Hypertravel with Hardie #19: Laos and Southern China

#19 Lao/Yunnan xPhongsaly, Laos: at the end of a long lonely road... It may or may not be the 'end of the earth', but it definitely qualifies as the outback of Southeast Asia, for whatever that's worth, probably not much, so long as China keeps encroaching, as it surely will, not so long ago Vietnam probably the greater transgressor, with its oversized population, locked into such a narrow sliver of prime southeast Asian coastline, and punctuated by rivers, this the only country in the world, that I know of, that is self-defined by its water, i.e. 'nuoc Vietnam', Viet-water, as opposed to Thai-land, Ire-land, Green-land, or Switzer-land, for example (if you're familiar with Vietnamese fish-sauce, nuoc mam, then you might recognize that same word nuoc)... But that's Vietnam, and this is Laos, though you might not know it at the crossroads town of UdomXai, a town of literally no more than a few tens of thousands, but with buses heading to all the four corners, i.e. China, Vietnam, and Thailand, every neighboring state except Burma, Myanmar, and locals can even go from Phongsaly to Luang Namtha, one part of Laos to another, via China, would that this option were only open to foreigners, and you might have a resuscitation of the backpacker market in this region... Which has largely left China out of that equation, not that they'd even know or even care, given the swarms of their own locals that have largely taken over tourist sites once almost the exclusive private reserve of foreigners. But that won't likely happen any time soon, much less the 'Five Chiangs' concept, of somehow re-configuring that original Tai-land... ...proto-state, with one visa for it all, splayed now over four national territories and the upper Mekong River, same as it ever was: Chiang Rung, Xieng Tong (Luang Prabang), Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Kyaingtong, which failed to thrive until reconfigured as Lan Na and Lan Xang, long before the modern states of Thailand and Laos came into existence... And the hills of Phongsaly sit overlooking much of that. But first you have to get there, and the fact that the bus driver's helper hands out little plastic bags before the trip should give you a clue. Hint: the bags are not for trash. And so it goes, up and up and up, but not so high, really, just twisting and turning, past the non-descript little burgs of Boun Tai (lower) and Boun Neua (upper), where much of the modern infrastructure of government is being relocated, apparently, as Phongsaly itself retreats further into the clouds... Confirmed upon arrival, the curly twirly road transforms into a curly twirly town, with no real center, much less a red light, or anything fancy like that, just a few key intersections holding place notation, for what constitutes the definition of a city, a place where roads meet and business is transacted, long before houses will be built and babies will be born, far less an entertainment district upon which to flail oneself and desires shamelessly... But the temps are cool, so this would be quite nice in the hot dry season March-May, while all the lowland dogs are dizzying with parched eyes ears nose and throat. And this is still the rainy season, too, though theoretically petering out, but I'm not so sure, as the third day grows torrential, and I'm worried about that patchwork road, and it's not so dirt cheap here, either, much less spectacular, the tribal peoples a bit dogged and tired-looking, a bit the worse for wear... So I leave after four nights, after a long 6-8km/4-5mi hike down down down a long country road and back back back the same way I came, Ban Chantane I believe was the name, calves now aching from the long uphill, and after torrential rains, and forecasting more of the same, figure I might better hoof on out of the woods while I still can, 'cause if that road washes out, then I'll be at the mercy of ditch diggers and tractor drivers, while all the fun is going on down below in the the green beautiful valleys... Ha! Luang Prabang, maybe, the pearl in Lao's oyster, but not UdomXai, just a hard-scrabble crossing, of roads and peoples, but that's okay, 'cause once it gets that groovy 'travel vibe', then it loses whatever authenticity it may once have had, but hard to calculate, because it's just too fluid and changing to measure with any accuracy, the comings and goings of peoples on landscapes, further confused by the dimension of time, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which makes it impossible to calculate position and momentum simultaneously... And sure enough it happened! We get stuck! Or almost, anyway, the bus unable to climb the muddy hill without sliding into the ditch. So it'll take a wench and a large tractor to get us back mobile, and on into UdomXai before nightfall, rooms at the ready, unlike the previous stop, some four days before, after midnight and all rooms full, just Mary Magdalene roaming the streets looking for something and I not about to be the one to tell her either yes or no... It's better this way, I recovering my travel legs after two months of four walls, steeling myself for the re-entry into China, m*therf*cking China, full of face and lacking in grace and as inevitable as it is unfathomable. And that is my fate. But there is no rush, so first I'll go to Luang Namtha and Muang Sing, the latter apparently fallen from grace since its heydays of the 90's, last time I was there, too, so we'll see... If nothing else, it'll be worth it for the Tai Dam peoples, one of my favorites, and the start of any serious discussion of Tai history and culture. After all I can speak this language, and that's the Holy Grail of travel, chatting up the locals, especially here and Thailand, where