For reproduction rights see copyright notice
We didn't have long to wait for a speedboat to Luang Phabang, but we hadn't got very far down the river when its engine conked out. The driver ran it up onto a small beach, pulled the petrol filter off blew through it to try and clear out any blockage that might be there. Then he started the engine up, revved it a bit and, apparently satisfied, started off again. But it wasn't any different and it coughed and spluttered and died as soon as he tried to get up any speed.
He got us alongside some rocks in what was a fairly turbulent part of the river and told us all to get out. There was a small beach right there too and i don't know why he didn't park it on the beach, but he didn't. A larger ferry came up the river and he waved to it to get it to come and pick us up. But they just ignored him and after it went past, the waves caused by its wash pulled the boat off the rocks, with only the driver on board, and it began to drift downstream. Of course, like so many motorboat users all round the world nowadays, he didn't have a paddle, so the only thing he could do was to try and get the engine going again. He managed this and then, for some weird reason, decided to speed off down the river. He got a few hundred metres away and then the engine died again and we were left standing on the beach watching the boat and all our luggage drift out of sight around a bend in the river.
There was nothing to do but laugh and sit on the sand and enjoy the beautiful view of the rapidly flowing river, the rocks all along its edge and the tree-covered banks rising up to the sky behind the rocks. It was a pleasant enough place to be marooned, but a beer stall would have been a welcome addition to the scenery!
After what seemed like quite a while, we heard the whine of a boat engine in the distance, downriver, out of sight. Was this our boat? we wondered, or another one, which anyway would hopefully have helped us out of our predicament somehow. Soon the boat came into sight round the rocks and as it got closer we could see it was our one and it seemed to be back in good order and running well now. We all got in and started the journey again.
The trip back down the river was much more uncomfortable than the upriver one had been three days before. We were sitting in the front seat, which had the dubious advantage of a better view. But it had the disadvantage of being narrower, as the boat, of course, came to a point at the front. It also had the disadvantage of there being no-one in front of us to act as a wind break. This meant we got the full blast of the wind, which was colder than the other day anyway. Two hours sitting in a space the size of a matchbox, being buffetted and frozen half to death by the violent wind made the earlier ute trip seem like a ride in a luxury taxi!
For some reason, most of us had put our shoes in the front of the boat with the luggage. As it hadn't been secured very well and the luggage moved, leaving them open to the blasting wind, all but four, which i'd managed to save as we went along, blew over the side, one by one as we sped down the river. The driver either didn't notice or ignored it. The four remaining shoes were all odd ones and not a single pair out of about five pairs remained. Mine were the black rubber sandals i bought in Pochutla in June and i was somehow quite attached to them. They'd both gone over the side and i wasn't feeling too happy about this. But when the Laos found they'd lost their shoes they all just laughed. Fucking nutters! But as they were laughing, and the price of a pair of new sandals was a lot more to them than it was to me, i didn't really have much choice but to laugh too. It's a much better outlook on life than ours really. There's absolutely no point being pissed off about something that you can't do anything about anyway.
*-*-*
Luang Phabang was an interesting and charming little town. I didn't explore much the first time we were there, or for the first few days of the second visit. But after that, i started to wander around a bit and check the place out and the more i saw of it, the more i liked it. In fact, i began to feel that out of all the places i'd been to so far on this journey, this was the one i felt most comfortable and relaxed in.
I don't think i could go quite as far as saying this was the place i liked the most, as liking a place is complex and doesn't necessarily relate to how comfortable you feel there - or even whether you'd like to live there or not. And if i'd still been looking for somewhere else to live and it was a practical possibility for me to live in Laos, out of all the places i'd spent time in in the last year i think Luang Phabang would have been the one i'd have chosen.
However, right at that moment, i was just looking forward to getting back to Australia and staying there for a long time, and the last thing on my mind was leaving it again and living somewhere else. But... who knows? Anything could happen! I don't really know what i'm going back to. The future is entirely formless at the moment. I don't even know where i'm going to live - assuming, of course, i can manage to stop moving for long enough to actually "live" anywhere, which seems unlikely. So... we'll see, i guess it's not impossible that i'll end up back in Luang Phabang before long. Or *i*'ll see, anyway. You won't - not in this book, at least. It's going to finish soon after i get back to Australia - i hope!
Luang Phabang town lies on the south bank of the Mekong, just west of where the Nam Khan river flows into it. The Nam Khan was a lot smaller than the Mekong, but still a reasonably big river - at least where it meets the Mekong, anyway.
