to the Buddha Cave. We wanted a shower, a nap, and dinner. We wanted to unpack.

The manager suggested I call Capital One. I didn’t have a local SIM card so he logged me onto the hotel wifi and I called via Skype. The woman who answered was sympathetic, said she’d call the hotel, then put me on hold. I waited. The hotel phone didn’t ring.

When Capital One Lady came back she assured me that the hotel had our booking; she had spoken to the manager Sara herself. “Go to the hotel,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

“I’m at the hotel right now,” I told her. “I’m sitting next to the manager and his name’s not Sara. What hotel are you talking to?”

“Can you let me talk to the manager?” she asked. I passed the phone over. I watched as he listened to Capital One Lady. Then he said, “Da.” There was a long pause.

“Da,” he said again. Another pause, then “Mister Da. That’s my name.”

With the introductions settled the two got down to business. I only heard our side of the conversation but it went something like this: Yes, that is the correct address. No, that’s not the phone number and hasn’t been for ten years.

The phone was passed back to me.

“Please hold.”

We spent the next hour and a half alternately waiting on hold and passing the phone back and forth. I kept asking Capital One Lady what hotel had our booking because at this point we’re happy to just go there and call it a day. She wouldn’t say. But Mr. Da told me “Sara” is not a Lao name so he can’t imagine that any hotel in Laos would have a manager by that name.

I practiced deep yoga breathing while I was on hold. Jack was slumped in a chair outside with our luggage. It was hot. Da got bottles of cold water for Jack and me and managed the noisy fan, turning it on when we were on hold, then off when Capital One Lady came back online. Otherwise you couldn’t hear anything.

While we waited on hold Da told me that anyway he didn’t have six nights of a deluxe room available because they were fully booked for the coming long weekend with a group of VIP envoys from many different countries attending a regional conference on economic development.

Eventually, Capital One Lady admitted defeat. “It’s our mistake,” she said, stating the obvious, and we all wished she’d come to that conclusion an hour ago. She never said what hotel we had been mistakenly booked into or what country it might have been in, but she offered either a complete refund or a handover to a supervisor who could “solve our problem.” Oh good grief. Just give me the money, I thought. I reminded her that I had used my $100 credit as partial payment and I wanted that back too. She agreed and she even added an additional credit which will come in handy in the future but doesn’t help us right now.

All parties handled the situation with grace and humor but we were left at square one with no room. It was now past 8:30. Da could give us three nights in the hoped for deluxe room with a balcony but then we’d have to move to a small room in a different building in the back for two more nights. Our planned sixth? Well, he’d help us find a room somewhere else. The town was booked to the gills.

Fine, we said. At this point we’d have accepted a futon in the alley. In sympathy he gave us a break on the deluxe room price.

By the time we got checked in it was late and we were weak with hunger. Da pointed us in a few directions for food but as we walked the neighboring streets we learned that the UNESCO part of town shuts down early and we had trouble finding anyone still serving at 9 pm. Eventually we came across a little bistro where we ordered small bites because our need for sleep was overpowering our hunger.

Back at the hotel all was forgiven as we settled in to our lovely spacious room and I set an alarm for 5:45am so I could watch the monks from the balcony in my pyjamas. This was the whole point of booking this particular room.

Not so fast.

I awoke before the alarm to find the travel gods were not finished toying with us. First of all, the view from our lovely balcony was obscured by shrubbery so that my planned morning sitting in my pj’s on the balcony with coffee watching the procession of monks was a bust.

Ok, no worries. I’ll just need to get dressed tomorrow morning and go out to the street to watch the alms-giving.

Before returning to bed I went to the bathroom and when I sat on the toilet the seat broke off and nearly launched me across the room.

Have I done something to deserve this karma? Or are we just on the Practical Joke Tour of Laos? I remind myself of our guiding mantra, “Every day is a journey” and expect the day will improve from here. But for now I’m going back to sleep.

