There are no tour buses. In fact, there are no city buses either. No Chinese tourists with hats and cameras around their necks, no senior citizens staying at the nice hotels and eating at safe restaurants as part of the group tour.
The Mercure and Best Western are among the few international chains hotels.
Perhaps Laos is just too difficult to get around. A bus from Vientiane to Luang Prabang – Laos’ other “major city” at a population of 70,000 – takes at least 12 hours to go just over 300 miles. The nice part is that the road is reasonably paved. In fact there are only two working roads to connect the northern part of Laos to central and southern – and only one is paved.
Many towns along the Mekong still use riverboats for their primary transportation. Journeys from Vientiane south can take more than a day. It ain’t Proud Mary.
To really see Laos – something I’ve never been able to do – you have to have as much or more time than money, lots of patience, a high tolerance for dirt and water and be someone who qualifies to sit in the exit row of an airplane.
This eliminates much of the population we typically call “adults.”
Although we’ve seen a few brave, adventurous and seasoned older travelers around town, central Vientiane is largely occupied by backpackers. The kind of people that stay three to five people to a room in shitty little guesthouses and wear Beer Lao (reputedly the best beer in Asia that boasts a 5 percent alcohol content) shirts as a badge of honor. They sport tank tops, cargo shorts and light, airy, flowy clothes designed to look ethnic – that in reality are not what Lao, Thais or anyone else in Asia actually wears.
At different moments in the trip, Emily has struggled with the idea that we aren’t the travelers we once were. In our 20s, we stayed in shitty little guest houses, ate cheap lunches from questionable stands and really lived out of our backpacks. We met people from other countries and sometimes moved in packs.
“We never do anything the hard way anymore!” Emily said the other week as I stared at her, incredulous.
“That’s because we’re not backpackers. We have backpacks – but we’re not backpackers,” I responded.
In the end, the “never doing things the hard way” argument became one of the reasons we took the train from Bangkok to Nong Khai and the Thai-Laos border.
During a year of travel we have undertaken only two train journeys – one from Mumbai to Jodhpur and the other from Bangkok to here. We’ll use the train to get back to Bangkok. In both cases, the travel was fine, although not luxurious. The Thai trains were cleaner, safer and had more personal space.
We have used buses on three occasions – two of which were in Turkey and took 16 and 12 hours respectively. We vowed never to use domestic overnight buses again. However, when going from Jodhpur to nearby Udaipur, India – the bus was our only option and it was the worst transportation experience of our trip.
The rest of the year has been filled with planes and a few boats. Boats are great – especially in Greece.
The thing is, when you become good plane and occasional boat people, you’re not backpackers. Backpackers don’t recoil at the 12 hour bus that goes only 300 miles. Backpackers don’t say, “That flight’s only $45, let’s just fly and be done with it.” Instead, they say, “Cool! Those girls we saw last night at that hookah bar are on that bus. And I think those Aussie guys from the hostel are too. That one guy, he’s crazy! I’ll bet he has a wicked hangover today!”
But it’s hard not to get a little nostalgic. We sit at some great cafes around town and everywhere we go, we hear conversations like, “Yeah, so I’ll go to Pakse before taking the bus down to Cambodia,” or “You’re going to Koh Samui? We’ll be there next week too. Why don’t you give me your email, we can all meet up!” and ” Yeah, so I have a flight tomorrow to Bangkok where I’ll meet up with my brother who’s flying in and some guys I met in Vietnam. We’re all going to Nepal together.”
I once had friends fly into Bangkok so we could all go to Nepal…. nine years ago.
I think for Emily, it’s the backpacks that are confusing. We carry around these 90 liter packs – from our hotel room to the taxi and from the taxi to the luggage cart at the airport – because they hold more than traditional luggage does.
In reality, we’re 33 year-old married people. We stay at mid-range hotels, care deeply about Internet quality, work at cafes and watch movies in bed at night rather than drink buckets of Red Bull and vodka on the beach. We complain when our air conditioner isn’t powerful enough and grade the quality of our showers. Our idea of a fun-filled weekend involves riding a motorcycle around the Lao countryside, getting massages and checking out that nice little French restaurant. Oh, and we love going to the movies in Bangkok and drinking Thai iced teas as we walk down the street on a hot afternoon.
At the same time, we both agree that we wouldn’t have done anything any differently. We’re done with shitty little guest houses. We don’t enjoy sleeping on buses, we do enjoy clean bathrooms and eating at real restaurants. Besides, there’s nothing sadder than 30+ year-olds who try to act like backpackers. And no one over age 24 should wear a Beer Lao tank-top.
Nonetheless, the backpackers add to the quaint charm of Vientiane. When sober enough, they are among the few people who can fully access and enjoy Laos. There’s something special about a country which opens itself primarily and almost exclusively to youth. The uber-mellow Lao and the energetic, interested, curious backpackers somehow go together like som tam and sticky rice, or Beer Lao and a hot day.
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