Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059204&l=b072f&id=1101094
As my bus pulled into Pakse station, I awoke to the first blue sky I’d seen since Thailand. As promised, southern Laos looked like a different world compared to Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng; green hills and rice paddies had been replaced by golden flatlands with sparse vegetation and clouds of orange dust. A less beautiful landscape, perhaps, but the blue sky and the warmth meant that the fleece and the poncho could go back into the backpack, and that was good enough for me.
Pakse itself was of no particular interest to me beyond the fact that it was the southernmost town of any size in Laos; from here I could get transportation to the Cambodian border. I walked from the bus station into town and found a sawngthaew driver who was headed to the border; he said we’d get going just as soon as we could round up enough people to fill the back of the truck. And when he said fill, he was not exaggerating.
By the time the pickup finally pulled out of Pakse, I was stuffed into the most crowded vehicle I’d ever seen. I’d called the vehicle a sawngthaew previously, and that’s what the locals called it as well, but, to be specific, what I was riding in was not a sawngthaew but a saamthaew: sawngthaew means two benches, saamthaew means three. It seems that two benches did not quite fill the truck bed to capacity, so the driver had added a third bench right down the middle, and it was packed with rear ends just like the other two. This left no legroom whatsoever; our legs were interlocked like metal teeth on a zipper.
Though I could hardly move my head, I decided I had to do a count of the people on board; after all, there was a decent chance that we had broken some sort of record. In the end I counted eight people on each bench, three standing on the rack on the back (the same rack I had stood on two days before on the ride from Vang Vieng to Vientiane), and three in the cab. Yes, that’s right—there were 30 people in this little Toyota pickup truck. This was going to be one interesting ride.
One would have assumed that with a vehicle this full we’d press on to our destination as quickly as possible, but the driver had other plans. Every fifteen or twenty minutes we’d pass a village and a crowd of women would run into the road with food to sell, and the driver would stop for all of them. I guess he had negotiated some sort of commission from their sales, because he stopped at literally every village over the course of the next four hours.
At each stop, the process was the same: ladies would run up to the truck and stick everything from ears of corn to bamboo chutes filled with rice to mystery meat on a stick into the truck, and, shockingly, the locals would fork out cash and buy up everything. By the time we reached the Cambodian border, every one of the passengers (except for me) had bags full of food to take home; it was as if this was their method of grocery shopping. The whole thing was quite strange, although it made for quality in-flight entertainment.
All of the locals got off at the town of Voen Kham, just north of the border; I was the only one actually bound for Cambodia. Though I’d heard horror stories of forced bribes on both sides of the border at this particular crossing, I didn’t experience anything of the sort—I had to pay $1 on each side for “overtime” (despite the fact that it was Monday at 1pm), but other than that the crossing was a breeze.
Once on the Cambodian side of the border, I jumped into one of the famed “share taxis” that provide much of the transportation between small towns in Cambodia. There are a couple of requirements for share taxis in Cambodia: they must be Toyota Camrys (I’m not joking—somehow, every single share taxi I’ve seen in Cambodia is a Toyota Camry; in fact, four out of every five cars I’ve seen in Cambodia have been Toyota Camrys), and they must be packed so full that no one’s rear end is actually touching the seat.
My share taxi fulfilled both requirements: it was a 2002 Camry, and by the time we set off for Stung Treng, the nearest town of any size, there were five people in the back seat and three in the front. And because all cars in the developing world have manual transmissions, three people in the front seat actually meant two in the passenger seat, one of whom was me. I spent most of the hour-long ride with my face pressed against the window. I tried sticking my head out the window at one point but I swallowed too many bugs that way.
We arrived in Stung Treng around 2:30, and I dragged my aching body out of the car and made my way to the nearest guesthouse. I paid $3 for a room with a private bathroom; that may be the cheapest accommodation of the entire trip.
Stung Treng, situated on the banks of the San and Mekong Rivers, is nothing more than an outpost town of 25,000 that serves as a transport and trade hub. As there wasn’t much of tourist interest in the town, I made for the epicenter of any Cambodian town: the market.
Though markets in Thailand and Laos certainly do exist, they don’t come close to rivaling Cambodian markets in terms of filthiness, chaos, and pounds of dead animals. As I walked through the Stung Treng market, I did my best to keep the dead fish smell out of my nose and the flies out of my mouth. But as I wandered deeper into the countless rows of vendors, who were hawking everything from produce to red meat to plastic toys, I began to warm to the chaos and the filth; after all, I had plenty of experience with both from my time in India.
I ordered a late lunch of noodles, vegetables, and mystery meat, and though I consumed a bit more gristle than I normally like, for 1500 riel (30 cents) the meal wasn’t bad. I hung out in the market for most of the afternoon, talking to vendors in a combination of broken English and butchered Khmer. Everyone wondered what I was doing in Stung Treng; apparently few tourists stay in the town for more than an hour between minibus connections.
The market shut down at dark, so I ate dinner at my guesthouse, though paying 4000 riel ($1) for a plate of noodles, vegetables, and chicken seemed like highway robbery after my cheap eats in the market. At least the extra 2500 riel meant that the skin and tendons were cut off the meat this time.
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