It was one of those rude awakenings. You know the kind, with alarms buzzing and you’re sure that someone has made a terrible mistake. Let’s see, it’s still dark and foggy outside but somewhere in the back of my groggy mind a faint memory surfaces and I realize that we are really meant to be up now and showering.

I’d had the foresight to line up the hotel shuttle to schlep us up the incredibly steep path to breakfast on top of the mountain.

Having just finished repacking we heard the beep beep of the shuttle. I threw the duffel in the back and marveled again at the steepness of the path as we chugged up the mountain almost all the way to breakfast. We walked this way last night for dinner. That’s when I decided the shuttle would be better.

A couple of our slow boat shipmates were already eating and we started to see a few more stagger in. With military like precision the slowboat van showed up on time and breakfast was over.

Today will be our longest and reportedly the most interesting run on the Mekong, necessitating an early start. Crew used the 20 foot long bamboo poles to push us back off of shore.

We relaxed into the zenlike flow that only a river can provide.

Soon we were gliding through the exotic Laos scenery.

The fog burned off revealing craggy mountains and unusual rock formations that disturbed the swiftly flowing river current.

Our guide mentioned that if you see a person squatting beside the river, they aren’t fishing, they are panning for gold!

I started noticing many straw hatted people apparently doing just that. Huge construction projects at turns in the river are common and often created pinch points due to their encroachment out into the river.

Turns out they’re Chinese projects and they’re not making reclaimed spoil land but they’re using large machinery to sluice for gold. I suspect that Laotians don’t get much of that revenue.

For our part, we were thoroughly entertained just watching this gentle landscape slide past, but then again, we’ve spent weeks at sea watching the beautiful ocean waves roll by our Escape Velocity.

As we got to know our fellow passengers we realized not everyone finds boat travel as scintillating as we do. One pair, a mother and daughter on a year-long travel odyssey before a planned move to Ghana, brought art supplies and games along to while away the hours. They were often joined by a young English couple who work remotely, he as a writer of children’s books, and she as a remote teacher of English as a Foreign Language. Another couple lived in Berlin for many years and now in New Jersey, so we had lots in common with them. Our group was rounded out by a Norwegian-Thai family with two sweet little kids. Marce and I enjoyed talking to everyone but more than anything we were focused on the river and the journey.

I began to notice strange boxy, man made concrete structures mounted on top of rocks in the river.

They look like small stairs, maybe for times with high water.

Growing up in Pittsburgh with three rivers heavy with barge traffic, I like to think an old river rat like me could figure this out. Then it dawned on me. They are water depth gauges, and when you see all the rocky obstructions it’s no wonder. Water vortexes, overfalls, and standing waves are our constant companions on either side, as we motor past. During part of the year they can’t even run the boats due to the lack of water.

We stopped at another village necessitating another scramble up a steep slope but Marce and I were quite comfortable where we were, soaking up the river scene, thank you very much.

Back underway we came across a brand new high level bridge across the Mekong that abruptly ends against the face of a mountain. There is no tunnel yet. It’s part of a controversial hydroelectric plant under construction that will dam the Mekong about 25 kilometers upstream from our final destination, Luang Prabang. The project is a joint effort between Lao PDR, Vietnam, and Thailand. Our guide suggested that most of the power will go to Thailand.

For now it’s possible to navigate around the enormous structure but no one seems to know what will become of the river when the dam is complete. We’re glad we’re doing this trip now. Who knows if it’ll be possible in the future.

It was about this time that the first of several dead pigs floated past the boat. As any of you old time Escapees know, when a dead pig floats past the boat, it’s a sure sign that it’s time to leave.

Well actually the bloated pig was stuck circling in a whirl pool, but to us the meaning can not be denied. It’s odd because pigs are supposedly strong swimmers but with current this strong apparently they get caught out.

With images of whirled pig before our eyes we nosed into a pier with dozens of other slow boats to climb up to the Pak Ou “Buddha”caves.

For 20,000 KIP extra ($1) we even climbed all the way up to the cave at the top of the mountain and to be honest, after lazing around the slowboat for two days this had us seriously sucking air.

