|
Sabai-dii, good friends, I write to you from Katmandu, Nepal, after a two-week journey through Laos. Here's where it all started: A day or two before I left Chang Mai, Thailand, I met two Israeli brothers at my guest house. We chatted for a while and it turned out that they were heading to Laos on the same day that I was. We went out for a couple of beers, I told them about my idea for a stun-gun bra that I want to have specially made for my trip to India, and they told me about life in Israel. The next day, the three of us headed for the Laos border together via minivan. On the way, I was writing in my journal about the transient nature of
travel friendships, and how sad I was that I'd never see a couple again that I had met while traveling to Pai. It seems that time and time again I meet people in my travels that I really like for whatever reason and then, without thinking twice about it, we turn in
separate directions and walk away, never laying eyes on each other again. So upon our arrival in the border city of Chang Khong, Thailand, we are dropped off at a guest house and the very couple I had been writing about (who I had met on the way to Pai and had lost contact with already) was sitting there in the restaurant. It was a moment of serendipity for me, in that I had just been thinking about how I knew for some reason that it wasn't the last time I'd see them, though I didn't know how or when we'd meet again. That night, the five of us and another American guy named Amery sat around the Thai side of the Mekong River, looking across the river to Laos. As we were contemplating the unknown, watching the twinkling lights from across the water, one of the Israeli brothers, Raz, says to me, "so, you think there are people over there on the other side, looking at the lights in Thailand, wondering what's on the other side?" Sure, I figured, why not? The next day we all piled into a skinny wooden boat and crossed into Laos. The approx. 50 travelers and myself were herded into a series of lines upon docking; this one for visa stamp, this one for money exchange, this one for your SARS check, which consisted of several people in white surgical masks taking our forehead temperatures and then issuing us a pass to enter. Luckily we all passed. As I was waiting to exchange money, I had a moment with an American woman (or maybe Canadian, oh God I hope she's Canadian) who cut in front of me in line. I had noticed this woman the day before, as she'd been on our minivan ride to the border, and she had spent all six hours mumbling completely asinine travel tips from a tourist guide to her husband, who was trying to read a book and ignore her every word as best as possible. I don't know why, but this woman really rubbed me wrong from the start, so when she cut in front of me in line when I was CLEARLY standing right there waiting for the same thing it REALLY chapped my hide. There are a few things that really get to me, and one of them is when people do things that are so completely selfish, so self-consumed, that they literally see other people as invisible, or worse, visible but irrelevant. I don't know which one this woman was, outright rude or simply an ignorant jackass who thinks other people stand around in exchange lines at the Laos border in 105 degree heat as a daily hobby, but when she did this, I was so gripped by rage at the injustice that I stood there, powerfully infusing the back of her head with my most toxic thought poison, frozen and aghast at her thoughtlessness. Oh, no, I may not have said anything, but she felt it, my punishing juju, she knew.
At the end of our first day on the Mekong, we stopped in a little village about halfway to Luang Prabang for the night and I noticed one the most obvious difference about Laos and Thailand. Before we could even disembark, there was someone on board offering to sell us pot, opium, etc. One fellow was so persistent that he stood outside of the Israeli
brothers' window and keep offering free samples. It was easy enough to say no, but if a person wanted to I imagine they could spend their life in an opiate haze in that little village on the Mekong surrounded by kids who don't even own a pair of shoes. Also, while Thailand is quite developed and one can find nearly all the comforts of home, Laos is definitely not. For example, besides the bigger cities of Luang Prabang and the capital of Vientianne, the rest of the country has electricity for only a few hours a day, and during that time the entire village crowds around the one house in the village with a satellite dish to get their fix of television. Finally, half of Laos is still covered in trees, and one really gets the feeling of being transported back in time there, as people live entirely off the land, which is still so beautiful and untouched that it boggles the mind. On the next day we arrived in Luang Prabang. It's a fine city, but not particularly mentionable, except for the fact that the French colonized Laos and so their influence on the architecture, food, names, etc. are still apparent. My first night there I dragged my traveling buddies to a French restaurant so I could have some delicious blue cheese and some red wine. It was worth every penny. The next day four of us took a long ride through the jungle to a beautiful series of waterfalls to swim and swing off of rope swings into the deep aqua pools. Beautiful, and unlike the waterfalls in Oregon they are actually a temperature warm enough to be inviting. I nearly kicked myself when I heard that I'd missed a great picture of a couple of young monks in saffron robes swimming in the pools while I was dragging behind photographing other things. The next day we took a bus north and then a tiny, wobbly boat upriver to a little village called Muang Noi. Muang Noi has no motor vehicles of any kind, no paved roads, no stoplight, electricity only for a few hours a night, and, to my great disbelief, no ice. It's hard to place a value on something as basic as ice until one goes without it for days, desperate for a cold drink, and forced to drink lukewarm juice and very warm, very bad Lao beer. But despite the inconveniences of a very isolated place, it is most beautiful. Our guest house was up a hundred feet up from the river, with views of the surrounding mountains on all sides. Many days we all spent here, lounging around on our eagle's perch in the sky, my Welsh friend, Ceri, and I drinking warm Beer Lao and listening to the sounds of the jungle while the others napped in hammocks and generally laid around doing as close to nothing as possible. At night, there were no human sounds of any kind (no planes, no boats, no voices, only the sounds of birds calling ("WEUW hoo…." and then in response but sung in a one-half step lower note, "whew hoo"), geckos, crickets, and the trickling by of the river below.
