Entering Laos

We left Bangkok and rode up to the border with Laos. We spent a night there to recover from the harrowing drive. The next morning we went through the border crossing routine right on the shores of the Mekong river. The Mekong was really wide here and the water was flowing very fast. We had hired a small passenger ferry to carry us over to Laos with a couple of other local people along with us. There was only one man driving the boat and the passengers. We pulled away from the Thai side and fought the current of the mighty Mekong going upriver. As we were looking at Thailand recede and Laos get closer we heard gunshots from the banks. We looked at the driver and he was standing tall driving his boat like nothing was the matter. As more shots were fired we could hear them whizzing past and bouncing off the water with a strange high pitched noise. We instinctively ducked down but our driver ignored the shots ringing out at us. Finally I asked him why he wasn't reacting to the shots that were coming so close to us. His reply was simple. "There is nothing to be afraid of. If they wanted to hit us we would be dead already. They aren't trying to hit us they are just letting us know that they are there with these warning shots." It amazed me how calm he was about it but he did do this river crossing many times a day so he must know what was going on.j

We made it to the Laotian side without getting hit just like our ferry man told us. We went up the steep river banks and passed through the customs and immigration without too much delay. They were pretty thorough and actually searched through our bags. When we finished we walked to a hotel that had been given to us by another traveler and checked in. We went out to tour the town.

We walked around Viang Chan for a couple of hours. The city was very quiet and peaceful. There was almost no traffic at all but there were a lot of people walking around. They were all very friendly to us. My French was not so good but we were able to communicate all our basic needs without any problems. We went to a cafe to sit around and watch the beautiful people walking by. We met a man at the cafe that was a French national but had been living in Laos his entire life. He was very very friendly with us. He bought us some drinks and snacks and we talked about our travels and why we were in Laos. He invited us out to dinner that night on his treat. He told us to get cleaned up as best we could because the restaurant was formal. I did not have formal clothes but at least I had some clean new clothes that I had bought in Bangkok recently. We went back to our hotel and cleaned up before meeting him back at the cafe to go to dinner with him.

We met up and went off to the restaurant together. The restaurant was a little piece of France dropped into the jungles of Laos. The exterior was stone or just aged concrete with sort of formal Asian designs in it but the overall look was definitely more Colonial than Asian. We entered through the fancy French doored entry and passed through a short hallway. The dining room was totally French formal, white table cloths, fancy silverware, fancy crystal dinnerware, formal clothing on the wait staff and all the fancy formal things you might expect in an expensive downtown Paris restaurant.

We sat at a small bar first and had a drink while we chatted quietly. Our friend was just full of questions so there was never a quiet moment. We spoke English and some French once in a while. Then we sat down for the meal. There was course after course after course of amazing French food. I loved the French onion soup, the escargo, the breads, duck, and everything I ever knew as being French was served I think. The desserts were to die for when we were stuffed from all the earlier courses. I think we were at the table for about five hours or maybe longer. Finally we had our final drinks and said our good night to our generous friend. We went straight back to the hotel and crashed from all the food orgy.

The next day we met up with another American traveler. We talked to him for a while and he wanted to rent a car and drive up to a place in Northern Laos that he had heard about to go to an opium den. The idea sounded fun to us so we made the plans together. Our friend from the dinner the night before showed up and we asked him for advice about driving up into the far north. There was the little thing called the Viet Nam war going on at the time remember. Our friend gave us lots of advice including where to rent a car from. We wrote down all his tips then went to the address he gave us to rent the car.

The address was a two story colonial structure with offices on the lower floors but our address was on the second floor. We found the door and knocked. We were welcomed into a small office by a tall Frenchman who immediately went and sat behind his huge desk and asked us about our plans. The three of us told him all of our plans except the opium den part. He listened carefully then asked us a few questions which we answered easily. Then he pushed a button and the wall behind him opened up to reveal a large wall map with notes all over it. He stood up and made sure we wrote down his route he told us about and then he told us about the car. It was a Citroen that was modified with a custom transmission and a large custom motor. He told us that we could go anywhere in the country as long as we were in the car because everybody in the country would know that it was one of his cars and that would protect us one hundred percent. The claim sounded kind of exorbitant to us but we smiled and went along with him. he gave us the keys and we gave him the travelers checks for the rental amount which was ridiculously cheap.

We drove off in the car and then we all just looked at each other with a what the hell just happened kind of look. We were not sure if we should be impressed with this guy and his purported power or if he was just full of shit. We hoped that his statement about us being a hundred percent safe in his car was true though. We went back to the hotel to pack up for our road trip.

Our third guy was an American college instructor here on vacation. He seemed to know a lot about Laos so we were glad to have him along with us. He made a great navigator in the confusing narrow gravel and dirt roads we were traveling on heading north. He was a stoner and smoked pot along the way.

We drove north and stopped at almost every interesting view or building along the way. The views were stunning. Laos is composed of tropical jungles studded with tall sharp mountains poking up into the clouds. The tops of many of the mountains are covered in white and looke to be snow capped. In fact the white is not snow but fields of opium poppies. We were just on the outside edge of the golden triangle which is composed of Thailand, Burma and Laos with the area around Chang Mai Thailand as the center of the triangle. This area was known as the worlds opium center at the time. We stopped and ate at little family owned businesses along the way. The food was all a tasty combination of French and Asian cuisine along with fresh fruits and things all of which I love.

We passed through several road blocks along the way. We were told that three different armies were in control of Laos. There were the government troops that only controlled the area around Viang Chan then there were the Pathet Lao a communist insurgent group and also the North Vietnamese army helping the Pathet Lao. In fact there were several more armies in Laos at the time. The drug lords had their own private well armed army and the South vietnamese were in the Jar of Plains area and the Chinese had control of large parts of the North and North Eastern areas of Laos. We went through road blocks of government troops, Pathet Lao troops, North Vietnamese troops and Chinese troops on our drive. There were also often local police roadblocks. Each one of them was terrifying to approach because they always had their rifles, usually AK47s, pointed directly at us as we pulled up to them. They would check our IDs and ask us where we were going and what were we doing. We always just told them we were tourists sightseeing and they always let us through. We drove past blown up tanks along the side of the road and saw blown up or shot up buildings. In fact we were well behind enemy lines considering we were two Americans and a Dane and the American government was at war with the North Vietnamese army whose road block we just passed through. We could not figure out the war because everybody was being so sweet to us.

We finally arrived at our destination of Ho a small town in North Central Laos where our buddy's friend had told us the great opium den was. We checked into a hotel and went out for some more great food. The next day we planned on going to the opium den after breakfast.