Yesterday we flew up to Phonsavan on Laos Airways. Nothing like rolling the dice to see if you will arrive at the other end.
We had a great ride to the airport on a ‘motorcycle with a sidecar’ rickshaw. He took us over the pedestrian & rickshaw only wooden bridge. With having the driver to the side instead of blocking our view in front of us, we could look down between the slats of the bridge and see the water far below. Excellent, dude!
Our flight experience started with wandering past a defunct security scanner, getting our baggaged scanned and passed back out to us through a different window, sauntering up to the ticket counter and getting checked in and our bags piled onto the back of a truck, watching a girl try to get some scotch tape out of her hair that one of the truck loaders ambushed her with, heading back out past the defunct security scanner, showing our boarding card to a guard to be let into the immigration room, paying for a domestic departure tax paper to be stapled to our boarding card, heading through a real security scanner (and noting that the security check guys were opening two 660ml Beer Lao’s and had two empties sitting next to them… the New Year’s slow on ending?), hearing a name being called over the loud speakers (M’st’r Piwah), ignoring the loudspeaker, hearing the name again about ten minutes later, arguing between ourselves as to whether that could be Derrell, wandering back out to the ticket counter, getting no information, stopping to check the immigration desk, finding success, handing over our passports for a ‘domestic departure’ stamp, and passing the security guys again (this time on their third round). Basically.
Our flight experience continued with the plane actually being on time and… overbooked by one person. We wondered how they would handle this. The last person on the plane ended up being a tourist, so… she was asked if she minded sitting in the cockpit with the pilots. She thought this was a grand idea, so off she went, and off we went.
Oh, but they actually handed out bottled water during the flight and did the flight announcements in Lao and English. And the stewardess looked like one, and the pilot had the white shirt, black slacks, funky Vietnamesque pilot glasses and the navy dress style hat that many a pilot likes to wear. So the flight sort of took on some resemblance of a real one.
The views of Luang Prabang were great. Many of the buildings have red roofs with whitewashed building sides. Add to this the lush green palm trees, the blue skies and the infinite meandering of the muddy brown Mekong river… and you have a National Geographic view that is worthy of this World Heritage town. At least while you were not worrying about whether the plane was actually gaining altitude quickly enough, that is.
The final experience of our short flight met with a large gasp from the Chinese fellow next to me. The pilot decided to go for a plunge through the clouds and successfully make this one of the fastest and steepest landings I’ve had the displeasure of participating in. The not-yet-threatening thunderhead clouds around us added a few lurching drops of air pressure. This had an effect, as we had a lovely view of one of the passengers using the air sickness bags after he climbed off the plane. Woo-hoo! Ground never looked so good.
While waiting for our luggage, we watched a Army green Lao PDB helicopter land a few feet behind the plane and that ended up being the only activity at the airport. Scanning the horizon, we noted there was a portable truck-mounted Viet Cong radar facility rusting a few hundred yards away that someone had placed up on a small bump on the airport grounds. And we eventually calmed down enough to notice that it was very quiet. Roosters, of course, do not heed nature’s call for quiet, but other than them, the only sound was the wind blowing. It made it feel tropically serene and pleasant standing in the sun looking at rusted war equipment. And that becomes a disconcerting feeling very quickly.
The town was full of aggressive touts at the airport, new construction of hotels on the main street, rather dusty from bricks and gravel going into the new construction, and still had lots of cheerful people greeting us with ‘Sabadee’ and smiles.
We found a room for $5 that had hot water and screens in the windows. The prices must be lowering from all the new construction? They had the requisite pile of empty cluster bomb casings in one of the side doorways. One of which had written on it ‘Bomb from USA’, as if that wasn’t obvious enough. Oh heck, maybe it isn’t obvious for some of us under fifty, especially for those of us educated in America with the appalling ‘let’s stop at WWII’ history curiculum.
We made a wrong decision that evening and took up a tout’s offer of taking us over to the Hmong market in the morning. We were clear that we were interested in musical instruments, a Hmong mouth harp called a ‘ncas’ (pronounced - ‘jah’) to be precise. He assured us that the market we wanted might have them. And he said that 4:30 AM was the right time to leave to get there. We saw a few flaws in this plan at the time, but ignored our internal scam alert signals going off.
At 4:10 AM, after a sleepless night through one hell of a major THUNDER-storm, we hear a knock on our door. “Hello, it is 4:30 AM, you up?” We shoo the guy away and get dressed. Driving the 30 km to the market in a beat up Soviet-era Volvo-like thing, we notice that even though it is pitch black.. the roads are good. @#!
At 4:45 AM, in the dark, in the last bits of rain, we step out into an empty market (lots of wooden platform under tin roof shelters, one huge state fair-quality shelter with a good hundred wooden tables scattered, and three women with baskets of cilantro and opium also waiting). And we wait. And shiver slightly. Yawn. And wait. The sky started to show the early morning bits of light around 5:45 AM. And people start to trickle in.
The market was great, if you were looking for a huge traditional farmer’s market. It was very scenic. Yellow mushroom season is here, so lots of fungus was displayed on bamboo mats. Herbs by the baskets. Fresh bacon parts being hacked. Ducks in handmade bamboo cartons (cage would mean it could move). Baby pigs also in cartons but with a better fate, they would age a few years before returning to the market as meat. Noodle stands, chinese steamed buns, and pre-made salads were sprinkled about. All of this arriving by Hmong women with woven baskets as backpacks, on wooden carts being rolled through the mud, or in style by jumbo (the local 9-seater public transport). The market was literally a ‘farmer’s’ market. The Hmong were arriving for their once-a-week journey in from the countryside to sell produce, buy produce and any extra household items needed. It was very festive.
By 6:30 AM, we had had enough. There was not a chance that a musical instrument would be here. This was a basic necessities of life market and centered mostly around food. We grumpily got our con-artist guide to take us back to town. The market was just starting. We could have gotten up at 6 AM instead of the friggin’ middle of the night. Our driver was the only one pleased with the entire experience. While our guide annoyingly trailed us sprinkling un-related converstation at us, he was off shopping. He had a huge bag of basil, shallots and some sort of root that I had never seen before. Bah.
On the positive side, the market was picturesque. The shoppers were chatty and smiling. Bargaining was easy-going. Everyone looked very happy (except the ducks and frogs). The countryside was shrouded in mist with ominous clouds looming over it as the world turned from the nightime grays to saturated green hills with streaks of red clay. And it smelled of clean morning air. No wonder we still have these weekly farmer’s markets at home. They are good thing for morning people.
But, you’ll have to excuse us… we need to strangle our ‘guide’ now.
