Every real Mekong road trip story starts with someone getting stood up at a donut shop, and this one is no different.
It’s almost 10 by the time I get to the donut shop. Jacky is nowhere in sight. “Have you seen a girl with blue-green eyes, golden brown hair, and big—” I cup my hands over my chest to illustrate.
“She here this morning,” the guy behind the counter says. “Eight o’clock exactly.”
“How do you know it was 8 o’clock exactly?”
“Because she say, ‘Look at the clock! It 8 o’clock exactly!’ She very angry! Hee hee! Whoever she waiting for, he crazy man! Hee hee!”
“Not crazy. Just stupid,” I sigh and slump over the counter.
I refuse to move until the guy behind the counter slips me more information, but all he gives me is Lao coffee. I sip the coffee, sitting at a table now, and try to work out some sort of strategy to get to Cambodia with the 50-odd dollars I have left. After Pat’s whole spiel about following the path, it feels like I have no choice. For a moment I think about Christmas. The return ticket back to America leaves in three days. I can only get there from Beijing. No matter. I’ll just spend the rest of my days in Cambodia, wandering as a crime-fighting monk. But first, I’ll need to steal one of those robes. . .
My mind wanders in search of Jacky, wondering what she’s doing now, wondering if perhaps she is and has been My True Love all along. I see her getting on a bus to Thailand, her visa happily renewed for another three years of beaches, cocktails, dancing, men, and all of their ladyboys. I want to say goodbye. Maybe I can find her Facebook. Damn it! What was her last name?
Time to go. What I need to do is figure out some transportation. Maybe I can pay a guy to take me to Cambodia. All right, let’s look at the monument. Might as well, since we’re here. Patuxai Stone Arch. Tourists everywhere. A group of girls. None of them Jacky.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I think to myself, and then it hits me. I’ll rent a motorbike! I get the idea after a motorbike almost hits me. There are motorbike rentals everywhere. All I have to do is leave some bogus collateral and then take that bad boy all the way to Cambodia! Is that stealing? Hell yes, it’s stealing!
(I was really hungover. I was kind of depressed. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry, your honor. No, I do not think that will hold up in court. I’m just giving you context here.)
Just as I hop into the first motorbike rental I see, there of all places. . .
“Jacky!”
She turns around. Her mouth drops as if she was just on the phone, calling me. Neither of us have cellphones.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you!”
I react like a cyborg and scan her statement for bullshit. It’s clean. She squeezes me tightly. She looks amazing, freshly showered and changed. I can’t help but ask.
“Did they try to gangbang you?”
“Who?”
“Him and his ‘friends.'”
“No, you ass!” Jacky laughs and pinches my shoulder. “I told him not to do anything funny or I’d stick him with a knife.”
“You’re so Australian,” I whisper admiringly.
It’s a strange kind of solitude travel philosophy — spending a whole night worrying about someone, only to find out they were fine the entire time.
“Did you end up bunking with some lucky Lao girl?” Jacky says, batting her eyelashes. “You didn’t meet another ladyboy, I hope.”
Events from the previous night flow hyperspeed like I’m being plugged back into the matrix.
“I think I’m still shrooming.”
“That bad, eh?”
“I was just about to rent a bike. Did you pick one already?”
“Sure did. Where ya headed, cowboy?” Jacky takes out a cowgirl hat and dons it teasingly for a moment before picking out a helmet.
“Siem Reap.”
“That’s perfect! I’m going to Sihanoukville. Who’s in Siem Reap? Come with me to the beach! We can rent a bungalow and sip cocktails by the water. I’m going to do a cleanse there before I go back to Thailand. Just sit at the bottom of the world for a few weeks and watch the sun go down. Oh wait! You only have a few days left, haven’t you?”
I nod my head stoically, trying to avoid a throat lump.
“We can still ride down together, can’t we? But how are you going to return the bike?”
“I haven’t figured out that part yet.”
“Why don’t you just ride with me? I’m riding all the way, baby! I’m not coming back. As long as you don’t mind riding bitch—”
“What? Are you nuts? I can’t ride on the back!”
“Why not? There’s nothing wrong with a boy riding bitch. It’s actually quite daring. You can show the world you’re not afraid of what they think.”
“Please stop calling it ‘riding bitch.’ That’s not helping.”
“Fine, we can take turns. You ride half and I’ll ride half. Deal?”
“What about once we get there? How are you planning to return your motorbike?”
“I’m not,” she says, and winks at me. “I just bought it.”
As if on cue, one of the grease monkeys from the shop comes wheeling a brand-new motorbike up to the front. It’s a fast little number, cherry red. I wouldn’t have expected anything less. He wipes it down one last time and gives Jacky the key.
I stand there with my mouth agape.