So it was back to the bamboo poles and a prodigious amount of reverse to get the slowboat to back up against the Mekong’s stiff current. Another hour and we were jostling for space at a small pier which led to the most outrageously steep and high set of concrete stairs.

We couldn’t believe they actually intended for us to schlep ourselves and our luggage up this monster. Turns out no, just our own cabooses. This is one of the many advantages of paying extra for the VIP slowboat; the boat crew hauled our luggage up the steps.

Feeling a little faint at the top, we were hustled into a van, bounced our way into town and disgorged at our beautiful hotel in old town Luang Prabang.

Wayside Guesthouse is our home away from home, although technically we really don’t have a home anywhere else. But after a month doing medical maintenance we have a choice: pay $55 each to extend our visas for another month or go on a visa run to another country. Our trip here to Southeast Asia is itself a visa run from our six-month limit in the UK, so we’ve decided on a visa run from our visa run. Destination: neighboring Laos.

It’ll be the Green Bus to the border for us. Our host Jackie, known to us as Mom, suggested she’d better call her friend to take us to the bus station rather than relying on a tuk-tuk at rush hour. Mom knows best. We made it with a comfortable margin and schlepping our faithful rolling duffel, found bus bay number 20 to Chiang Khong.

Thailand’s roads are legendary so we have girded our loins in preparation for a rough day. Loins are one thing but there’s something seriously wrong with my seatback which insists on pushing my torso into a forward facing vice.

It’s raining before we even get out of town but our bus attendant lady has already passed out a box full of tiny complimentary water bottles and I’m sure she’s accumulated a body full of bruises fetching up against the bus’s seats. I’m spending most of my time searching for a lever or anything to at least get my seat back to vertical.

Parts of the road are fairly recently patched but what I find intolerable is Thailand’s penchant for adding speed bumps to the potholes for which they are already so richly endowed. We lurch from village to village, temple to temple, this Buddha to that Buddha, each covered with gold even though they’re surrounded by people living in little more than lean-tos, but then that’s Thailand. I reach down under my seat feeling for someway, really anyway to recline my seat back, without joy.

Now we are creeping up the beautiful mountains at a screaming snail’s pace only to hurtle down the other side. The Green Bus has a beeping speed warning to let the happy passengers know that the driver is now speeding.

In the meantime, great news: it’s time for the distribution of the complimentary snack which features the only word in English — banana — on the paper wrapper and may include some form of spongecake rolled into a tube. I missed out because I was looking under my seat for the elusive lever to recline my seat. Still no joy.

Now we’re grinding our way up more mountains. I have serious reservations about the health of this poor Green Bus. It’s still beep beeping down the other side though. People periodically begin to depart the bus while the driver opens the door to dart into various businesses dropping off parcels or picking up other parcels. Bear in mind this Green Bus is marked as an express.

In time we found ourselves alone in the Green Bus with just the driver and the bus lady for company. I’m looking at the empty seats to see what could possibly operate the goddamn seatback. We jostled through a dusty country village only to swing around in a lumbering 180 degree turn, abruptly stopping in a cloud of dust, and with that the driver turned and looked at us. My best guess is that we’re not going any further on the Green Bus.

The good news is that after seven plus hours of searching and being pummeled by the Green Bus, I finally found the tiny black plastic knob that marginally reclines the seatback.

We stood up stiffly, claimed the only bag remaining under the bus, and hired a tuk-tuk to take us the rest of the way to Day Waterfront Hotel.

After being sprayed with dust and dirt for a half an hour our driver ended this madness by braking to a merciful stop at the precipice of an ungodly steep hill.

With the muddy Mekong River spread out below us, he mumbled “It’s down there.” I assumed he meant our hotel, so I yanked our loyal rolling duffel out of the tuk-tuk and with baby steps we carefully negotiated the ski jump of a hill.

Finally in our room we divided our time between filling out visa forms and marveling at the sight of the mighty Mekong River valley.

It’s not home but it’ll have to do until morning.