9th
Mekong Dream
Before we left for Laos, I had one last mission to complete: Operation Durian. The Durian fruit has a mixed reputation. Some can tolerate it, even like it. But when you mention it to most who have come within a few feet of it, they cringe and tell you how disgusting the smell is and how they would never eat it in a million years. Most businesses, including hotels and airlines, will not allow you bring in durian. So naturally, I was intrigued. I finally spotted a truck bed full of this notorious spine-covered, coconut-like fruit near the market in Chaing Mai. Christie and I bought a small cellophane-cover pack of it, and dug in. Smell: Like a raw onion rolled in baby poop. Taste: like raw onion mixed with banana, with a mango-like texture. All-in-all, a bit of anti-climax. I was expecting to be wrething in the street. Instead, a had a few bites more than planned. Another exotic mystery debunked.
After the most brutal 6-hour minibus ride yet, where every seat was occupied, my lower back was on meltdown, I was car sick, and we got in at 3:30am, we arrived at the Laos border. 3 hours of sleep in the worst room yet (cost $1.25, apparently it’s optional here to have your sink actually connect to plumbing rather than simply drain toothpaste foam onto your feet), a weird breakfast, and a local Sunday exchange rate raping, and we were across the 9am steaming Mekong and waiting for our slow boat down the river. Phew!
But then the magic began. The ride down the Mekong to Luang Prabong is broken into 2 days. 6 hours to Pa Beng, and 8 hours to LP. The boat held about 100 people - more than expected, but then again, when in doubt, assume packed-in-like-sardines. The river was high, brown, and running fast. The first day was cool and cloudy with some showers. The clouds clung to the surrounding jungle peaks like ghosts. Outstanding scenary. We had met what would turn out to be our rowdy Luang Prabong compadres before the trip began, and when we arrived at Pa Beng, we all decided to get rooms in the same guest house. Dinner, drinking, ghost-story telling, and local-conversing ensued. A strange town in the middle of the jungle where everything runs on generators and when curfew hits at 11:30, the entire place goes pitch back except for the candles we are huddled around.
The second day was spent huddled on the floor of the engine room b/c there were less seats on today’s boat. What we thought would be a toxic fume trap - the deafening engine pouring exhaust into the cabin, turned out to be an experience more like the one I came for and not like the sterile, quiet seating up front. I managed to find a place to escape the fumes and enjoy all the scenary. Surroundings so beautiful that the experience is unavoidably personal, despite the droves of SLR-toting, ipod-listening westerners all-round. Mind-blown by the remoteness of the lone fisherman casting his nets on the bank - a life unchanged for thousands of years.
We arrived in Luang Prabong and secured accommodation together again. Max and Joe from Leeds, Greg from Melbourne, Katie from LA, Juan from Santiago, Lena from Maui, Roy from Israel, and us. Great times with great folks. Very laid-back place. Big bottles of BeerLaos for $.80, coconut milkshakes, waterfall jumps, smoke bomb throwing, cave adventures with orange-clad monks, and lots of laughs. We loooove this place.
We leave tonight for Vang Vieng, another back-packer destination likely to be full of street vendors hoking food, t-shirts, carvings, and other knick-knackery. We will be meeting up with the same crew again - the comradery really adds another dimension to this experience.
But I can’t help but feel a little phony in some aspects of the life. Spending time in these traveller towns, you start to see that we are not adapting to the local way of life, the locals are adapting to ours. Reportedly, the hill tribes all over the north of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, are no longer living on their chosen land and are consolidating where they know the tourist trekkers will show up with $ to buy bracelets and carvings. And the swarms of like-itineraried people constantly chattering about where-to-go-next and what-they-just-did-that-was-cool make it hard to keep sight of the original plan: slow down, care less, plan less, and learn from it all.
But there’s so much more good than bad in all of this. We go in search of more good…
