Tuesday 26 February 2008

Destination Laos: Part 17 Sawngthaew tales

Sawngthaew are a common form of transport in Laos. Literally it means 2 rows, referring to the benches at the back of the pick up truck where the people, vegetable and animals are seated as they zip around the Lao PDR, picking up more people, bags of rice and chickens along the way.

Those were journeys that promise a peek into the real Laos, and that many a traveller had an interesting anecdote to share about, and more often than not it was of his affable companions that couldn't stop licking his trouser legs or the one that showered him in feathers all throughout the ride, raising much concern about avian flu - Seriously i've met people who wouldn't touch chicken at all in Southeast Asia because of the flu. That aside, other amusing tales of the sawngthaew that ive heard from travellers include:

" We boarded the sawngthaew at the market, and then i had to lean to one side to avoid someone's chickens, and then halfway out of town someone forgot his stuff and the truck did a huge U turn in the middle of the road and we went back to his house and waited for him to get his things."

And another one:

"We stopped by the fresh market for some Lao woman to pick up some stuff and waited for 45 minutes while she did her grocery shopping and came back with huge bags of veggies in each hand."

To add to that my own tale in Luang Nam Tha, being unceremoniously deposited very late in a suburb after the last passenger had mustered her whole extended family to haul all her stuff back home, rolling them off a small slope that led to her home.

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