It was just before 6am when the tuk tuk we’d arranged the night before arrived.  We’d been waiting in the lobby with our bags.  I tossed them in and asked him to take us to the bus station.

We didn’t expect Phonsavanh to be so cold in the morning.  It must have been close to freezing and we were wearing shorts and sandals.  We never went over 30kph, but the tuk tuk was open to the elements and our teeth were chattering when we arrived at the bus station on the outskirts of town.

We showed our tickets and shoved our bags underneath the bus.  Oksana climbed aboard to claim our seats while I looked over the snacks at the station kiosks.  I started up a conversation with the only other tourists in sight.  Derek and Paulien were from the Netherlands and had just traveled through all the same places we’d been, going all the way back to Phuket, in Thailand.  When I asked them if they were going to Vietnam, too, they looked relieved.  It always feels good when you get independent verification about the bus you’re about to get on.

Shortly we were underway, but our driver took us on a tour of Phonsavanh before pointing us in the direction of Vietnam.  By the time we’d arrived at the border, I’d read a few chapters of my dog-eared copy of Kitchen Confidential and watched a movie on my iPhone.

The Laotian side was nothing more than a concrete corridor with a row of windows along one side.  Unaware of the protocol, Derek, Paulien, Oksana and I neglected to add our passports to the stack from our bus, so we were the last to get our exit stamps.  Bringing up the rear, we hefted our bags and hiked across the border.

The immigration office on the Vietnamese side was a different beast altogether.  High-ceilinged and full of echoes, we gawked a bit when we entered.  Instead of the loops and swirls of Laotian, the signage was written in a Roman-derived alphabet. The plentiful and peculiar accent marks were the only clue that one should not pronounce them without first learning more about the language.

Beyond the tall glass doors, a long counter sat in the sunlight.  As we entered, an official behind the desk pointed to a waiting area with rows of airport-style plastic chairs.  I set my bags down in front of one, turned back, and raised my eyebrows.  Here? (more…)

I’ll admit that I knew hardly anything about Laos before entering the country.  Our friend, Wendy, did the initial planning for the trip – she was the one that picked the border crossing so we could take a two-day trip down the Mekong River (which was half awesome and half horrible and the latter was not her fault.)

Going into a country without knowing much about it is a lot like watching a movie without seeing the trailer first.  Knowing what you’re in for doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll enjoy it any more or less.  I’m happy to say I enjoyed our time in Laos and, even though we were only there eight days, I learned a lot more about the country that I thought I would.

Pronunciation

Okay, first off, it’s “Lao” not “Laos.”  The French added the ‘s’ during their Indochina occupation and it’s silent besides.

The people are Lao, the country is Lao.  Technically, Laotians call their country “Muang Lao,” or “Pathet Lao,” both of which translate to “Lao Country.”  When the French came along, they united three separate Lao kingdoms and so it sort of made sense (in their language) to pluralize the name of the new territory.

Thanks, Wikipedia!
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We didn’t realize how large Zambia was until we bussed across it.  The whole reason for visiting was to see Victoria Falls, which is in the south.  Since we entered from Namibia, we didn’t have that far to go to reach our destination.  Our plan afterward was to climb (or at least see) Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, which is on Zambia’s northern border.  Getting there was a nightmare.

Our first bus from Livingstone to the capital, Lusaka, was only six hours.  The following day we decided to push all the way to Dar es Salaam.  We spent 34 hours on that next bus, with the same four Thai martial arts movies on a loop and no air conditioning.  It just about did us in.

Before all that, however, we spent about a week in Livingstone.  Being such a tourist hotspot, it was more comfortable (read: wealthy) than most of Zambia and we enjoyed our time there.  Most of my observations are from that area; I expect things where much different in the rural parts of the country.
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The great thing about traveling around the world for a year without a plan is that you can make it us as you go.  On our first night in South Africa, I found myself flipping through a National Geographic that was left on a coffee table at our backpackers.  There was a feature on the Okavango Delta, with beautiful photos of elephants pushing through marshy waters at sunset.  That’s something I’d like to see, I thought.

The Okavango Delta is in Botswana, huh?  Oh, and hey, look at the map!  Botswana is right next door to South Africa!  That’s pretty much exactly how we decided to go.

For a country right next door to South Africa, Botswana is very much a different place.  Parts of it matched up exactly with my preconceptions of what an African country would be like (the bus system, the sounds of the spoken languages) and some of it surprised me (3G cellular service, safety.)

