running to cambodia - draft

the roosters begin to crow at five. light begins to creep through the gaps in the walls of my simple riverside hut. outside, in the cool morning breeze that blows gently off the mekong, the sky eases into a dark, steely grey. the buzz of cicadas slowly build into a loud chorus, then quit together in their mysterious orchestration.
Here in the south of the Laos Peoples Democratic Republic the Mekong river splits into dozens of fingers that cradle countless sandy islands. They are called "Si Phan Don," the four thousand islands. The former president of Laos, Khatamai Siphandon, was born here and took their name as his. On the island of Don Khon along the dirt road through the village (name!) the locals, subsistance fishers and farmers, are slowly emerging from under mosquito nets, on their porches, crossing the road to the river to bath in their sarongs. a fisherman heads out on the river.
i eat banana and drink a canned coffee on the road. i pass the Buddhist monks out collecting alms from the locals kneeling on the side of the road with their offerings of rice and vegetables and money. the monks' burnt sienna robes stand out against the tawny dirt road even at this hour, in this light. i breath deeply and relax my shoulders and try to feel the dirt beneath me, the cool air, and pay attention to the sounds and smells.
on the edge of the village, crossing under the abandoned bridge built by the french to transport their precious harvest of hardwood south to Vietnam, three dogs sleeping on the bridge wake, and shuffle down the far side to greet me, which they do by nibbling at my shorts, for some strange reason.
these dogs are my running partners. my morning group run. they are clearly high on the hierachy of wild dogs in the village, and across the island. as we shuffle past other dogs scurry. the villagers hiss at us, and shoo us along the road. we are a roaming gang. we pass the Buddhist temple and monastery and head out into the dry rice paddies.
it is hot in southern lao, maybe thirty and humid, and running at dawn is the only option. in the dry season it is dusty and the sun rises a beautiful orange red sphere from behind the dark silohettes of the coconut trees.
the dogs are reckless runners. they are impatient. their pace is inconsistent. they sprint after chickens and water buffalo. they stop to mark a banana tree, or a turmite mound. i am the glue that keeps the pack together and moving around the island, counter clockwise. i join the boys for a few sprints, but mostly keep the pace steady. we are a roaming gang, fearlessly claiming the whole island as our territory. at a small bamboo hut on the far side of the island, the dogs chase after a few chickens (they are all free range here) and i imagine myself trying to explain it to a poor farmer as i hand over a few dollars to pay for the birds that my running partners just ate.
we flush out some pheasant. we stir magpies and ghostly white egrets. one morning i spy two horn bills dropping from a branch above me and floating across a dry river bed. there are always the sounds of scurrying beasts in the dry leaves that cover the forest floor. mostly small birds and lizards. but there are snakes and very large spiders around, too. i keep a keen eye on the trail, for cold-blooded snakes like to warm themselves in the sun on the open trail in the morning.
i am running to cambodia. the southern tip of this island marks the border between laos and cambodia, and the islands in the river, and the bank on the far side, are another country.
between laos and cambodia, along this river border, the rare and endangered Irriwaddy dolphin can be seen breaking through the surface of the river, small black halfmoons breaking the pink sheen of the morning sun reflected on the river's surface.

flip flops

flip flops are the footwear of choice in southeast asia. bangkok might be the one exception to this, where sneakers and loafers and heels predominate. but everywhere else, rich or poor, foriegner or local, the flip flop rules.
there is something about the flip flop that i envy, that i aspire to. it oozes a casual, slow pace. they are clumsy of course, and you cannot walk fast or run. they flap against the soles of your feet and therefore they announce to the world the slow pace at which you are moving, a kind of psychological metronome. that is if you are not merely sliding your feet, shuffling across the floor. like a snare drum the wearer shuffles and flaps through their day, on and off their motorcycles, across the street, into the office. they are also continually slipped on and off, which means the wearer spends much of the time barefoot, walking across a cool tile floor, or a worn hardwood flight of stairs. they are also dirt cheap, and the owner, therefore, embodies a carelessness towards this very same essential characteristic, which of course makes it that much more atractive.
i have flat feet. and my ankles collapse inwards. so i can't wear flip flops for long. and i fear that if i walk for anything more than five or ten minutes i will get blisters. i belong to a lower class of traveller. i occasionally wear flip flops, often i wear my runners, as i am now, and sometimes i wear a heavier hiking shoe. the lowest class of man (it doesn't seem to be an issue with woman) is the one who wears the full ankle high hiking boot.
but i aspire to the flip flop. i am training, wearing them a little at a time. building callouses between my toes. i clumsily emphasize a shuffled gait whenever i can.
i'm okay with this. but i envy the natural grace of the flip flop man.

