October Vacation, Part 1: Auntie Mon-Mon's Land of Elephants... and extras.

Nan, Thailand to Hongsa, Laos

No one said it was going to be easy to get to Luang Prabang by land. 

Our journey began with Aj. Prakop bidding us farewell and choke dii (good luck) at the bus station early Saturday morning.We paid our money to a "ticket taker" (read: woman in her pajamas sitting at a fold-out table in front of a bus platform), handed over our backpacks (which were tossed on the car roof - presumably tied down, but who knows really) and climbed into our mini-bus van. It was stuffed to capacity with about 14 adults, a handful of babies, and one monk. 

Hongsa: dirt roads, Auntie Mon-Mon, and that's about it.

Two hours later, the whole gang was dropped at the dusty Thai border town of Ban Huay Kon. After showing our documents, paying for a Lao visa and walking a kilometer over the official checkpoint, we finally grabbed a songthaew to Hongsa, a few hours east of the Thai-Lao border and our stopping point for Day 1; the only transportation running in our Luang Prabang direction would not leave until early the next morning. 

The songthaew driver and his wife dropped us at the Jumbo Guesthouse, the first visible lodging in the flat, mostly empty, chicken-scattered 5 square kilometer town. As we approached the front yard, the guesthouse owner appeared at her colorful front doorway. She had short curly grey-hair, and looked disheveled and sleepy-eyed (evidently just awoken from a nap), and was sucking down a cigarette as she squinted at us in the afternoon sun. "Sabai dee," she said when we reached her, in a thick German accent. "I am Monica. Please, come in." 

The Jumbo was a one-story, four-bedroom house - one of which belonged to Monica - converted into a rather pricy, but very nicely decorated guesthouse. We each took a bed, unloaded our belongings, and washed off the dust and grime we'd accumulated on the drive over in the cold-water mosquito-infested shower. Monica invited us to have coffee on the patio (which we were subsequently charged for, along with various other mysterious "extras" added to our bill), and explained that we were very lucky to come by that day: elephants were on their way over. 

Sure enough, five enormous Asian elephants showed up later that afternoon, clumped awkwardly into the grassy front yard of the house, each with a Lao "driver" perched lazily on top of their thick wrinkly backs. Monica psuedo-explained that she also runs an elephant-riding business on the side, and had some German tourists coming by that afternoon to take the enormous animals out for a spin (so to speak). In the meantime, we were allowed to feed and marvel at the elephants, taking photos beside them and dodging the large and rather sudden piles of excrement that tumbled down every few minutes... 

Land of A Million Elephants... I'll stick to the front side.

Amidst the elephant visiting, a British couple about our age, Dave and Rowina, arrived at the Jumbo. We quickly befriended them and spent the rest of the evening on the patio, chatting while eating Monica's delicious-and-also-overpriced spaghetti carbonara, and downing cold Beerlaos (in my opinion, the best of the best cheap Asian beers). The five of us - as well as Monica, who milled in and out from her bedroom - spent hours swapping our favorite Asia stories. Dave and Rowina had both quit their jobs in England - bar tending and graphic designing, respectively - a few months ago and were traveling around for a year or until their savings ran out. They had just come from the exact route we were headed towards, and loaded us with maps, business cards, and suggestions of places to stay, eat and see. 

Dinner preparations at the Jumbo

Around 10 p.m., Monica - ol' Auntie Mon-Mon as we now were calling her - came out and placed a small sticky-rice basket on the table in front of Dave, then walked away without saying anything. He opened it, peered inside, laughed and shrugged. A few minutes later he had rolled her a "special" cigarette with the basket contents. Mon-Mon came out to retrieve it, sat at the table, and slowly smoked it. Despite having promised over and over the whole afternoon that she was going to make us pancakes for dessert - "a treat from home!" - her eyes slowly drooped shut and she scuttled off to bed. She never mentioned the pancakes again, but did mention the next morning that she slept very well. 

Sunday morning, we were off to the Mekong River, from which point we would take the 6-hour "slow boat" south to Luang Prabang. Getting to the Mekong, however, proved our most difficult land travel challenge yet. The only way to get to the Mekong from Hongsa is to take a once-a-day songthaew over the extremely steep and unpaved dirt roads that run through the mountains in between. Our particular songthaew was (unsurprisingly) filled with about five passengers too many before we even left the bus station. Everyone's belongings were stacked on the truck roof, or splayed out on top of us or under our feet. On the edge of town, the driver stopped for one last passenger: a heavyset woman whose baggage doubled what was already on the truck. It included: two boxes of live chickens; a basket with a live duck; a crate of wrapped apples; and one lid-less black bucket full of water and live fish. SOMEHOW this was all loaded into the full truck (the duck was relegated to the rooftop), although the woman had to spread out across us all like a starfish to keep her market goods from moving about. 

The drive was jolting and painful, and there were many times when I flat out refused to look out the side of the truck - like when the driver had to cross a 6-foot wide, 2-foot deep mud crater in the middle of the road, while dodging cows and trying not to fall off the mountain cliff. Our hair, skin and teeth became coated with a thin film of dust, and my eyes felt grimy. About an hour and a half into this, one of the market woman's fish sloshed out of the bucket. The woman lunged for it, but it had already hit the ground, its wet skin flopping and glistening in the sun on the red dirt road behind us. I assume it was on purpose; by that point I was thinking of flipping myself out of the truck bed too. 

But things were to get oh so much better as we made our way to LP. 

To be continued tomorrow...