A few days before we were set to leave South Africa, we met a couple Canadian girls in Pretoria that were volunteering in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, for a few months (Hi, Brandy! Hi, Angela!)  They offered to let us stay with them at their volunteer house for a couple nights, which was awesome for a number of reasons, not least of which being that we had a couple unofficial guides that had already figured out many of the ins and outs of Botswana society.  Their initial help with things like the bus rank were invaluable.

The Bus Rank

When we saw the bus rank for the first time, I thought, now we’re in Africa!

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Going to Africa for the first time was a huge step for us and it’s hard to remember how worried we were about the whole thing.  Would we have trouble with the languages?  Would we be safe?  Will the food be safe to eat and the water safe to drink?  Should we worry about racism?  Civil wars?

In retrospect, I’m very glad our introduction to Africa was through Cape Town.  The infrastructure there is good, the population is mostly white, English is spoken by just about everyone… starting at the southern tip really eased us in.  Later on, as we progressed through the rest of Southern Africa, things became more difficult for us as travelers, but by then we had gained enough confidence to handle anything thrown our way.

Africa has elements of the Western and Eastern worlds (and even the Middle East), but it’s not really much like either.  Africa is its own place, with its own cultures, and its own way of doing business.  The list of notes I jotted down on South Africa grew rapidly.  As our first introduction to a new continent, there were bound to be many differences from the other countries we’ve visited, not to mention the United States.
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Oksana and I visited Argentina for the first time in 2008 and I wrote up my initial thoughts about the country back then.  We rented an apartment in Buenos Aires this time, and I thought that I would have noticed a ton more things, but my list this time is fairly short.  That could be because first impressions are always the strongest, or it could be because we mostly hid out in our apartment the entire month (enjoying a kitchen we could cook in and a bed that didn’t have to be sought out after every night’s sleep!)

Tipping the Baggage Handler

The first new thing about Argentina, we noticed before ever leaving Chile.  As we handed our big backpacks over to the baggage handler to stuff under the bus, he put his hand out and waited.  Obviously he wanted a tip (we did notice other people paying him, but not how much.)  Oksana handed over what Chilean change she had for the both of us – he kind of sniffed at it, but accepted it.

I thought it odd.  I wasn’t sure what the tip was for, as he hadn’t done anything differently than the baggage handlers in the other four countries we’d visited.

Then, just before we reached the Chilean/Argentinean immigration checkpoint, high in the Andes, the baggage handler came walking down the aisle with a tin cup.  People all along the bus were dropping more coins in.  I was able to listen in to another curious tourist asking what it was for and he replied that it was a tip for the baggage handler.

That sounded very close to blackmail to me.

I relayed the answer to Oksana; she didn’t like it either.  When he reached us, Oksana dumped all our remaining change onto the top of the pile in the cup – it was the equivalent of perhaps four pennies – and it was supposed to cover Oksana, Anna, and me.  He looked into the cup, somehow managed to ascertain that she was short-changing him, and said to her, in Spanish, “Not enough.”

Oksana, defiant, started to ask, “¿Por qué?” and he explained himself as he did to the other tourist.  Oksana began to argue with him in English, he argued right back in Spanish.  Neither one knew what the other was saying.  Finally she said, “No entiendo español,” and he fired back with “¡Y no hablo ingles!” The ultimate “let’s agree to disagree.”

To add insult to injury, when we arrived in Mendoza and went to get our bags, the handler put his hand out yet again for tip.  Three times for the same bus ride, just to keep our bags “safe!”  By that point the bags were in our sight and there was no way anything would be stolen from us if we didn’t pay him. We turned and walked away.  Besides, we were tapped out.

At least after going through the border crossing, I realized what the guy with the tin cup was getting at.  While we were in line at immigration, all our bags were gathered up and taken to customs.  If no one had been watching them, the customs officials might have been tempted to remove one or two items from our bags.  I guess all it takes to stop that sort of behavior is a surly, well-tipped baggage handler standing over them.

National Coin Shortage

We never noticed this in 2008, so it may be something new.  Coins are in extremely short supply in Argentina.

Here’s the problem:  The municipal buses in Argentina are the cheapest form of public transportation and (aside from buying multiple-use cards) they only accept change.  Because of that, everyone hoards their change for the buses.  And because of that, it’s practically impossible to impulsively decide to take the bus.

You can go to the bank, of course, and exchange some paper money for coins, but God forbid you ever find yourself in a bussing moon on a Sunday.  Once, three of us wanted to take a bus to a mall on the outskirts of Mendoza.  We spent at least a half hour, going from shop to shop, asking cashiers to break some bills for us.  We even went to McDonald’s, offered to buy something, and the girl behind the counter said she had 25 centavos. Misunderstanding her, I said that’s fine, we’d only need about 4 quarters per person.  “No,” she said, “I have only 25 cents in the till.”

A kind woman standing nearby took pity on us and changed as much as she could, 2 pesos.  We still needed one more to get all three of us to the mall.  We ended up taking a cab.

An interesting way in which this problem manifests itself is in what you can be offered instead of change.  We were at the movie theater and I bought a package of M&Ms.  13 pesos, I paid with a twenty.  As the concession stand girl was fishing for my change, she held up one of those foil-wrapped chocolate coins and asked if I’d like a piece of candy.  Um, okay.  Sure, thanks.  It was only afterwards that I realized she only handed me back a five in change.  That piece of candy cost me half a bus ticket.

Popcorn

Speaking of movie theaters, you can order just as big a tub of popcorn as you can in the States.  The only difference is that they don’t ask if you want it “buttered or unbuttered,” but rather “sweet or salty?”  We found ourselves going for the sweet popcorn.  If it’s not going to be smothered in butter, it might as well be dusted with super-fine sugar.

Eggs

I don’t know why I didn’t realize this until now, because it’s not unique to Argentina, but so many places in Latin America don’t refrigerate their eggs.  I guess they can stay fresh up to a month (or longer, depending on the temperature – but not too warm or they’ll incubate!) It makes sense if you think about it.  If Chicken eggs had to be refrigerated, they would go bad as soon as they were laid.

Sales Tax

When you leave Argentina via the airport, you have the opportunity to have some of the sales tax you’d paid on purchases refunded to you.  I don’t know why I forget to mention this in my previous post, because we took advantage of it ourselves, back in 2008.

Basically, it works like this:  Store where you can buy some of the bigger ticket items – like wine, leather products, expensive tourist souvenirs, things like that –give you a receipt declaring the sales tax amount you paid.  If you hang on to those receipts, there’s a booth at the airport where you can get that tax refunded just before you leave the country.  The process has been streamlined a bit since we were there the first time.  You used to have to gather everything together and drop the bundle into a mail box, then wait a month or two to before you saw the refund on your credit card statement.  Now they simply reimburse your credit card while you wait.

It’s an international version of a process we’re familiar with in the States.  Typically, you don’t have to pay sales tax on things sold in states you don’t live in.  This is why you don’t have to pay sales tax on most of the items you buy on the internet.

Garbage Collection

Picture this: A trash bin in the shape of a basket, made of maybe eight pieces of iron rebar, situated at about chest level, balanced on a single pole of slightly thicker rebar. Many of the garbage bins along the streets in Argentina are designed just like that, and in the evenings people pile their bags of garbage  up in them until they’re about to topple over.

These garbage baskets bothered the heck out of me every time I found myself walking along with an empty bottle or candy wrapper in my hand.  There was no way to put anything small in them without it falling through the gaps between the rebar.   Despite being on practically every street, they’re not at all a solution to the litter problem.

I’ve seen this style of garbage basket all through Latin America, too, but it wasn’t until Argentina that it dawned on me why they were made that way.

It’s the stray dogs.  By keeping the garbage off the ground, balanced on a thin pole that dogs can’t possibly climb, it keeps most of the garbage from being torn apart and dragged through the streets.

Cartoneros

At night, on Corrientes Avenue (where we rented an apartment), everything is a mess.  People from the high-rise apartment buildings bring all their garbage down to the street and leave their plastic bags sitting on the sidewalk.  Before long, the bags have been cut open and the contents strewn all over the sidewalk, curb, and parts of the street.  Every morning, however, everything was tidy and clean again.  What the heck was going on?

I started to be more observant when we walked home after dark and noticed people rooting through the garbage for stray pieces of cardboard.  Was the recycling so valuable to make it worth someone’s time to search everyone’s garbage?  Apparently so.

When I asked our local friends what was going on, they smiled.  It’s a long story.

You see, Buenos Aires has a cardboard recycling program, but cries of limited resources, going green, and carbon footprints mostly fall on deaf ears.  The average Porteño can’t be bothered to sort their own garbage.

