We travelled the first section on a
songthaew
owned by a guy called Somsanig who had his wife and baby with him in the cab. He’d rigged up a water barrel in the back for his passengers. He was a cool guy, tall and thin-faced with black hair and a typical Laos kind of smile. He made lots of stops, letting people on and off. I asked him if there was any chance I could drive. He said sure, no problem, he’d be happy to let me.
I’m not so sure about his wife, though. We were on pretty good roads and not going very fast but she had her baby with her and this vehicle was their livelihood. She didn’t say much but then she didn’t smile much either so I’ve no idea how nervous she really was. Russ told me the passengers were pretty nervous. They weren’t sure what was going on but suddenly the driver was standing on a home-made footplate at the back and I was behind the wheel trying to find first gear. The stick was pretty wayward and wrapped in an old towel. I tried to pull away, but first gear kept grinding: Russ told me that back where he was there had been a collective look of extreme consternation.
We had a young schoolteacher on board who said her name was Vilaivon. She chatted about how the kids were good but with the summer they had three months off. The old guy next to Russ had been really nervous about me driving but Russ placated him by sharing a loaf of bread. I got the hang of the gears eventually and it was only really taking off that was the problem: Somsanig told me to give it more gas in first gear and I’d be fine. The horn was great and in faithful
dolmus
tradition I used it to great effect; it had a kind of echo and I decided I wanted one for when I got back to London.
Having such a full load of passengers was a big responsibility, but the roads were pretty empty. It was very rural here with flat cultivated land that opened up the jungle. Now and again hills reared up; stark, grey cliffs bare of vegetation. I think most people were subsistence farmers, living pretty much on what they were able to grow.
We stopped for lunch in a colourful little market town with broken-down trailers lying by the side of the road and darkened, lock-up shops with tin roofs. A bunch of street vendors came up with bags of bugs on sticks; crispy cockroaches marinated in something sticky before being impaled on a skewer like a kebab. The old guy had a stick, peeling the beetles like prawns before sucking out the flesh. Not very appetising - they reminded me of the grilled rats the Malawi people had tried to sell us when we were riding to Cape Town, those and the fly paste they made on the shores of the lake.
I drove for about an hour and really enjoyed it, but I think Somsanig’s wife was relieved when her husband took over the wheel again. He dropped us in a small town where we boarded a coach, what the locals call a
lod mei
, that would get us into Pakse. It was ancient with narrow seats and an internal framework of bars like scaffolding poles to strengthen the structure. There were holes in the walls and the ceiling and passengers appeared to be entirely secondary to the cargo. The aisle and the overhead luggage racks were stuffed with brand-new school books. We had to climb over more books to get to a seat, the conductor making his way over them to collect our money. It wasn’t just books either; there were sacks of rice and vegetables, and bags stuffed with cloves of garlic.
We endured five and a half crazy hours, the driver stopping for the odd passenger now and then, but mainly just to make deliveries. Gradually the rice dwindled, the garlic was dished out to customers and by the time we got to Pakse only the books were left.
The next morning we took a slow boat down the Mekong. It was long and narrow, with a cane roof, the engine and steering wheel taken from an old car. It appeared that people did that a lot here, lifting the engines from cars and converting them to fit the kind of direct-drive propellers we’d seen at Yangshuo. At over 2,700 miles, the Mekong is the twelfth-longest river in the world. We ambled along for a while, trying to avoid the fishing nets and disembarked in Champasak.
When we got off the boat we flagged down another butt-breaking
songthaew
, and headed for Voen Kham where we were due to cross to Cambodia. Just a few miles from there, however, are the waterfalls at Khon Phapeng and we couldn’t leave Laos without stopping to see them.
The largest waterfalls in Asia, they were truly incredible. They didn’t drop a long way but they were very wide; a series of boiling rapids that formed a massive natural hazard right across the river. We could hear the roar from a hundred yards away. Making our way through scrub and trees it got louder and louder until finally we could see black boulders, ragged at the edges like lava rock, splitting the river in a hundred different places. Water cascaded around them, tumbling a few metres before being forced over single trees and between bushes and flatter plateaus spewing a torrent of spray.
There was an official overlook and a visitor centre but, spotting a couple of fishermen working traps from what looked like a ruined boat, Russ and I picked our way across a section of slippery rock that stretched into the river. It was a little dodgy, slip and we’d be right in the midst of that tempest with no chance of escape. The noise was incredible, we had to shout to be heard. The rapids were at eye-level now and from that angle you really got a sense of their power. I’ve always found waterfalls to be therapeutic places; nature at its most awesome, and I took a moment just to sit on a rock with my elbows on my knees and take it all in. This was the Mekong, one of the great rivers of the world. Half its length is in China and the rest splits Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. I shook my head. I’d seen the Victoria Falls and now this - it was hard to believe I was really here.
Crossing into Cambodia at Voen Kham we met Nick, an Englishman who has lived there for nine years. He runs a tour company, speaks the language and would act as our guide and translator. I’m a petrol-head at heart: power and speed, it’s my bag, and Nick had rocket boats waiting on the Cambodian side of the Mekong. I decided I liked Nick a lot.
The town hugged the banks, a clutch of buildings that looked even poorer than those we’d seen in Laos. With Nick leading the way we wandered through an empty market, the stalls no more than wooden poles supporting aged green tarpaulin. A lumpy track led down to the water between weathered houses. The path ended in a headland between thick palms and below we could see a jetty accessed by a plank of wood. Tied up to the jetty were two wooden boats with bows that curved upwards like a scimitar. They sat low in the water, narrow and sleek. Fixed to the back of each was a sixteen-valve, 1600 cc Toyota car engine. They were absolutely huge, with shaft propellers and massive open-piped exhausts. I could only imagine the horsepower.
‘Oh my God,’ Russ said. ‘Like a drag racer on water.’ Climbing aboard I had the biggest grin on my face; boy oh boy was I looking forward to this. Late afternoon with the sun going down, we were soaked in the most spectacular scenery. I asked Nick if there were any rapids downstream.
He just smiled at me. ‘Charley,’ he said, ‘the only thing that’s rapid is the boat.’
The river was really high: it had overflowed its banks and flooded the paddies. We could see solitary trees, strands of vegetation and bits of debris swirling in the currents. It was a beautiful evening, though, the sun was low and it cast the surface in deep shadows. The mountains hung with mist, trees covered the banks and the Mekong, a thick-bodied serpent, uncoiled as far as the eye could see.
With everyone loaded I turned to the driver and asked him to fire up the engine. The pilot gave the engine some revs and we were off. I was in my element - the power, the petrol and the speed. The prow slapped the chop like someone rapping a table and I was bouncing around like crazy. With a roar we tore downstream, sweeping between the trees with the wind dragging my hair. We were flying along now - a complete contrast to the slow boat we’d taken this morning. Standing in the bows I could feel spray stinging my face. It was brilliant; by any means imaginable the best piece of transport we’d been on.
I was gutted when the pilot killed the engine and slid the bows up the bank. It was almost completely dark now, so we made our way to the hotel and sat down with a beer and a map. Nick showed us a couple of options for tomorrow: we were riding a pair of Honda 250 dirt bikes, which I was really looking forward to. I knew the bike well, having owned a 600 that used to pop the greatest wheelies.
Nick not only spoke the language, he knew the country like the back of his hand. He had planned a particular jungle route, but the monsoon had come early and most of that trail was either flooded or the roads were so messy they were impassable. It was a shame because he would have taken us to the hut where Pol Pot had died of malaria. His body had been burnt on a pile of tyres. One of the world’s most notorious despots, he was supported by the West when opposing communist Vietnam. Nick has written about Cambodia for Lonely Planet and knows his stuff. He explained that these days there was a nominal democracy, although it’s still pretty feudal. The people support the politician chosen by the village chief.
He also explained that the Chinese have an interest in the country and are building most of the roads; and now that gas and oil have been discovered the Americans are cuddly too, as are the French. For years the country was ruled alternately by the Vietnamese and the Thai, but in 1863 the Cambodians sought protection from French Indochina and became a colony. Caught up in the Vietnam War, they were invaded briefly by the Americans. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge, Maoists from the ancient Khmer Kingdom, seized power. Under Pol Pot’s rule the country was renamed Kampuchea. Their attitude to the civilian population was ‘To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.’ Between 1976 and 1979, 26 per cent of the population were killed. The Khmer Rouge used to raid their Vietnamese neighbours and in the end Vietnam invaded and Pol Pot was forced to flee, though the Khmer Rouge maintained their seat at the UN right up until 1990. Their record on human rights was as bad as it gets and they were officially a party in exile, but a blind eye was turned to all that because people thought they were preferable to communist Vietnam. Ironically, the Khmer Rouge used the UN seat to secretly get arms back into the country and fight a civil war that didn’t end until Pol Pot’s death in 1998.
Now a little wiser about our surroundings, we were back on motorbikes. It was 12 June and with less than five weeks of the expedition left, we would be travelling 250 kilometres today on both tarmac and dirt. I’d slept really well, was feeling good and couldn’t wait to get going. Little did I know it would turn into a marathon, a ride of epic proportions.
We left early and it was pleasantly cool. My bike was the perfect wheelie machine and I was wearing just a T-shirt, jeans and gloves. My helmet was a tad small though: it pressed my forehead and I knew that by the end of the day I’d have a bit of a headache. I didn’t care - it was just great to be riding again.
We were on tarmac to begin with, a smooth road through open country with the clouds hugging the summits of distant hills. Close to the road the homes were made of bamboo and thatch built on stilts, with lengths of uneven planking for the walls. It looked a lot like Laos and for once a border crossing hadn’t altered everything.
After an hour or so we hit dirt, the road narrowing into a track we shared with cattle and the farmers driving them. I was in my element now, part earth, part mud and puddles, and part gravel. I could slide the back end and really have some fun. We didn’t pass many cars. We saw a few trucks but mostly people got around on mopeds and small motorbikes. Some drove carts pulled by oxen.
The towns seemed more chaotic than in Laos, with animals wandering the streets and gangs of kids skipping across in front of us. Music blared from shop fronts and stallholders tried to sell us stuff even though we were passing on the bikes. We stopped for breakfast and Russ admitted he was completely noodled and riced out: what he longed for now were two slices of buttered bread with English sausages cut in half and covered with brown sauce.
The roads seemed to be lined with huts and houses like one vast village stretching the length of the country. When they did finally peter out we were either in damp jungle or tracts of farmland, farmers ploughing the fields with teams of oxen. Mud-streaked kids splashed about in orange-coloured ponds created by the flood waters. Cattle grazed by the side of the road, skinny animals with bells made from more American munitions. They hunted for food between coconut palms that climbed above the houses.
It rained a little as it always seemed to do when we were riding bikes. I began to wonder if it wasn’t my sister Telsche forcing us to slow down.
We had to cross the Mekong by ferry and to get there we rode through the backstreets - little paths between tiny homes with straggly washing lines and pigs grubbing for scraps. We wove our way between the houses, avoiding people and livestock until we descended through shoulder-height vegetation to the muddy banks of the Mekong.
There were plenty of people waiting for the ferry. This was a proper boat with a flat deck and solid metal sides. We were glad it was nothing like the one we’d seen from the deck of the slow boat, which had been three boats lashed together with ropes and carrying a couple of pickups. We’d watched, gobsmacked, as it inched sideways across the river, looking as secure as a house of cards.
This one was still powered by a truck’s engine, though. A young guy called Saporo was piloting, sitting up high and overlooking his cargo of one car, a bunch of motorbikes and a whole stack of people. The steering wheel was from the same truck as the engine and he operated it like a truck driver, sitting with it flat before him. He told me he’d only been driving the boat for a year and before that he had indeed been a truck driver.
On the eastern shore we tore up the clay hill. I had the back end spinning and was catching air on the bumps. This was brilliant - my own private Dakar. Stopping for fuel we found the same drum and canister system as in Laos, only here it was complemented by Pepsi bottles filled with petrol which the attendants upended into our tanks.