Welcome to Laos!
Full of energy, curiosity and a head filled with dreams we took of on this journey and here we are, yet again another country to add to our list! Slowly we are moving, discovering all that is new, surprising and different from what we are used to. At times it can be hard to not have the comforts of home. A quote beautifully summarizing the feeling for me is the following:
“Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things. -air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky. -all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
– Cesare Pavese
Luckily this brutality is more than compensated by never-ending smiles, unexpected meetings and irresistible beauty that keeps you going, urging you to continue and discover what is hidden beyond the next corner. One of the things that always keeps me going here in Laos are all the children waving along the way, trying to give a high five while you ride along and giggling the moment you put out your hand or wave back. The contrast with Vietnam could not be bigger in many different ways. It immediately became clear when crossing the Na Meo border. At the Vietnamese side we were asked for an export cost of 10 USD per bike, so 20 USD for the both of us, which, believe it or not, is a lot of money here. We simply said it was no problem if we could get a proof of payment, but obviously, this was not possible. After some time the story changed and the charge was because we didn’t have a drivers license, but he couldn’t have made a worse bet to prove he was trying to scam us. We got out our international drivers license according to the 8 November 1968 convention that is valid in Vietnam and that covers all types of motorbikes. His colleagues fully agreed with us on the validity of the license, but the guy who had to hand us our papers to leave Vietnam just got furious and ended up refusing to give us the papers without payment. By this time I was uncontrollably angry and had to shut up for some time or I would have caused some serious problems. Jonas, my boyfriend, fully took over the talking while I tried to calm down a little. Finally I went to ask the policeman outside for some help, or rather kept playing it kind of dumb and asked his help with a misunderstanding due to the language barrier. To make a long story short, thanks to the policeman we got our papers without paying a penny and got over to Laos where everything went as smooth as one could hope for. After a few hours of crossing borders we continued our journey, but this time we had to move slow. Roads were no longer what one would call roads in Vietnam. Gravel made way for dirt tracks, sand and stones. Helmets closed to keep the dirt out of our mouth, eyes on the road and tractoring uphill in first gear, slowly to not slither back down. Oh, we had a blast! Finally, our dual sport bikes could show what they were worth, and oh yes, they didn’t disappoint!
A setting sun overhead turning deep red and nature one can only dream of! Untouched wilderness with strangely shaped hills making place for small wooden cottages, rice fields and rivers. Suddenly we felt in another century. This place was again so different from all the places we had been before! We started wondering, how do children grow up here? What do people do for a living? What would life be like being born here? So many questions and slowly we hope to find some answers.
Laos, a country filled with undiscovered nature and curious people, a country carrying the remains of a recent war and a place one could hardly imagine to exist without having been there!
