Lost in Vacation: The Fellowship of the Border Crossing

I am sure you will notice the subtle innuendo to Tolkiens' Lord of the Ring - saga in the title of this blog entry and maybe wonder if we are truly that nerdy to write such a thing. But compared to what we had to endure after we left Dien Bien Phu in order to cross the border to Lao, Frodos journey to Mordor was an easy Sunday morning stroll...

It all started out funny. We met some nice people from Australia, England and the States in the Bus from Sapa to Dien Bien Phu, and as we were 6 persons and very eager to get to Lao, we decided not to wait for the bus on Friday but to charter a minivan in order to head off to the border right the next morning, from where, according to our guest house owner, a public bus would leave to our next destination, Muang Khua, which is situated about 50km into Lao. Said, done. Our enthusiasm couldn't even be tarnished when the minivan we ordered on telephone turned out to be a small station wagon (quite a logistic challenge for 6 people and some backpacks that are bigger than the average Vietnamese) and our driver to be motionsick on the curvy mountain road. (We are getting used to Asians puking in buses as easily as small children but it was our first driver that had to throw the towel.) After crossing the Vietnamese part of the border quite easily - we only had to justify living in a country like Austria, of which they had never heard of - we walked about 1km to the Lao customs office, where the real trouble started...
I have to explain here that this border wasn't open for foreigners until 2007 and obviously not too many Westerners have crossed it yet, as the secretary in charge had to copy our personal data line by line (Lao doesn't have the Arabic lettering like Vietnam). It took them 4 hours to fill in/draw the forms of us six and an elderly French couple we met there.

The real problem was, though, that it was already getting 3 pm and no bus in sight. We attributed this to the bad streets and rainy weather. So we refused the generous offer of the customs officer to organize his friends' car for 100 bucks and marched off to the next bigger village, which was, according to our map, just about 6 or 7 kilometers from the border. We were ready to settle for everything, be it a bus, a car or maybe already a place to sleep and something to eat, as we had skipped breakfast and almost no food left. We actually reached some village after about 3km, where they told us that the bigger village we were searching for was still 20km away. But as they didn't welcomed us as openly as the Lao people are said to do normally, we traced this back to the fact that a big jeep was parked behind the chiefs shack: The price was 100 dollars again, for a drive to the next village, which supposedly was right behind the next few turns of the road. So we refused again and hiked on, knowing that the villagers wouldn't miss the chance of some easily earned money and come after us with their real offer as soon as we left their village. After a few more kilometers of walking it dawned on us (while it already dusked on the sky) that they wouldn't come...

gallows humor

Our cards weren't too good: It was raining, our map has betrayed us, we were on a dirt track in the midst of the jungle and, above all, had to carry backpacks the size of a grownup cow. At least we had torches, which helped us to find this rice storage shack beside the track, which we modified to be our survival camp for our first night out in the wild.

Alone in the jungle

United Nations could have taken a leaf out of our book when our survival instinct finally punched in as we sat together surrounded by unheard-of noises coming out of the jungle which mingled with some well-known noises coming out of our stomaches. Austria chipped in Mosquito nets and some cookies, France handed America some dried fruits and Australia and Great Britain drank from the same rice wine bottle.

The Fellowship of the Dried Apple Rings

When we woke up we were still eight in number! Without guide, cellphone, TV or frozen food, we still had persevered. Jungle: 0 - Civilization: 1! Long live the human race.
Spirits fresh but only four cookies for eight people left, we hiked on. I will spare you the cruel details, but 15km, some severe shoulder myogelosis and several aberrant conversations with villagers later (which couldn't have been conducted without Langenscheidts picture dictionary "Ohne Woerterbuch"), we finally got to the "town" we were so desperately seeking. Only to discover that there was no bus leaving the respective day. The owner of the only guesthouse was already baring his teeth...
At this point the French couple, who put up a good fight until then, gave in and paid the majority of an enormous amount (which I will not reproduce here) for a minivan to bring us the next 30km to our actual destination, Muang Khua, where they immediately checked into the best hotel the city could offer...
As these 30km took us about 4 hours, we finally got an idea why the villagers reacted, euphemistically expressed, reluctantly on our requests for transportation.