Dante’s Infirmity
Boten, Laos
December 25th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“I just don’t see the point in tearing apart a perfectly good car.”
Tony P


I HAVE never woken up with a man on Christmas morning and, other than hoping to catch out Santa, I never expected to.
We could only afford four beds at the hotel, and the Mighty Tony P and I drew the short straws. But at least it was a room with clean sheets and a hot shower, not the crab-infested plywood whorehouse.
And Tony is a gentle lover.
Christmas Eve back home is spent down the pub with scores of old friends I haven’t seen for a year.
I spent this Christmas Eve with a gerbily Mexican-Italian-American watching a Japanese slapstick in Chinese in Laos.
I’ll be home for Christmas.
I’d told that to a lot of people, and although I knew months ago that I wouldn’t, it still felt strange. I felt like Dorothy.

Christmas lunch was fried noodles with squid and coffee. There were a few closed shops in Boten, maybe they knew something of this Christian holiday, but otherwise no signs of festive cheer. And though we’d been living in the village for four days, and everyone had noticed us, no one wished us season’s greetings.
I'm not sure what the locals think of the strange white people with their funny cars.
Someone must have been celebrating something because I watched a man cooking a giant hamster with a flamethrower. He was just out on the street with some gloves, a jet of flames and this enormous rodent.
What you up to?
“Just flamethrowering this here hamster.”
Okay.
Round back they had a crazy looking owl and three medium sized bears in cages. They were a few feet tall, with thick dark hair and powerful arms. I asked two of the boys where the bears came from and they gestured towards the surrounding forest. They told me they got them when they were very small, and when they were very big they would eat the paws and heart.
One of the boys was playing slaps with a bear through the cage, trying to palm the back of its paw before getting clawed.

We spent the afternoon successfully repairing Dante, and unsuccessfully working on Ziggy. Everything was tried, every piece taken apart and rebuilt, every component tested. But it wouldn’t start. The starter would whir and whir, and then, when you think the engine is going to catch, a loud ominous clunk, and nothing. It was the same sound as back in Beijing, and four days of tinkering had not fixed it.
By late afternoon OJ was plying Ziggy’s engine apart with a chisel. I think at that point we knew it was the end.
Christmas Day 2007, one-hundred-and-fifty-six days since we set off from Zwickau, Germany, twenty-three-thousand kilometres down the road, in our nineteenth country, we were going to have to dump a Trabant.

The decision to ditch a car was pretty much made for us- one engine didn’t work. But which Trabbi to get rid of? We had two working engines that could go in any of the cars.
The victim would be cannibalised for parts, butchered for spares, and it would take a lot of work, so really it didn’t matter which car went- it didn’t have to be Ziggy.

We decided the time was right to sit around with a beer, discuss it and vote.
But there wasn’t much agreement or discussion, more argument and contradiction. People became sentimental about their Trabbis and didn’t want to see them dumped. They admitted it, Carlos wanted to keep Fez because he loved it, Lovey wanted to keep Ziggy because he loved it, Tony wanted to keep Dante because he loved it.
Only OJ and I remained impartial. I honestly had no problem with losing Fez. I’ve spent a lot of time in the little car, but it is a pile of rubbish. It’s probably had more problems than any other car and runs terribly.
This is not the time for sentiment, I said, lets make a decision which gives us the best possible chance to get to Cambodia.
Everyone agreed. Then continued to let their sentiment cloud their judgement.

We thought about the car’s pluses and minuses:

Fez
Cons: no passenger seat, front right bearing and transaxle dodgy, passenger door doesn’t lock and swings open, brakes dodgy, rear control arm welded, history of problems, exhaust welded to the floor (extra noisy), headlights dim, speakers broken.
Pros: It’s looks good (subjective…), currently works so we could just drive away. In theory three people could squeeze in.

Ziggy
Cons: It’s in pieces all over the floor, broken front leaf spring, rear control arm welded, only Lovey can open the door, parking (hand) brake broken. Shocks are too big on the back (damaging rear tyres).
Pros: The only car that locks, hasn’t had too many problems, seats four people.

Dante
Cons: A giant hole has been cut into the roof (wet, cold, insecure). Passenger window missing, driver window stuck open. Passenger door broken (sealed shut). Trunk door broken (sealed shut). Can only seat two people.
Pros: Currently works so we could just drive away. Big trunk.

It was too tough to call. Not being particularly in on the mechanical side of things, which I felt should be the only consideration, I had no idea how to vote.
But this is how it went:
Tony wanted to ditch Ziggy, it was in pieces. He also loves Dante.
Carlos voted Dante, because there is no roof so it is terminally insecure. And he loves Fez.
Lovey voted Dante for the same reason (and he loves Ziggy), and so did OJ.
So when it came to my turn the decision was already made, Dante by three votes, with the main reason being the giant hole in the roof, which the Americans had cut out just the day before.
I abstained, I really had no idea.

Tony was pissed. That’s an American pissed, which I have learned means angry, not a British pissed, which means drunk. But soon he spanned the linguistic differences by downing a mini bottle of rice wine.
Then he was really pissed.
“I'm not annoyed at anyone for the decision, I just think it was the wrong one. I don’t see the point in tearing apart a perfectly good car, when we could just take the drum and the transaxle from Ziggy and go before it gets dark.”
But the car is insecure.
“So is Fez, the passenger door doesn’t close.”
Personally I didn’t really care about the time it would take to rebuild Ziggy and strip Dante. It would be better to get the job done properly than to rush it. We’re here now, I said, we should just get the job done as best we can.
But Tony was right. It took ages, it got dark, the job got harder and we’d scattered out tools across a mechanic’s forecourt. It was midnight by the time we’d finished testing Dante’s engine in Ziggy, switching the leaf springs over, harvesting the best tyres from Dante, taking the drum, transaxle, speakers, stereo.
When we’d finished gutting Dante it really was a sad sight. Sitting on bricks, shocks hanging loose, roof gaping open. We left it there, by a garage, and told the owner we were going to Vientiane to get parts.
The Americans talked about returning to pick it up once we’ve finished the trek. They want to ship it to the States.
But I think we may have seen it for the last time.

We set off in convoy, if you can call two cars a convoy. Really we were just following each other.
“How far do you think we’re gonna get?” I asked Carlos, who was driving.
“I don’t care, I just want to make it out of this town.”
The battery was dead, but we were on a hill so we roll started down, back towards the Laos border.
The engine kicked in, the loud, raucous vibrations, the exhaust filling the cabin. Carlos clicked it into gear and slipped the clutch. And we went…nowhere.
He turned to me: “There’s no gears.”
We looked at each other in silence. He had that flicker of a grin he grows arounf the corners of his mouth when he knows somethings gone horribly wrong. He shifted the stick around, but nothing.
“Clutch?”
I stepped out the car and looked around. We were still in Boten.
“So on that attempt we actually managed to go backwards?” I said. We’d roll started towards China, not Cambodia.
“Nice work. So we’ve lost one car and scored –50m today.”
We set up the tent for our fourth night in Boten.

Lying in Fez, where I had made a bed, I heard that infuriating sound of a mosquito, buzzing about in the dark, looking for a target. I don’t remember the last time I heard a mosquito. South East Asia, we’re here. Five of us, with two cars. But we’re here.
“Happy Christmas,” I shouted towards the tent, and squashed the midge.

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