No Mekong road trip story is complete without someone just buying a motorbike outright to avoid the hassle of giving it back.
“You do know how to use the clutch, I’m assuming,” Jacky says as I straddle the driver’s seat.
“I’m a fast learner,” I chirrup.
“Oh god. Please don’t tell me . . .”
“Come on! Teach me! Give me 10 minutes, and I’ll have her at full speed!”
“You really are something; you know that?”
We go to the side street and start up the bike. Jacky flies up and down the street like a pro, making sure it’s ready to burn. I can see she’s going to be expecting me to have it pushing red line the whole time. I’ve never even ridden a Vespa. When she hands me the motorbike, I struggle to steady it, my arms quivering like two strands of wet spaghetti.
“It’s heavy,” I note dumbly, and nearly tip it over.
“Hey! Get a scratch on my new bike and you’re paying for it!”
Jacky runs through the tutorial without pause, and something in her voice tells me I better get this right or I’ll never see her tan lines again. Fear vanishes the moment you let absolute concentration of the moment take over and become an unbreakable particle, a transcendent wave. There’s a brief moment when I enter the superconductor and all of my infinite parts and pieces seem to deconstruct and just hang there for a moment in the air. There’s a sudden shudder and the sound of grinding gears. Jacky is on the sidewalk, yelling. She’s not happy.
For the next few hours, I sit on the back of the cherry red motorbike and try to avoid the stares of nearly every single person we see — children and dogs included — as I daringly ride bitch — Jacky’s words, not mine — defying 5,000 years of learned culture. Perhaps the seat position fits the name. I do a lot of complaining, and continue to mutter under my breath because I’m stuck in the house and she can’t seem to listen to me while she’s at work. I don’t like the way my helmet has a lily painted on it. Jacky tells me it looks fine, but I don’t believe her. She’s probably just saying that to make me feel better. “Maybe it does look good,” I think to myself as I move my head back and forth in the side mirrors. I’ll need to have a proper look at the next rest stop, play with the angles and my hair.
We weave in and out of traffic until we reach the outskirts of the city where the walls along the highway slowly crumble into fringes of concrete, which then diminish to pebbles, and then finally rubble and the grassy nothingness of the road stretching into the trees. The plan is to ride until we reach the border without making too many stops, a trip that would normally take half a day, but with the way Jacky rides and expects me to ride, we should get there in no time.
This Mekong road trip story was never going to be a leisurely one — not with Jacky in charge of the throttle.
My bandaged hand is the one with the accelerator. A sort of numb vibrating pain comes from the hyper-pulse of the engine, electricity shooting down my arms and into my fingertips. Jacky’s arms hold me tight. She moves her hands down to her sides when my speed slackens up, and holds on tight when I burn. I set that motorbike on fire; I’m nothing but smoke and rubber, asphalt and grit, tires and fire, and that feeling of numbing electricity shooting through me, tears trembling in the corners of my lids.
Jacky lets out a cry of delight as we go full-speed into an open light, a perfect summer day, wind in our hair, sun in our face, the blue in the sky and the trees surrounding us disappearing into rays of blurry light. We fly into the realms of zero gravity, and I feel her pressing my back with the side of her face. I almost see myself screaming into a bright white light before the explosion following right behind us, disintegrating the world. There’s only the silence of deafening roar, the sound of pure consciousness, the perfect awareness of this moment, speeding through the countryside toward the green hills with the trees standing perfectly still until you pass them and they break down into their simplest forms. Seeing the road in complete focus until it becomes a rainbow of flying light.
This is the kind of moment spiritual travel Asia stories are actually about — not a temple or a mantra, just speed, wind, and total presence.
If I walked into a bar and you saw me, would you buy me drink? Would you listen to how I’ve been and tell me there were times when you wondered how I was, however far you were, in a strange moment unrelated to anything, but somehow coming back to that time, no longer your life now, but wondering how you are? The sun dips over the Mekong, painting the sky quicksilver with pink and vermillion stains sparkling on the water, drinking cold beers, watching the silhouettes of fishing boats float in the distance.
Any honest Mekong road trip story eventually slows down to exactly this — cold beer, a fading sky, and a conversation you know is a countdown.
“I wish our last meal was a bit more memorable,” I say, using chopsticks to pick at a plate of fragrant greens, sticky rice, and lukewarm tripe.
“Trust me. I’ll remember this every time I even think about touching animal parts again. I’m going back to being a vegetarian. How can anyone eat this stuff?”
“Starvation usually helps.”
“I wouldn’t give this to my dog,” Jacky says, wrinkling her nose. “But here we are, and I’m eating tripe.”
We stare out at the water in silence, listening to the songs of crickets in the air, the last glittering notes of sunshine. What do people usually say at these times?
“I love you?” I ask, and then add, “I think.”
