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You are here: Home / Archives for headaches

Not exactly grandtheft auto

November 29, 2010 By Danny

“That’ll be $2,” we were told by the border agent. We asked for what and were told that it was the ‘holiday’ fee because it was a Sunday. Never mind that neither Cambodia nor Laos are Christian countries or that any such fee officially exists, this is the way this border is run and there is no choice given but to participate. Requests for receipts go unanswered as the border agent, wearing his undershirt, can’t even look you in the eye. The bus who arrived the next day, late because of mechanical difficulties, was charged $7 per person.

IMGP6421We arrived to Laos around dusk and were let off of our bus in the dark. Somehow we made our way to the island ‘paradise’ we were set to explore for the next few days. We found Don Det to be so wonderful that we couldn’t stand to wait to leave…so the next day around noon that’s what we did, and that’s when we started to have even more problems.

Once on the mainland I realized we’d left the cell phone behind and called for it to be sent over on the next boat. We’d left it behind at the agency who sold us our bus ticket and the agent still had it, identified it, and said I’d need to pay the boatman…to which I agreed. A few minutes later he called the person with us back and said it was ‘stolen’ in the 2 minutes he was on the phone with me.

Right. Not only was that @$$ probably talking to me while using our phone, but his accomplice, the man standing with me whose phone I was using, repeatedly asked me how much it was worth.

Next up. The bus was late. It should have arrived before 4pm. It didn’t arrive until nearly 9pm, about 5 hours late. Over that time, my friend the cell phone thief has had many beers. It is now very dark and we’ve been waiting on the side of the road for the bus for hours. Around 7pm he decides he is hungry and wants to put us all in his car and we’ll wait for the bus at the restaurant 3km up the road. He is drunk so we say no. He keeps trying. It is dark. I sneak around the side of the car and feel around for….yup….the keys are sitting right in the ignition. So I steal them. We’re not going anywhere.

Is that grand theft auto? Beats me!

IMGP0342I stay out of the ensuing argument, as I have the man’s car keys in my pocket. Somehow though, he realizes we’re not going anywhere and give up. Then decides to light a fire using rice stalks (fresh ones, ya’know, still green and filled with…water) and shake burning sticks at us as they go out. He is upset when we are unimpressed, you wouldn’t have been either. He was still drunk but as Winston Churchill might remark, in the morning he was still going to be stupid.

I ended up hiding the car keys right in front of the driver’s side tire. It was dark and they wouldn’t be seen until they were looked for. It was good I did this because as we were boarding our bus when it did finally come he came in our direction and started yelling and screaming about his car keys. I just told him he was drunk and he should go away. His friend quickly stopped him, we assume because he found the keys on the ground where I’d left them. He may have helped to steal our cell phone, but we got a good laugh at his expense.

IF YOU GO: On the Islands you will find nothing to do but sit in a hammock in a mosquito filled area. There are some waterfalls to look at (nice) and the river dolphins to see if you didn’t do so in Cambodia, but all this will only take you a day tops. When you decide its time to leave your mosquito and roach infested bungalow (cheap, but that is literally the only option) just take the VIP bus in the AM north, don’t take the afternoon bus that is coming from Cambodia.

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, Headline, Laos Tagged With: border crossing, headaches, robbery, transportation

Kratie: a journey not a destination

November 24, 2010 By Jillian

Some places are a real pain in the butt to get to. Of course if it’s a remote or rural location that’s one thing, but when its off the main highway of a country, well that is something else. Getting to Kratie was the beginning of what would be an epic journey for us. Over the next few days we endured broken down buses, blown out tires, drunk and belligerent tuk-tuk drivers, buses that were literally 5 hours late, and even a night bus that completely lacked headlights. But I’m ahead of myself.
IMGP6378
Kratie promised to be a little of a frontier town on the banks of the Mekong, with what the guidebooks describe as a charming colonial history. As any experienced traveler or travel blog reader at this point knows, reading between the lines of the guidebook, Kratie was sure to be an unimpressive location on the way to something else. We were enticed by the promise of Irawaddy River Dolphins, an extremely endangered species of dolphin that lives in deep pools of The Mekong River near Kratie. As luck would have it, the night before we left Siem Reap, Discovery Channel ran a program on the giant catfish and stingray of the Mekong River, and to our shock and amazement the host stopped in Kratie. High with hopes for dolphins, and perhaps something a bit ickier, we set off.

Dropped at the crossroads by our Siem Reap shuttle, we were piled into the back of a mini-bus (matatu, combi, dolmush, whatever you want to call it), relieved that the transfer actually showed up, we were still in a good mood a few minutes later when the driver pulled up to a commercial garage. With the roll up garage door opening, we were sure cargo was about to be loaded. Sure enough about 10 meters of thick blue plumbing pipe came out first. Rolled to a diameter of about a meter in a half, we laughed as the driver tried to shove it in the back. My sister, with her sarcastic sense of humor, laughed as random greasy boxes were loaded in the back. Biofuel. With little room left, we were sure the van was about to leave, but no, not yet, the driver could still see out the back window.IMGP0204 And that’s when we saw it. Piece by piece men from within the garage were taking out a full size table saw, with a crane. Yup, that baby was loaded in back with the plumbing lines, greasy boxes and backpacks. At some point a tricycle was shoved aboard an nearly an hour later, we set off.

It won’t surprise you to hear we got a flat tire. What may surprise you is that the driver actually had a spare, but lacked a jack. Jacking the car up on a tree branch he and another man changed the tire and we were off again…

The next day, in the back of a tuk-tuk with a driver named “Lucky”, we headed out of town to see the dolphins. With a price-back guarantee, our boatman took us out to the middle of the river and we waited. Finally the dolphins appeared and without much fanfare disappeared again as quickly as they came. The famous, if not a little bashful river dolphins, didn’t want to be an attraction.

IMGP0233On the way back into town our little group stopped at a monastery that Lucky had told us was holding a festival. Unfortunately he forgot some of the important details and we arrived about eight hours to early to a festival, one that we were certainly not invited. The monks were gracious however and we poked around the Monastery a little bit. Having our fill we were about to leave when an Australian who was part of our party asked if any of us spoke French. Rusty as it might be, my husband and sister volunteered my skills and we were off to a private area of the monastery where the monks were eating lunch. It turned out that several of the older nuns spoke rudimentary French and as I translated the Australian’s desire to meditate with them, the nuns asked numerous questions about us and our lives back home. Set against a backdrop of 5 Buddhist monks eating [meat] and nuns chanting it was a memorable experience. The entire group was as fascinated and interested in us as we were with them and our time past quickly.

If You Go: Transportation to Kratie is easy, but getting out, especially if you are going North can be a porblem. Try to arrange onward transport when you arrive. Most transprotation going north will be at least 2 hours late by the time it arrives in Kratie. The dolphin boat price is setby the government, and if you choose not to take the boat, they will try to make you pay the same prices just to sit on the landing.

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, Cambodia, Headline Tagged With: animals, headaches, transportation

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