The next day, we returned the favor for this family by offering to teach them how to make pizza. Well, I'm not sure if it was a favor or not, as the end result was not the best pizza ever cooked, but we did generate a lot of attention as several children and a few adults crowded around to watch this great pizza experiment. As we waited for the pizza to cook, a great hard rain began to fall on the red dusty streets outside, turning the one main road into a muddy trough. For about an hour the monsoon poured, and at the end of it we trudged back to our guesthouse where Effi, a young Israeli fellow just out of the military, Ceri, Ezra and I decided to take a hike to a nearby cave. As we were walking along the path, Effi in the lead in order to watch for snakes, we all chatted about this and that, telling travel stories, discussing the Israeli military, our families, etc. About 15 minutes in, Effi stops and points out a tiny black leech. We all look with minimal interest, and then carry on. We reach the cave a little while later, and as Ezra is posing for a picture by Ceri, he suddenly says "ouch!" and looks down at his foot, saying "hey Effi, what do I do if I have a leech on my foot?" The three of us ignore him at first, thinking that he's imagined a leech, but then we see blood coming from his foot and Ceri rushes over. No clear evidence of a leech, though he seems sure that he saw one, and there is a lot of blood. But he's not terribly hurt, and so we carry on to another cave down the path that is said to house a small Buddha statue.
My next stop was back to Luang Prabang for a day, and then onto the town of Vang Vien, Laos. Getting to Vang Vien proved to be quite an ordeal, as we had heard that some group had been hijacking local buses on the route, killing and robbing all the passengers, and then setting the bus ablaze using the bus's own gasoline to do so. It had been happening for the past three months, one a month, and so we had to find a way there and hope we wouldn't be the ones chosen for this bloody end. I considered flying, but settled on taking a minivan, while my friends all took the tourist bus. While none of us could be assured safety, I figured I had a better chance of getting away in a minivan, and those hadn't yet been a target. The next day on the road, we passed one of the burned and broken buses, hanging precariously on the side of a cliff. It was a harrowing sight and all of my fellow passengers gasped as we drove by. I found out that the group most likely responsible for these acts was a group of opium farmers whose crop had been burned just before harvest, and that they were seeking revenge by killing passersby. We all made it to Vang Vien with no problem I can thankfully say, and for the next few days spent a lot of time lazing around open air restaurants, watching movies and eating. For some reason, Vang Vien has incredible pizza that rivals that of Old Town Pizza in Portland, and we took advantage of this often. And, for the mere price of 10,000 kip ($1), one can opt for marijuana to be added. Though I didn't partake of this menu item, lots of folks in Vang Vien did, which may explain the very laid-back attitude in the town. We also took a float down one of the many rivers flowing through Vang Vien, and every 15 feet or so we would encounter little bamboo mini bars with locals yelling out "Beer Lao!" It was a beautiful float through mountains and reminded me somewhat of the Sandy River outside of Portland. The next day, Effi and I decided to take the bus to the capital city of Vientianne together, as he and I both wanted to move onto Nepal. The rest of our group was off to other places, and so we were forced to say goodbye. Traveling for two weeks with these same people, hearing the silence in the jungle, being attacked by leeches, sharing stories, seeing the best and worst of each other, makes it hard to say goodbye. Well, for me it was hard. I knew that when I turned and walked away from these folks it might be the last time I'd ever see them. But that is a part of traveling, and so I swallowed my sadness and wished them all well, knowing that when one chapter ends another is around the corner, waiting to be lived. Vientianne is not a place worth describing in much detail. About the only thing worth saying is that Effi and I decided to stay in a posh $20/night room, figuring we'd earned the comfort. The next day we made our way to the Thai border and as the second class train was sold out, we were forced to ride in luxurious first class. Back to Bangkok for two days to arrange travel plans, and then we took a plane ride for three hours to Katmandu. Oh, Katmandu, I want to tell you about it, but that will have to wait. Wishing you all well and thinking about you from the jungles, # For those of you who knew my Grandma Sugar and to the rest of you who may have heard me talk about her, she passed away on the 22nd of April. Sugar coined such terms as the "whore's bath", gave me hilarious advice about men and relationships, and will be greatly missed. Here's to you, Grandma Sugar. May the afterworld have the luck of the Irish. It's going to need it. I love you. Go to Chapter Four |
