[LEMONS] 1.16.2003
Wow, Laos
Yesterday (two days ago? two weeks? two months? I don't know, time has sort of run together and fallen apart) we crossed the border from Thailand into Laos, Nina, Harper and I. One and a half minutes in a longtail across the Mighty Mekong and it's goodbye Chiang Kong, hello Hoayxai. Though not for long.We stayed in Hoayxai just long enough to get our passports stamped, grab some fried rice, and change some Bhat into Kip. (There are 10,000 Kip to the US dollar. Dave, I kept thinking of you when we all first got Dong in Vietnam. It feels top-notch to be a millionaire again.) Almost as soon as we arrived, we left, chartering a boat to take us up to Luang Namtha, in the far north of Laos. There were nine of us, another American, an Englishman, two French women, and two boatmen, all in an open wooden boat with an inboard/outboard engine. We set off down the Mekong, and after about an hour, turned upriver onto a tributary, the Nam Tha.
This is not the beaten track (if anything in Laos is). Most folks entering at Hoayxai take the Mekong all the way to Luang Prabang, which was what we intended to do until we found out we could go directly to Luang Namtha and save ourselves some backtracking later on. This is rural Asia--bamboo villages and no electricity whatsoever. Water buffalos in the rivers, naked children waving from the shore, all that.
We rode for seven (eight?) hours upriver, getting wet and cold, but passing some amazing jungle scenery along the way. Just when I thought I couldn't sit on a hard, wet, cold, wooden floor anymore... no, wait... that had happened four hours earlier. Anyway, many hours after we left, we arrived at a little riverside village carved out of a muddy hillside. The captain's kid, Looks, who was all of eight or so, met us at the, er, dock(?) and offered to carry our bags for us--each of which easily outweighed him.
But he grabbed Steve's (from Engand) daypack and Harper's hated conical Vietnam hat, so we set off after him in a little Farang procession up the hill into this village of 40-50 huts.
This was totally crazy. The wildest half-kilometer I've ever walked in my life. I was instantly mobbed by smiling little kids, tugging at my pants and shirt, calling out "Sabai Di! Sabai Di!," the Laos greeting. All along the way we're kicking up pigs and chickens. Endless mud. And the whole time we an hear this music. This crazy music, men singing or chanting and stomping in time, pinging on glass and metal on the downbeat. Positively tribal. This is a place that's not even on the guidebook maps. It's just a big blank space. Conradian. I found out from the boatman that it was called Ban Can Com. I think. In any case, it was small and rustic and quite muddy.
We wound our way through the village to the boatman's house, where he and his family laid rice mats, cushions, blankets and mosquito nets out for us, and cooked us a meal of sticky rice and eggs. We went out to wander the village before bedtime.
The whole scene was surreal. Inside the temple, men laid on the floor. Open fires and fish. A fight broke out in the "bar" (just someone's home where all the men had gathered drinking and singing) and spilled out into the pathway below. At some point, they quit singing, and put on electronic dance music. (How I dunno. There was no electricity here, it was al candles and open flames. Batteries, I guess). Who knew they had The Beat in rural Laos.
The next morning (today? Good Lord...) we got up and after the boatman chiseled some more money off of us, we headed out again. Not too far upriver, we pawned us off on another boat, explaining that he wanted to get back to Hoayxai so he could "eat-eat, drink beerlao, sing-sing," he says this the whole time making dancing motions. I guess all that Green (or Blue as the case may be) was burning a hole in his pocket. He was a nice enough guy, though.
And then, after our new captain nailed a few boards to the sides of his boat, we were off again. The next section of the river, however, was one of the craziest rides I've ever had in my life. As we made our way upriver, the river got progressivly lower. The shallow river beat at the boat on all sides. Except the top. Obviously. We scraped rocks, and plunged up rapids. You'd never find this in Ameri-okay. I'd be challenged to float down this river in an inflatable raft, nevermind kayak. And here we were, fighting up it in, essentially, a motorized canoe.
This was adventure.
But it was the really good kind. The river, where it was rapid, tended to be shallow. We weren't going to drown. I was never worried for life or limb, just our stuff. Oh. And getting stranded soaking wet in the middle of nowhere and having to flag down some passing boat (of which there were VERY few) to take us back down to Hoayxai.
Our boat took hit after hit, and the boatmen (there were three on this one) had to pole it upriver in sections. I think flabbergasted is the word I'm looking for to describe how I felt every time we made it past some class 3 churnfactory in this cobbled together boat. Water streams through the seams. Perpetual bailing. Wet asses, all around. Me praying like crazy. Staring into Harper's eyes to calm my nerves. And worrying about my new camera. (The only piece of gear I really was concerned with. I was determined that, no matter what, if I went in that camera was staying aloft.)
And then, at 3:38, just like that, we made it over the last rapid and hit smooth water. The captain (I was sitting in the way back next to him) looked at my watch and proudly exclaimed "Namtha, See Mon," as a couple of hours earlier when we stopped and they shared their lucnh with us (sticky rice, dried fish) he had said he'd have us in Luang Namthat (aka namtha) by 4 O' Clock. (aka see mon). It was a smooth ride all the way up to Namtha, where we arrived at 4:06.
I LOVE YOU NEW BOAT CAPTAIN MAN, I LOVE YOU!!!!!
I tipped our captain 20,000 Kip, which is not nearly as much as it sounds like, and that was that. Four and a half hours later, I can still feel the boat moving. Sixteen hours in a little boat will do that, I guess.
This was, thankfully, our last upriver trip. It's all downstream from here. You can only run up the Nam Tha from the reainy season until January, and I heard when we got into town today that they thought the arrivals yesterday would be the last of the season. Tonight, Harper, Nina and I sat around eating our first real meal in two days and having a beer, just trying to absorb it all.
Between the boat ride and the village, this has been by far the most dramatic, mind-boggling 48 hours of the whole 3 months. It was incredibly. Absolutely amazing. Something I'll always remember so fondly, something that I think Harper and I will talk about forever. Somthing I'm sure that every time I see Nina from now on I'll think of.
It was great. This is what I came for. I wouldn't do it again for all the Kip in Laos.
Tomorrow we head off to Muang Sing in a songthaeu. I've had enough of boats for a few days. There is, from what I understand, no Internet there an we plan to lounge for a few days, so this will be my last update for a while. (Even here in Luang Namtha, which is a big city by Northern Laos standards) there are only a handful of computers in a--get this--solar powered Internet cafe.
- l i n k -
