Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng lies considerably less than half the way to Luang Prabang, but the afternoon was well upon me and I still had the mountains to cross. Yet the scenery was exquisite, and thoughts of time became lost in the lush valleys of rice fields and the forested hills that rose on either side. Scattered grass and bamboo huts merged into the green and brown countryside. Just beyond Vang Vieng, rising straight up beside the narrowing river valley, hauntingly magnificent 'Chinese' mountains poked through the hazy clouds. Here were the kind mountains I thought only existed on oriental landscape scrolls, or in the minds of dreamers. The hours crawled on and so did I, through intermittent drizzle and rain showers that obliged me to roll down the canvas flaps and swelter in the vaporous heat.

As the day waned, I stopped for dinner in a muddy little village. There was a small makeshift cafe where I got a bowl of very sticky rice (Lao style), and some fairly racy chicken stew. As I was eating, a group of soldiers rushed behind the building and several shots were heard from the forest beyond. Then a pause, and a few more shots before a man was hauled out from the trees, his hands bound behind him. He was surrounded by a cluster of soldiers and citizens, marching toward the barricaded Lao Army compound. Was he a spy, a deserter, or perhaps just a chicken thief? No one knows. Just as I was leaving, another truck arrived, camouflaged in mud and heading south. An American on board announced that they had left Luang Prabang twelve hours before, but had broken down on the way. I had no more favorable prospects to report for the road south, and I could only exchange droll smiles.

Beyond this last outpost, the road twisted up through dense forests as I left the Plain of Jars far behind. Here were only a few subsistence villages carved from the jungle. I saw the simple huts of the Meo and Akha tribes people, and a string of military check points, manned by young boys, living off the jungle in low grass shelters. At each station papers were shown, passengers scrutinized, and bags occasionally searched. In this fashion I wound my way up, climbing out of the humidity of the lowlands, into the evening chill of the mountains. Then suddenly - it seemed sudden, although it had taken all day - at dusk. I mounted a long ridge high above the clouds, on a par with mountain peaks on all sides. Seas of clouds lay low in the valleys all around. And beyond it all, on the edge of that cloudy sea, the sun set in a soft red glory. Such quiet splendor to match the calm eternity of the journey. Not long after sunset, the full moon climbed high above the misty veil. The entire scene remained visible in its soft white glow, and pockets of clouds shone up from the sleeping lowland valleys.

I passed through another checkpoint, high on a mountain saddle, where two massive pieces of heavy artillery were perched, protruding out into the moonlight. Nearby lay the bombed-out ruins of an Old French auberge on a panoramic knoll, littered with shell holes, tanks, and barbed wire. It was my last spectacle before I headed down into the darkened forest. Our last good tire blew out about half the way down. I was exhausted, but my drivers only seemed to grow more rollicking with each new catastrophe. Here on this dark deserted stretch of mountain road deep in guerrilla territory, they were in hysterics as they tried to mend our last blown-out tire. They rolled on the ground in riotous laughter when the tire pump came up broken and they had to fix that as well. For some reason, pumping up the tire was too ludicrous for them to bear, and they collapsed on top of each other in convulsions of laughter.

By this time, I was all in the spirit, and I didn't much care if they ever fixed the tire or not. I was ready to sleep on the road if need be. Eventually they did get the tire fixed and I was off again into the dark forested night. Several hours later, just as I sighted the distant lights of Luang Prabang, the truck pulled over in front of a farmhouse where I stopped for quite some time. Out on the verandah, my driver delivered a gift to a pretty young girl, had a drink, and joked with some local friends while I tried unsuccessfully to snooze out in the truck. Then at last, somewhere in the early morning hours, I rolled unnoticed into Luang Prabang. The city lay sleeping, as I so longed to do. I had arrived.