Wild Bill

Unusually well-rested and reasonably sober, I awoke at 5am without any great difficulty. The tuk-tuk I’d arranged wasn’t as punctual as I, so I quickly made arrangements with one of the loitering drivers to take me to the airport and, as he had been unhappy at the price I’d quoted, I wasn’t too surprised to see him stop to pick up another passenger as soon as we came round the corner. At this unsociable hour there was only one place that anyone would be going so I found myself sharing my cab with another Californian: Wild Bill, as I came to know him or, affectionately, Lousy Bastard!
He was certainly an interesting character and no shy, retiring type. It is of course easy to talk to people who love talking – even before the sun’s above the horizon – and we were soon gabbling away at high speed with plenty of gratifying profanity. At the airport we were amused by and abused the pointless, almost-non-existent security measures. We then laughed all the harder when we realised that the passengers for the international flight to Siem Reap (who had had to check in to the ‘International Departures Terminal’ and undergo proper security checks) were in fact sitting in the front part of our plane, which was parked midway between the two terminals. Whatever cavity searches and invasive x-rays they’d undergone were completely negated by the fact that we joined them with unchecked hand luggage and were able to mingle freely. Still, in a country with only one airline, what can one expect?
The 40 minute flight to Pakse was comfortable and trouble-free and we were soon sitting smugly in a taxi into town and imagining the horrendous torture undergone by the ‘cheapskate fools’ who’d taken the bus. When spending large amounts of money to achieve something that could have been achieved for far less, it is of course absolutely necessary to justify the expenditure at every opportunity. For my part, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have survived 12 hours in a bus…and Bill wasn’t travelling on a tight budget anyway. Apart from all this rationalising, it is always nice to have something to be smug about anyway ;-).
I was glad to find out that Bill was interested in the same things as I was during our short stopover in Pakse. We were both intent on visiting the Khmer Empire ruin of Wat Phu Champasak, 35km south…and we both wanted to get down to Don Det as quickly and comfortably as possible. As we were hunting for suitable accommodation, it soon became apparent that I had a big problem. It was Sunday and a public holiday…and I had no cash. Nowhere was open to change travellers cheques, there didn’t seem to be anywhere I could get a cash advance on my credit card and there certainly weren’t any ATMs! Just at this precise moment I remembered American Jon telling me the previous night that he had found Vientiane’s one and only ATM. He’d agreed to take me to it and I’d clean forgotten after being distracted by a certain Dutch person. Fortunately, Bill came to the rescue admirably and offered to lend me the cash until we were able to visit a hotel on the edge of town that reputedly offered cash advances. However, this wouldn’t be possible until much later in the day and, in the meantime, I was indebted to his generosity in a sticky situation.
Thanks to having an upmarket travel chum I was able to go halves on a very pleasant twin with minibar, en-suite, cable TV and air-con. After we’d dropped our bags we went to make inquiries about transport to Champasak and, of course, to have breakfast. We found a curry house run by the same company as my favourite eatery in Vang Vieng and, while Bill got tucked into a rogan josh for breakfast, I made do with some pancakes and a fruit shake. We discovered that getting to Champasak wasn’t going to be all that easy nor particularly cheap. In the end, we opted to hire a 250cc dirt-bike, which meant we would be masters of our own schedule and wouldn’t have to worry about haggling over Tuk-Tuks. Bill had formerly raced dirt-bikes and ridden moto-cross so, after allowing him to take a good burn around a piece of wasteland to get over his excitement, I had no worries riding pillion on the unusually well-paved roads running alongside the river. Once our arrangements for the day had been settled, we settled down in the cool comfort of our room to watch the 4th round of the Australian Open. Another thing Bill and I obviously had in common was our great love for sport and it was nice, for the first time in months, to settle down in front of the goggle-box and binge on some high calibre action.
Later on we packed light bags with water, camera and wallets and jumped on the bike for Wat Phu. The journey down in the intense sunshine was a blast back to the plateaus of Vietnam’s central highlands. Long stretches of plain reached away to our left, on the right a range of hills was beginning to encroach on the far banks of the nearby Mekong. Our ferry trip over the river on two small boats, lashed together with planks was accomplished with the aid of our diminutive (probably 11years old!) skipper, who wasn’t the slightest concerned by Wild Bill’s engine-revving mounting of the pontoon. Coming down the steep bank with perfect aim, he rode up the narrow gang plank with some throttle and came to a dead-stop 3 inches to the right of our little ferrymen…and about 2 inches from the edge of the raft. It reminded me of the crazy stunts required of the contestants in one of my favourite childhood TV programmes, KickStart (anyone else remember?). Once on the other bank, it was a short journey along unpaved, orange-dust roads to arrive at the site of Wat Phu.
