had booked a trip to Luangprabong, Laos via slow boat after my tour of Chiang Ria. The van picked me up at 6:30 and transported me and two others to the border. I bought $35 in US money for my visa on arrival. The fee may be paid in Thai Baht or US dollars, Laotian currency is not accepted. I was quickly processed and we boarded a bus that took us to a transfer station. Next we were shuttled in the back of pickup trucks to the river.
On the shore were near a dozen 30 meter long, steel hulled boats with a three meter beam. Only one was departing that day and we took our seats. I sat next to a pleasant young man from Vancouver who was traveling the world, supporting himself as a SCUBA dive instructor. Across the aisle was a young couple from Barcelona. He was carrying a Nikon D-7100 camera with a ridiculously large 70-200mm x 77 mm telephoto lens. Sure, the aperture could be set to 2.8 at any point in the range, but that is a frigging bowling ball. We talked about photography. The Canadian and I talked about travels and diving.
The ride was long and boring. The shallow, fast moving muddy water was edged by green unpopulated hills. There was a complete absence of boat traffic and fishermen. Interesting, these waters harbor 300 kg catfish and enormous rays. In the Delta fish farming is a way of life. There was no activity here.
After seven hours on the river,I found myself on some outpost, halfway to our destination. The representatives of the lodges milled about with laminated flyers. The lodgings had little to differentiate them, private room, private bath, river view, fan only, 200 baht, about $7.
I chose one at random and was the only person to make that choice. Others packed into the back of enormous trucks. We were all shuttled up the hill. I put down my backpack, my daypack, filled with disk drives, cameras and lenses, my Mac Air and a giant linux notebook, checked in and put the bags in my room.
Famished I went out and had three meals. That may sound gluttonous, but the vast majority of the meals are rice and I skipped the rice, pure carbs and calories with little nutrition. I checked my emails and retired for the evening.
I woke up, grabbed my mac air and went down to the restaurant to check on my messages. I had a lot of coffee while waiting for my omelette which took just about forever. Come on, the boat leaves in an hour. Finally I went back to my room, showered again, changed my clothes and packed. WTF? Where is my linux development computer? I was gone yesterday for ninety minutes. I left my room, it was locked, returned and it was locked. Gone. Gone, gone, gone. The woman at the front desk told me I only had one computer. I distinctly remember putting with my other bags when I checked in and then carrying everything to my room.
The thing was a big heavy beast that I hadn’t been using and I have two full backups with me, but it would have been nice to grab that terabyte disk drive. The rest of the computer was pretty much shot due to exposure to high humidity.
Fortunately, thousands of dollars worth of cameras and all of my backups were undisturbed, on the bottom of a worn out and torn daypack that I intentionally use for its worn out appearance. I had left to dinner with my Mac Air.
This is nowhere near a tragedy, but it is annoying. I shall certainly have to get a good internet connection and store my critical software files on a server somewhere in the states. I can’t expect that years on the road won’t result in the loss of these drives one way or another, theft, flooding, an overturned boat. Maybe I should be grateful that I am not lugging that weight around. I have had some interest in my aerospace software lately, we shall see. Yeah, I shall do what I can to get this stuff on a couple of remote servers and then ship the drives to the US for safe keeping. Although they are encrypted, I have a guest operating system on my Mac Air that can read the disks.
I walked down the hill and passed the boat dock by a long distance, some woman on a motorbike figured I was dazed and confused and offered me a ride. I threw my leg over her seat, tore the crotch out of my pants, put my hands on her hips and she rode me down to the dock where the boat was departing in three minutes.
I now ride in a similar boat to yesterday on seats from a car of some sort, bolted to skids but not to the floor of the boat. The boat yesterday was packed, we could take another thirty today. I have no idea what is in that little outpost that would attract somebody. The only thing for sale to eat on this eight hour journey is Japanese Seaweed flavored potato chips.
Damn there are some pretty girls on this boat. Smiling, cheerful, bright eyed, thin with breasts that haven’t yet been pulled down by gravity. Spaniards, English, Canadian, and here I am looking like a flasher.
To be continued, let’s see what I can pull off of these backup drives without having my linux operating system in place.
When I got to the town of Luangprabang there was no haggling over tuk tuk rides, the fare was posted at 20,000 kip. I bought a ticket and walked over to the largest tuk tuk I have ever seen, a 125 cc bike with an enclose back with benches that seated six. A man took my bag, handed it to a guy who put it on the top and then he took my ticket. I was the last to board. One other of the 16 guys in green shirts came over to collect tickets. Every passenger aboard, all Laotian handed over a ticket. I explained that I had already given my ticket when they put my bag on top. They went in and asked the guy who sold tickets, to 80 people in five minutes if he recognized me. He had never even looked up when I bought the ticket. He said he had never seen me before and I would have to buy another ticket.
It’s only about $3 but after the computer theft it was not a heartwarming greeting to Laos. I found a cafe, pulled out my phone, did a quick search on Agoda, found a hotel and checked in. A short while later, the keys for guests who had left the hotel were sitting on the front desk, which was unattended. Great, three rooms with luggage and nobody in the room. I don’t care what they say, I am taking my key with me.
The WIFI didn’t work in the room so I checked my mail in the lobby. The hotel clerk told me he could get me a woman for only $40 an hour. Really? WTF? Ten minutes later a young Japanese woman came in and we went to the night market. I bought dinner for two with two bottles of water for 30,000 kip, less than $5. When we came back she embarrassingly said she had lost her room key, could she stay with me. Sure, I am a nice guy.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur