Waiting for the Buffalo...

 

I'm sitting on the balcony of the hut, looking at a man and his family who arrived at the riverside, carrying a rice sack tied at the top. The man lit a fire then, when it was blazing, he opened the sack and tipped out a dead dog and began singeing its fur in the fire, beating at the burning hair with a switch of green leaves. Now they're skinning and cleaning the carcass in the river, and I'm waiting to see whether they plan to cook it here over the embers.

We've been in Tad Lo for a week now, losing track of the time, losing track of the days. Yesterday we drove across the Bolaven Plateau to Sekong, and a little further to Tad Feake, another beautiful set of falls where water washes the black rocks before spreading in deep pools where locals swim and plunge from the rocks. We drove back through Thateng, where a few days before we'd stopped to watch one half of a football match. The local team, dressed in Liverpool jerseys, and on average a good six inches taller than their opponents, were clearly the superior force, but both teams played committed, physical football in the dust and heat. Each time the ball struck the baked brown earth an explosion of orange obscured the air, and hundreds of heads weaved to follow the ball as it emerged from the smoky clouds kicked up by the worn football boots.

The family at the riverside just left, carrying the dog carcass, its innards in a large steel bowl which a young boy carried with care up the steps beside the hut. In a few days, at full moon, there is a celebration in the nearest village, Khiantenglae, where there will be a buffalo sacrificed in honour of the local Gods. Mama Pap, from whom we have been trying to elicit information about the time and date of the festival, is going to take us there to witness the ceremony. She speaks Lao and Thai, and a little French and English, but hardly any Jarai, the language of the village only one kilometre away. We were there a few days ago, and a boy asked us for a pen. Sam gave him hers and he walked off happily drawing on his hand. We bought boxes of pencils and copybooks to bring with us next time. I guess it was a boy from one of the villages where little Lao is spoken who returned our greeting with a careless laugh as he said 'No Sabaidee' over his shoulder.

Perhaps it's the timeless routine of village life that seems to distort temporal perception here in Tad Lo. Every morning for perhaps hundreds of years, women have come to these river banks to wash their children, the family's clothes, and to bathe. Every evening young men gather on the falls to fish from the rocks with bamboo rods, with nets and spears, and to jump from the cliffs and swim. Along the river banks are farmers washing their buffalo, women washing their hair, and children playing. In the middle of the shallow river, men and women with nets dredge up mud and weeds, and pick through it looking for shellfish and eels to bring home. In the early darkness boys hunt for frogs in the damp grass.

The young girl who came to investigate the sound of the whistle the other day just returned with her friend when she heard the music again. She was looking through my pencil case and playing with the pens while her friend blew shrill, shrieking noises from the whistle. I got a pencil and a copybook for each of them, and they immediately sat down to write their names on the first page. They were delighted with their little gifts, and disappeared, saying 'Thank you', and 'Bye bye', slapping high-fives, and even bumping fists. I expected more children to return, and the first of what I guess may be many visitors has just arrived, and the balcony is crowded with happy children munching oranges and playing games that I 

can't begin to understand.

Tad Lo...

We stopped at a coffee plantation on the road between Paksong and Thateng, and the young boy who just arrived home from school got the fire going to boil water for coffee. A middle-aged woman brought spoons and sugar, and I've been trying not to stare intrusively at the huge tumour on the right side of her neck. It must weigh the best part of two kilograms. Yesterday at Khiangtenglae village, upriver from tad Lo, a woman stopped us to show her child's infected eyes. It was impossible to know what to do, and we left feeling helpless. The people in Laos seem so strong and healthy that it's easy to forget that the vast majority don't have access to the most basic medicines that we take entirely for granted. Sitting here drinking the exceptional Lao coffee from the plantation here, I'm watching the woman with the vicious tumour light a massive hand-rolled cigarette made from office paper and raw local tobacco, who is savouring the blue smoke as it boils out of her mouth and nose.

 

We've been in Tad Lo, on the outer edge of the Bolaven Plateau, for three or four days now, and the sleepy river village seems to run on its own time zone, exempt from the temporal laws of normal reality. Early in the morning people pass the hut on their way to wash in the river, and all day and night men, women and boys wade through the shallows with nets, masks or torches, hunting for fish. At Tad Lo Waterfall yesterday I lent my mask to a couple of boys whose fishing duties were completed, and they splashed around with it until I left. I'd just made the 1 metre jump from the top of the waterfall, plunging into the foaming depths. A young guy from Salavan showed me the way up and across the river, leaping nimbly from rock to rock as I scrambled and slipped my way across with trepidation and inelegance. After he'd jumped he climbed the cliff face, pulling himself up on wires and tree roots, free-climbing across crumbling rock until he became stuck on a ledge, and jumped fearlessly into the murky water. The day before we'd been led up by another little ninja, perhaps nine years old, who walked effortlessly up the rocks with his hands behind his back, reaching the top without breaking a sweat, before leaping without hesitation from the heights above the falls.

A Cautionary Tale...

The kayaking was pleasantly relaxing, and apart from one set of rapids, the time was spent gently paddling down the Nam Lin River under mercifully overcast skies. When we stopped for lunch, a few of us  followed our guide, Lee, along the bank to a ten-metre cliff where we jumped into the river below. The relaxed mood was rather spoiled by a bone-crunching two-hour jumbo ride, which left everybody caked with red road-dust, and stupified by the exhaust fumes.

Walking around the capital, Vientaine, looking for a room was exhausting, and only the most expensive accommodation was available in most places. Eventually we found a rough-and-ready room at a reasonable price, and gratefully dropped our bags, which seemed to grow heavier with each step. Later that night we found a nice Lao restaurant serving duck Lap and excellent imported wine. Afterwards we ended up in the adjoining bar where it was easy to forget which country we were in, as we drank Australian Shiraz and listened to American Jazz.

The next day was a write-off, but eventually I roused myself to the simple task of shopping for new shorts and a necklace. On the way back a Tuk-Tuk driver with a chipped tooth offered me some decent-looking weed, and I took a small pinch, despite his insistence that I buy the whole ounce he proffered. We went down to the river for a smoke, and as we climbed back up the bank we were both feeling excessively high. My immediate reaction was to speculate on which particular synthetic chemical had been added to the grass, but it was impossible to tell. Negotiating the busy road was extremely challenging, and crossing to the other side was felt like a major triumph. We decided to head for the guest-house and re-group until the initial wave had passed, but sitting on the bed and staring at the patterns emerging on the wall, I soon realised that it was only building. I decided to stop fighting it and relax, stretching my muscles and massaging the stiffness from my neck. A strange physical pressure was building up wherever I touched, and the sensation passed down through my body towards the ground. Soon I felt like I was giving somebody else a massage, and receiving one in turn. The profound physical dissociation was too uncomfortable so I gave up and lay back on the bed to experience the strange, soporific visions rushing past my closed eyes. Just over an hour after smoking, it was clear that this was a high that wasn't likely to diminish for several hours at least. I went out to buy water after a long-surreal period of mental preparation. I was fine until a policeman crossed the road behind me as I walked into the shop, and I became drenched in paranoia. When the money in my sweating hands began to melt and glow supernaturally under the neon lights it became impossible to distinguish one note from another, and I could only pass over the money in random handfulls, hoping that I'd receive at least the approximately correct change.

After the first intense waves had passed, we went for a wander around town, drinking the occasional beer until the edge had been taken off the unpleasant chemical high. Despite the interesting hallucinations, the dull, emotionally-flat, uncommunicative state imposed by the drug was unpleasantly reminiscent of my reaction to  ketamine. When the intensity had diminished further, we decided to head to a bar to drink our way through. We walked into one place before realsing it was a Lao karaoke bar, and worldlessly turned and retreated into the street. The horror of becoming trapped in a karaoke K-hole was too much to contemplate. We ended up in a Lao ladyboy bar, dancing to terrible, random pop music until the lights went out. Sitting in the pitch-black bar, we decided it was probably an indication that the establishment was closed.

Still way too high to go home, we ended up sitting outside the convenience store, drinking Lane Xang Beer and eating wasabi rice snacks as our appetites re-emerged through the sedative fog of the strange drug we'd taken. Sitting outside a shop, drinking beer and eating sponge cake with a spoon, we met a Spanish family with whom we'd been kayaking the day before. Fortunately we were able to communicate at that stage, but the sense of shame 3was justifiable. Street drinking while off your tits on what feels like an animal tranquiliser is never a good look.

The following day we were heavy and listless, though the depressed mood I had anticipated didn't materialise, mercifully. We visited Wat Si Saket, a beautiful, early-nineteenth century temple in the commercial district. The interior walls of the crumbling cloister contain niches where there are thousands of small Buddhas. There  are also many of the distinctly Lao Buddhas, with their uniquely-expressive Lao faces, and their hands held by their sides, calling for rain.

Later that night we returned to the lovely Lao restaurant where we tried the subtly-flavoured Lao sausage, and a popular Lao dish called Bitter Duck, which wasn't bitter at all, but rich, complex, and really excellent. It was served with a sauce of ground garlic, lemongrass, chili, lime, and fish sauce, which I really must attempt to replicate when I get home. After dinner we had a couple of glasses of wine at the Jazz bar, and said goodbye to the charming wine waiter from Chicago who we'd bumped into every night we were in town.

Health and Safety...

It's 11.30pm on a Monday evening and the 10K sound-system across the river has just started blasting karaoke versions of Lao pop songs into the night air. A brief thunderstorm just washed the oppressive heat from the electrified air, but the temperature has immediately begun to rise as the water evaporates from the sun-baked soil.

The strangeness of this place has been intensified by an inconsistent illness which has been coming and going in bouts of dizziness, loss of energy and appetite, nausea and exhaustion, almost on an hour-to-hour basis. Attempting to ignore it to the best of our ability, Sam and I have been bouncing over the rock-strewn roadways on a noisy Chinese moped, visiting caves and rivers, driving through farms and across streams, losing track of the days.

There are signs for the Blue Lagoon posted all over the tracks around the town. Intrepid landowners hope to entice tourists onto their land, in order to claim a small guide fee and entrance charge to the caves in the hills behind their farms. We were guided into one pitch-black hole in the limestone karst by a pair of ten-year-olds with two headlamps. They led us through cramped passages to a deep cave with a terrifying drop to one side of a treacherous path of loose rocks. It was a small cave, and we were thankful to be back in the daylight after only a short time underground.

The following day we were led into Pha Pherng Cave by a young boy who'd finished school for the day. He pointed out honeycombs hanging from the rocks, and showed us frogs and spiders on the dark walls. One of the caves was filled with deep blue water where I saw a fish swimming slowly in the darkness. The flooded fields beside the path leading from the cave sparkled with dragonflies in flight, the sun flashing on their irridescent wings.

Later that day we went to the Poukham Cave and climbed the steep rocks to the entrance up in the cliffs. We were arrested by the sight of the vast vaulted space which throbbed with the echoed voices of the tiny, ant-like figures exploring its lunar surfaces. The space is breath-taking and its magnificence is illuminated by the light of the sun, which pours through a great opening in the sheer cliff face. Deeper inside the mountain, the cave extends into utter darkness where it is even grander in scale, and the rock formations are staggeringly beautiful. We wandered around in the labyrinthine, alien landscape, stopping to stare in wonder at stalactites and stalacmites, chimneys and rock pools, until we bacame disoriented and began to feel uncomfortable in the lonely darkness. On the way out, when we could make out the distant glow of the daylight, I played a few tunes in the empty vastness, the whistle echoing impossibly from the distant rocks. After descending from the cliffs, the dark water of the aptly-named Blue Lagoon was refreshing, but quickly became chilling, bringing the cold of the mountains as it flows to the river.

Today we went rock-climbing on the Sleeping Wall, a few Km outside of Vang Vieng. The instructors were excellent, but many of the experienced climbers there were surprised by the demanding climbs being undertaken by the novices in their charge. Starting on a 4C, and progressing up to a 20 metre high 6A+ which nobody in our group managed to complete, we were all exhausted by the end of the day, and a platform swing into the Nam Song River was the perfect way to cool down between climbs. I tried the 6A+ twice, having fallen no more than a foot from the top, but I was too tired and weak by then, and I had to drop. I hope I have the strength for the kayaking trip to Vientaine we have planned for tomorrow.

Laos Redneck...

I just chased away a beautiful red-necked keelback snake from the waste-paper basket at the bottom of the steps of the bungalow. He seemed to be stuck, and as I tipped it over with a broom his neck flashed a deep red, and he flattened his muscles in imitation of a cobra. He bolted for the bushes at the bottom step, but the thought of stepping on him in the dark was too much, and I harried him out, forcing him to retreat behind the building. I’m sure he was terrified, but his presence, and the serpentine movement of his spine, provoked a primal response in my mammal brain, and my adrenaline glands were still stimulated half an hour later.

Later, after a haircut, I was about to turn on the shower, when a frog jumped off the bathroom wall. Still thinking about the snake, and checking the corners of the room to be sure, I nearly killed the unfortunate amphibian running out of the bathroom…

The Peoples Democantic Republic of Laos...

 

1st March 2011 - Luang Prabang, Laos  PDR

The twelve hour bus journey to Luang Prabang was tortuous and interminably uncomfortable. The twists and turns of the road, bumps and ruts in the road, made any attempt to sleep short-lived and utterly frustrating. I soon came to realise that the load Lao pop-music was keeping the driver awake, and the passengers alive, and it became acceptabler, if not entirely soothing. At least I had a reasonably-comfortable reclining seat. The Lao man next to me was seated in a plastic garden chair in the aisle, between 50kg sacks of Thai rice. He slept fairly well nonetheless. The Europeans and Americans seemed jealous of the South East Asian passengers who are able to sleep in the most contorted positions at the drop of a hat. A guy at dinner last night, who lives in Mae Sot, explained that the expectation that people should be quiet when others are sleeping doesn't apply here. Consequently everybody learns to sleep comfortably despite noise all around them.

 I was broken and exhausted when I arrived in Luang Prabang, but after a few hours sleep, I awoke in the heat of the afternoon. Hiring a jumbo for the 32km trip top the Kuang Si Waterfalls was an excellent decision. It is the quintessential inland tropical paradise, and the beauty of the falls, and the cool invitation of the turquoise waters were more refreshing than sleep.

Today the waters beckoned again, and after a lunch of Mekong fish and sticky rice came an afternoon of swimming, diving, and rope-swing bawbaggery. Stopping at Wat Xiang Thon on the way home to listen to the monks sing, I was disappointed with the disrespectful behaviour of many of the other tourists, and I left and watched the sun set over the Mekong. For dinner there was more river fish in a yellow curry sauce. The colonial history of the region was perceptible in the heavy, delicious butter blended into the sauce. To accompany it there was deep-fried river weed encrusted with sesame seeds, and a Thai-style dish made wioth local freshwater shrimps, small and delicate. Despite the temptation to sample 'True Manhood' Lao whiskey, the only beverage worth drinking here is the excellent Beer Lao.

 

3rd March 2011 - Viang Vieng, Laos PDR

 The last couple of days have been something of an ordeal. The horrendous journey from Luang Prabang left everybody in a foul temper, and I contracted food poisoning from an over-priced chiekcn baguette I bought on the way. I was hallucinating and ready to collapse by the time we arrived, but today I'm beginning to recover. Viang Vieng is surrounded by towering limestone karst which are honeycombed with caves and subterranean rivers and pools. A short ride from the bungalows is Tam Khanlakhan Cave. Near the entrance is a seated Buddha, and inside a narrow warren of passages and caverns carved from the rock, and encrusted with rippling limestone formations. Tree roots have forced their way through the rocks, and the sweeping light of a torch occasionally picks out the bright green pinpoints of enormous arachnid eyes, pale insects, and swooping, chattering bats.

Viang Vieng itself is a strange town. On one side of the river are hotels and guesthouses, bars showing American T.V. shows, and restaurants serving American-style food and imported Australian beef. Across the bamboo bridge, or over a small steel suspension bridge, is another world entirely. The wooden bungalows are quietl, and arranged around beautiful gardens. Dogs sleep in the sun while chickens scratch for food. There isn't really a road to speak of, and the only way to go is slow, slow, slow. Tranquil and idyllic as it is, the country's punishing past is present at the suspension bridge. The steel bollards are topped with the sinister fins of unexploded U.S. bombs, dropped relentlessly on Laos between 1961 and 1975.