trip reports

Serpent Across the Mekong: Morning of the Special Pork Sandwich with Salad and Everything

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Vientiane

MORNING OF THE SPECIAL PORK SANDWICH WITH SALAD AND EVERYTHING

Take half a freshly baked baguette, kept warm on a bed of coals. Slice it open and smear a generous dollop of pate on the lower half. Add slices of Chinese-style char siew pork, a little ham, a fitsful of julienne-cut Vietnamese carrot, cucumber and radish pickles, a shot of soy sauce, a squirt of chili, a sprig of spring onion and a spray of coriander. Wrap the now-bursting sandwich up with a twist of paper and hand over in exchange for 8000 kip. Devour in culinary ecstasy.

Morning chores thus completed, with the mercury climbing towards 35 C by 9 AM in the morning, I lolled around my air-con hotel room for the rest of the morning before heading off to the airport. VTE has two terminals: a new, reasonably stylish international terminal with the swooping roof lines of a temple, and a domestic terminal with all the charm and panache of a Stalin-era Soviet orphanage. Much to my own amazement, I’d managed to book my flight online at Lao Airlines’ website, and this caused not a little amazement at the terminal as well: the check-in lady had a list of all e-ticketed passengers, consisting in entirety of me, and I was asked to sign this manifest, validate my credit card and get my passport copied before my boarding card was handed over.


(sorry about the crappy cellphone pics)

The landside holding hall is remarkably beaten up, a dusted-over long-closed restaurant on the 2nd floor and a few fans beating humid air in the general direction of passengers sweating rows of yellow plastic bucket seats. Not all were going to Luang Namtha: one announcement stated that passengers for another flight to Xiang Khoung were now asked to proceed to check-in! But our boarding started about half an hour before our flight, with a Commie-era passport and ID card inspection complete with a sign advising passengers to SHOW ALL WEAPONS. After this formality we were allowed to The Gate, where The Coffee-and-Beershop and The Giftshop awaited. Eventually the same lady who’d checked me in sashayed in to slot in blue plastic boards reading “QV601” “LUANG NAMTHA” over a wall lamp and switched in on: it was time to fly the champa-scented skies.

Serpent Across the Mekong: Day of the 45th Anniversary of the Establishment of Lao PDR-People’s Republic Of China Diplomatic Relations

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Vientiane

We were somewhere around western Vientiane on the edge of the Mekong when the chili began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should go sightseeing by yourself…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around me and the street was full of what looked like a tour group of retirees, all swooping and screeching and diving around the bus, which was parked in front of our hotel and not going anywhere. And a voice was whispering: “Sacre bleu! What are these animals?”

Then it was quiet again. “What the hell are you yelling about,” Monsieur M muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to head out.” No point mentioning those retirees, I thought. The poor buzzard will see them soon enough.

Shortly earlier, the table of our restaurant had looked like a cooking class. The larb had two massive orange chillies, 75 pellets of chopped long bean, five coarsely shredded springs of mint, a shotglass half-full of fish sauce, and a whole galaxy of unidentifiable herbage… and also a liter bottle of Beerlao Dark, a mug of Beerlao Original, a lethal bowl of green papaya salad dressed with fermented crab, two tip khao full of sticky rice and a wine glass of orange juice, with a straw. All this had been rounded up after we finally reached the hotel, crossing the street in a frenzy of hunger — from appetizers to mains, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for lunch, but once you get locked into a serious Laotian meal, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the orange juice. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man who drinks orange juice in the land of Beerlao…

(with apologies to Hunter S. Thompson)

Serpent Across the Mekong: Evening of the Soontra Beetroot-Passionfruit Juice

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Opened with great fanfare two years ago, its scraggly palm trees still strapped to their training poles, Suvarnabhumi is already visibly falling apart, dark clouds of murk gathering on the only recently blemishless vast expanses of raw concrete. I navigate past the touts to the SHUTTLE BUS stop on the lower level, its Thai purity unblemished by any other words in heathen languages, and partake of a free tour of catering buildings, customs compounds and parking garages before being dropped off at the Transport Terminal, where lower-class riffraff such as myself can board ordinary public buses or avail themselves of taxis without paying surcharges.

