How Bizzare! How Bizzare!

Some of you might, perhaps, have an interest in international border crossings. But, even if you haven't the slightest, the nightly shenanigans at the India-Pakistan near Amritsar border are quite entertaining.

Its no secret that India and Pakistan are not best buddies. I'm not sure this fact has much to do with the performance staged on the countries' boundary lines, at the closing of each day, but it sure fuels the fire. I could never have imagined this, if I hadn't seen it first hand for myself. And, oh my, is it entertaining. I'm not even being disrespectful. Its supposed to be entertaining. They've built stands on either side of the border for the comfort of the spectators. Seriously. They have an M.C.

This is how it goes down. Every night. It all happens in Wagha, the border point on the Indian side is about 30km from the city of Amritsar. Tourists take taxis and Indians arrive in droves. We were lucky enough to come with our new friends, Vikramjit, Raj, their kids and cousin. It was like arriving at a carnival. On Canada Day. (But, Indian day -actually called Independence Day here, but anyways). Today was just a regular day. Vendors selling cold drinks, chips, cotton candy, coconut and snacks line the streets. Kids run around selling little plastic Indian flags and teens parade through waving huge flags. Upbeat dance music is blaring. Being foreigners made us 'VIPs'. Or that's what they called it anyways. Huge, tall, stern looking uniformed officers scrutinized our passports and refused to let us sit with our Indian friends. 'Foreigners in this section, Indians in that one.' There was no arguing.

The crowd was huge and it was blazing hot. The stands were packed. Like we were at a huge concert of someone really famous. People danced in the street. Others were given huge orange, green and white Indian flags and they ran up and down the stands, riling up the crowd, proudly swinging their flags. People cheered, hooted and hollered. An MC with a loud microphone shouted out into the Indian crowd and they responded resoundingly loud. The best however, were the officers. Their uniforms were a dark sandy khaki colour. Their boots were black, shiny and huge. On their heads were peacock type red headdresses that stood straight up. They all must have been seven feet tall. No joke. Either there are heels in those shiny boots, or they only hire abnormally tall people to guard their borders.

As the sun drops lower the real festivities begin. The officers move the street dancers and flag runners to their seats. Something similar is happening on the Pakistani side of the border, only with far fewer people (on this particular day, anyway). The officers and their red peacock hats line up in front of the building. The MC riles up the crowd again and then yells out a long, looong, command, holding the last note for an unnaturally long period of time. When he finally gasps for breath a pair of officers take off simultaneously in a crazy half run, half walk, taking huge, quick strides down the main street, determined and cold stone serious, to the Pakistan gate. They are met there with Pakistani officers, dressed similarily, only with black uniforms and black peacock headdresses. There is a stern-faced, unsmiling stareoff and the crowd goes wild. The MC again calls out his abnormially loooong command and more officers take off, stomping loudly down the street. Only these ones add a 'kick' to their step. An actual kick. Higher than their heads. Seriously, they are acrobats. I don't know a single male that could be capable of actually kicking this high. (Or maybe I do, and just don't know it). Either way, its absolutely crazy. How do they do it? Once they reach the gate, they puff out their ginormous chests and kick at their Pakistani counterparts (not actually kicking them, of course, just kicking in their direction. Point taken) and then Pakistan kicks back, and again, the crowd goes wild. Like insane. Being 'VIP' foreigners, we don't know where to look. The barrel chested, kicking, peacock-head officers are pretty fantastic, but the boisterous crowd is pretty distracting in themselves. The country gates are slammed closed, the flags are lowered simultaneously and another day at the border comes to a close. Its all over... until tomorrow. These people were fellow countryfolk a few decades ago and now, here we are, in a bravado showdown where everyone is trying to out-puff, out kick, and out stomp the other. Every night.