guest houses

a quick note on guest houses.
in our overwhelming and reckless enthusiasim for our elephant adventure, after hiring a boat, ben and cath and i decided we might try a homestay in pak lai. we knew the few guest houses would most likely be filled by the tens of thousands of lao arriving early for the festival. and we all liked the idea of a home stay. i had been considering the idea since i entered lao and thought this was a great time to partake. a french organisation involved in the festival set us up with a home. when we arrived in town we walked up the pier and down the main roan a hundred meters to the temporary tourist information desk. we were assigned a house, number 104, given a map, and pointed down the road. we walked down the road and a few nice houses with home stay signs pasted to their doors with other numbers. we walked for a while and then realised we had gone to far. we returned to one of the other home stays, a nice looking home on the banks of the river with a helpful and smiling family out front. they looked curiously at our map, and then recognizing something, gestured across the road.
it was a delapitated barn-like house. there was a small and exceptionally dirty crowd of lao out front. they were very poor. as we approached there were frowns and they avoided eye contact. we gingerly walked up a rickety flight of wooden stairs to a raised platform. a very old woman gestured inside and entered the dark house, that wasn't all that dark for all the holes in the walls and the roof. there was a person lying on the floor at the back of the room. i noticed right away that this man had a serious condition. his feet were swollen and pointed at a strange angle straight down. the skin was cracked. then i noticed a catheter bag next to him. we put down our bags, looked at each other nervously, and left. no one really addressed us in anyway. there were nervous giggles amongst the crowd, who i now recognised, were drunk too. (though to be fair it turned out that most of the town was drunk the whole festival. it was more of a drink festival with an elephant problem.) we immediately agreed to look for a guest house, but we were all scared that we would not find one. there was a hushed awkward tension. cath was already feeling a little rough from the night before. i was too, a little. the red wine, though fantastically alchoholic, was truly awful, and we were all a little hung over. the lao rice whiskey moonshine surely didn't help.
we passed the pier and saw a guesthouse on the bank of the river. we entered trepidatiously. a man walked up to meet us. we asked for rooms. he mumbled and asked how many, for how many nights. he said one moment. he returned and led us up a flight of concrete stairs, unlocked a door and waved us through.
the room was spaceous. there was a big bed and room for me on the floor. we had a balcony overlooking the river and the boats. it had an attached bathroom, which was not great, but not bad. we were ecstatic. we went back to the home stay, grabbed our bags, just smiled a lot and said thank you. they seemed to be expecting that we would leave. the old woman stopped us as we were leaving and pointed to a bag of food and water we had forgotten. we retrieved it and returned to our guesthouse.
five minutes later we sat on the deck of a bar, next door, watched the sun set, and toasted guest houses.
its difficult travelling in a poor country at moments like this. though its clearly much more difficult being poor in a country like this. there are days when you want to help. there are days when you do help. and there are days when you don't want any part of it, the dirt and disease and helplessness, and you are quite happy to have the money to pay for a room overlooking the river, for dinner in a restaurant, and for a ticket out of town the next day, all the while keeping your return airplane ticket home tucked away in your pack. in laos i have encountered a few abject, poor beggers on the streets, in vientiane. but mostly the urban poor that i have encountered are those living and sleeping in small street-side garages, that double as simple shops selling water and pop, or bananas and oranges, or something like that. and they are generally quite quick to smile with you or their friends. they are social and appear fairly happy. this is the spirit of the laos that so many speak of, and it is remarkable for its close relationship to the poverty of the nation. laos economy is booming, and most are surely doing better and better every year. there are wealthy middle class with with money to burn on fancy hair cuts and cloths in some of the small towns, here in paske, and even in pak lai. but you know that behind many of the closed shop fronts there are old and sick laos who cannot imagine the comfort that we know.
i always remember this when i am bartering over the price of a motorcycle ride, or a boat, or a pair of pants. i barter because it is part of their culture, it is a social function. i don't care about the money. i think of myself as a one man walking micro-develoment fund. i look for excuses to spend money in places i like, with people who smile, and some who don't. frankly, i don't know why i'm not mugged on every street corner. i'd be tempted to do so if some stupid white hairy guy who was unjustly loaded and rich came stumbling down my alley, and my kid was at home with diarhea, my wife was pregnant again, and i was selling baseball hats in the market for a dollar.

