Hua bin, lot fai le lot nyon!

What’s the best way to get to Bangkok?  That’s not the start of a bawdy joke, although now I’ve got the idea in my head, several punchlines have occurred to me.  In fact, it’s what I’ve spent most of the past month trying to find a genuine answer to.  From Bangkok, it’s quite straightforward to get to almost anywhere in the world but to get to Bangkok itself, or more specifically to get to Suvarnabhumi airport from Pakse, takes some thought, a lot of time and varying amounts of money.

My plan was to spend a couple of weeks in the UK this August.  My sister’s baby was due; I had a wedding to go to and a bridesmaid’s dress to help look for, so it seemed like a prime opportunity for a holiday.  It was easy enough to book the flights, although there is a bewildering array of options for different routes at different prices.  As I didn’t want the trip to take three years, I chose a direct flight to Heathrow with an airline that shall remain unidentified.  For the purposes of this blog I’ll call them Blighty Flights.  Actually, I won’t be coy, it was British Airways but if I ever get the capital to start a budget airline, I’m going to call it Blighty Flights.  My first problem was paying for the flight.  I’m British, the company is nominally British, my credit card is British and I pay off the debts on my credit card using small denominations of British currency.  If anyone can therefore explain to me why I was forced to pay for the flight with Thai Baht purely because I was starting the journey in Thailand, I’d be grateful for the explanation.  In the process of paying, I lost out twice over on the exchange rate and incurred an unnecessary fee, which made me understandably, a bit miffed.

Anyway, the flight was duly booked for just after midnight on the 4^th August.

The most straightforward option for getting to Bangkok is to fly from Pakse airport but only if you want to travel on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday and pay through the nose for the privilege.

Bangkok park

Option 2 is to take a bus.  It’s really cheap and very direct and reliable, with only a short train ride on the uber efficient airport express once you arrive in Bangkok.  I chose this option.  Never, never again!  I woke up at three in the morning, wedged in to an unfeasibly tiny space to see that the aisle had been filled with plastic garden chairs and extra passengers.  I passed the 15 hour bus journey by listening to a Kindle ‘text to speak’ version of Crime and Punishment.  It was like having a bed time story from Steven Hawking and although I don’t know which of my crimes I was being punished for, I’m fairly sure I’ve done my time.

Having survived the journey, Bangkok was a bit of a revelation and I’m definitely keen to spend more time there.  The transport around the city was easy and cheap and I spent a very pleasant morning watching the middle aged joggers in an immaculately kept park before retiring to the airport in the hope of a shower and a change of clothes.

There followed a fantastic, although action packed time at home in the UK, covering a ridiculous number of miles and racking up enormous train fares in the process.  As my new nephew had arrived nearly four weeks early, he was tiny, grumpy looking and a bit spewy but undoubtedly a lovely edition to the family.  He is variously called turtle face, spider monkey, Twix and James and it’s a real shame I won’t be seeing more of him over the next couple of years.  Even if seeing him had been the only reason for going home, it would still have been worth the ridiculous journey.

James looking grumpy in a natty outfit

After my exertions in the UK, including the jet lag busting trip to the Great British Beer Festival only 12 hours after I’d touched down, it was time to head back to Laos.  Predictably it started badly.

Take note, if you travel to Bangkok with British Airways, the flight might be operated by BA or by Qantas.  If it’s BA you get a 23kg luggage allowance but must use only one bag, if it’s Qantas you get 20kg but can use as many bags as you like.  Don’t confuse the two or you will get screwed over at the airport for excess baggage, like I did.  My evident and facially expressed displeasure at this elicited a ‘cheer up, the flight won’t be that bad’ from one of the stewards as I boarded.  I responded cheerily with ‘it’s what happens at the other end that I’m worried about’, which with hindsight probably isn’t the wisest response when it’s Bangkok you’re heading to.  Yet another example of why I shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people.

Learning the song 'boogie nights'

What did happen at the other end was another seamless trip through Bangkok on their excellent public transport.  I’d decided to take the train back to Ubon and catch a bus from there, over the border to Laos.  This method is marginally more expensive than using the bus all the way but given the amount of money I’d frittered away on my Oyster card in the previous two weeks, I thought it would be churlish to complain.

The train was clean, cool, spacious and comfortable.  I had a lovely bunk and slept pretty well.  I used the spare time to catch up with the Archers omnibus podcasts and arrived in Ubon refreshed.  We were inexplicably over three hours late.  It took us half an hour to leave the station in Bangkok and well over two hours to clear the suburbs.  I have no idea if this is normal but reading some forum posts about Thai Railways, it sounds like it might be par for the course.  Also, everyone on the train seemed to have doughnuts.  Some had Krispy Kreme whilst others preferred Dunkin’ Donuts but boxes of doughnuts were everywhere.  Perhaps that’s what slowed us down.  Who knows, but they’re definitely the accessory du jour for the discerning Thai traveller.

Thai tuk tuk

Having missed the bus in Ubon, I took a series of minivans and tuk-tuks to make it to Pakse.  In total the journey from Gantshill to Pakse took 39 hours but I’d definitely use the train again, as long as I was in no rush.