The site was particularly interesting because, as well as the reasonably well-preserved remains of the monument itself, there was also an informative museum. This modern building housed many fine sculptures and carvings from the site, dating back as early as 7th Century. In itself, this information was exciting because it meant that the temple pre-dated the Angkorian ruins and, yet, had been constantly in use during and long after the monuments in and around Angkor Thom. There was obviously some special significance to the site that had kept the Empire’s rulers interest when the centre of their empire was so many hundreds of miles away. And this, as we were to discover, was indeed the case. Wat Phu Champasak is the site of a sacred spring and the holy waters of the spring were what kept successive Emperor’s coming back to and maintaining this glorious mountain temple.
A lot of the remaining carving is from the later periods of Wat Phu’s use and so is of a particularly high standard. However, much like Prasat Preah Vihear (PPV) on the Thai-Cambodian border, much of the appeal of this site is derived from its beautiful setting. The layout is in complete contrast to PPV: instead of a sprawling mass of archways and sanctums, gently rising along a ridge, Wat Phu is built steeply into the side of a hill. At the foot of the hill, in the flood plain before the river, are the reservoirs that are an essential part of the temple mountain layout. From these leads a paved causeway, formerly lined by carved and engraved pillars, to the foot of several steep flights of steps. This stairway to heaven is guarded by an avenue of beautiful silver-barked trees and, eventually, gives way to the intricately adorned temple on the small plateau jutting from the foot of a precipitous cliff. From here, the views over the Mekong’s flood plains and the southern lowlands of Laos are far-reaching and nothing short of majestic. It was certainly easy to understand why the spring found here would be considered to be holy. Ingenious craftsmen had, long ago, fashioned a series of stone troughs and pipes which delivered the spring’s outpourings from under the cliff into the inner sanctum of the temple, where they poured suggestively onto the Shiva linga (phallus) that was the focus of pilgrims’ worship. Every year in February local people still hold a colourful festival in the temple grounds but, for us this was a peaceful and enjoyably uncrowded look at the far-reaching remains of a long-dead empire. As with the Khmer Empire’s long-abandoned relics in Cambodia, the original dedication to Hindu deities (in this case Lord Shiva) had long been usurped by Buddhism. Whether this change was made due to astute political observation by the Empire’s rulers or due to a fervent change of beliefs is unclear, but certainly, as in other mixed Hindu/Buddhist nations, the transition appears to have caused little rancour. I was probably the only person there that day that was a little irritated by the situation of an imposing Buddha statue in front of the entrance to the temple’s original inner sanctum. Eventually, though, I found a gap to squeeze through and was rewarded by the sight of some particularly intricate stone carving around the site of the original sacred lingam (long since removed).
On the way back to the river there were some beautiful views of the sun setting behind us over the mountains and again I was reminded why the site had been of such special significance to the Khmer’s.
Back into town just before night fell, we returned to our trusty Indian restaurant and, this time, I tucked into a delicious chilli chicken with garlic naan. One could hardly claim that I was indulging in the local cuisine but there’s no arguing when food’s this good. As the perspiration began to seep out below my eyes and from my brow, Bill and I fell to congratulating the wide appeal of sub-continental cuisine and the entrepreneurial spirit that allowed it to appear all over the world. Bill got to telling me about the many happy evenings he’d spent sitting on the floor of an art gallery in Kathmandu, eating chicken tikka and butter naan. I, of course, was only too happy to fill him in on the delights of my Sunday evening sessions in Jamal’s. United thus, by food, sport, interest in ancient civilisations and, of course, beer we were the best of travelling companions. Although Bill and I appeared to be very different on the surface – the one a divorce-bruised, abrasive, middle-aged American, the other an uncynical, somewhat naïve and youthful Brit – we had one undeniable common bond…our masculinity. We were soon trading good-natured verbal insults like we’d been drinking buddies for years and, back at the room we soon reverted to type, flicking through the channels in an endless search for more sport and gangster films. Bill had been unsure whether we would continue down south together as he had been hoping to meet up with one of those ‘cheapskate fools’ who’d caught the bus. As we had decided to get up at 6.00am to watch the Superbowl play-offs, he decided that he may as well use the early start to make it down to the bus for the trip to Don Det. I was certainly pleased to be continuing further along the road with him. His caustic wit and playful ferocity would be ample amusement during the long journey…and there was bound to be mayhem and entertainment wherever the two of us went.