In order to get cardboard – presumably the most cost-effective item to recycle – out of the garbage and into the recycling plants, Buenos Aires decided to pay a minimal price for cardboard by the kilo.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to entice people to sort their trash, but it was enough to make it worthwhile for some of the lower class to go through it for them.

Enter the “cartoneros.”  These ladies and gentlemen work exclusively at night, slicing open bags and looking through them for any packaging boxes they can get their hands on.  Later on they push and carry huge bundles of cardboard down the street, some as large as small cars.  I have no idea what they do with them after that; presumably someone comes around and collects it, weighing the haul and giving them a cut of the recycling return.

They left such a mess on the streets, though; I couldn’t quite get a handle on why they were allowed to continue.

“Oh, it gets more complicated,” my friends told me.

You see, the municipal garbage men have to come around every night in their big garbage trucks.  They collect all the trash from those crazy rebar bins and pick up any intact bags left on the curbs, but they won’t touch what the cartoneros have spread all over the sidewalks and streets.

I can understand that.  I can even respect them for taking a stand.  They have strong labor unions in Argentina and they probably argued that they were hired to be garbage men, not street cleaners.

“But who cleans everything up?” I asked. “It’s all gone in the morning!”

“Well, the government appointed another group to clean up the stuff the garbage men wouldn’t pick up…”

“What?  Why don’t they just put a stop to the cartoneros, make it illegal to—“

“Oh, no!  No, no, no!  The cartoneros are protected now!  Not too long ago there were a couple incidents where cartoneros, working late at night and wearing dark clothing, were killed in car accidents while they were crossing the street,” my friend explained. “Now the city pays to provide all of them with reflective jackets and gloves so that they can do their work in relative safety.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t understand how the whole system could be allowed to continue (let alone be functional and profitable.)  Another friend described it as a band-aid on a band-aid on a band-aid.  The Argentineans thought there was a good chance that the mafia was involved.

I kept asking, “How?”  “But how?”  “Why, how, why?!”

Finally, my friend from Buenos Aires smiled and raised her hand to stop me.  “It’s the Argentinean way,” she said.

If you’re in South America and ask other travelers what they think about Chile, you’ll hear two different things over and over: Chileans speak fast and everything is much more expensive.  I guess it’s not surprising then that those were pretty much the first two things we noticed when crossing the border from Bolivia into San Pedro de Atacama.

Language

The language, I knew, would sort itself out in time.  They speak Spanish there, like pretty much everywhere else we’d been, they just hurry all their words together.  In previous border crossings, I noticed the weird phenomenon where, on one side, I understood almost everything said to me and on the other, practically nothing.  My Spanish usually isn’t good enough to pick up the reasons why; it could be the speed, the accent, or the slang.  The tiny improvements I gain in comprehension over the next week are too small to notice as they happen, but after seven days or so, I’m usually doing alright again.

I never got to that point in Chile.  We were in and out of the country too fast.

(Interesting note about Chilean English:  We were told that Chileans learn “American English,” rather than “British English.”  Not that there’s a huge amount of difference between the two, but sometimes you notice the changes.  Flat for apartment, that sort of thing.  You would think that learning American English would somehow make their Spanish easier to understand, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong.)

Sticker Shock

The sticker shock in Chile was harder for us to deal with.  Coming from Bolivia, we were used to paying, oh, about $20-25 a night for a nice private room.  Our first place in San Pedro ran us $42 and we had to live with a shared bathroom.  (They even charged us for towels, $2 a piece!)  The hotel reception guy saw our hesitation and asked if we were coming from Bolivia.  We nodded and he said, “Yeah, tourists from Bolivia always want lower prices.  It’s just more expensive here.”

Later on, in La Serena, I wandered into a music store and looked around at the prices.  Figuring the Twilight sensation would be a good place to do a price comparison, I checked out what it would cost to buy a book, a DVD, and a Blu-Ray disc of the first in series.  Roughly: 10,000 pesos for the DVD, 13,000 for the (trade paperback) book, and 22,000 for the Blu-Ray.  That’s $21.25 (DVD), $27.65 (Book), and $46.80 (Blu-ray). Not everything costs more than it does in the US, but media certainly does.

It would have been easy enough for us to stick to our $100/day budget if we were only concerned with food and lodging, but we had two other big expenses to consider: Excursions and transportation.  I haven’t look over the budget too closely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Chile was the first country that broke our budget.  In that respect, it was a good thing we got out of there so quickly.
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