241206 Pak Mong 龙门客栈

A few steps away, the owners of a little stall cleared away their wares from a little table outside the front of their home. Two guys waiting for onward transport to Vieng Kham & Sam Neua took over the table & sat down to a simple dinner of a small plastic bagful each of sticky rice & what looked like reddish beans. Younger guy invited the cat to share their little meal & sit with them while waiting.

PS (younger guy) asked if the cat could speak English, for he wanted to practise what he knew. Together, the three of us watched uniformed men at the junction stop & check every passing vehicle. ทหาร thahaan (soldiers)? No, ตำรวจ dtamluat (policemen). The cat found out that police wear olive green, whereas soldiers have darker green uniforms.

The last songthaew from Udomxai arrived - no luck. Before the cat knew it, the 'Pak Mong Welcome Committee' sprung into action, & daughter of stall owner took care of its backpack while PS led it to the 'white guesthouse' that everyone in Pak Mong had recommended. The doors of 'white guesthouse' were wide open, but the only response we heard when PS called out for the เจ้าของ jao khawng (owner) were echos.

PS decided to try another guesthouse across the road, but apparently the only water available for washing & bathing was from a concrete tank of stagnant water in each room. When asked if there was any place to bathe, the owner showed us to the room with the fullest tank - of equally stagnant water =P There were no taps nor pipes, & we wondered how on earth did they fill the tanks, which were all on the second storey - run a hose up the narrow winding stairs? PS joked that 'baw dtong aap nam - baw aap nam kaw suay ngam laew' (lit. don't need to bathe - without bathing already beautiful). Seems that even locals considered the tanks filthy! =P

Back at Bountham Vonethabing Guesthouse (aforementioned 'white guesthouse'), a daughter of owner finally appeared. For the same price (30,000kip) as 'stagnant water guesthouse', the cat had access to a shared bathroom with the biggest fattest water heater the cat has ever seen in all its 9 lives, & a room in this 龙门客栈 long2 men2 ke4 zhan4...



龙门客栈 (Dragon Gate Inn), the title of a Chinese swordfighting movie, is the cat family's term for mysterious guesthouses in the middle of nowhere. In the movie, some guests at the isolated inn never leave, but end up as fillings for 'pork' buns (something like what Thais call 'salabao') served to other guests ;)

241206 Udomxai to Pak Mong

The cat spent the journey peering over the roof of the 'driver's cab' of the songthaew as it wound & wound its way past villages busy celebrating the Hmong New Year. Girls dressed in their best finery tottered down rutted slopes from their wooden houses & along the road in shiny gold & silver high heeled shoes, protecting their faces & make-up from the sun with umbrellas. Music boomed from beside the road in one of the larger villages, with a huge crowd of people surrounding an unseen stage beneath a canopy. Once in a while, horns blared & people jumped back as the songthaew swerved to avoid Hmong teenagers lined up along both sides of the highway playing the ball-tossing courtship game.

Three hours later the cat found itself with a bunch of empty songthaews at the main junction in Pak Mong where highways 13 (to Luang Prabang) & 1C (to Sam Neua) meet. There was no one else heading eastwards to Nong Khiaw, not even Nam Bak. The drivers agreed that it made more $ sense for the cat to spend the night in Pak Mong than to charter one of their songthaews, althought they were willing to drive the cat to Nong Khiaw if it had to get there urgently. They suggested hanging around till 7:00PM when the last songthaew from Udomxai would pull into town, in case there might be passengers heading towards Nong Khiaw, & if there weren't any, go to the white guesthouse around the corner.

& so the cat parked itself by the roadside, passing time & attracting quite a bit of attention from locals by making 'friendship bands':



One by one, Mr One-of-the-Songthaew-Drivers, a grandpa from Boten, a shopkeeper, a lady who turned out to be Mrs One-of-the-Songthaew-Drivers, & others came up to talk to the cat, asking to watch the process:



& asking the cat what phao son (ethnic group) did it belong to, where it was from, etc. Apparently many Lao & some farang get the mistaken impression that 'friendship bands' are a traditional craft of some Lao ethnic group that the cat belongs to - one that they have not met before! =P Six days later the cat did the same thing on the boat from Pak Beng to Huay Xai, & ended up photographed by some farang tourists, & surrounded by a bunch of curious Hmong wanting to examine the threads.

The cat has no idea where 'friendship bands' originated from, it learnt the ropes (strings rather) from its best friend in primary school. They are far lighter to carry than books, great for passing time on buses & boats, useful for breaking the ice with locals (especially women), & can be given as gifts to people one meets along the way =)