[LEMONS] 1.31.2003
Muang Ngoi, Laos
Muang Ngoi is perfect.You don't think you can describe it. You don't know how. Every day, you walk down the path from your guesthouse, and wade out into the stream to take your bath. To your right is a bamboo-and-stone sluice gate, with a turbine wedged in the current, providing enough power for a few lights at your bungalow, but no more.
All around you are mountains, the stream you bathe in flowing from the hillsides. Kids run naked on the shoreline. Above you is your guesthouse, which just opened. A few nights ago, you came in to find them celebrating their new business. They plied you with fish just plucked from the Nam Ou and Nam Ngoi. They tied bracelets around your wrists, and repeatedly blessed you. The next night, it's the same scene all over again at the bungalow next door, where they throw a party for your friends' departure.
Then you all head off to a wedding in the town center. You're plied with Lao-lao again and again. There's no saying no to Lao-lao, you try, but you can't. It's made from sticky rice, and tastes like pure grain alcohol, with a little pepper thrown in for flavor. You find it surprisingly smooth, and after six or seven shots, you actually begin to like it.
Scratch that. You love it! You love it! You must have more Lao-lao! MORE LAO-LAO! MORE! MORE!
Everyone from town is here. There's Xai, who owns your place, Boon, who owns Happy, the "pants lady," "Fonzie" in his leather jacket, and of course your friends. Nina, a friend from home who you met up with in Pai, someone you never knew you had so much in common with until you started travelling together. Steve, who was already waiting on a boat that you boarded at the border, and you've spent the last 12 days with. Nikki, who showed up at your dinner table one night in Muang Sing, who Steve knew from Ko Lanta in Thailand. Geoff--the stereotypical California surfer, except he's a skier from Canada--who you met in the back of a Songthaeu in Nong Kheaw. And of course there's your beautiful wife, Harper, who you left San Francisco with months ago now.
You all take turns doing Lao-lao shots with the fathers of the bride and groom. You dance and laugh. You wander home in the dark, unafraid, in this one-street town with no cars or motorbikes. That can only be reached by river.
The next day you're too tired to go to the waterfall, like you'd planned, although you're amazed at how good you do feel considering how much Lao-lao you drank. But it affords you the opportunity to hang out on the island between the Nam Ou and Nam Ngoi for another day. And to go bathe in the Nam Ngoi again, which you love to do.
In the mornings you all meet next door at Happy Bungalow. You drink strong Lao Coffee mixed with condensed sweetmilk, and listen to the Voice of America and BBC news over your shortwave. The pending war with Iraq seems another world. You can't possibly relate to it. On your next to the last morning, you all listen to the State of the Union address, and take turns cracking jokes and exchanging knowing glances. You wonder at the ridiculousness of it all. You wonder at the arrogance of power and greed, and the dominance of oil, here, where fossil fuels are still less mighty than muscle power.
Xai tries to take you net fishing, but you politely decline, preferring to hang out on the banks. Three little boys come up to you, and show you their catch, a bucketful of tiny shimmering silver fish. You admire them, you compliment the boys on their catch. One has a mask and speargun--the kind you see a lot of here fashioned out of a piece of wood, sharpened metal spikes, and a thick rubber band--the other has a casting net, the third carries the bucket. They give you the thumbs up symbol. You tell them you're from America, and they laugh.
The laughter is surprising. The town is built with bombs, American bombs, left over from the secret war here. You see bombshells used as fenceposts, stairs, boats, walls, everything. Around the town, illustrated posters warn children not to pick up or play with the UXO. Bombi, the deadly insides of cluster bombs, litter the countryside. There's still tons of it about. Literally. You notice that there don't seem to be any men from the age of about 45-60. Dead? Probably. This is the most heavily bombed nation per capita in the history of man. You stay on the well-worn trails.
At night, you eat at Fonzie's. That's not his name, but that's what you call him, thanks to his cool-daddy leather jacket. You all call him that, although none of you can remember who gave him the nickname. He always has the best fish in town, the Giant Mekong Catfish, which tastes nothing like the catfish you get in the states. You drink Beerlao, and play "Shithead," a card game seemingly every traveller knows, although they all have different rules. The different rules just make it that much better. Fonzie has the best Prik Nam Pa you've ever tried, in addition to fish sauce and diced chillies, he adds thinly sliced garlic. You put it on everything.
But the daytime is all about the river. Sitting by it. Watching it. Wading in it. The town itself is about the river. It's the lifeline and source of all livelihood. Although tourism is big enough here that there are several guesthouses and decent food, most of the families here still make their living from the river. The travellers don't dominate the town. Village life goes on around you.
You think about all this as you bask in the sunlight. To your left, Harper drops into the water, kicking against the current and rinsing out her hair. You soap up, and plunge into the cold, swift current, and think you can't possibly describe it here. It's the best place you've ever been.
Muang Ngoi is perfect.
- l i n k -
