16. Vang Vieng (Continued)

18/01/03: Colleague is still unwell; check emails; process colleague’s camera film to cheer her up, then go for a walk; eat at bar by the river with Al, L, Sasha – the giant Swede – and Yam(?) – a Welsh scaffolder – and others; back to Xayoh; return to the ‘generated’ bar and drink with Al, L and ‘Will’; check out local club; end up back on the air, the scene of last night’s Full Moon Party, with Sasha.

19/01/03: Breakfast at Tanketkham; process some of my camera film; drink at Xayoh; tea at bar across the road; watch some football.

20/01/03: Breakfast on the main drag; temples with colleague and then walk to riverside café; attempt another cave but it shuts early; tea at Xayoh; internet; a few drinks at Xayoh.

You should have seen her last night – she looked almost choleraic. I was a little concerned by the ghostly visage before me, skin turned green, lips purple. My companion had reassured me that she did not feel as bad as I assured her she looked, and with that I’d rolled over and fallen asleep.

            She doesn’t feel too good today, though, so I offer to develop some of the disposable cameras she’s accumulated, as some sort of recompense. [My colleague had actually brought a camera along with her, but it seized up in Prachuap Khiri Khan. From then on she had little choice but to rely on disposable cameras, which are a far sight bulkier to carry around than rolls of film. To make matters worse, on our return, the store from which the new camera had been bought refused to issue a refund. Instead, they said they would need to send it back to the manufacturer, which they duly did only for the offending item to become lost in transit, whereupon the store in question was obliged to replace it with an equivalent model, the original having since been discontinued.] I think the gesture is appreciated, but it also gives me free reign to wander around the town’s perimeter in a manner that might not interest my colleague.

When the films are developed an hour or so later I also return with crisps of a neutral flavour. The photos are quite good, far better than one would expect from such an impromptu photo-lab in the middle of Laos. On the way back I run into Al and L who invite us for dinner at a restaurant down by the river. This will be Al’s last night, for tomorrow he must leave to catch his flight back to England, a flight he’s already postponed once so as to allow him to accompany L to Vang Vieng (I think they’ve been having something of an affair). Sounds great, I say, but warn that my companion’s restricted appetite might preclude her attendance, which it does.

It’s just as well. Al’s last night is a strange one. It involves some of us drinking in the street after chucking-out time at Xayoh, trying out a club called the Full Moon (very much a locals’ affair), before then returning to the scene of the previous night’s debauchery with this Scandinavian guy called Will, who to this very day I struggle to remember. Who was he, where was he from, who was he travelling with, and where did he go?

My colleague feels no better the next day, and again I am left to my devices. So impressed was I with the quality of my colleague’s photographs that I decide to develop some of my own, if only as something to do.

            My colleague’s appetite is completely shot, so I take brunch alone, again at Tanketkham but this time avoiding the fish. I anticipate having to dine alone a second time but bump into L, who invites me to dinner to meet a few friends of hers who have recently arrived in Vang Vieng; Welsh L and his girlfriend K have just come from Nong Khai – by way of Vientiane – across the border in Thailand, where they were on something of a yoga focussed retreat. L vaguely knows them from her time there and spoke well of the pair when we met earlier, and there is no obvious indication to the contrary. Also in attendance are the seven foot Swede – Sasha, and the same I’d talked to at the Full Moon Party – and a Welsh scaffolder named Yam, and they too have formed something of a travelling bond, although I’m very sure it’s not of the romantic kind. Dinner goes well and inspires everyone to reconvene at Xayoh Café a few hours later.

I successfully persuade my colleague to take leave of our room and join the party, but it is to Welsh L I now find myself doing most of my talking. Naturally, the conversation turns to how long and to where we’ve been travelling. For some reason or other, I conjure together an anecdote built around the dread-locked hippy who had threatened the canine-hassled Thai fisherman back in Koh Phangan. Welsh L has dreadlocks, and he’s a vegetarian too. This needn’t be a problem but the change in atmosphere suggests that it might well be: that I’ve made a bit too much of a big deal about the Island Hippy’s proclivities for all things ‘new age’, rather than let the aweless threats speak for themselves. Fortunately, Welsh L recognises that my point is neither personal nor political. Indeed, he is rather amused when I try to clarify my position, positing that the dreadlocks were incidental, that I was simply adding colour to the narrative. For those listening in, the persistent excavation of one’s own hole must undoubtedly come to mind.

Not because it was a Sunday and a Monday – for the days of the week have only the vaguest of implications when one is travelling – but the following days were more tempered than those anterior: my colleague endeavoured to make a complete recovery; impressed with yesterday’s results, I decided that I too would process some of my camera film; the two of us chanced upon a few charmingly modest temples and attendant Buddhist casts; we hired bikes again but failed in our attempt to explore another cave, finding that they closed early on a Monday; and we generally went about our business, like we were waiting for something to happen. Such indolence didn’t particularly bother me but I noticed how some of my fellow travellers were becoming restless. It was if we were all following some cosmic timetable that forbade us from putting down roots for more than five days at a time – and even that might be pushing it. Except, when I found somewhere that grabbed me, I quite liked bedding down indefinitely and taking a more capricious approach to when I might elect to move on again. So it was with Vang Vieng.

This wasn’t the first time that my relative apathy had revealed itself. L and H had made the decision to push on by the end of our first evening in Hua Hin, and M and E always seemed to know when their time was up and made arrangements accordingly. S, on the other hand, had been more in tune with what my companion and I wanted to do – or what we didn’t want to do, which none of us were always very sure of. And when my companion and I had cut ourselves adrift in Krabi we had taken it very easy indeed, only the impending expiration of our visas and the appropriation of new ones determining our movements. As a result, it was not actually unreasonable that we’d exhausted another four days in Bangkok, in addition to those eight we spent there on arrival, but I suspect a good few travellers would have taken the opportunity to jump on a bus and spend a couple of nights somewhere else (like Kanchanaburi, for example, which is no more than a three hour drive out of the capital, and a damn sight more convivial). I can honestly say that the thought didn’t even occur to me at the time.

Now it was possible we were entering our third epoch, considering our journey down the east coast with S as defining the first, and then our time on the islands representing the second (we’ll regard the journey from Trang back to Bangkok as something of an incongruity). I had enjoyed the sodality of our extended company of late, so when I sensed there were plans afoot to move on I was quite prepared to follow. Because although I was very fond of Vang Vieng, I had to concede that we had pretty much exhausted all that it had to offer.