Liminal Spaces

December 10, 2025

Xayaburi to Paklai

Dear little friends,

There are times when you wake up and think, where are we? How did we get here? How do we get ourselves into these situations? And most importantly, how do we get out of this place? It’s a Talking Heads soundtrack, running incessantly.

The most important thing to do is get up early, really early. Take your vitamins, brush your teeth, steal the adorable little Beerlao glass (Bruce, not me), and see if it’s light enough to leave yet.

It wasn’t but we left anyway. Behind the entry counter a young man was sleeping on a cot, presumably the same one yodeling to the karaoke machine last night. That big empty echoing lobby had really good acoustics. On the lobby table was a collection of empty Beerlao bottles and one adorable Beerlao glass. Bruce took it up to our room to replace the stolen one. The sleeper didn’t stir as we unlocked the bikes and loaded up out in the foggy darkness. Down the steep steep hill we went, Bruce rolling, me walking my bike because the steep fog and blurry lighting was freaking me out. I’ve never stayed in a more surreal place.

Mind you, we were perfectly safe at the Surreal Hotel, it’s just that it was all so weird.

The Xayaburi bus station, the NORTHERN bus station, mind you, where we landed yesterday, was only a hop, skip, and a jump away. We wanted to catch any early bird transport that we could to Paklai, not take any chances on missing the only vehicle bound that way for the day.

The bus station was deserted. A few people stood over a grill nearby, cooking up the day’s bus station offerings. I asked about a bus to Paklai. “Baw dai.”, was the terse answer. They vaguely gestured toward town.

The reason we even stayed at the Surreal Hotel was that it was by the bus station. As far as we could figure there was no SOUTHERN bus station, or we sure couldn’t find it on the map even though it was mentioned here and there on a couple of travel forums.

We rode into Xayaburi. We’ve been here before but the fog made it seem pretty desolate, it was very chilly. The fog was collecting on my jacket but it did keep the dust down. We rode through Xayaburi, on the theory that as the northern bus station was a few km north of town, the southern one would be equidistantly south. Xayaburi is not a small town, it took awhile for it to dawn on us that there might not be a southern bus station. The early morning road sweepers we asked looked completely baffled by the concept.

It wasn’t looking very good. But then we came upon a man who was out for an early morning constitutional with AirPods in his ears. The presumption being that only a person with a little more worldly experience would be out walking for exercise, Bruce asked him if there was a bus station. No, no bus station around here. Only minivans go to Paklai. You know, like THAT one, rolling out of the gloom toward us.

He waved down the white minivan, helped us negotiate a price to Paklai (it turns out he was going all the way to Vientiane and had very few customers so we probably made his day), the driver slung our bikes and bags onto the roof and covered them with a very heavy tarp (as we quaked in terror), and we were on our way to Paklai.

You ride in the fog hoping for the thing you want to happen to happen and then a kind stranger helps you make it happen. We were Paklai bound.

I am going to emphasize once again, that in 2008 Highway 4 was a muddy track. In 2014 it was a brand new smooth highway with zero traffic. Lots of rolling hills that really taxed us, yes. Maybe one guesthouse between Xayaburi and Paklai, and we stayed in it, yes. But now? Now it’s another potholed, rocky, dusty mess full of enormous loaded vehicles. Nearly every village is coated with red road dust, where children and babies live as the monstrous engines thunder past.

Keep in mind that this is a major highway through the country similar to the Interstate System in the U.S.

As the minivan bounced along we looked at the hills and dales and admired the buff cyclists we had been in 2014. But now, it would have been pure unadulterated misery and danger. I sent a text to my family, of the view out the window, and a selfie of us in a minivan. My son replied, “This should be on the Liminal Spaces Page”. This whole part of Laos is a liminal space, in my opinion.

We took on several passengers, none of them going very far. The driver had an app on his phone and people would call in and have him pick them up at such and such spot, or he’d see a backpack or bag by the road and swing to a stop and find out if they were going where he was going.

One such stop was in front of a very poor house, where most of the roof housed their plow. This was about halfway to Paklai so everybody piled out for a hong nam stop. You know it’s a hong nam stop because people get this little smirk and because everybody gets out. “Hong nam stop”, I told Bruce. We got out too.

The family hong nam was a shed made out of corrugated iron with the door flapping in the breeze. The men hightailed it to the back forty, the women took one look inside the hong nam and we all headed to the tall grass behind the house. Then we stood in the road and commented on how cold it was, as one does in the post-pee relief mood. The sun was out by now but it was definitely chilly still.

The young lady we were picking up sat in our row of seats, and immediately opened a bag of small round yellow citrus fruits and started peeling them. She put her nose in the bag and breathed deeply. She offered us one, it turned out to be a round lemon, very sour.

We’ve seen this in the past, where folks who don’t travel very often get into a vehicle and get very, very sick. That was this poor kid. The lemons she was sniffing weren’t helping one teeny bit. She had brought a big supply of plastic bags with her, and the driver gave her some too. She needed them all. And that’s all I’m going to say about it, we all felt badly for her.

She and her bags got out at a small village, and we got out at the Paklai Northern Bus Station, which consisted of a pitiful roof over some vague infrastructure. There’s no southern bus station in Paklai either. The hong nam door didn’t close and it didn’t open but at that point who cares. Our bikes were totally fine despite bouncing on top of each other for hours, it was early afternoon, the sun was shining, we rode into town and stopped at a soup place to consider our hotel options.

This is actually called a bus station. However there don't seem to be any buses anymore, just minivans and trucks with two rows of benches.

Paklai is snugged up to the Mekong, and it’s trying. I mean, it’s trying.

There are several hotels now, instead of just the one dodgy one we have stayed at in the past, which is now closed. Most of them are ornate and weird looking, all gaudy, some half-finished and abandoned, some all the way finished and abandoned. We decided on the most gaudy one because it looked newer, maybe everything would still work in it. Once the faucets and drains go, the mirror/shelf in the bathroom goes, the door locks or light switches go, they never get fixed. So you wanna choose the one with the least mileage.

Our room's balcony had a creature. I wouldn't put my hand next to it for scale because it was too freakishly huge.

The internet didn't work we'll at our hotel in Pak Lai.

After we settled into the Hotel Gaudy Green we took a walk down the long hot street looking for the market. We find things to be way more expensive than in Thailand even though you always hear that they are cheaper in Laos. There were no papayas in the market but the two mangoes we bought there were excellent and surprisingly cheap. No such luck on dinner, where we were served the worst fried rice in the world, and it was way overpriced. The sunset was nice though. Down on the Mekong was a floating restaurant with zany lighting, a live band, and a lot of bad karaoke singing.

Rice cakes drying in the sun with a touch of dirt coating being next to a dirt road.

At least we were done with minivans in Laos. Tomorrow we hit the road towards the Thai border and see what that road is like, how far we can get, escape the grit and this inescapable feeling of doom that has haunted us here in rural northern Laos. I just want to tell you this: it didn’t used to feel this way. And it didn’t have to become this way, either.

Today's ride: 6 miles (10 km)
Total: 424 miles (682 km)

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Steve Miller/GrampiesSometimes you do have to believe that it is better to only return in memory.
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