“Forget Vientiane, it’s rubbish”

The quote that is the title of this post was a hand written note that a friend from Melbourne had written prior to me leaving. Mary – you were spot on! As mentioned previously Vientiane was not in the least bit exciting. We didn’t do one touristy thing while we were there. We hung around there just long enough to get our Chinese visas. We paid double to get them in 24 hours rather than wait 3 days. We didn’t realise how good our timing was since the next day it was a Chinese holiday and the embassy was closing for a week. Whilst we were in China we met someone that got stuck in Vientiane waiting for the embassy to reopen. He had the same feelings as us towards the Laos capital and spent most of the time hanging out in his hotel room. Rather than doing this Peach & I discovered a restaurant that served awesome food and then gave you free internet. So we spent a lot of time there. We also spent a lot of time trying to figure out what do once we got our passports back from the Chinese embassy and we could hightail it outta Vientiane.

After lots of to-ing and fro-ing we decided to continue heading south towards the famed 4,000 islands. Then if we had time we’d head back up north later on and check out the parts we missed before overlanding it into China. The main reason I never tried to make plans on this trip was because things always changed. This time was no different – as you’ll discover in future posts.

We got our passports back at about 4pm on Tuesday and were booked on an overnight bus to Pakse, the main hub of the south, 4 hours later. Not soon enough. We were supposed to be picked up at our hotel at 8pm. By this time on the trip we expected some kind of drama everytime we had to catch a bus. Almost as if scripted our pick up time came and went. Peach dashed down to the agent who we booked our tickets through a couple of times and he assured us everything would be ok, he called the driver and there’d been some mistake. Sure. Whatever.

Eventually a tuk-tuk big enough to fit about 10 people showed up to take us to the bus station. The bus was due to leave in 15 minutes and we were 30 minutes away. The tuk-tuk was almost full and the people inside it informed us that the driver had done about 3 laps of the city picking people up.

There was one particularly funny English guy sittng across from us. As the ride dragged on we got talking about how we’d hoped to go trekking up north but had to come to Vientiane instead. This guy’s response was “Well, you know, trekking. It’s a lot like bum sex isn’t it?” Everyone in the tuk-tuk just stared at him, shortly followed by bursts of laughter. What a random comment? He went on to explain that he felt that some people try bum sex and really like it, and for other people it’s not for them. He and his wife had been on a horror trek in Thailand and decided trekking wasn’t for them. I didn’t know who this guy was but I got a kick out of his perspective. Plus he was piss funny. I didn’t know it then but we’d end up spending the next week or so travelling together and I can honestly say they were our favourites in terms of all the friends we made in Asia, and there was some quality competition!

The guy in question was Chris and his lovely wife was Nicola. They were both English and travelling through Asia on their way to settling in NZ. As luck would have it they sat behind us on the bus to Pakse. We continued our conversation there and quickly discovered some remarkable similarities between Chris and I and Peach and Nicola. It was as if we were a mirror couple.

When we reached Pakse in the morning we parted ways only to be reunited some minutes later as we ended up on the same tuk-tuk. Peach and I had heard Pakse was just as shit as Vientiane so our plan was to head across town to another bus station where we’d get another bus 4 hours to a tiny place called Tadlo which we’d heard great things about. Chris and Nicola were going to stay in Pakse for the night and then continue heading south. We managed to convince them to come with us though and we all ended up at the other bus station.

The bus station was a large dusty area with some shonky looking restaurants and food sellers. We had an hour or so to kill until our bus so I grabbed a noodle soup. The others weren’t so keen on the look of the hygeine. They had bananas instead.

Luckily I’d managed to sleep quite well on the bus – the VIP buses in Laos were even more luxurious than the ones in Thailand. As a result I didn’t mind the next 4 hour bus ride to Tadlo on a rattling, unairconditioned public bus. After a ride through some beautiful scenary the bus dropped us on a corner in the middle of nowhere. Apparently Tadlo was a couple of kilometres walk away.

Is there a doctor in the house?

