Flying over Hanoi, a journey back to Bangkok

Planes in the sky

Just a little note about flying 

The plane climbs steeply in to the sky and my ears try to pop under the pressure. They're struggling after THAT drift dive three days ago and the air con that lodged the water stuck in my canal in to some kind of horrid solid. The strain makes my eyes bulge.

Da Nang this morning disappeared among the sidelining mountains and left the beach at it's side. Now, Underneath me the City of Hanoi runs away to the sea.

As the plane banks sharply to turn towards Bangkok a huge cumulonimbus cloud threatens the city below. Towered, whipped and peaking up and up, our flying partner warns us, not this way. An electrical storm waiting to pour on the north of Vietnam? We skirt around it heeding the warning thankfully.
A flat wind-rushed cloud partners the multi storey storm and I wish I knew anything about weather patterns. That one looked amazing, an audible 'wow' escapes my lips. Although I'm not sure how audible, because my hearing is impaired from my blocked ear canals.

We've really got so high now, another plane several hundred feet below appears like a toy rolling towards Hanoi. And the red river winds a long the floor of Vietnam. Now I. Know why it's called the red river, it is literally red! Perhaps by way of the silt below. But all the time the colour adding to the drama of Vietnam and it's history.

The City below gives way quickly to flat green landscape, which gives way quicker to jagged forested mountains, that from beneath look like the knuckles of a giant. As you look further out they rise up and up, mixing with patches of cloud, until the mist filled sky hides their beginnings and you just can't tell where the two might meet.

Patches and wisps of white cloud mix with Asian pollution hazes, which although unpoetic and harmful still create a sense of mystery about this continent. We quickly get over Laos and ride through a great rain cloud, the rain falling towards the ground, we stick inside the creamy precipitation. I am back in Austria, blindly working my way down the side of the Tyrol, promises of strudel and gluhwein, and memories of swooshing and skimming over pillowy powder.

I love flying.

 There's the promise of what's to come, the nostalgia of where you've been, the gift wrapped partitioned food, which no matter whether it's good or not, is always going to elicit either a satisfied or amused smile (unless you're just totally joyless). There's also the free alcohol and remaining few people who still treat it like an occasion, looking the finest they can wedged in to a seat the designer meant for people with no blood circulation whatsoever. God love em!


Red dirt, green fields, towns, blue seas, all manner of cliches pass my window as we're not so high as to prevent me from gazing out at them. If I was a dog in a car, you know where I'm going with this sentence. It woud be great to be able to stick my head out of the window of the aeroplane, but natural physics such as either being sucked out or having my head whipped off my shoulders from the g-force, so alas that remains a dream.

I must be a traveler, for I am always happiest in transit.

Driving around Laos Part 2

A Bus to Nong Kiaow

It seems that my experience of buses in Asia are permeated this time by characters and driving styles. From Chiang Mai to Pai the death bus rocked my world quite literally, where the driver insisted on veering at break neck speed around every sharp bend up the mountain path. The last bus from Luang Prabang was bumpy, slow and uncomfortably hot, ensuring a need for beer after.

This bus is special. 

Loud Chinese pop blasts out of the speakers and a Laos mother and her two children next to me softly vomit in to clear plastic bags. At first I feel sympathetic, mountain roads and a lack of experience in a winding, noisy, bumpy bus that smells of dog is surely a recipe for motion sickness. It's when the second hour of dramatic puking, after I’ve donated my water only to watch mother discard it on the floor, and a child somewhere up front begins a banal scream that I start to lose my patience. It's a bus not the death star! As if karma heard my unsympathetic thoughts I begin a little nausea trip myself. See how you like it Falang! It must be the Chinese pop music that to my western ears sounds a like a Laos’ entry to Euro-vision.

Finally, mother pats me lightly on the arm, signalling to move forward while holding up her bag of sicky goodies. Seriously?
Littering the road with not only an army of plastic bags but those also filled with your acidic human stomach sludge? Are there no bins where we're headed? I am now devoid of all sympathy.

So as the bus slows to a stop and mother rouses her sickly brood from their respite, I rejoice at their departure, while they carry their trail of destruction away with them. Peace prevails once more.

Nong Kiaow bridge

And when we arrive in Nong Kiaow, we realise that to see a place so beautiful, sometimes you have to suffer to be deserving of the view. Nong Kiaow is separated in two. One area for locals, the other seemingly built of guesthouses. We make our way across the bridge on foot to our designated Falang bungalow, and begin to drink in slowly, the view with a beer Lao on Laos time.

(Only a week later I would culminate my time here with a thirty hour bus journey from Vientiane to Hanoi, where all foreigners were sent to the back civil rights style, a French man dismantled the speakers, a Singaporean was burgled and I left the bus hopeful to never see another overnight bus again.)

Driving around Laos Part 1

Hmong Village, Luang Nam Tha

Bus to Luang Nam Tha, National Protected Area

The local bus takes us to Luang Nam Tha, sans air con but boasting sliding windows that have to be pushed back open after every jolt over the dirt road. The bus guide, wearing a yellow Laos football shirt, asks me about my book and tells me he wants to watch football. I wonder if he means on t.v. or in a stadium. I share my sugary fried coconut.

for half an hour in the stifling heat. It launches over potholes and my bum leaves the seat on several occasions, returning with a jolt to my coccyx. I feel that the fresher air, with the smells of wild flowers and mint is even more welcome than usual.

my

journey and not their own. Which is a topic of travel theory to be discussed another day.

Driving to Muang Sing

Selling eels, Muang Sing market

At 3.30am my alarm rings in to the deep dark, reminding us to dress warmly for the early morning trek through mountain roads bordering China. In convoy we set off out of Luang Nam Tha for the two hour journey to Muang Sing. The promise there is of hidden cultures, away from any Westernisation, where there are no routes for eighteen year olds searching for a drink in a car tire.

Up and up through darkness that relaxes in to mountain mist and morning dew we climb. Eventually we find our way to the market, a melting pot of Hmong, Akha and Black Thai women selling vegetables, home made clothing and eels that try to escape their plastic bowls. The freshest of fresh produce here.  

Noodle broth in pig pens, Muang Sing market

While visiting a beautiful waterfall, just outside of Muang Sing in the golden triangle, I am met with a scene from Stig of the Dump. As we walk to the falls a narrow trail stretches in front of us, leading us up the side of the river. Suddenly the sound of a log crashing through the trees falling behind us breaks our chatter and I look up to see forest debris tumbling after an unknown entity causing this wake of destruction.

“Oh my god is that a snake?!” exclaimed Ciara.
We look in unison at the river a few feet below. An enormous dark green python slithers off the rocks and in to the river.
“That nearly landed on my head”, came the nonchalant ponder.

 
At the waterfall we are greeted by a small, and dry-season-depleted, green rocky resting point.  Water splashes down in to a shallow pool creating a miniature cooling breath and the accompanying view of the golden triangle and it's mountains hold our imaginations. Until I look back to the waterfall and logs for a seat. White plastic food dishes, wrappers, torn chocolate cases and plastic bags litter and mar the scene. My heart sinks and I lose my patience at the rattan sack serving as a bin sits impotently next to the debris. These places will not last if they are not looked after and by the locals too. It doesn't take infrastructure to put rubbish in a bin. Taking matters in to my own hands I set about clearing the rubbish heap while my fellow travellers look on. 

A child hides behind her hands among the other many women at Muang Sing market