Urine…that’s what it is, it’s the stale odour of urine, like in a hospital.
It’s 4 pm and I am still in the minibus that I boarded a few minutes before 10 this morning. There are 15 adult passengers, the driver and one baby who I hear from time to time but haven’t actually seen. The urine smell is not from the baby.
I’m on my way to Phonsavanh, and if there is some sort of spiritual entity that watches over the earth and intervenes from time to time, we will arrive soon. It must be in the high 30s. There is A/C but the locals like to drive with the windows open, totally eliminating any relief that may have been possible from the relentless heat.
It’s been a bitch of a day. The tuk-tuk driver was almost an hour late picking me up at the guest house. All departures are in Lao time. The vehicle was actually what they call a songthaew, with two rows of five or six passengers facing each other. Me and 11 other twenty-somethings, which should have been my first clue.
Total chaos at the bus station but as usual it worked out and we piled into the van. It is excruciatingly crowded. Next to me sits a Lao woman. Tiny, timeless. She is wearing a bright pink hoodie lined with thick fleece, what looks like a sweater underneath, black sweat pants, brighter pink socks with some sort of Disney creature on them and her hair is tied up in a scarf. She is clutching a second, woollen scarf and is covered by a pink polar fleece blanket. I am suffocating just looking at her.
There are seven falang (foreighners) and eight locals, plus the mysterious baby. The locals are up front in the good seats for the most part. About three hours into the trip, the guy two rows ahead hawked up a gob of spit and hurled it out of the open window. The wind blew it back inside and all over the man and woman seated in front of me. She freaked and told him off in no uncertain terms. I’m not sure he totally understood the words but she made him give her tissue to wipe off the mess and dispose of it.
The woman next to me may be small, but she’s a good eater. A baguette sandwich of some sort, then animal parts that look like chicken. She pulled a nice looking apple out of her bag eventually along with a kitchen knife with a blade aboutj six inches long. That made me a bit uncomfortable, truth be told. If she’s feeling anything like I’m feeling about this journey, she could snap at any moment.
Buddy two rows ahead makes as though to spit again. The woman behind stops him. He then proceeds to throw a water bottle out of the window, and both she and her husband whack his seat. The lady in pink hawks and spits into a bag hanging from the back of the woman’s seat. “Charming,” she remarks.
I’ll check in with the local pharmacist about a heavy sedative for the trip back.