35 bahts’ worth of Bus 551 whisks me to Bangkok, in the sense of an impatient chef attempting to whip up cream that he had forgotten to refrigerate, but the clots of traffic crowding around Rama IX’s fine establishments like the Colonze 4 Massage parlour (SPA SAUNA KARAOKE NO BRA) eventually dissolve and barely two hours later I’m at Paragon.

A Nikon camera show is in progress in one of the atria, with scruffy photojournalist types and even scruffier geek types fondling lenses the size and resolving power of telescopes while teenage models in princess dresses ignore them totally and chatter about makeup. I head up to my regular haunt, the True Cafe on the 4th floor, and position myself and a glass of ice tea under what looks like a giant perming machine, vague washes of color projected onto the wall behind me while an giant dot matrix display on another wall flips through True propaganda.
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Serpent Across the Mekong: Day of the Sign Banning Durians on Public Transport

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My molded plastic seat hurtles sideways at 50 miles an hour. What passes for countryside in Singapore — carefully tended simulacra of jungles, housing blocks painted vaguely sinister shades of pastel with posters proclaiming “RACIAL HARMONY FOR TOTAL DEFENSE” (this being Singaporean code for “BE HAPPY OR I’LL KILL YOU“) — pass behind the head of the youngish Chinese office lady tapping away SMSes opposite me on her Hello Kitty-encrusted mobile, perfectly round glasses (but, not, thankfully, the moustache) robbed from General Tojo’s grave, complexion of a peach that ought to have been thrown out a few days ago and bouffant Kimjongilesque haircut enhanced by a constellation of expensive prohibitions, from flammable materials to stinky fruit, plastered on the wall beside her. A hypnotic spray of dots near the ceiling (1 center hole, 4 around it at the compass points, multiply by three to 12, shift and repeat 12, shift and repeat 12, shift and repeat 12, end) audibly advises us in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil to press the Emergency Communication Button if we see anything suspicious.

Imagine Changi Airport as a cluster of fire engine red water-filled balloons, quivering in the tropical heat, pressurized dihydrogen monoxide squirming for release from its plastic confines. Shortly after station CG1 “Expo”, the Kawasaki Heavy Industries/Nippon Sharyo C751B segmented steel bullet punches its way underground with a WHUMPP, first heading due north, then curving 90 degrees to pass under runway 02L/20R and then — we enter Matrix bullet-time here — squarely impacting into Terminal 3, which implodes in slow motion with a PLOOSH, showering rain on all sides, as the train punches a hole on its way in and, within seconds, punches out. The train is now braking for CG2 “Changi Airport” (an eerily distorted “All passengers please disembark” announcement plays in the background), but it still retains enough motive power to poke about one carriage length (23 meters) into Terminal 2, which punctures with a less convincing PHLUMPP like punching a fat kid in the abdomen and, Newton’s laws being in effect, disgorges its load of water towards the offending object.

A last pitter-patter of drops and we return to real time. Only Terminal 1 and the pathetic shrunken little brown lump of the Budget Terminal, hanging from the deflated remains of T2 like a colostomy bag, remain intact, if wet. I have chosen my seat in carriage 5 of 6, which positions me next to the up escalator into T3, where I trek past the orchideous Crowne Plaza and board the Changi Airport Automated People Mover System. A Mitsubishi Crystal Mover on the PMS(*) North route B-C Landside beeps its way to Station B, and I board and take the front seat facing the Emergency Escape Hatch, staring ahead through the plexiglass at three parallel tracks diverging to lurk into and sneak around Terminal 1. (*) Yes, it really is called the “PMS” in bureaucratese.

In the interest of narrative continuity, Terminal 1 fails to implode on arrival at Station C. I obtain a near-rectangular piece of cardboard at check-in desk, insert a rounded piece of plastic and an opposable digit into the appropriate orifices of the Enhanced Immigration Automated Clearance System, take yet another escalator to the Commercially Important Passengers level (always a depressing reminder of why airlines value me) and enter.

Changi’s Thai Airways lounge has undergone a welcome refurbishment since my last visit here. It’s been afternoon for a while now, but they’re still serving breakfast, including specimens labeled “Smoked salmon butter lettuce sandwich” and “Chicken mayonnaise butter lettuce croissant”, and I sample both before realizing that “butter lettuce” is not a meltingly smooth cultivar of Lactuca sativa, but two separate ingredients.

Outside, T1 is being refurbished for the third time since 2003, wiry little Bangladeshis in dusty blue overalls nipping their heads out from partitions covered in meaningless slogans selling an Exciting, Vibrant and Enjoyable Changi Experience(tm). This time, they’re ripping out a perfectly functional ceiling and rebuilding it again a little higher up.

At gate. Boarding starts.
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Serpent Across the Mekong: SIN-BKK-VTE-LXG-CEI-BKK-SIN on TG/QV/FD

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SERPENT ACROSS THE MEKONG
also known as
The State Railway of Thailand is Decadent and Depraved

When there is a floating stone and a giant serpent across the Mekhong, Lao will be at permanent prosperity. 

–anonymous Lao sage

The Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge opened on April 8, 1994.
The inauguration of the first passenger train service across the bridge from Nong Khai, Thailand to Tha Naleng, Laos was on March 5, 2009.
This is the story of what happened on the 6th.
(Plus another week’s worth of dazed wandering around rural Laos and the Golden Triangle after that.)

SIN-BKK-VTE-LXG-CEI-BKK-SIN

Readers are asked to excuse the florid verbosity (or maybe that should be “pleonasmic prolixity”) of the prose — you try writing a trip report while reading Infinite Jest. If it gets unbearable, skip ahead and it’ll get better. Or, quite possibly, worse.

Five Flights in Five Words: SIN-FRA/HHN-TMP/HEL-FRA-MUC-SIN on LH/FR/AY Y

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Wordy trip report? Not this.
Five words in every line.
Map and flight list: http://openflights.org/trip/214

LH 779 SIN-FRA seat 55K

Twelve hours in tin can.
Ancient jumbo, even toilet scuffed.
Man, not flying SQ sucks.

Mainz

Beer. Sausage. Beer. Schnitzel. Beer.

Frankfurt Book Fair

Weekdays all work, weekend play.
Bounteous, mostly underaged, cosplayer bonanza.
Next time, bring better lens.

Deutsche Bahn

Unreserved tickets are a pleasure.
But whence famed German punctuality?

Cologne

The Dom: yes, it’s big.
Lounge in Marriott Cologne rocks.

Wuppertal

Suspended monorail for the win.
Even had to buy T-shirt.

Assmannshausen

Everybody else here is retired.
Good wine though. Where’s Tittenmädchenplatz?

Burg Eltz

It’s a pretty castle alright,
but I preferred the hike.

Luxembourg

Arab oil sheikhdom, only European.
Hearing spoken Lëtzebuergesch scares me.
Judd mat gaardebounen with Diekirch!

FR 1921 HHN-TMP seat ??

Ryanair: it’s not so bad
when expecting rubber glove proctology.
(Well, OK, it’s still bad.)

Tampere

Salsa with five blonde pixies,
plus Finnish mixology until three.
It was worth the hangover.

Helsinki

Michelin starred lunch, elf shopping,
flourescent minigolf, more wild parties.
Even the weather mostly cooperated.

AY829 HEL-FRA E190 seat 20A

First AY flight in years.
Bumpy Embraer, sad snack pack.
I’ll stick with Star Alliance.

HI Frankfurt Airport-Nord

Albanian shuttle-cabbie brought along girlfriend.
Time-warp motel free on PointSavers.
Decent room, chocolate, decaying fruit.

FRA LH Senator Lounge

Healthy German breakfast: beer & sausage.

LH966 FRA-MUC A321 seat 30F

Bigger than the Helsinki plane.
More time waiting than flying.
Take off, snack, circle, land.

MUC LH Senator Lounge

Munchen wrapped in foggy quilt.
Empty terminal is shaded gray.
Only my flight not delayed.

LH790 MUC-SIN A340 seat 55K

So much nicer than jumbo.
AVOD, decent pitch, great service.
But ending soon? Load 20%…

Conclusion

Patronage and praise much appreciated.
Next time, I’ll try haiku. 

A Querulous QR Quest to Q8: Kuwait International Airport

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Kuwait, the airport, is just weird. Entry into the terminal is through a bizarre scrum of four gates leading to different check-in areas for different airlines, with cars honking at each other outside and a constant flow of passengers, trolleys and porters trying to squeeze through both in and out. If going to Zones 2 or 3, you first have to trudge through an honest-to-Allah multilevel shopping mall, complete with Debenhams department store and Harley-Davidson outlet; on the other side, finally, lies Check-In Zone 3 for local LCC Jazeera (crammed full of pax) and Qatar (almost queueless). After a brief scare of demanding proof of my Singapore residency, successfully bluffed by flashing my Access Card (which is no such thing, but has enough state seals, embedded photos and IC contacts to make it look terribly convincing), I was checked in and could start wondering how I’d spend the next two hours.

The inside of the airport is old-fashioned but well-maintained. The gates go from number 1 to number 26, which might make you think KWI is pretty big, but unfortunately everything between 7 and 20 appears to be missing. There’s a boozeless but nonetheless amazingly popular dutyfree (why, I know not; an iPod Shuffle 1GB costs nearly twice what it does in Singapore), a McD’s/Pizza Hut, a Costa Coffee, and that was it. Except for a Ghiraoui chocolate boutique, which I inspected in detail, playing a fun game of “spot the chocolate” by comparing the unlabeled pralines with an illustrated brochure, and eventually handing over my last five dinars to the equally bored (but rather cute) Filipina salesgirl in exchange for rather more than 5 KD worth of chocolate.

On the way in it was the ammo boxes, on the way out it was the soldiers: none in full uniform, mind you, but those GI Joe haircuts, desert camo everything and combat boots are a bit of a giveaway. Even some of the Filipina ladies were toting about “US Army Reserve”-branded bags.

And that was that. Boarding was ordered, we were marched into the airline by tube (no buses here), and the Kuwait Towers loomed on the horizon as we did a few turns and then set off to Doha and home.

A Querulous QR Quest to Q8: Kuwait City

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Kuwait was rather more fun than I expected. My arrival wasn’t particularly propitious: it took me over an hour to get my on-arrival visa, I was stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the hotel, the city was wreathed in a persistent slow-motion sandstorm for the first three days, filling the air and even the swimming pool with dust, and at work half the hardware on site was missing and the customer’s idea of reasonable timelines was rather different from ours. But the Courtyard Kuwait City is a mind-bogglingly amazing hotel for a Courtyard, our partner’s technical people were actually competent (such a refreshing change from the usual), and Kuwait had one immense advantage over my previous work site: it’s not Saudi Arabia.

It only slowly sunk into me how different these two “conservative Islamic” countries are. Yes, both ban alcohol and pork and like to execute drug smugglers… but that’s about it, as in almost all other things, Kuwait is infinitely more laissez-faire than the Saudis. Women can, and do, wear pretty much what they want, with a remarkable array of head-turners at the (ultra-expensive) Arraya Centre mall next to the hotel and some even lounging about in bikinis at the hotel pool. Music in public is allowed, which — even subconsciously — just makes a huge difference to how lively a restaurant or shop feels. And while prayer calls were piped into shopping malls and echoed along the streets, nobody cared if you trotted off into the mosque or not. Saudi papers, and streets, and TV shows, are full of effusive paeans to the Guardian of the Two Holy Mosques HH King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and the vast tentacular branches of the al-Sauds; Kuwaiti papers, on the other hand, are full of Parliament debates, squabbles between voting blocks, elections, demonstrations and all the noisy trappings of a democracy; while Kuwait certainly isn’t a real one, it certainly feels like one, and even the occasional paeans to the wisdom and sagacity of HH the Amir were usually tucked away on page C17.

