NB: this is a beta version, during a soft opening, as part of a trial run, in a preliminary stage, as I get the hang of all this. This is also a rewrite of an article I did for The Spectator magazine about a year ago, however Substack allows me to add loads more photos, which makes it way more fun. I hope. So, here goes
The Night I Accidentally Saved A Baby In Laos
What is a hero? Can you be an inadvertent hero? These are questions I’ve occasionally asked myself: with regards to one torrid 24 hours I spent in Laos, in south east Asia – about 15 years ago.
I was thriller-writing in the north east of the country – near a town called Phonsavan – researching a mysterious megalithic site known as the Plain of Jars. When my research was done, I realised I had to devise a route home, to the quaint Laotian capital of Vientiane.
The jars on the Plain of Jars, in remote north-central Laos. Dating from about 1200-600BC, no one is quite sure what they were for, or why they were put here. It is of course possible they are just massive jars. Yawn
As I was driving one of only three rentable four-wheel-drives in the country I decided to make the most of my mobility, and take a more exciting route than the singular main road down the middle of the country (whereby I had arrived). I was particularly tantalised by a sentence in the Lonely Planet guide to Laos which claimed ‘there is theoretically an alternative route from Phonsavan back to Vientiane, which is said to be very beautiful, but we haven’t tried it’.
This was enough to rouse my spirit of adventure. Immediately I set off in my 4WD pickup, arrowing south out of town, passing lovely Hmong girls in their lovely pink frocks throwing tennis balls at young men in crash helmets (an annual New Year ritual in which the local tribe, the Hmong, marry off their young people). All was sunny and happy - until I realised the road I was driving was not going to last forever. Indeed, it quickly became clear that in a few kilometres there would be barely any road at all.
Two lovely Hmong girls choosing gifts during the Hmong New Year tennis-ball-throwing spouse-finding festival. They were all very friendly, I was possibly the only non-Hmong there
Deeper into the wilds, a more informal Hmong New Year tennis-ball-throwing etc
The lack of asphalt wasn’t the only hint that I was entering terra incognita. Judging by the astonished stares of the locals, as I passed their hamlets, I might have been the first round-eyed westerner to ever come this way. Or maybe just the most stupid? I comforted myself by remembering that I was in a four wheel drive. Even if the road ran out, I could go off road.
Road getting properly wild, now
Four tiny kids carrying wood to their hillcrest village, up the enormous mud-slope
As dusk crept over the canopy, the tarmac finally gave up. For a moment I wondered about turning back but - as I’ve always hated going over old ground – I decided to press on. Not least because my map was telling me that a few klicks ahead there was a little town deep in this muddy rainforest where I might find a tiny guest house. An hour later, as darkness truly descended on the thickening jungle, I saw that the ‘town’ was actually a bunch of shacks, and a tethered goat.
By now the mud was knee deep. I was driving through dense cold jungle, wheels spinning in the slough. Belatedly, the fear kicked in. Why had I done such a stupid thing? Taken such a lunatic route?
Fortunately, I had a bottle of whisky to hand. So I started drinking, as I churned my way onwards. This gave me courage - which I definitely needed. Because the jungle “lane” was, with every moment, becoming more of a chilly swamp. And the rising moon was staring down at me, through the palm trees, in open-mouthed astonishment.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get out of this self-inflicted mess, I heard cries, and they sounded like cries for help.
The shouting was coming from an entire Hmong family: they were climbing out of a VW Combi. They spoke no English and, of course, I had no Lao (or Hmong), but they made it plain in the International Language of Total Panic that they had a deeply sick baby on their hands, a baby that needed a doctor immediately. And they also had no means of getting to any doctor: their vehicle was profoundly stuck in the jungle mud. Therefore, their only hope of saving the baby was…. me, temporary owner of one of the very few four-wheel-drives in the country, a miraculous-for-them driver who just happened to be passing.
And so it began. To make our escape easier, and the VW Combi lighter, most of the Hmong family climbed into my pickup, as the Hmong patriarch, a young man called something-like-Hector, chained my pickup to their VW. Then I revved my vehicle and we began – I hoped – the long haul to safety.
My 4WD somewhat overloaded with quite-desperate Hmong. It was COLD
The evening stretched into night. Onwards we rocked, through the mud. My 4WD kept screeching, yawing, sometimes toppling, and often the chain snapped: even without its occupants the towed VW was surely too heavy. But every time this happened Hector nimbly leapt out, and somehow fixed the chain.
I had no idea what he was doing, or how, but he seemed to do something important, and then off we went again: pitching and rolling, knocking into trees, scaring off wildlife, splurging through evermore mud-holes, giving everyone bruises, making me drink even more whisky, as I battled with the steering wheel and the handbrake and the screaming links of the steel chain. And still the sickly baby whimpered.
All the time I kept thinking: is the baby dying? Is this too late? Every two kilometres I drank another neckfull of whisky to purge this thought. Then I passed the bottle to Hector, who also wanted to calm his nerves.
And then – ah, then – the mud dried out, and the trees thinned out. Abruptly, it was warmer, even sultry - we were off the jungly highlands. The land was flattening to a plain.
We’d made it. It was 5am in the middle of Laos but somehow we’d passed out of the jungle into a proper little town with shuttered shops and streetlights. The whoops of my passengers told me that this was the place, here there was a doctor for the baby. The women leapt out of my car and ran eagerly into the town with the poorly child, and then there was only Hector left, and he looked at me like I had saved his child’s life – who knows, maybe I had – but he apparently didn’t know how to say all of this in any shared language, so he just stood there, and he said, in English, ‘I love you’. Perhaps it was the only English sentence he’d ever learned.
Hector saying “I love you”
Getting back in my car, I drove on down a dusty road, feeling suddenly quite lonely and bereft, as dawn overtook the rainforest. Half an hour later I found a tiny hotel where the manager amiably cooked me up a pot noodle with a fried egg, and then I went to a room and slept for 12 hours straight.
Does that make me a hero, what I did that night in the jungles of eastern Laos? I don’t believe it does, if there was any “heroism” it was by sheer accident, I happened to have a four wheel drive at just the right time, in the right place. Moreover, I only took that crazy, peculiar route across Laos because I selfishly fancied an adventure. Which is not very heroic.
However, I do know this. The next day, as I drove the proper sunlit road, back to Vientiane, with some vivid music blaring on the car stereo, I suddenly felt the most piercing, unusual and unexpected rush: of pure and absolute happiness.
You were an angel.
Very moving story. One love.