Laos

I'm currently in the Northern Laos town of Luang Nam Tha. I arrived here yesterday after a 7 hour bus ride from the border town of Huay Xai. The bus in question had 21 seats and yet up to 31 passengers were present at some points. The journey itself was somewhat of a disappointment as was/is the township of Luang Nam Tha itself. What was interesting however is the Laos government approach to road building. Pretty much the entire road was under various stages of construction with most of the journey on a dirt road that will one day (2005 according to my guide book) be sealed. This in itself, while a bit unusual, is not so remarkable. What did surprise me was the scale of the operation. It is very mountainous in Northern Laos; the road engineers however decided to ignore all conventions for building bridges or going around hills and simply dug straight through mountain passes and piled up dirt where a bridge would normally go. At points the cuttings must have been 30-40 meters deep for long distances. The scale was staggering and yet the road itself is still a shitty little single lane dirt track with inadequate guttering.

I'm not sure what this tells me about the local populace, the communist government or indeed what such a dull post says about me but I'm sure it's significant.

Anyway, to defy the conventions of traditional chronology, my last days in Thailand were spent in the Northern town of Chang Rai. This is a very nice town and I sure there would have been much more productive and interesting ways to spend my time there than on the toilet. Said toilet time delayed us from taking the 3 hour bus ride to the boarder for an extra day which in turn cost us 1000 Baht in fines. It was poo.

Next stop: Oudomxai.