people are infinitely chattable. So that's what's for supper tomorrow. And what did you do today? Time-Travel: A Tale of Two Towns in the Laotian Outback... At age 64, and after 155 countries and more than forty years of travel, it's all time-travel now, going back to see something I once saw before, and seeing all the changes that time has wrought, rather than seeing it all virgin-like for the first time, like a gap-year giggly-mouthed googly-eyed greenhorn, that prototypical wide-mouth chin-dropping awe that inspires sales of toothpaste and fashion, featuring credit cards and deodorant, dreams of midnights and long flights, and carrying prophylactics, just in case... But it's all different now. What was once exotic is now just chaotic, and International Standard Pidgin English ensures that you're not likely to miss a meal, unless you really want to. Hard-core travel cowboys consume geography like chocolate cake on Sunday, apps logging miles and journals logging impressions, with an index, and a table of contents, and an itinerary to be followed.... But once upon a time the mark of a true backpacker was his ability to get lost, and find the remotest track to the remotest border crossing in the remotest neck of the remotest woods of the remotest God-forsaken country, with a pristine people and a pristine attitude and a pristine culture, just so that we can change all that, in exchange for some sustenance in the form of a few crusty loaves and a pocket-full of tissues... But most travelers now it seems just want to party, the more the better, vast quantities of alcohol to help ease the transition into a once-foreign culture, locals reduced to extras in their own movie, culture and language just a sideshow for evening entertainment, to hold ones interest between the main acts of daily sightseeing and nightly binge-drinking... But before all this there was pot, grass, weed, joints, spliffs, reefer, marijuana, whatever, you smoke it and it gets you high, or so I hear. And for the really adventurous there was even opium, vestige of the old days here in outback Asia, religion of the masses back when not much else was available, and cash crop for many when the market got excited about heroes and heroin back in the late 20th century flowering of youth culture, and related fashion accessories... And that's where Muang Sing fit right in, a few years before Y2K (remember that?), as Laos re-entered the world after its aborted Communist nightmare, and travelers rushed in to enjoy cheap rooms, cheap highs and all the Lao beer one could drink. So when I stumbled in to Luang Nam Tha around '97-'98 from China, that's where all the travelers were heading, Muang Sing, a couple hours away, and nestled up against a Chinese border crossing that foreigners weren't allowed to use, still aren't... There were hill-tribe peoples there galore, and revolution in the air, Laos still proudly Communist, even if dependent on a helping hand from distant cousin Vietnam, while capitalist big brother Thailand stayed far in the background. I was buying crafts, and they were making them, so plenty of reason to hang around, just to see if something might make a splash in the market... And when I came back around 2002 it was even better, Tai Dam people coming in to the area from over-crowded Vietnam, and inviting me in to their houses, just as if I were one of them, ostensibly to look at crafts, maybe even buy, but no big deal, just chill with or without a deal. And Lao people from all over were coming in, too, just to catch the buzz, and hopefully make a few bucks... Back then Luang Nam Tha was just a stopover on the way there, nothing much to see or do, a provincial government center, and not much else, first stopover on the way in from Yunnan province, China, or connection point up from Huay Xai and Chiang Khong, Thailand, down on the Mekong, all secondary to the main tourist business a day away in Luang Prabang, and another day to the capital Vientiane... But that's all changed. For some reason Muang Sing has dried up, while Luang Nam Tha has made steady gains, if no big deal, but still steady. All the major latter-day-hippie trade in tricks and treats has moved far south to Vang Vieng, between Luang Prabang and Vientiane, and even farther south to the 4000 Islands, near Cambodia... There's little or no indie travel to China here now, even though the road from Thailand is now good, but the travel scene in China has largely dried up, too, for indie travel foreigners, that is, not the Chinese hordes, who have largely repopulated the groovy destinations that backpackers once put on the travel map. Meanwhile the travel scene that barely existed in Cambodia in 1997 is now near saturation, between foreign indies and those same Chinese hordes... And it's impossible not to compare with another prime location some twenty years ago, already written up in these pages a few posts back, i.e. Yangshuo, China, which is now totally overrun by the aforementioned hordes, to the extent that it is now imminently avoidable, and hopefully forgettable, as I struggle to erase it from my short-term memory before it writes itself into long-term. This is the extreme opposite of what has happened in Muang Sing, and honestly, I don't know which is worse, uh-huh. I persevere... YUNNAN 828 Leaving Laos, Enter the Dragon... So the nice lady at the Boten-Mohan border between Laos and China in the far Southwest decided to hassle me about my latest entry into the Kingdom—my fourth over the past year—inquiring as to my motives. “Tourism,” I respond, just like it says on the form. But that doesn't seem to satisfy her. “Sight-seeing,” I add, since I know I'd seen that word on the form, also. I have a ten-year tourist visa, BTW, so 3650 days, plus two or three for leap years, maximum 60 days per entry, so some 600 entries possible (but who's counting?)