Then there's all our very own officers, right in front of us, having the tedious task babysitting us 'VIPs.' I don't envy them. Tourists are pretty annoying. All the poor officer wants us to do, is sit down and just sit there and enjoy our front row VIP seating. But no. This tourist needs to stand up so they can get the absolute best pic of the action, because, of course, they are the most important tourist and their photos/videos are all that matter. So the person behind them, in turn, stands up because they can't see anymore, then of course, everyone stands, and then everyone gets yelled at. (again.) And then, the front row isn't good enough for that tourist. They need to sit on the curb, or the median, or on someone's head. I lost count of how many times this impressively patient border officer had to tell this one British guy to just sit down. Its embarrassing. For me. The British guy didn't seem to care. As long as he got his 5 million pictures of the same thing with the same DSLR that most travellers seem to need to have now for their trips (Bigger cameras don't fix bad photographers, people), which he is, no doubt, going to blow up (all of them) and have an entire room in his house dedicated to 'that one day at the India-Pakistan border.' The room in which he will also likely play the video that he was painstakingly filming with his other hand- on repeat. Because this experience was that important to him. Sorry fellow Niagara Falls-ians -turns out, no matter which far corner of the globe you try to escape to- there are stupid tourists there too.

Although, as far as I remember, in Niagara, the Canada Border Services Officers don't put on a nightly show of this caliber, stomping and kicking at the US Officers in the middle of the bridge. That I know of. Yet. I would certainly support such a spectacle if it were to allow those hard-working, dedicated officers to close up shop every night before dinner and be home for sunset. Oh, sorry, Ohio, Canada is closed until tomorrow morning at nine, or nine-fifteen, depending on the line at Tim Hortons. And, yes, they turn off the Falls and roll up the sidewalks at.... Hey, one can dream, right?

China: The Ying Versus the Yang

The ying yang, one of China's most famous graphics, symbolizes that in all good there is a little bit of bad and in all bad there is a little bit of good. The good and the bad are inseparable- intrinsically linked to each other. The good doesn't exist without the bad and visa versa and together, they make a whole. This has been China for us thus far.

It all began on a surprisingly high note. We exited through the fickle Vietnamese Officials and walked across the bridge to China. It was much like a stroll across Rainbow Bridge, as it spanned a mighty river and some decent scenery- only the vehicles were replaced by pedestrians. Pedestrians wheeling massive carts of hay, massive carts of goods dragging pedestrians, elderly people hobbling on canes, donkeys, rusty bicycles and body bag sized backpacks. We were greeted at the Chinese side of the bridge by a couple stern looking officials. In Vietnam, they use the Latin alphabet- so at least words are recognizable in that sense to us. Now that we were in China- it was all characters. Everywhere. It was very overwhelming. Anything could mean anything, for all we knew. We stood there, flabbergasted for a moment. 'We're in China!!' We headed in the direction of a building that the official had waved us towards. This particular border had been singled out in our guide book as being particularly frustrating, slow and bureaucratic. There were even several noted incidents of officials confiscating Lonely Planet China guidebooks, as their map indicates in colours that Taiwan is an independent country - where as China still believes that Taiwan belongs to them. Needless to say, we were nervous about how the day would play out. We walked into the first entrance and we were stumped again. There didn't appear to be anywhere to go. Of course, this is because we had entered the exit. On the other side of the glass wall we spied a more entrance looking entrance and two surprisingly smiley young officials laughing and calling us over. Once we had successfully made it to the front door, it all became super easy. 'Welcome to China!' they said to us. Wow. ok. We got a helpful, private official each who scanned our passports in a machine that looked like the ones you use at the airport to print your boarding cards. These printed our entrance and exit cards for China, which they then helped us fill out. Jonathan was finished first, so he got in line to talk to an officer at the counter. My passport wasn't co-operating with the machine, so it took me considerably longer before I was ready to get into the line. By that time the line (the one and only successful line-forming we have seen in China to date) was long and with Jonathan now standing in front of the official- it was at a stand-still. The officer helping me at the machine led me away from the line to a different counter. I was sure that he thought my passport was fake because it hadn't worked in the machine, or that he was going to yank every single last item out of my bag and discover our stealth guidebook, which I had cleverly made a book cover for out of a large map of Hanoi, take it away and really leave us stranded with no information. Terrible scenarios started running through my head. What if....Ahhhhh! Turns out there was no need to panic, however. My nice little official was just opening another processing line, and bringing me to the front of it!

Phew.

Soon our bags were wheeling through an x-ray machine that no one was looking at, and we were out the door, into the sunshine and officially, in China!