Above all, though, the best thing about Kuwait is just that you could feel at ease: in Saudi, you’re always a little on edge, not even because of the ethereal threat of terrorism but just always being a little unsure if you’re staying within the tightly prescribed boundaries of Allowed behavior…

The downside to visiting Kuwait in late June, though, is the heat. After the dust storm and its momentary (comparative) coolness wore off, the mercury crept closer and closer to 50 degrees, making the daytime feel literally — not figuratively, literally — like a sauna. Metaphoric saunas are usually associated with humidity, but no, the real thing is actually quite dry, and that’s how it’s in Kuwait too: you can walk outside for a few minutes, thinking “gee, now that’s hot”, before you start to sweat. But the evenings were quite tolerable, and even the daytime furnace heat was almost enjoyable if spent at the Courtyard’s breezy rooftop pool, which by afternoon had heated to the point that the jacuzzi next to it was usually cooler.

A Querulous QR Quest to Q8: Doha Airport

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Qatar is the world’s only country whose name starts with the letter Q, and they don’t let you forget it: in the five-minute ride from plane to terminal, you pass signs for QAS, QAAC, QNB, QJet and QTel. But DOH is also the closest I’ve seen to an airline monoculture anywhere in the world: both planes on the tarmac and flights on the information boards were 95% Qatar Airways. The DOH-based frequent flyer isn’t going to have much choice.

The airport is amazingly small and unpretentious for what may be the world’s richest country’s main gateway: one runway, one small rectangular main terminal with no jetaways, only buses. On the inside, DOH feels like a recently-built airport in a small city in a rich European country: slick, modern, supremely efficient, yet without the slightest bit of the usual Arabic penchant for ostentation with gold paint, chandeliers, palm trees and whatnot. Even duty free feels downright restrained. Enjoy it while it lasts, they’re already busily building a new DOH which will be umpteen times larger…

I had tight connections both ways — 1:20 on the way in, a scary-sounding 0:50 on the way out — but Doha’s minimum connecting time is 45 minutes and, indeed, everything worked like clockwork. I would even have had time to duty-free shop on the way back, but at midnight the queues at the registers were long and I was scared out of line by snippy “passengers on the flight to Singapore report to gate for IMMEDIATE boarding!” announcements coupled with a boarding pass admonition to show up 20 minutes before departure… which (inevitably) just left me with time to drum my fingers in the bus departure lounge. Gah.

A Querulous QR Quest to Q8: Singapore to Kuwait on Qatar Airways

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The Firm recently found itself with a customer in Iraq, but visiting Baghdad being presently contraindicated for unbelieving khawagas like myself, I was asked to visit the next best thing — Kuwait. Always ready to check another Gulf state off my list, I accepted the offer and set off figuring out how to get there on Singapore. There are no direct flights, and I first looked at Thai via BKK, but they only fly three times a week and the schedule didn’t fit. Going through DXB on SQ and/or Emirates would have required two long layovers on the return leg, although detouring via Sri Lanka did sound kind of interesting… but in the end, I decided to try out Qatar for the first time: the schedule was excellent, the price was right and it was time to see if they lived up to their “five-star airline” hype, especially in Y — there are plenty of trip reports about QR C/F on FT, but I couldn’t find any for economy.

http://openflights.org/trip/1

As I flew the same flights on (almost) the same planes in both directions, I’m going to condense the flights together: one report each for SIN-DOH-SIN and DOH-KWI-DOH. No pictures, alas, as my CF card did a disappearing trick on my very last day and took every last picture of Kuwait along with it.