After all the checks, the lot of us climbed aboard the slow, colorful wooden boat which would carry us down the Mekong from the city of Huay Xiu to Luang Prabang for the next two days. As we all got settled in for the journey, a well-dressed Lao man came aboard and proceeded to explain that he was a government representative and was here to explain about the boat insurance that we all needed to pay in order to ride. It was the equivalent of $2.50, and covered us for death, dismemberment, etc., up to about $50 or so. I couldn’t hear everything the man was saying as I was in the back of the boat, but I could hear that several people had begun asking questions about the insurance, many of them appearing to believe that the insurance man was a fake. I could hear some of the man's responses, and in my opinion, he seemed to be answering the questions patiently and professionally. But the few voices in the boat who didn't want to pay were loud and stubborn and wouldn't you know it, the one woman who cut in front of me was right there beating the man down too. Now, I don't know the truth about this insurance thing, but my instincts told me that this wasn't all that unusual, as I could think of examples of this sort of thing in the U.S. But this woman's instincts appeared to be just the opposite. I thought of her moving through Southeast Asia like a bull in a china shop, suspecting a scam, a con artist, thinking someone is trying to rob her, or cutting in
front of locals and travelers alike from the Mekong to the Indian Ocean in her complete falang paranoia. I know that these things happen, but I have been amazed at how many people travel around thinking it's ALWAYS happening, and therefore behaving rudely and aggressively to the 95% of the population who are overly kind and helpful and never even raise their voice. Anyway, the end of that story is that the folks in the front ran the guy off, refusing to pay. I'll never know what the truth was there, but I saw
what kind of ass holes rich white people in dirt poor Asian countries can be, and that's the bigger lesson.
On our second day here, one of my Israeli friends brought us to a local restaurant owned by a family that had performed a ceremony for him a year ago when he was in Muang Noi. This was a Buddhist ceremony performed to provide protection, and today they would perform it for us. It began when the six of us came in and were seated around a small table full of cookies, candies, and various other treats, behind which sat several women and a few men related to the owner of the place. Once we were seated, they came around and garnished us with silk banners, and then took out a roll of white string which they cut into several pieces. Then, the group of them began walking around the circle and reciting various things that we couldn't understand while tying the strings around our wrists. The only things I could make out were the words "mama, papa, baby girl" and the Lao term for good luck, "suk dee". This term made me imagine a happy go-lucky rapper from east L.A., and so I smile at my own silent joke. At the end of the ceremony, when all of us had about 5-7 string bracelets on each wrist, they all sat back down and proceeded to offer us shots of local whiskey, called "Lao Lao". At that, we were finished and on our way with protection for all our kin.
The cave is set back from the path a little, so we have to walk through some thick brush to enter. Everyone takes a quick look and a couple of pictures and then we backtrack to the path. We are standing there discussing what we want to do next, when Ezra says, "Well, being the only one who's sustained an injury today, I vote that we go back." We are in agreement and just about to voice it when Ceri, standing in front of me on the path, begins to scream. She is hopping on one foot, and letting out blood-curdling yelps and incomprehensible squeals and I figure she's seen a snake so I back up quickly on the path. But soon it becomes evident that it is not a snake, it is a leech that has curled up and begun sucking up the blood between her toes. As Effi struggles to find his lighter, she is screaming, and then it’s fire to toes, then another one on her foot, and more fire, and the leeches are digging in and then falling to the ground and squirming. As Ceri is rid of hers and before we can think to laugh about it, Ezra, followed by Effi, also sees leeches on him, and I look down and see that they are crawling on me too, attempting to tunnel through my canvas hiking shoes and climb up and over my socks. Everyone is screaming and burning leeches and I can't wait for the lighter so I flick mine off and stomp and I hear "oh, you mother fucking leech, you bitch, come on!" and everyone is battling their leeches in a loud orchestra of swears. When we all finally rid ourselves of them we decide to quickly run down the path toward the exit, stopping every few minutes to check again that they haven't gotten us somewhere else. When we are all just about out of the woods, Ceri stops dead in her tracks and quietly says, "Oh my god, I think I have another." She is calm and quiet, but clearly stressed, as she unbuckles and drops her pants to the ground, exposing two blood-filled leeches on her thigh and hip, sucking away mercilessly. They are burned but they are resistant and strong, and when they finally fall to the ground they land like fat bloody figs. They are too big to roll over onto their feet, so they just wiggle and flop, clearly in ecstasy from their success. After Ceri is cleared, we make it back to our guest house, telling stories and laughing about
the whole day, when Effi notices that he has another one. He is cursing it and saying how he's going to kill it and stomp on it and light it on fire, and then he proceeds to do just that as we all watch in silent support of his killing, with no love lost for the leech. It was truly a horrific experience, but traveling isn't always about good ones.