boy band

last night as i entered my room at my guesthouse i was assaulted by loud, disorted voices speaking lao. i thought the nieghbour might have been blaring their TV. i walked the halls attempting to find said nieghbour, but it became apparent that the sounds originated across a small field where i saw some lights and a crowd. i returned to my room, but it was unavoidably intrusive.
so, if you can't beat them...

a stage was set up just off a main road, a few tables and chairs, and two large stacks of speakers. the lao, for some curious reason, feel the need to crank the volume on all remotely public sources of audio. every music store or television or sound system i have ever encountered, in restaurants and on the streets, has been obnoxiously loud. this was no exception. it was some kind of lottery fundraiser, i think. a bit like lotto 649. a young well dressed lao couple were on stage. they drew some numbers and screamed them into their microphones. the speakers crackled. i walked around with a frown and a growing headache, but i figured it was better to confront the beast head-on than battle it from a distance back in my room. i walked around. walked past some drunks, past a small, charming, and ramshakle fairground, past some food stalls selling green gelatinous squares of bean paste, and then returned to the main stage, where nobody seemed to mind the auditory assault.
and then the two said thank you, "kawp jai," and something including the number five, "haa," and then left the stage. the lights went out. tension filled the air. the crowd gathered closer to the stage. a few young girls screamed. then i saw the silhouettes of a few bodies on stage. and then, simultaneously the lights on stage came back on, a smoke machine bellowed a small cloud, and the beat of pop music came pumping out the speaker stands. a five member boy band began a choreographed dance number. they wore fancy and elaborately coiffed hair styles, and layers of black and white urban street clothes. they also sported head sets with small microphones, which they obseively fiddled with. they lip-synched through a half dozen songs and posed in grandly theatrical arrangements. they gestured out, over the heads of a hundred or so lao, and one confused but delighted westerner, to an imaginary stadium of screaming fans. it was a lao boy band, in all its mediocre glory. a smile erupted on my face. my disasterous night had been saved. i quickly grabbed my camera. i stayed through the whole set and then watched as the young lao crowded around the back for autographs.

gender outlaws

wat sok pa luang is a forest monastary on the edge of vientiane. our tuktuk driver turned down a shaded, tree lined dirt road, and then pulled over. he led us down a small path, through the trees, past some simple wood, bamboo and thatch buildings on stilts. there were some dogs running around. you could smell a wood fire. then we rounded one shack and came up at the rear of another, a large fire burned under a metal barrel with a pipe that enters the back of the building.
this is a fairly rudimentary lao style spa. the lao appreciate a good steam. and you can usually get a massage at these places. here, in a small open forest, with monks walking past in their burnt siena robes, dogs roaming and fighting, on a raised hardwood floor, under a wooden cieling, without walls, you could watch the sky turn pink, drinking tea, waiting for your massage.
at which point noi, the loud and curvacious woman who appeared to be running the joint, would chat you up. as i emerged from the steam room, soaked, wet sheet around my waist, she asked ben and i where we were from. as ben said that he was from the uk she asked why we were travelling together. i looked over at ben, similarly wet and glistenning and responded that he was irrisistably handsome. she seemed concerned and pointed out that he had come with a girlfirend. we responded that she was, in fact, his wife. her concern grew. she said it would be bad for me to interere in their marriage. i laughed. i added that i had been lonely and needed some company. she asked if i wanted a boy friend or a friend boy. i thought about the question and decided it was best not to answer. i said i thought she was putting me in an uncomfortable position. she then asked if i wanted a girlfriend. i thought i better avoid this one too. but then i thought i better turn the tables on this woman before things got even worse and i asked her when she got off work. she laughed and said she could be my friend girl but not my girlfriend because she liked ladies. she laughed mischieviously. i suggested that she was trouble. she looked at me and said when trouble gets together with trouble it breeds like a virus. it was surprisingly eloquent. i made a quick escape back into the steam room.
the steam room was maybe six feet square, with three benches. the wood was sweaty. it was dark and hot. i burned my foot on the steam coming in from a hole in the floor. a crowd of lao entered in behind me. there were maybe six of them. i was not entirely clear on anyone's gender. this was a co-ed sauna, rare in lao. they gathered around me and spoke in lao and laughed and joked. they sat very close, scrubing their sweated bodies. they were clearly talking about me for much of it. i heard the word for foriegner, farang, in most of the sentences, and there were many fleeting glances, and some not so fleeting. lots of hands and elbows and knees seemed to be brushing me. some of the voices were deep, some high, and some in between.
when it got too hot i left the sauna. as this group emerged minutes later noi began speaking rapidly and joking and laughing with them. it was clear she was trying to set everyone up. she herself tried to pick up one woman, who was deaf. noi made a series of impromptu hand gestures suggesting that they lay together. the other woman (who was rather lovely) eased her head from side to side with an uncomfortable frown. noi attempted several times, with different gestures, and the woman's response was always the same. she then gestured that she preferred men, pointing in my direction. noi exploded in unrestrained laughter, telling everyone she like farang. she held her hand up to her nose and outlined a large one. farang means big nose. the def woman nodded. noi then moved on and tried to set up one of the ladyboys with a young skinny french man.
it was all an entirely unexpected, strange, sweaty, hyper-gendered encounter.
the mosquiotos arrived as the sun fell.
the dogs started fighting.
the monks chased them away.

