I hired a car to take me north for an hour where I could trek to a waterfall. I set off to the market to get some grub. It is but a ten minute walk and I had an hour to kill. By the time I had returned to my hotel the van had come and gone.
How did that happen? I walked the streets couldn’t find the side street, walked back to the the market and set off in each of four directions several times. By this time everything was a familiar site and I still wasn’t oriented. Finally I went to an internet cafe, looked up my hotel and printed off a map with my hotel marked by a flag. After a long time a printout in light grey appeared on the ink jet printer, only three of the streets had names printed on them (thanks, google maps).
I set out again and couldn’t find the only three streets on the map. Most of the streets don’t have street signs. Sweating in the sun, I finally hired a tuk tuk and gave the driver the map. He looked at it as though it was an MRI printout. He had no idea. He told me it would be 30,000 kip. I laughed and told him 10,000. You can figure things are at least three, probably four time the fair value. He accepted and drove around. He stopped and consulted with other tuk tuk drivers. Five guys looked at the map. They couldn’t even find our current location on the map. WTF? After another forty minutes I was delivered to Luang Prabang Botique Hotel. Same name, same key fobs for the room, same WIFI password, different hotel. They had no idea where my hotel was.
Presently the tuk tuk driver greeted a european fellow walking down the road. I hailed him and he told me he knew where the hotel was, just a five minute walk. five minutes later we in front of an enormous hotel with a completely different name. He took me to a small office, probably and accountant or lawyer. The bookshelves were filled with three inch binders with client names written on the spine many of the binders contained but a sheet or two. The proprietor spent half an hour printing off a map on a tired Brother ink jet printer, produced the map, couldn’t locate his office on the map, turned it over and drew a map. Ten minutes later I had a hand drawn map that indicated I had to walk three blocks, turn left and walk a block.
I have entered the Twilight Zone. Meanwhile I encountered dozens of people who had travelled with me for two days on a slow boat. None of them seemed to have any problem making their way around, from 19 year old girls from England to a couple of Australian women in their late sixties. I am seriously spatially challenged.
In my wanderings I decided that having a SIM in my phone would allow me to use google maps, so I bought a SIM and some prepaid time. An hour later after consulting with half a dozen other people the guy at the shop gave up. He had no idea what code to enter to enable 3G.
Restaurant, hotel, tour operators (trek, ride elephant, waterfalls, become a mahout (elephant trainer), white water rafting, Mhong (ethnic Chinese) village tours) and repeat. Only a programmer would nest parentheses. There is much to do in this town. Strange that one can eat to the point of near exploding for 10,000 kip, less than $1.50 and a bicycle is $15 a day. Motorbikes in Southeast Asia usually rent for $2 to $5 a day and bicycles less.
Ok, time for breakfast, rent a motorcycle book a tour for tomorrow, go motorbiking and get hopelessly lost today. Just setting goals I can easily accomplish.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur