Community: Real Life

Stop and bribe


Taxi for two from Bangkok to Brighton? Ants Bolingbroke-Kent and Jo Huxter aim to cross 12 countries by tuk-tuk, and raise £50,000 for Mind.
Entry: 6
Date: 10/06/2006

If you see a sign saying 'stop' in Laos, stop. Or pay $12. And forget Uxomxai for your next holiday - it's an armpit, apparently.

Green Diamond Hotel, Meng La, China.

Ants writes...

Having conquered the worst stretch of Route 13 the day before, we set off with increased confidence in our new-found mountaineering skills. Udomxai was only 170 km away and we had been assured that the road was good. Slightly baffling was the fact that public buses take over four hours to cover this relatively short distance. Yet rather than making us suspicious of what lay ahead, we just put it down to the spluttering, bronchitic old buses and not the road conditions.

The first 100km flew by. I lounged in the back and admired the beautiful country slipping by while Jo skilfully navigated the road north. We'd practically be in Udomxai for lunch at this rate, I thought. Then things changed. The corners got sharper, the hills steeper and the potholes more prolific. And the road signs disappeared completely. As we rounded one particularly fearsome bend, we were met by huddled groups of people sitting in the road; monks, women, children, old men. Behind them was the bus that was supposed to be taking them to Vientiane, clinging to the edge of the mountain and miraculously suspended by a tangle of plants and trees. Only 20 minutes before, the driver had lost control on the corner and narrowly escaped killing all. Terrifying.

After stopping to see if everyone was ok and if there was anything we could do, we tukked off, driving even more carefully than before. In the end we didn't tuk into our destination until 4pm, over five hours after we had left Luang Prabang. In fact, we had covered 215km, and having had no lunch and little water we felt totally exhausted.

If you're ever contemplating a holiday to Udomxai, think again. It really is the armpit of Laos. It's a strange Chinese/Lao trading post, teeming with Chinese construction workers and half-finished buildings. Rain, bedbugs, a plague of mosquitoes and extreme tiredness followed by insomnia made for a wholly unpleasant night there. In more driving rain, we set off for the Chinese border this morning.

And we thought the roads yesterday were bad. As we drove the last 100km to Boten, I found myself thinking, incredulously, that this was Laos' main artery, the principle thoroughfare linking it with China and Thailand. Yet a few kilometres north of Uxomxai, the road almost disappeared altogether. It took us over four hours to reach Boten in conditions that would test even the most hardy 4 x 4.

"If you're ever contemplating a holiday to Udomxai, think again. It really is the armpit of Laos."

So here we are in China, in some random town 60 km north of the border. Jo and I were so flummoxed by the place that at supper we just gawped at the 'otherness' of it all. Thank goodness we've now got our Chinese guide, Sam (his English name), with us. Otherwise we'd get very confused and probably end up starving and very lost.

Jo writes...

It is hard to believe that this time two weeks ago, we were still in Bangkok. I think we are going to enjoy driving through China and our guide seems like quite a dude, although perhaps not as mischievous as we would like. Our supper this evening was nothing like what you get at your local Chinese in England, but it was tasty. Besides, since we had no time to eat all day, even a plate of cat food stir fry would have been appealing.

One thing that amused and frustrated me in equal measure today happened at the Laos border crossing. As we approached the exit to Laos, Ants pulled over next to a checkpoint, only to be told to drive backwards behind a line that we later realised said STOP. I was instructed to go to an office with a guard and all of our papers. He informed me that we had breached a rule as we had crossed a line that said STOP.

He informed me that we would have to pay $3 for each metre we had driven over the line. He estimated we had driven at least 10 metres, which was a gross exaggeration. I asked to see the regulation that we had broken written down, because it was obviously an attempt to get some money from us. He asked me if I spoke Laos, which of course I don't. So we had a small debate and I said we had not gone more than four metres over the line. He immediately decided that $12 would suffice. Naturally I asked for a receipt, which I received with our misdemeanor detailed in English. I think if we had not crossed the line he would have found some other way to extract money from us, but at the end of the day $12 is not a huge amount of money to us and probably very useful to him.

If I was a border guard I would probably have great fun making up rules to get money from tourists.


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