In contrast to the previous day, an ancient Toyota Crown Royal saloon, circa 1970s, with red plush velvet seats and a driver who continually fidgeted for nearly two hours, turned up to take us to the Thai border. He dropped us off around 11am and we wandered through an archway, had our passports stamped and boarded a waiting bus which whisked us over a bridge to the other side of the river, to a similar building in Laos, near Huay Xai. Where to next? There was a small window labelled ‘Immigration’, so that seemed like a good place to start. We were handed four forms, thankfully written in English, and we stood scratching our heads at what was intended by some of the questions. It took a while to fill them in, and then when we handed back the completed forms and our passports, we were waved away to stand beside all the other tourists hanging around looking bored. We waited and waited, another bus full of more tourists arrived and they joined the rest of us waiting for forms and passports to be returned. It took quite a while, but the passports and half the paperwork were returned and we finally strolled through another archway and into Laos. Then the waiting continued….
There were no taxis, just a few tuk-tuks which were being overly loaded with tourists and all their baggage. Frustratingly, every time we told a tuk-tuk driver the name of our hotel, they would shake their heads and walk away. What was going on? Finally, one driver told us that he couldn’t take us there because the Nakaraj Nakhorn Hotel, which we had booked and paid for, did not exist, but from where we were standing, we could actually see the hotel on the small hill right next to us. He amended his comment to “it’s closed”…..not funny! We still don’t know if the drivers didn’t want to take us a short distance up a hill, despite some of them remaining sitting there with no passengers, or was there a more sinister reason? I guess we’ll never know, but we really did wonder later on, if it was the latter. Neither of our mobile phones would pick up a signal in Laos and the small window labelled ‘Tourist Information’ was closed, as was the bank. Maybe this is the French influence; everything closes at lunch time! So Rodney left me to wait with our luggage and he set off across the empty concrete car park, out on to the main road and slowly, in the 35°C heat, climbed the hill to the hotel.
Half an hour later he was back in a ute with a cheery driver who loaded our bags into the back and whipped us up to the hotel……..on the wrong side of the road; ahh the French influence again. On arrival at reception, the manager gave us an ‘upgrade’, which on checking into our room created much laughter. I have never in my life seen so much opulence, except perhaps in a palace somewhere. There were ornate gold architraves and skirting boards. Some walls had white wallpaper, some had red, but they were all hand-blocked with a gold design. We even had our own enormous hallway, complete with a very comfy red velvet sofa.
There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms, all of which were enormous. The bedroom we chose seemed bigger than the whole floorplan of our house back in Sydney! Scattered about were nine white and gold tables and chairs. There were two flat screen TVs, neither of which worked. There were four swans, made from twisted towels, perched on the beds, plus three gold plastic swans filled with plastic flowers swimming across some of the tables. Gold net curtains, complete with enormous gold tassels and fringing, hung limply across all the windows. Even the door knobs and mirror frames were gold. Red patterned Turkish rugs lay on the marble floors and to complete the décor there were two cheap white plastic wardrobes that didn’t match anything. The rooms should have been in the Palace of Versailles, except that I think Louis XIII had more taste. There was a safe, but it also didn’t work. There was no wi-fi. The curtains were hanging off the hooks, the one hairdryer was burnt out and definitely not to be plugged in to see if it would work. As we wandered the suite, the laughter gradually turned to growls and then a squeal when I discovered there was no hot water, not a drop. Grrrrr. We did note at this point that it was Friday the thirteenth…………
After washing my hair in chilly water, we wandered down to see if there was a swimming pool, bar, café, shop; anything to while away the rest of the afternoon and evening. Nope. We were miles from the nearest town and obviously taxis and tuk-tuks would not come near the place, so we had to stay put. Finally, deciding it was time to eat dinner, we headed to the dining room and were barred from entering. “Private function, sorry”. Where did all those people come from? We were pointed in the direction of a balcony with views over the border control centre, which we’d already seen enough of, earlier in the day. We waited and waited to order our meals, but a cat and her kitten kept me amused for a while. Then as we waited and waited for the simple dishes to arrive (thank god we didn’t order something as complicated as a chateaubriand (not that it was on the menu), the Korean manager joined us to advise with a big grin that: “Due to lack of hot water today, please accept the evening meal for free” and he then plied us with “free alcohol too, for you, our special guests”. “You might as well get drunk tonight, what else is there to do!” he obviously knew full well about the added lack of TV and internet…… Rodney managed to squeeze down three large beers and two very large glasses of an apparently rather nice Pinot Noir….”The very best wine from Australia”, we were informed with another grin. Two European girls who arrived ten minutes after us (the only other customers), got their meals ten minutes before us and when ours finally arrived, the rice dish was overcooked, tasteless and bland and the Pad Thai noodles were claggy and weird, both with no sign of a vegetable on the plate. How can a chef go so wrong with such basic meals? Right from the start, loud speakers were blasting out Asian “lift music”; you know, the sort where every song sounds the same…….or maybe it was just one song playing over and over again….. When the music got pumped up so loud that we couldn’t hear each other, the void of our gold suite seemed like a better place to be.
In the morning we were still not allowed in the dining room, and we couldn’t find anyone to ask where to go for our breakfast. We had to get the receptionist to come down to the balcony and rouse someone to prepare some food for us. She found a menu and informed us we could have ‘A’ or ‘B’. There was no cereal, no yoghurt, no fruit, no juice, not even water, only tea or coffee to drink. ‘A’ turned out to be a club sandwich filled with ham and lettuce, and ‘B’, the ‘American Breakfast’ consisted of two greasy fried eggs, two tiny frankfurters and a pile of coleslaw; we’re not sure which American invented that one!
It was a massive relief when our guide from Shompoo Cruises turned up at reception to pick us up. I think we were both starting to wonder if this was a sister hotel to the Hotel California; “You can check out, but you can never leave”….