It took about 60 seconds for the initial excitement to wear off before we realized, in a more practical sense that-we were in China. We couldn't communicate with anyone, we didn't know where anything (namely the bus station) was, and we had no Chinese money. Dumb luck found us stumbling in the right direction. A man behind a counter in a shop that said 'toursitcal world' used Google Translate to tell us where the international ATM and bus station were. If you have never used Google Translate- check it out. You just type what you want to say into one box and your message comes up instantly in the adjacent box! It will even read it out loud for you, if you ask nicely. Google translate can even translate full websites with the click of a button!

We finally got to the bus station, money in hand, ready to go, only to find out that we had missed the bus by half an hour. There was one English speaking guy at the whole station though, and he was nice enough to tell us that we could take the bus a couple hours to the big city north of Hekou (where we were) and from there we could catch a connecting bus to Xinjie in the Yuanyang Rice Terraces. It sounded relatively easy, only one connection, and our guidebook had the Chinese characters written beside the names of the cities so we could just show the characters to the ticket lady- and voila- we would be in Xinjie, enjoying the view for dinner. These Yuanyang Rice Terraces were pretty famous, so, really, how hard could it be? What could go wrong?

Lesson #1- There is more than one town in the one hundred kilometer radius called 'Xinjie.'

So, we get on the bus, with our expensive ticket, all proud that we have managed to get this far avoiding disaster. The highway is smooth and an amazing engineering feat, passing through tunnels that burrow kilometres though mountains, along cliffs and over towering bridges. Along the way we see an exit sign for 'Xinjie.' We pass it. We figure that Xinjie, being way up in the rice terraces, must be in that direction, but this bus is an express bus to the major city and we have to catch a smaller bus from there. Makes sense. The city were we were to change buses was 80km past this 'Xinjie' exit. Oh well, as long as we got there. There was even a nice young boy on the bus that said 'Welcome to China!' It was going well. When we get off the bus, a mere three hours later we show the characters for 'Xinjie' to the bus driver to see if he can point us in the right direction and are met with confused looks, a growing crowd of concerned citizens and a whole lot of distressed sounding conversation. A man is trying to tell us something in Chinese. When we obviously aren't understanding he writes the characters down on his hand for us. Because maybe we don't speak Mandarin, but we can read it. Precious time is passing, so we thank them and head inside to the ticket counter. We show the lady 'Xinjie' and the Chinese characters beside the city. She prints the ticket for the next bus leaving in less than five minutes. We rush to the bathroom and hop on the bus as it is pulling out. Easy peasy. We start heading back over those eighty kilometers we had passed since the exit sign. Jonathan falls asleep. I dose off. A man at the front of the bus is yelling something. It kinda sounds like 'Xinjie' but I'm not really paying attention because he's yelling in Mandarin. And, I don't speak Mandarin. Even if he is saying 'Xinjie' I'm sure the bus will stop there anyways, so I don't think I really need to respond. Jonathan is snoring. We pass the sign for Xinjie. I start to panic. I show my ticket to the lady beside me. She points to the passing sign. Why aren't we stopping? Nope, we definitely aren't stopping. I run to the front of the bus and show my ticket to the driver as the exit gets smaller and smaller behind us. He starts yelling at me in Chinese. I don't know what he's saying exactly, but I get the distinct feeling that we won't be making it to xinjie today. It didn't even really make sense though. How could Xinjie be just a stop off on the way between these two cities? From what I understood, it was up in the mountainous rice terraces- far, far from the city.

Where do we end up? Back in Hekou. We have done a loop. We are now out about $30, we have spent almost six hours on the bus and we have gotten absolutely no where. We are super annoyed, frusterated and exhausted. 'We missed our stop,' I tell the English speaker back at the bus station. He looks at our tickets. 'Wrong Xinjie' he says. What?! We had a ticket to the wrong friggin Xinjie? Yup. And now the bus driver wants us to pay more money because he brought us all the way back to Hekou and didn't drop us at the wrong Xinjie. Er. Not a chance.
Its now evening, so we find a guesthouse for the night and vow to make it to those darn rice terraces on the 'direct' bus the next morning.

Now we just need some food. Easier said than done. First, we try using our Mandarin language book to ask at a few restaurants if they serve vegetarian food. This, apparently, was not the way to go. The very idea that someone would eat a meal without meat seemed to be offensive. We were waved away, shooed, ignored, and if we were lucky enough for someone to actually look at us, it was a glare. No one had a menu at all, let alone one in English. None of the dishes listed on their walls were in our food dictionary. Finally we decided just to pick a place and see what happened. We went to an open air 'restaurant', really a stall surrounded by short tables and stubby stools. 'Menu?' we asked. We were shown to a large fridge with a glass door and a long table covered in numerous bowls of raw meat. This was the menu. You pointed to what you wanted. In the corner was a tiny bowl of tofu. Really, we just wanted some veggies, but the only green on the table were herbs. We pointed at the tofu. But, I didn't just want tofu on a plate. That would be gross. I looked around to the diners tables to scope out what other people were chowing down on. There was a tasty looking dish with onions and chillis and pork. 'That,' I said, pointing to the dish, with 'that' I continued, pointing to the tofu. It seemed perfectly obvious to me. The dish with the smattering of veggies, made with tofu. Easy. I was starving. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. Jonathan, irritatingly, wasn't hungry at all.

First we were each brought a package with a tiny plate, bowl, cup and chopsticks all plastic wrapped together, and sealed- for the environment's sake. I wasted no time ripping mine open- it was a novel idea. A personal set of dishes all wrapped up just for me. Well, it was novel until we got the bill and realized that we were charged for using the dishes! What kind of restaurant is this, where you don't even get to use the dishes for free! How ridiculous! Anyways, next came a bowl of rice. Good. Then, finally, the main course, the exact dish I pointed to, the one heaping with pork was delivered. Sigh. It took about 10 minutes further to get anyone's attention. When the young man who had taken our order finally strolled over we tried to explain to him, in Mandarin, again, that we were vegetarian and submitted to the idea of settling on a plate of tofu. 'Tofu, tofu.' It was agreed on. He was annoyed. Our order was followed by a long interlude of mocking where by the server loudly and obviously complained to the entire restaurant about us. I was so hungry and frustrated that at that point I really didn't care what I ate. If I had been thinking clearly, and not so overwhelmed, I would have just ate the rice and called it a night. The 'tofu' dish came. It was a plate of bacon. Literally. Just bacon. In an inch of oil. I was so, so, so frustrated. I couldn't help it. Tears started to sting the corner of my eyes. We were surrounded by food and couldn't find anything to eat. We couldn't communicate even the simplest thoughts. We couldn't even buy a bus ticket. And it was day one. How were we going to survive the week, let a lone the month, let alone three in this meat-obsessed country!

We paid for our untouched food and left. Across the street was a fast food joint that had big, glossy pictures of the fried dishes it offered. Burgers and fries type food. There was a picture of a rather tasty looking pizza. And a cob of corn. They love their corn. I wasn't picturing my first meal in China to be pizza from a fast food place, but times were desperate. We were pretty sure the pizza was pork free. I ordered it. It took exactly three minutes to cook. I know this because I could see the timer on the microwave they cooked it in. It was soggy and gross. I wasn't hungry anymore anyways. We went back to the guesthouse and fell asleep vowing to give China a fresh shot in the morning.

Everything seemed better in the fresh light of the fresh following day. We bought a pineapple and mango from a stand and they cut them up for us to eat for breakfast. We got on the correct bus to the correct Xinjie and it left right on time. Despite our rocky start we were determined to keep our hopes high for China. Since that first day, we really haven't been disappointed. Sure, the tourist structure for non-Chinese tourists is almost completely lacking, but generally people have been very friendly and helpful- even though communication is a huge barrier. We were originally thinking that Yunnan would be reminiscent of South East Asia. We were 100% completely wrong. China is unique in almost every aspect.

Our nine hour bus ride up to the Xinjie was long. Very long. The scenery was superb, however, and it was a real 'slice of life' type of experience. The bus stopped along the way, loaded up on boxes of mangoes and bananas which were deposited at various stalls along the way, the ticket man/conductor/boss (there is always a driver and a conducter on the bus) kept everyone laughing the whole time. We picked up sassy Chinese women, decked out in heels and silk scarves, despite being 'exactly in the middle of no where,' who teased the men and spent long periods watching themselves in their handy compact mirrors. We stopped to wash the bus no less than three times. We stopped for gas. We stopped at numerous police check points. It was not the express, smooth highway we had been on the day before. It was more of the back, dusty, bumpy, cracked, crumbly variety. We took that as a sign that maybe we were going to end up in the right place this time.

We arrived in 'Xinjie' -the wrong one first, and shook our heads. It was less than a one yak town. It was probably a good thing that we hadn't ended up here for the night anyhow. Speaking of 'Xinjie-the wrong one,' it turns out that we aren't the only travellers who have been led astray by this naming conundrum. We heard from our friends Joel and Sonia that they had paid a significant sum for a taxi to bring them to 'Xinjie- the right one,' but instead had been delivered to 'Xinjie- the wrong one.' Unfortunately for them, being such a confusing ordeal, they realized minutes too late that there weren't in fact in 'Xinjie- the right one,' and the taxi driver made out like a bandit. Makes you wonder if they co-named 'Xinjie' for such purposes.

In wrong Xinjie, there was a police check point. A police checkpoint is most often a little shack on the side of the road manned by incredibly young looking police officers who sit behind a little wooden desk intently writing in a big, thick notebook. A police officer boards the bus and quickly glances at ID cards of the passengers. Foreigners hand over their passports which are taken off the bus and over to the policeman behind the desk who dutifully copies what must be the entire passport worth of information, considering how long the process takes.

In Xinjie an adorably cute young officer with a wide smile and shiny eyes boarded our bus. 'Welcome to China!' he said to us. It was the third time we had been 'welcomed' in 24 hours and the thought didn't go un-appreciated. He took our passports for the regular check. When he brought them back, he was smiling again, and seemed genuinely happy that we were there. 'Have a good China,' he declared proudly. I gazed back at him, batting my eyelashes and smiling dreamily. He was just so cute. Beside me Jonathan sighed loudly and rolled his eyes in my direction as he reached past me to retrieve the passports that Officer Adorable was holding out patiently, waiting for me to claim. 'Don't mind her,' my husband quipped.

As he disembarked the bus my officer's brilliant smile fell from his face. Himself along with two fellow stone faced comrades squared their shoulders and stood perfectly still and straight, saluting our bus. I took advantage of the fact that our ancient bus took a good sixty seconds to gurgle, spurt and lurch back to life. I spent the first thirty seconds smiling widely at them. Then, when that got me no where, I resorted to making funny faces, trying my darnedest to make any one of them crack a smile. Like the guards at Buckingham Palace, their faces remained straight as an arrow. Just as we were pulling away I noticed the smallest twitch in the corner of Officer Adorable's mouth. I considered it a grand success. How utterly charming... uh...I mean serious, professional and authoritative...

We arrived in Xinjie proper, extremely happy with ourselves for finally making it. We were even overjoyed that and over zealous hotel tout was waiting for us upon arrival to whisk us away to her guesthouse in a minivan. It didn't even (really) bother us that she didn't even wait until we had gotten off the bus to 'wow' us with her business card. 'Belinda' cut to the chase and jumped on the bus and ran down the aisle to get to us. All the better. At least we wouldn't get lost. Things were looking up. China was going to be great.



Chinglish Lesson #1-
A sign posted at the base of an escalator in a department store:
'Guardians MUST accompany oldies and children on the lift.'

On our menu this week:
'Fried breast milk'
'Fried Friends'

Alive in Lao

One thing that has eluded us thus far in Asia is the time-distance ratio. Just how long is it going to take to get from here to there, there to here. One never can say for certain. We were in Mae Saelong, in Thailand and were hoping to cross the Laos border and then make it a few hours north up to Luang NamTha that same day. We really had no idea if it was possible or not. I suppose it's just all part of the adventure. Can you imagine me (especially) living like this at home? Who knows where we will sleep tonight? Somewhere between here and there...

Mae Saelong has been one of our favourite Thai destinations. The town runs along the spine of a mountain; just a hop, skip and jump from the Chinese border. In fact, Chinese is more readily heard spoken on the streets than Thai. Being in a village on the spine of a mountain is spectacular. On either side of the road the land gives way to steep slopes now mostly lined with tea plants. Every which way you look you see lovely lush hills in the foreground and the distant majestic mountains of Burma or China in the background. Houses, shops and restaurants cling to the edge of the mountain, rooted in the rock on the one side and supported by bamboo stilts on the other. Every house has a breathtaking view. The downside of being on the spine of a mountain is the getting there. Hair pin turns switch back and forth, back and forth, up, up, up the terrifying, yet beautiful mountain range. Once you're at the top, there's no where to go but down. Really down. Down, down down. This thought doesn't seem to even enter the minds of locals as they fly down the streets helmet-less on their motorbikes (see our Flickr photos on the right).