moonlight

as the sun rose on the morning of the 17th i shuffled down to the pier to see if there was any action at the ticket office, which had appeared closed for three days. it was closed. i continued down to the pier and to the crowd gathering around a boat that i had spotted earlier from the balcony of our guest house. vientiane, i said, and pointed down river. the young man on the boat nodded. a french woman then turned to me and suggested that i hold seats first before the ticket office opens. she said it all with a convincing air of authority - but maybe it was just her accent. i scurried back up to gather ben and cath and we returned to the boat with our bags, saved some decent seats, then returned to the ticket office, which was miraculously open, with a lengthy queue. we bought tickets, and then some provisions: baquettes, cheese, marmalade, peanuts, oreos and water. i had time for quick double espresso from a stall run by an exceedly friendly and sweet indian woman we had come to know. we returned to the boat and relaxed, having achieved, with relative ease, our goal for the day, the fresh coffee a bonus.
an hour later the lao on the boat abruptly, and madly, began to slip out the small windows and doors to the boat moored next to us. ben said later they moved liked ferrets. it was a sincere compliment. we were apparently changing boats. there was a dangerous frantic rush. the foriegners were clumsily squeezing through the windows as the two boats moored next to each other moved apart and back together. i feared that a few bones might get snapped between boats, or worse, someone might fall between them. but with some help ben and i held the boats apart, got everyone on to the next boat, got our bags across, got seats, and then waited, calmly, absurdly, for another hour, before we eased away from the shore and into the muddy mekong river.
it was lovely to be back on the boat. it was quiet and relaxed. i watched the passing hills and bamboo forests and the white egrets flying along the red mud banks.
two hours later, as the suns rays began to heat the day, we pulled near a house boat, were an older woman and a young man, her grandson likely, paddled a low dugout canoe next to our boat and sold some oranges and water and coke. the young boy was moving quickly back and forth along the length of his boat, taking requests for items, delivering them, taking money and returning with change. he was remarkably efficient and light on his feet. and he was all ussiess. no smiles or frowns. it was a pleasent exchange and had the air of an old and peaceful way of life along the river.
the engine on our boat fired up and we began to pull away. the boy quickly finished his last order. he had a large wad of cash in his hands - perhaps a week's income. there was a basket full of money the old woman had collected, and the few remaining, unsold items in the canoe. the driver revved up the engine and turned hard into the current. the rear of the boat swung towards the small dugout canoe and hit it. it began to push the boat out as it swung, and drag it along the side. the woman and the boy, suddenly frantic, tried to push against the boat, but with no effect. as the smaller boat was pushed sideways and dragged forward it began it dip, taking on water. the woman began to scream. i began to yell stop, as did many lao. the boy abandoned ship, jumping out and away from the boat. the back of the dugout reared as the nose sucked under the larger boat. the old woman, sucked under too, grabbed on the the edge of our boat. the engine finally cut.
a few young lao at the rear of our boat jumped in to make sure the woman was alright, and help her swim to the shore. the boy was already half way there.
no one was hurt.
we floated down the river a few hundred feet. we watched as a small fishing boat arrived to collect the now empty basket, the paddles, and the upturned boat. some of the men on the boat jumped out and pulled a rope to the shore and tied us to a fallen tree. after a time, as the immediacy of this near tragic event began to fade, we all began to notice the sound, metal on metal, of impromptu repairs to the ship. the dugout boat had apparently been swept into the prop and snapped the drive shaft. later a young thai man confirmed this to me.
one of the lao men ran up the shore. an hour later he returned on a boat for a few minutes. then sped up river, and returned again in another hour. then they untied the boat, pushed us into the current, and the engine fired. we pulled away and it appeared that we were headed back upriver, to return to pak lai. there were some groans from the westerners on board. but then, with relief, we turned hard downriver when we hit the current, toward vientiane.
of course, this meant that we were more than two hours behind our already tight schedule. see, you're not really supposed to travel the river at night. none of the boats have lights. there are rocks. and the sand banks are always shifting.
at six the sun began to set. we passed a brush fire on the thai side of the river. then it was dark. and then, blessedly, the dark clouds over head spread to reveal a nearly full and bright moon. our driver navigated the rest of the now monochromatic river under moonlight. there were a few dangerous bits, with rocks and some mild rapids. but it was mostly open and seemingly expansive river. ben and cath were a little tense.
though not the smartest place to be, for sure, i accepted the gift of this beautiful moonlit cruise openly. i listened to some music. i sat on the window ledge of the boat. i soaked it all in. for me it was a very happy place.
then we nearly died in a crap tuktuk, made from half a motorcycle, as our aggravated driver raced through the streets of vientiane.