... Then she asks, in English, if I speak Chinese, so I shrug and respond, “a little.” That's what she wants to hear, I figure. If she wanted to speak Chinese, she'd've asked in Chinese. So she fumes and fusses and calls someone over, who quickly green-lights the entry, but just for a final 'f*ck-you' she holds my passport up to my face as I pass, as if to verify my identity. The passport and picture are less than a year old, so not much has changed, but that's not the point, is it? xTai Bizarro World in China? If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear that on some cosmic drafting table in some corner of the universe there is a blueprint for the Tai diaspora out of China from a couple thousand years ago, or maybe outta' North Vietnam in half that, in which the northern and southern flanks of this proto-Tai state are laid out on either side of what would become Laos like a mirror image of each other, in which the northern Tai towns of Jinghong (Chieng Rung), Mengla, and Mohan (Bor Han) would become Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Mae Sai, respectively... And it will take me a cool year or two to become fluent in Mandarin, no matter how hard it try. So Mengla has been my makeshift home for the last three weeks, while I finish my current term for online studies, and plot my next move. Frankly I really don't want to travel much in mainland China, due to the difficulties of indie travel there, here, mostly in the booking of rooms, but that is not so much of a problem here. I've been at the same place for three weeks and never even registered! That would be unthinkable elsewhere, where foreigners are often not even allowed, especially in the cheaper digs, and always thoroughly registered, complete with color glossy photos or at least smartphone pics. Remember that in case you need to 'lay low' somewhere sometime. But don't expect a 'travel vibe' here, as I have yet to see another western soul the whole time. I'm sure Jinghong has more, but not much... The bloom is off the rose in China, and rightfully so, as it ain't so cheap any more, and the hassles are endless. But that's next stop. Fortunately in this neck of the woods cheapie hotels are ubiquitous and not hard to find, so kinda' like the old days where you get off the bus and just start walking, Lonely Planet optional. Forget the booking sites, except for reference, or just to book the first night and then take it from there... Jinghong is perfect, so similar to my erstwhile digs in north Thailand, that they almost share the same language, if you care to take the time to learn it. And no I'm not talking about the lingua franca of Chinese, but the original Tai Lue dialect, so similar to northern Thailand's kam meuang... But these Tai ladies still wear the traditional rags, so as to distinguish themselves from the predominant Chinese, I suppose, something you'd only see in northern Thailand in such out-of-the-way villes as Pai or Mae Sot, where a northern Thai majority is not assured, and so becomes a matter of pride, similar to the African dress of Trinidadians, where a black majority of the population may or may not exist, and where such clothing doesn't exist elsewhere in the Caribbean where blacks indeed do have the majority... But Jinghong resembles Chiang Mai more than Chiang Rai, if only for the larger population and greater stategic importance, even if Jinghong is much more attractive, really, with its tree-lined streets, of mostly palm, something any place in Thailand could only dream of, that and clear clean sidewalks, which you do have to share with the occasional motorbike, unfortunately, but still... So my new project now is to learn the Tai Lue alphabet, so as to learn the Tai Lue language, half of which I know already, but I just don't know which half, and to learn Chinese characters, also, except in the case where I already know the Chinese character, so compare it to the Tai Lue script, to see if I'm right or if I'm wrong, or if it's a phonetic transcription of the Chinese character, or a definition thereof, or if by luck there's some Latin letters, too, then I'm in alpha beta heaven, no quibble between us where there's no stones to be thrown, Rosetta stone, that is... And so for kicks I go to the nearby town of Menghai, which apparently hasn't seen a foreign Westerner in many many years, judging by their reaction to me, ranging from fear, to endearment, to outright befuddlement, but the city's no beauty, and the altitude guarantees a chill, so I put it on the back burner for the hot season, just in case I have no other way to beat the heat... And that’s just about a wrap, for me, at least, with probably six months in China over the previous two years and with most of that in Yunnan, including the Tai far south and the Tibetan far north, in addition to Sichuan to the direct east and Guangxi and Guangzhou to the far southeast, all the way to Hong Kong. Still my favorite day was in the Xishuangbanna town of Mengla, already mentioned, when and where I was invited to attend a wedding celebration between two local Tai youths tying knots and what-not while I watched as Buddhist monks presided over the ceremonies and I spoke Tai Lue as best I could with the peeps, the final swirl to the linguistic dressing of Tai dialects that I’ve been rehearsing over my many years there. The same is true for the Kingdom of Laos. There isn’t time or space nor easily available pictures to rehash it all here, but much , if not all is available on my Backpackers/Flashpackers blog on Wordpress. There won’t be many more video episodes of Hypertravel with Hardie for better or worse, but i can put it all in book format, if the demand exists. Please like and subscribe.