Anyways, that's where our adventure to Laos began. With an early morning, ninety minute songtheaw ride back down through the mountains with a old lady who spit out the window every thirty seconds and a couple of babies who stared at Jonathan's beard like it was about to jump off his face and attack them. (Although, really, who knows whats living up there in that crazy facial bush these days). The songtheaw pulled up alongside another songtheaw in a backstreet village and our bags were hoisted from one roof to another and we switched to another songtheaw for the duration of our journey to Chiang Rai. From Chiang Rai we hopped a bus to Chang Khong, on the Laos border. We were dropped off on the side of the street, conveniently in front of the tuk tuk hang out so that we could pay them a bit to drive us further down the street to where the tiny eight-seater long tail boats waited to take us across the river to Laos. Really, the bus could have dropped us off at the end of the street next to the boat pier, but then what would all these tuk tuk drivers have to do all day? We paid the boat guy far too much to take us for a sixty second jaunt across the river where we then waded through the mud to get to the landing.

There was a sign that said 'Check In' up the hill from the boat ramp, and so we assumed that that might be a good place to stop and maybe have a chat with Laos Immigration. Who knew though, really. Tourists were walking about lost for direction practically bumping into each other as they tracked in circles. There was absolutely no direction. Somehow we ended up with paperwork to fill out and then we stood in front of the window that said 'visa fee' as opposed to the 'check in,' 'check out,' or 'only official money exchange' sign, which were the other options. The officers stared back at us from behind the glass. So we stood there some more. Then someone came out and took our papers, passport and photo and stomped back into the office slamming the door behind him. We inched closer to the glass window. The Officers were doing their best to avoid any eye contact. Now what? We wondered. So I asked. 'Now what?' I asked politely, sticking my face up to the minscule hole just wide enough to slide our passports. 'Five minutes,' the Officer barked. And then he sat there, with the
pile of our passports beside him and continued to count his wad of American money. (The visa fee is charged in USD, but they take Thai Baht too, if you really want to be ripped off.) First, he spread it out into piles, separating the tens from twenties and fifties. Then he piled them all back up again. Then, for what appeared to be sheer entertainment, he divided the bills into piles again. Then he wadded the bills, arranged them into origami shapes, and put elastics around them. Then he took the elastics off and rearranged them again. Wash, rinse, repeat. When we got bored of that show, we turned our attention to the 'VISA FEE' paper that had been taped to the wall. We were shocked to find that Canadians pay the absolute highest fee for a Laos visa. $44 USD! Most European countries were $30USD and the United States was $37. If you were from Cuba or China you got a super deal at only $20 USD. Even citizens of Afghanistan could get a Laos visa cheaper than Canadians. What exactly had Canada done to anger Laos Immigration to this extent, I wondered. Someone should get to the bottom of this. Perhaps, next time we are on Skype we will take a second to ring up Mr. Harper and request that he pen a letter offering Canada's sincerest, deepest apologies to Laos, for whatever our wrong-doings may have been, and send it off straight away. Oh, and would he mind sending our $28 refund cheque to....

We figured our 'five' minute wait was up when someone called 'Visa Fee!' through the passport slot and wagged our passports at us like we were dogs being offered a bone. 'Why is Canada so much?' I asked the Officer forking over our US dollars. He looked at me like I had just asked him to solve the problem 527 x 7237502750 (it equals 3,814,163,949,250) and shook his head. 'Ahhh so it's super classified information!' I nodded, putting a finger aside my nose, 'Don't worry, your secret is safe with me!' He smiled. He had no idea what I was talking about. But it didn't really matter. We had Laos visas and a thirty-day entry stamp. All was good. We barely even got down the steps from the 'Check In' Office when we passed a Tiki Bar looking set up with a handwritten sign that said 'Passport Check.' The bartender/Officer took a quick glance at our passports and waved us up the road. Nice.