I’m due to head back to the UK for a flying visit next June.  Predictably enough I’m going to a wedding and potentially a bridesmaid dress fitting.  I think I might try mysterious option 4 to get to Bangkok.  That would involve a bus to Ubon and a cheap Air Asia flight from Ubon to Bangkok.  It sounds feasible but getting the timings to add up will take many hours of careful browsing on Skyscanner and precision timing to get the cheapest deal.  I’m planning a dry run in November when I’m going to Hong Kong, so I’ll keep you updated. 

In case you’re wondering, I’m going to Hong Kong for a wedding.

Cern nang

I’ve had a great success this month.  I’ve finally found somewhere comfortable to sit.  The chairs in Laos seem to be almost universally uncomfortable.  I find it a little bit strange that this should be the case because Laos has all the ingredients for making great chairs.  I think there probably are some really fantastic chairs out there but in the last 5 months, I’ve struggled to find one.  In fact, I’m going to make it my plan b for while I’m here.  If I can’t contribute to development of improved phytosanitary systems, then at least I will have sourced some good seats for those who follow.

In my previous blog entry I talked about my office.  It’s the office that ergonomics forgot.  I have a wooden chair at the wrong height with a wooden desk.  The chair doesn’t even have arse dimples.  Much to my disappointment I’m fairly sedentary at the moment and I finish each day looking a little bit more like Quasimodo than when I started.  That’s Quasimodo with a very flat arse.  It’s a character trait that Victor Hugo didn’t linger on but I’m sure he had a flat arse. 

At home it’s no better.  We have a collection of wooden armchairs and a bench.  All of them really poorly designed with regard to comfort.  I’ve spent a good many hours squirming in those chairs trying to find a good sitting position whilst watching the plethora of space and astronaut related stories on Russia Today.  Which reminds me, I don’t think anyone’s told the Russians that the space race is over.  We get at least a weekly update on the progress of the space programme.  It’s very odd but quite enjoyable.  It’s like starring in a really crappy Laos version of ‘Goodbye Lenin’.

Anyway, until quite recently, the most comfortable place I had to sit was a plastic garden chair positioned on the veranda so I could rest my legs on the balustrade.  This position necessitates resting my dinner on my chest to eat, resulting in a really steamy face but it was generally the best of a bad job. 

I’ve looked for other chairs both in Pakse and Vientiane and have come up against three main obstacles to comfort.  They are the wrong proportions for people over 5’5’’.  They are all far too flat in the arse area and even the marginally softer sofas are all covered in leatherette, which given the average temperatures here, results in the removal of significant tranches of thigh skin.

So why are the chairs so uncomfortable?  Although in some ways the subject seems quite trivial, I think it is indicative of some of the broader obstacles to development in Laos. 

Bear with me on this one....

Laos has the potential to be a fantastic and sustainable source for timber, with some of the best opportunities in ASEAN for developing the industry.  This potential is currently checked by illegal logging and weak enforcement by the authorities but if these problems can be minimised, there are real opportunities to use the forest.  The Vietnamese situation makes an interesting comparison.  Here they have extremely strict controls on internal logging and have therefore had to substantially increase the quantity of timber imports to feed the factories and furniture industry which rely on the raw material.  In some ways this provides a great opening for Laos but what concerns me is the lack of development of the secondary and consuming industries within Laos itself.  It is true to say that there is currently significant investment in extractive industries and processing plants for raw materials like rubber but this investment is coming mostly from foreign companies looking to feed their home markets and international demands.  Laos doesn’t seem to be succeeding at adding value. 

The advent of sustainable and accredited rattan production in Laos is being trumpeted as a great success, which it undoubtedly is but like so many of the other natural products which Laos is so well placed to grow, the results are sent for export.  The most comfortable chairs I’ve used in Laos are undoubtedly the rattan chairs found at some higher class cafes but in order to buy them, you have to seize the opportunity presented by passing Vietnamese traders.

Even in one of the areas of great success within the Lao economy, increased coffee production is being hampered by the lack of processing capability and resulting lack of profile for Lao coffee on the World stage.  Lao coffee is accepted to be of a quality comparable to the best in the world yet you can’t find it on the shelves in Western supermarkets.  Like Lao tea, it is exported and blended and you will no doubt have found yourself inadvertently drinking it but as a single origin product, commanding higher prices, whilst providing opportunities to further develop the industry it is impossible to get hold of. 

Living in Laos there is perhaps a surprisingly large number of processed and prepared foods available.  The vast and overwhelming majority of these products come from Thailand.  There are some positive examples within Laos but for some reason they don’t seem to be thriving as they could.  Processing can be carried out on a small, cottage industry scale to start with and seems to present a prime opportunity to diversify and stabilise farmers’ incomes but it doesn’t seem to receive the same attention as the larger scale industries like mining and rubber.

So, what was my recent success in the search for comfort?  Well, I’ve bought a hammock and it’s a revelation.  But where did I buy it?  Sadly, I picked it up on a recent trip to Thailand when renewing my visa. 

Anyway, I’m off for a nice sit down and a coffee.