slow boat to pak lai

on the first morning in luang prabang i saw a small printout taped to the window of a travelling agency advertising a tour to the lao elephant festival in pak lai. i spoke to a young man inside. the "tour" was basically a drive there and back. he suggested i find my own way there.
the option to travel by road looked tedious and down right dangerous. everyone said the public bus would take at least two days. but one look at the map and i noticed that pak lai was right on the east bank of the mekong. so i walked down to the peir and spoke to a few boat drivers about hiring a boat. that night ben and i spoke bravely of buying a boat and floating all the way to saigon, but in the end we hired a boat and left the following morning with great expectations.

the weather was rather cool, and did not exactly fit with my idea of a tropical cruise. and our driver, who had been so friendly the day before when we checked out his boat, had become quite unfriendly. he steered the boat from the front, and all day long he would glance over his shoulder at us, or possibly his stern and pregnant wife, with a look of fear in his eyes, as if he expected to encounter some ongoing disaster behind him. i too began to peer towards the back of the boat as that same fear began to grip me.
as the sun dropped behind the low hills to the north east we rounded a five hundred foot limestone cliff and pulled into a small village on the opposite shore. the engine cut and we could hear the screech of some owl way up on the cliff, looking down on us.
our boat driver, who told us his name was mr. c., grapped me and led me up the hill into the village. we had to get dinner, he said. chicken. as we walked through the town the sun had completely surrender to the horizon, and we began to stumble around the dusty houses. we encountered a few fires in yards, and a few lao looked into the darkness at what must have seemed, even in the darkness, a little foriegn. a drunk accosted us.
then mr. c. pointed to a house and said, chicken. i could he the quiet throaty clucks of the chickens in the pen under the house. several locals gathered. as mr. c. and a few locals entered the pen through a door on the opposite side, a kid, just in front of me, reached in and grapped a chicken by its leg. there was a brief struggle. then mr.c. emerged with the beautiful bird in his arms. dinner, he said. i looked over at ben and cath. ben looked a little stunned, but poor cath was rather upset. they stayed behind as mr c and i took the bird back to the boat.
leter we had a spicey chicken soup, tom gai, some sticky rise, khao niaw, and a spice fish sauce for dipping called nam phi. we drank our red wine quickly. mr. c. brought out some lao moonshine made from rice. we got quite drunk eating our chicken on a boat floating in the mekong under the wall of limestone. we stumbled back up the hill into the town and slept on the floor of a wooden house.