To Luang Prabang by Rail and Road

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo-HomeAway travel writing competition, sponsored by Grantourismo and ‘HomeAway Holiday Rentals’. Each month, a different topic is announced and the topic for April is “On The Road”. Hence, eligible entries must touch upon the experience of travelling and being on the move, observations from the road and reflections on ‘the journey’. This month, however, there is an additional requirement—entries must be about, or reflect upon, a train journey. Stories and photographs must be original and should derive from a firsthand travel experience. For more information, check out Grantourismo. Our entry follows!

Taking the train to Laos is a great option—not only to save money but also to see the countryside. It’s a relaxed way of travelling—board in Bangkok in the evening, sleep through the night and awake to majestic views in the morning light. Only the thin scar of the railroad breaks the landscape of jungle and sky. The passage is beautiful—and humbling—and I found myself smiling bemusedly at Graham Greene whose Lawless Roads I had just been reading before I looked out the train’s window.

Decidedly not a Romantic, Greene judged a landscape by its value to man: “Nature appals me,” he wrote, “when unemployed or unemployable.” Romantics would have loved this landscape, finding God in the verdant jungle that fronted the rocky crags which thrust upwards into the underbellies of soft, white clouds. But it was obvious neither God nor man dwelt here any longer—just the memory of man rolling onwards in the surfaced track and the memory of God, pushing in on all sides through the fecundity of the jungle.

The jungle, finally, gave way to Vientiane. But this bustling city wasn’t my ultimate destination and I chose instead to push on to Luang Prabang—an eight hour drive.

My bus spat me out at a guesthouse clinging to the shoulder of the highway. Its porch was framed by a pair of lamps that gathered back the night with thin fingers of light. Out front, a young girl passed with slow step among the tourists selling old coins while road weary foreigners sat smoking on the porch, staring at the point where the highway disappeared into the mountains. Despite the night and the dust, it appeared they were still hungry for a little more geography in which to consider their own dissatisfaction.

In Luang Prabang there is everywhere—hidden behind stilthouses and juxtaposed against temples—the reminders of conflict being eaten by time and water—and converted to the strangest of uses. Here, an old bombshell, once carrying a payload of shrapnel, was turned nose down and made to hold up a lotus. There, an impotent anti-aircraft gun was frustrated into a makeshift merry-go-round by giggling schoolchildren.

It’s in such a place that mundane events are amplified into inexplicable beauty. I’ll never forget the image of a child running after his brother—the white soles of his bare feet appearing like stars against the inky dusk—and his laughing brother shouting encouragement in a beautiful language I could never pretend to understand.

It seemed that breezes passed with perfect ease about the whole of South East Asia to touch me where I slept that evening: the night air of Halong Bay, charged with the shine of stars; the fitful cough of Saigon; the panting of Phnom Penh, rolling with the scent of the Mekong; and sweet with the stink of rot and life, the heaving sigh of Bangkok—all came to my side that night, whispering: “Truly a kind of heaven, this”. [498 words]

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