It was mid afternoon by this point and it was hot. We arranged a mini bus to NamTha at the first ticket agency we came to and spent a couple hours exchanging our Thai Baht for Laos Kip and eating lunch while we waited for our bus. The bus was meant to arrive at 4pm and we would be in Luang NamTha three hours later. We were counting on it to be on time, because we knew the road up to NamTha was windy and we didn't want to be driving it at night. Doing anything in Asia at night other than sleeping in a safe, comfortable (and on land) guest house isn't high on our priority list. Driving on these crazy roads with these crazy drivers at night is actually in the Top Five of our 'Things to Avoid at All Costs,' list. You can imagine how happy we were then when our minibus arrived at about 3:50pm. And you can also imagine our growing annoyance when that same mini bus drove away to get 'fuel' and then didn't return for another hour. So close. We knew then, that even if the bus did in fact take three hours, which was highly unlikely, that we would still be on the road, winding around the hairpin turns in the dark. We said a prayer and threw our luggage up onto the roof.

'Do you notice anything different?' Jonathan asked me. I looked around. Kamikaze motorbikers, rusty local buses, rickety tuk tuks. 'Ummm. No?' 'We're back on the right side of the road!' Wow. He was right. So weird. We had been on the left side for so many months, and now in little landlocked Laos, they decided to drive on the right hand side! That must make land border crossings quite interesting... Maybe saying that we were driving on the right side of the road would be a bit of a stretch. In actual fact, we were swerving back and forth across the road to which ever stretch of pavement the driver deemed more favourable. It also wouldn't be a stretch to say we had an 'ambidexturous' driver who spent just as much time on the left side of the road as he did on the right. So far, we liked Laos.

'Whoa! What's this?' Jonathan asked pulling a long sturdy piece of material out from under his bottom. 'Hmmm. I have no idea!' I said, studying the metal clip at the end of it. We burst out laughing, like we were the funniest people this side of 'Just For Laughs.' It was a seat belt. We hadn't seen a seat belt since out plane landed in Singapore and we found it pretty entertaining to find one on this ancient mini bus. We buckled up. 'Safety First!' That's our motto.

We weren't even on the outskirts of the city and our driver was already concentrating intensely on the obstacle course of cows, water buffalo, piglets, dogs, cats, children and people's houses that kept popping out in front of us like a line of nasty jack-in-the-box. What? You've never seen a house 'pop out of no where?' Believe me. It happens. It must walk out on its stilts or something. Our guidebook said that the road improvements between the border and NamTha had made the journey significantly more enjoyable that it previously had been. The condition of the road solidly pointed to the conclusion that the guidebook authors had imbibed in some local Lao Lao (rice whisky) when penning these notes. Either that or the 'road' was previously a jungle trench, filled with monkey poo and lined with yet-to-be-detonated UXOs. Because that's the only way that this road would be an improvement to anything. If we were in NamTha in three hours, I would eat my hat. Beside me, Jonathan comforted Jimmy the Rice Hat, telling him that he would protect him in the event that a hat would, in fact, have to be consumed.

I was cursing the Lonely Planet (which is a daily event anyways) when the road magically transformed into pavement smoother than a baby's bottom. The saying 'Be Careful What You Wish For' popped into my head. As soon as the road evened out our driver morphed into Mario Andretti playing a racing video game. It must have been a game, because there is no way anyone in real life, with real 'live' people as passengers would drive like this. Because you come very close to feeling like you are going to die. And generally I wouldn't pay money for that sort of thrill. He took the ninety degree turns at the perfect speed to get up on two wheels at every possible opportunity. The curves were so tight that he had to use all his body weight to make the steering wheel turn. He was a little guy. I know this because I was sitting directly behind him and watched in fear as his torso would swing into the passenger seat when we turned right and practically out the window when we swerved left. Seriously: picture a little kid playing a car racing game.

Just as the last rays of light were sinking behind the mountains, the driver gave one last galiant effort to kill us before nightfall. We played chicken with an oncoming transport. Just for fun. I mean, the pavement WAS better on that side of the road. 'Don't worry,' Jonathan sighed, opening one eye after I disturbed his slumber with a panicked shake. 'That's why they gave us seat belts: in case the road is better on the wrong side. We'll be fine.' And we were. Note to Self: Try even harder to avoid the roads at night.