‘When was the last time in your life, that you did something for the first time in your life?’
The punch line from a commercial that caught my eye always left me thinking that my answer would be, ‘A long time ago’.
With that in mind, I told my friend Mieko that my life was getting boring and asked if she would join me in doing something ‘exciting’.
“Something exciting? Like what?”
I explained that I wanted to get deliberately lost, to go somewhere without knowing where I was going. In Vientiane, one option to do something like that was to take a public bus where it would not be necessary to tell the driver or conductor one’s destination as fares were fixed irrespective of distance travelled. Mieko laughed as she had once taken a bus to Ban Pako, a resort in a quiet village outside Vientiane and she always wanted to travel in a public bus again. Not knowing the destination seemed like a fun idea.
So, one Sunday morning she picked me up and we drove to the Lao Plaza Hotel, where she parked her car and then we walked back the central bus station in Talat Sao.
There were a number of buses waiting to leave and we walked to one furthest away from everybody. It was rather dilapidated and we approached it from the side so that we wouldn’t be tempted to read its destination and boarded. We chose the least rickety seats and settled in. Some passengers got in after us and slowly the bus began to fill. After about thirty minutes, it set off with about a dozen passengers on board.
We drove through central Vientiane, past the Lao Plaza Hotel and headed towards Wattay Airport. After a while, we passed the airport and turned into Sikkay district, heading up the road to Luang Prabang. Slowly the haphazard sprawl of shop houses, beer shops and open air markets gave way to isolated bungalows, small vacant plots and paddy fields. The bus turned off the macadamised road and drove over an area of very red earth, past some low hills. Two or three excavators were churning up the land. It was a hot day and with the windows open or broken, dust swirled through the vehicle.
As the bus wheezed and swayed over the dirt roads, passengers boarded or alighted. Unlike in the city, everybody chatted to each other sometimes shouting out greetings to people at the other end of the bus. We had left the bus station about two hours earlier and in a small city like Vientiane that was a lot of travel time. The terminus couldn’t be far off we thought, yet the number of passengers didn’t decrease. In fact, they seemed to be increasing. We joked that maybe we had caught the bus to Luang Prabang, more than 300 km away.
Soon it was past noon and we were hungry. We did pass the occasional roadside shack displaying grilled chicken and other animal entrails covered with dust. As always, the ubiquitous yellow and green Beerlao hoardings guaranteed that we would never die of thirst.
The driver kept looking at us in the rear-view mirror. Passengers came and went and he must have noticed that the two foreigners sitting in the middle were the only persons left from the start of the journey. When he next stopped to let some people off, he turned around in his seat and asked, “pai sai?” (Where are you going?).
I rummaged in my pocket for the piece of paper where I had scribbled the Lao word for ‘terminus’ but before I could read it, Mieko answered, “baw hu.” (don’t know).
The driver stared back at us and some passengers turned around to look. It was obvious he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. Some of the passengers tittered. I was sure they were thinking: ‘Crazy foreigners get on this bus without knowing where they want to go’.
He rattled off some more in Lao and then seeing that we didn’t understand, asked us in very passable English where we wanted to go. When we replied that we didn’t know and it didn’t matter, he repeated that to the passengers. Now everybody looked at us. There was open laughter.
“Baw pen nyang,” (don’t worry) he said to us with a smile on his face. ‘This is last stop. Now bus go back to Vientiane. I take you to Talat Sao.’
He was even more confused when we got up and headed for the exit, explaining that we didn’t want to go back, that we were going to get off. We were starving and had spotted a restaurant about fifty metres back. Some of the other passengers gesticulated at us to sit down but we pointed to the restaurant and made signs that we wanted to eat. The driver then told us that there would be a bus every hour and that the last bus would come at 5.30 pm.
We got off and walked back to the restaurant. We entered the gate and saw a large open space with about a dozen crudely-made thatched bamboo salas set a distance from each other. In the centre of each was a low bamboo table with a couple of cushions strewn around. Some distance away from the salas was a long single storey brick building with a number of bolted doors.
Mieko headed off to the toilet and I examined the different salas to see which was the cleanest. I had barely sat down in one when I was surrounded by about four or five heavily made up young women. ‘Beerlao’, I said and they smiled. I gestured for a menu and one of them went off to bring one. There were big smiles on all their faces and I thought them the friendliest waitresses in the world.
Mieko returned and the women looked at her sourly and walked away. We waited for about twenty minutes but neither the beer nor the menu arrived. I went in the direction of the hut I had seen the women go into and saw them watching a Thai serial. Again I asked for beer and pointed to the stack of menus on a dusty table.
The place was dirty but we were ravenous. We thought it safer to order grilled chicken – standard fare in most Lao eating places – but all they had was boiled chicken, jeo (a kind of dip) and sticky rice. They didn’t even seem interested in attending to us. Of course, the Beerlao was plentiful. About an hour later, the chicken arrived and though it was insipid at least it was freshly made. We left the rice untouched.
Much later a Toyota Land Cruiser drove in and a couple of very drunk men got off. The women who had abandoned us earlier, swarmed around them. One man put his arm around a girl’s waist and staggered towards one of the locked rooms. The others, talking at the top of their voices headed to another sala.
It was obvious the kind of a place we had come to.
The last bus didn’t come till about an hour past its scheduled time. Dusk was beginning to settle and I wondered how we were going to call for help when we didn’t even know where we were. Finally, the bus did arrive. We were starving but laughed off our experience. After all, we had wanted something ‘exciting’. It was only when we were returning by a completely different way that we realised that the bus was on a circular route and that was why in the afternoon we hadn’t reached a terminus.
We never did find out where we had spent that Sunday, nor did we try.
COMMENTS
Juhi Rohatgi Williams
Very well written Percy!! Love the story. This story is so you! I know you love exciting adventures. Reading this blog led me to think of several others.
Anne-Marie Rouleau
Your stories were a real pleasure to read. They have the relaxing pace of the “bo pen yang” lifestyle which I enjoyed very much. I think you need to be careful which bus you get onto next time……. Keep writing, sounds like you have been having some really fun adventures. I like the way your experiences cover both happy and more tragic moments, a snapshot of everyday life which is always unique.
Hubert Barennes
Hi Percy, I remember when you told me your escapade with Mieko!
Nice story indeed! Keep going. A pleasure to read you. You are very talented. Warm regards.
Dodo Phunyathiboud
This is great story. Now I know why you always tell me to travel. It will give me lot of experience and one day I will do like you.
Bee
This is a good story one. It gives us an experience and a lesson too. I think that I would like to go somewhere very very far away but now I should think again. 😅
Deng
It is a good story and worth the read. This teaches me to explore new experiences in life, and not worry too much about consequences, just focus on the present like the two people in the article. The fun was in the journey, not in the destination. In the end both of them had fun and enjoyed their trip
Anong
I wanted to laugh after reading your story! Thank you for sharing your travel experiences.
© Percy Aaron
Wow Laos 