We lurch to a sudden stop. For the third time in fifteen
minutes. We’ve barely left Laos’ sleepy capital, Vientiane. At each
stop, we pick up something different; another passenger, a few boxes of fruit
or several crates of flavoured milk. This time, the driver’s assistant brings a
large, brown box through the door and places it in the aisle near my feet. I can
hear scratching coming from the box. There is something alive in there? The petite
woman sitting across from me notices my alarm, grins and lifts one flap of the
box with her hand. It’s the chirping that surprises me first and then the two
dozen baby chicks scrambling over each other to find the light. The box is quickly
closed again by a flick of her foot.
Two friends and I are on our way to Thakhek, a town near the
centre of the country on the Mekong River. Our bus is run by a local company
and tickets are too reasonably priced. Some of the windows are without
glass.
Nobody’s complaining as there is no fan or air conditioner and the missing
panes provide much-needed airflow, when the bus is moving, that is.“Sabaidee! Sabaidee!
Hello! Hello!” the local children shout; all smiles and waves as we drive past
them, through tiny villages and herds of cattle, past rural clinics and countryside
schools.
After another while, we stop for the fourth time. Street
vendors hop on to ply their wares. There is an elderly woman selling ice-cold water
and baguettes stuffed with pork floss, meat pate and cucumber, a tiny taste of French
colonial influence. Another woman seems to be advertising some sort of natural
medicine to the men on the bus. None of the female passengers are offered her
product. A teenage girl is trying to get rid of her few sticks of chewing gum. The young man
sitting behind me buys two sticks and offers me a piece. I am struck by the incredibly
long nails on each of his ‘pinky’ fingers and the unnecessary kindness of his
gesture.
We are not the only foreigners on board. Near the rear of
the vehicle, sit four other backpackers. We all exchange concerned looks as the
smell of burning rubber wafts through the open windows. A rusty red tool box
appears from a side compartment near the front of the bus and the driver’s
assistant crawls under the bus. The humidity shows on our faces and the air is
thick with dust. It’s a long wait before we’re on the road again.
And it’s a short one before we stop once more. It appears to
be an emergency ablution break for our driver who hurriedly jumps down from his
seat, grabs the roll of toilet paper from the dashboard and heads into the bush.
My friends and I share what we hope is a discreet chuckle. No one else even moves.
The local passengers appear unfazed as we hurtle around hairpin bends
and swerve to miss potholes. Then, thud. Crunch. Something’s fallen from
underneath the bus. The truck behind us has ridden over it. We soon learn it’s
only a few boxes of banana milk and not our luggage. The undamaged cartons are swiftly
retrieved by the driver’s assistant and repacked inside the bus, the salvaged but
dented cartons passed out among the passengers and we are on our way again.
When next we come to a halt, it is with expectation, not disbelief,
that we watch two dust-covered scooters hoisted onto the roof of our bus. It’s
a smooth and polished system, this, albeit rather extraordinary in our eyes. The
trip from Laos’ capital city should take four hours at most, we were told.
We’ve been on the bus for over seven, my watch says. I remember the cardboard
box of baby chicks. They must be hungry and thirsty. The box is gone. The man
with the long fingernails is playing a game on his mobile phone and the sound
is turned up loud. We have no idea where we are and have lost count of the
number of stops. But no matter, we’ll soon be off again.