Jacky looks at me and bursts out laughing.
“What am I going to do when you’re gone? It’ll be so boring. I’ll have no one to drink alone with. It’s more fun drinking alone when you’re there.”
“I know. You tell me every time you finish drinking alone and I’m there.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Jacky asks, touching my hand. “Am I going to need to rescue you again?”
“It can’t hurt.”
We order more beers. The sun fades into a spectacle of beauty and light, impossibly distant, distorted by dreams.
“We’re not going to exchange emails and promise to keep in touch, are we?” I ask.
“No, of course not. That would be horrible.”
“Dreadful.”
I swallow a shot of beer.
“The bus leaves at 6 in the morning, so no dallying,” Jacky reminds me governess-like. “It’s not an actual bus, of course; they just call it that. It’s more like a pickup. You’ll see the farmers waiting around for it. That’ll take you to Stung Treng. From there, you can get a bus that’ll take you straight to Siem Reap.”
“I was really sad this morning,” I interject now in sudden confession. “When I didn’t see you at the donut shop, I was hoping. . . you might still be around.”
“I knew you were a stalker.”
“I could’ve been a killer on the road. You should be more careful next time.”
“I’ve got good instincts.”
“Plus a really big knife.”
“Yeah,” she grins, knowing that she really does.
Our faces smile together at the river in the last waning reflections of rosy glass.
“What if there was something you lost,” I ask aloud, “and you didn’t know where it was, or how to get it back? How far would you go to find it?”
“I reckon I’d give a look.”
“What if you couldn’t find it?”
“I reckon I’d keep looking,” she says softly, more serious this time.
“Should I become a hermit?”
“And move from shell to shell?”
“Not that kind of hermit. I mean the kind who live in little huts on the mountaintop, eat berries, and occasionally come down to the nearest village to play some music with mice dancing behind them in the street. Will you come listen to me?”
“I’ll do you one better and bring my piggy bank.”
We laugh and let our voices dissipate into an ellipse of crickets and sun fall, my hand around her waist, her head against my shoulder, cradled now in the feeling of no return.
“Is this what it means to be happy?”
“You mean where we are right now?”
“Dreaming about where we’re going to be.”
“Maybe, but you can’t live in dreams forever.”
“But I could live in a cave.”
“You’d have to marry your left hand.”
“How’d you know I was a lefty?”
“There was a moment that night.”
“I see.”
“So you planning on caving it for a while then?”
“Thinking about it. Just sitting there, meditating, becoming enlightened, understanding that we don’t need anything except what’s inside.”
That’s the joke every spiritual travel Asia daydream runs into eventually — the plan to need nothing, undone by one person crossing your path.
“And then some stupid girl crosses your path in the middle of nowhere and you look into her eyes, and you see all that you’ve been missing is still out there, because believe me, she doesn’t want to live in a cave.”
“But what does it mean when we meet in the desert, or sit beside each other on an empty highway waiting for a bus that never comes?”
“You’ll never forget her, even if you only met for an instant. You’ll walk away feeling as if you’ve known her your entire life.”
“Nothing will ever be the same again. The peace and solitude I once had will be ruined. I spend the rest of my life searching for her like a phantom, because without her, the world is just empty scenery.”
Maybe that’s the truest solitude travel philosophy of all — that the peace you build alone only means something once someone threatens to take it away.
“Will you really look for her?”
“I will.”
“What’ll you do if you find her?”
“I don’t know, but I know what to say when I see her.”
“What’ll you say?”
“I’ll ask her to watch the sunset with me.”
Jacky sits on my lap and kisses me. I close my eyes and see stars fill the twilight skies. She looks at me, and for one last moment, I see the blue-green of her eyes, like a world spinning alone in the galaxy, coming in line with the sun and the moon one last time.
“Do you think we could ever be something? Out there in the real world?”
“It never works,” Jacky says, shaking her head. “We’d just end up hating each other. I’d never cook anything, and you’d always forget to pay the bills on time.”
“In the next life, I will return as an accountant,” I declare.
Jacky puts her arms around my neck and gives me a long kiss goodbye.
“Come find me,” she says, “if you decide to change your mind.”
She puts her hand on my cheek and mounts the bike. She disappears in less than eight seconds, but it feels longer, like watching a giant wave roll across the sea, growing and growing, until finally it crashes on the horizon on some distant moonlit beach.
And that’s how this leg of the Mekong road trip story ends — not with an address or a promise, but with a taillight disappearing toward Sihanoukville.
Further reading:
- Mekong River — Britannica — background on the river that runs through this whole Mekong road trip story
- Crossing from Laos to Cambodia by land — Lonely Planet — practical info for anyone planning a similar overland route
More chapters from this same spiritual travel Asia series live on the Philosophy of Wandering home page.