Border Crossing #2

Border Crossing. Five English lads, another Australian, and myself in a minivan designed for people about a foot shorter than the shortest of us. Every one of us is showing the scars of our travels. A supposedly friendly soccer game had lead to much damage to English flesh, one of them displaying a large chunk of missing skin on his knee that really should be dressed. My foot is still problematic, swollen and painful but is on the mend. It seems that everyone had a boozy last night in Siem Reap, everyone is half asleep, hungover and easily confused, which does not bode well for dealing with officials. The bus reeks of nervous, boozy sweat, which I am contributing to. Last night after drinking and shopping I bought beers back to my hostel and drank more with the owner of the hostel. I have not had enough sleep. I am wondering how I am going to handle Laos roads, I have a blister pack of motion sickness pills but that does nothing for my nerves.

I am distracted by dramas from the English, one of them (the one with the skinned knee) has left his passport behind, and many frantic conversations with the driver lead to phone calls to Siem Reap, a friend of the driver is going to head to the hostel, pick up the passport and drive towards the border, but this is going to cost him dearly. With masturbation-like guilt, I succumb to checking my wallet for my passport. We stop at one of those petrol station rest stops, and I stock up on iced coffee and lollies, and I wash down some motion sickness pills with Pocari Sweat. We change buses, causing further confusion, then continue on. We stop again, at a restaurant I assume is owned by the driver’s family. Our luggage is piled up and the bus leaves, we are told to fill up with fuel.

I eat a mediocre stir-fry and drink not quite cold enough beer, while a local fixer shows up to offer us money exchange and Lao Sim cards.

Another bus shows up, and we load up again. The area near the border seems to be given over to marginally viable agriculture, and it’s clear that the government spares no thought in maintaining infrastructure, except for the ever-present political signs. Our driver nonchalantly steers the minibus around the worse of the potholes, but not skillfully enough judging by the swearing by the English, as if they have never seen a unsealed road in their young, sheltered lives.

Eventually the bus pulls up just outside the border, and we are instructed we have to walk across ourselves. Our bags are unloaded, and the minibus roars off. We collect ourselves in small groups and start walking towards the Cambodian exit. Our passports are found uninteresting, stamped out and our bags are X-rayed by a machine that looks like it was made during the Cold War. We hike across No Man’s Land, through untended gardens and forgotten slabs of concrete. At the Laos Immigration I am shaken down for forty USD for the visa, and then a further two dollars to fund the officers’s new motorbike. It’s obviously a shakedown but they have me by my balls and they know it, so I cough up. At the other side our passportless English companion is no where to be seen, but in any case here we seperate, myself, a pretty French couple and a single French guy go on one bus to the ferry to Don Det, which was luckily uneventful.