When you walk upriver, along the street that runs beside the Mekong, above its highest wet season flood level, you pass through one of the most interesting parts of town. The main dock where the larger cargo vessels moor was a short distance up here, as well as a few warehouses and freight related businesses and a small boatyard halfway up the bank.
On the land side of the street there were a lot of interesting and picturesque old houses. This area, really, was probably the one most influenced by the french colonial period, although the architecture wasn't what you'd call "colonial" exactly. One small section of the street was the most striking to me - it was a row of two-storey timber, weatherboarded houses that looked like they should be facing a river or a canal in a small country town in northern France. In fact most of the buildings on this street and the street behind it in this area looked like they should have been in Europe. But strangely, although they produced a slightly disturbing sensation, they didn't feel exactly out of place. Somehow that architecture worked well there - unlike most colonial architecture you find all over the world. I wonder if this was because i was looking at it with english eyes - maybe if i was french it would look like british colonial buildings look to me in other parts of Asia... I don't know.
But then, mixed in among all these very french little houses and shops, there were half a dozen very lao buddhist wats or "temples". A weird combination, and one that was evident in Viang Chan too, in places.
About a kilometre along this street from the main town steps down to the river, it ended and turned sharply to the right. From that corner you could look down, over more vegetable gardens, to the mouth of the Nam Khan. When i walked along there, there was a man in a small boat ferrying pedestrians across the Nam Khan, pulling the boat back and forth along a rope tied to each bank. On the other side there were more gardens.
You could carry on walking along this road, which followed the smaller river upstream for a while. Not far from the Mekong it did another right turn and, along with the Nam Khan, ran parallel to the big river back towards the town centre. Half way to town the river bends to the left and heads off towards the hills, but the road carries on back into the centre of town, passing the main market.
The Nam Khan is like a small version of the Mekong with vegetable gardens lining the opposite bank. Behind them are the plumes of bamboo and the spikey tops of the coconut palms and then green hills off in the distance. Every time i walked along that bit of road there were loads of kids laughing and shouting and splashing about as they swam and played in the river.
*-*-*
Veronica left on Sunday as she had to go back to work the next day, but i decided to stay on in Luang Phabang for a little while longer as i liked the place and anyway there wasn't anything much for me to do in Dong Dok for nearly two weeks. It was better to spend a bit more time there and then i wouldn't have time to get bored with Dong Dok before i flew back to KL a week the following Friday. There wasn't much to do in Luang Phabang, either, but i wandered around a bit, read a bit and spent quite a lot of time sitting and chatting to other tourists who were staying in the hotel.
I eventually decided that Friday would be the best day to go back to Dong Dok. I'd had enough of Luang Phabang by then and it would give me the chance to spend the weekend with Veronica and then have a leisurely four more days before i left the country.
As it started getting close to the time for me to leave, i felt more and more like going back to KL by a different route. When i'd come, there was no way i would have considered travelling overland unless there really wasn't a choice. But now i was a bit less strung out and the end of the journey was in sight, and the idea of catching the train back and spending a few days in Penang on the way seemed quite attractive.
There was no chance of actually doing this though. The day i was due to fly from KL to Melbourne was chinese new year. But that wasn't all, it was also Aidil Fitri or Hari Raya Puasa, the festival which marks the end of Ramadan and therefore was new year in the muslim calendar too. Because of this, which is roughly the equivalent of the christmas and new year festival for both those cultures, all public transport in Malaysia would have been fully booked up weeks in advance.
It was a strange kind of co-incidence that i was flying back to Australia on the chinese new year. But it was even stranger that this co-incided with the muslim new year too, which is something that happens occasionally, but probably only once every twenty or thirty years or something. It seemed like a good omen anyway - a good start to the rest of my life!
*-*-*
In the week that followed, i spent a lot of time thinking about going back to Australia. The year seemed to have passed incredibly quickly when i looked at it from this end. I couldn't believe i'd be back there in a matter of days. I thought back to when i'd left London, really wanting to be back in Australia then, and how far away the end of the next three months had seemed at that point. Well now it was over and i was going home and i began to feel a bit weird about not being in Asia any more, not being on the road in unknown places at all any more. It's always the same when i come to the end of a stay somewhere or a journey like this, that i haven't been particularly happy with a lot of the time. I suddenly start to look at it with nostalgia - even though i haven't left yet - and see only the good things about it. It's a fucking shame i couldn't have seen it like that the whole time!