The day after the epic interview adventure my constant headache was, well, still constant. We’d planned to head further north to an even more remote village that was supposed to be even more beautiful and was only accessible by boat. Given my condition though we reluctantly decided to catch the bus 4 hours in the opposite direction back to Luang Prabang so I could see a doctor. I hadn’t taken pain killers for a couple of days so I was getting used to walking around in throbbing pain – but it was probably a good idea to play it safe just in case my head was about to explode.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful and when we got back to Luang Prabang we checked into a hotel then headed off in search of the international clinic. When we got to the clinic I spoke to the nurse on duty and although there were some problems with language I managed to discover that since it was a Saturday all the doctors weren’t working. They’d be back on Monday. Given this why was the clinic even open? This I was not able to determine. I was able to find out that if I required a CAT scan I’d need to go to Vientiane.

So the options were:
1) Hang out in Luang Prabang, which was lovely but we’d already seen, until Monday. See a doctor and take it from there.
2) Save time and head straight to Vientiane. We had to go there eventually to get our visas for China. At least then if there was something seriously wrong with me they had better facilities.
3) Screw medical attention. Tough it out and head back up north.

I really didn’t want to hang out in Luang Prabang. So we saw a travel agent about options for getting to Vientiane. As it turned out we could catch a flight there in a couple of hours. Faced with an overnight bus trip with a throbbing head or a 45 minute flight it was an easy decision: fly.

In Vientiane a few hours later I realised why so many people had told me to avoid it if I could. It’s a shithole. It’s dusty, noisy and ugly. To its credit Vientiane probably had the best food I had in all of Laos.

After checking into a hotel we got a tuk-tuk through the dusty streets to the main hospital a few km’s out of the centre of town. Just before we got their out tuk-tuk broke down, haha! So we had to hoof it the last few hundred metres. Gold.

At the hospital a doctor asked me a bunch of questions and said I’d be better of going to the international clinic. Ok. the tuk-tuk was back in action so we headed back to the centre of town just a few hundred metres up the road from our hotel to the international clinic. By this time it was probably after 9pm. I was too late to be consulted by a doctor but I could see one the next day, Sunday. If needed I could get a CAT scan on Monday.

It was time for dinner. There was a great Indian place near our hotel and we ate a bucketload. I hadn’t had Indian for ages so I was loving it. I should probably mention that despite many days of pain I actually didn’t think anything serious was wrong. Call it my enduring cock-eyed optimism or plain stupidity. You decide.

The next day, surprise, surprise, my headache was still there. Before going back to the hospital I went to an internet cafe and did a spot of self-diagnosis. According to the wisdom of the internet since I wasn’t having seizures, vomitting or experiencing blurred vision I probably had nothing to worry about. I also found out that there’s loads of people that live with constant headaches for years at a time. There’s no way I was going to be having any of that.

At the clinic I saw a doctor. I was invited into the consultation room whilst he was still finishing up with another patient. Maybe he felt the language barrier meant that there’d be no doctor-patient confidentiality issues. When the other patient had gone he asked me a series of questions, mostly the same ones the doctor in the hospital had asked me the night before. Coincidently they were also aimed at determining if I had any of the symptons the internet had warned about.

He got out his tools and did a bunch of tests. Blood pressure, breathing, eyes, ears, throat etc… Then he pronounced that the cause of my headache was an infected throat. What was most surprising about this was that my throat hadn’t been sore once in the last few days. Hmmm. I mentioned this and he didn’t seem to think it was a problem. Apparently it was probably causing me mild discomfort but I hadn’t noticed. Apparently I’d probably also had a mild fever at times too. That was a bit more likely but I’m still not sure. Anyway, the good doctor subscribed me a heap of drugs. Antibiotics. Made sense. Antihistamines. Dunno about that. Paracetamol – enough to take one dose every 4 hours for a fortnight. Crikey!

Within a couple of days I was feeling heaps better and after a few days I was back to normal. So mabye the good doctor was on a winner. Regardless of what he thought there was no way I was dosing up on paracetamol every few hours for a couple of weeks. So I ignored that piece of advice. In fact I’ve still got some of the paracetamol left today.