We left Luang Prabang at 8:30 a.m., for a long day on the Nam Ou ('ou' means 'river' in Lao.). Our boat, like all the Lao boats, sat low in the water. We fitted ourselves carefully into the little wooden chairs, their legs cut down to fit against the sloping keel. With leather cushions to sit on, and life jackets to pad the seat backs, we were quite comfortable. I was glad we were riding a slow boat -- according to Lonely Planet the fast boats are seriously accident-prone. After watching one roar past, its passengers' helmeted heads just visible, I concluded that it would also have been hazardous to my hearing. As we took off upstream, I noticed that the driver, up front, had a rear view mirror beside him, and I could see the rudder cables, running along a little wooden ledge on the outside of the boat, slide forward and back as we changed course.
Fenced plots lined the carefully farmed banks of the river near Luang Prabang: one man was irrigating his crops with a watering can. Not far from the city we stopped briefly to explore the Pak Ou caves. Over 4,000 Buddha images were grouped among the stalactites and stalagmites -- some big, some small, a few new and shiny, the majority old and dusty, as were the rock formations. During the Lao New Year celebrations people bring their Buddhas to the caves to be washed in water poured down a carved and decorated wooden channel, perhaps designed as a naga, the sacred serpent.
Sightseeing over, we headed upstream between inventive buoys -- concrete posts, plastic bottles, lengths of bamboo. The boat heeled as it wove from bank to bank and powered through the rapids. At one point it heeled too far, drenching three of us. We stopped at the next village to dry out in the hot sun. The villagers, especially the children, seemed pleased to see us, and after an orgy of photographs we were taken to see the village temple.
I usually have problems with village visits, which too often feel like "human safaris", but in Lao the villagers seemed genuinely pleased to see us. In one Hmong village one of the men volunteered to dress in his best clothes, provided that we sent him copies of our photographs, and the children have not yet been exposed to tourists handing out money and candy.
Back on the boat, we floated up the broad highway of the river through high forested limestone hills that seemed largely unpopulated. Who could tell, though, what lay behind the trees, beyond the first rank of hills? Is there still fighting here? Are the Hmong still fighting the government, or vice versa? The "special zone" is south of here, but this would make wonderful guerilla territory.
Often, we would come upon a solitary skiff, motionless -- one old man in a straw hat and a T-shirt, two women, three young boys -- the boats curving up at prow and stern, a hands breadth above the water at centerline. Occasionally, we disturbed women washing clothes -- and themselves, sarongs tight over their breasts. Then the jungle would close in again, painting oddly disconnected blocks of green on the water -- a new form of impressionism. Around one bend a wall of rock rose in three sheer steps above us, green-clad but gleaming white where the drop was especially steep. I would commit this day to memory -- the seat was hard, the wind was cold, the way was long, but we were floating through beauty in the back of beyond.
Indeed, at journey's end at 5:30 p.m., we were still at the back of beyond. We came to shore below a bridge among boats unloading sacks of oranges, and I carried my pack up a muddy slope behind a woman half my size toting two huge sacks. Our guesthouse had electricity from 6 to 9 in the evening, otherwise candles and torches were required. There was no light bulb in the bathroom Michelle and I shared in any case, nor, for that matter, any hot water. Still, Nong Khiaw (Green Pond), was a magical place, nestled among mountains above the river, with a crescent moon appearing as pink striped clouds faded to dusk. Unfortunately, we were not the only visitors, and the cafes were overloaded. Although Cam, our local guide, turned cook, it still took three hours before we were all fed. But dessert was a serene night sky unsullied by the glare of electricity, a dark bowl pierced by bright stars, sparkling from horizon to horizon.
In the morning I had no chance to oversleep -- the cockerels started up well before daybreak. The cliche that cocks crow to greet the dawn is totally false. In Lao they start early and keep going. And going. In general I slept badly in Lao -- in addition to the pre-dawn cacophony, and in common with several other people, I had strange dreams -- not precisely nightmares, but unsettling.
Abandoning the boat for a bus we drove up into the hills we had seen the day before. Up and up and round and round, through Hmong villages and Khamu villages, past bamboo and teak, orange marigolds and purple bougainvillea, and red poinsettias as tall as small trees. Our destination for the night, Udom Xai, was less inspiring. Hot, dusty, with a lot of building in process, it was singularly lacking in charm. From the undistinguished wat crowning a small hill near our guesthouse I did sight what appeared to be a more impressive wat, white and gold, on the outskirts of town. After I trekked over, and paid to have the gate unlocked, I found that it wasn't a wat at all. It appeared to be a monument to a Lao-Vietnamese alliance, with a statue of two armed men with their arms round each other and four reliefs of men fighting.
The next day was more of the same, only the unprepossessing town of Luang Nam Tha was smaller than Udom Xai, and our guesthouse almost unacceptably grubby. We survived two nights at the Hongthaxay Samboun Hotel, separated by a day spent hiking. We trekked through paddy fields bounded by up-and-over stiles requiring some degree of athleticism and by irrigation ditches crossed by single planks requiring some degree of balance, through a muddy rain forest where I had a close encounter with some leeches and up a steep hill to a reconstructed stupa painted a hideous shade of orange-pink (the original was destroyed by U.S. bombs). I needed the guide's help to make it down the hill from the stupa -- my balance is getting worse.
We lunched at a Laen Taen village on rice, chicken, delicious green beans, taro, boiled eggs and bananas. And lao-lao. It is, unfortunately, very rude to refuse to drink with your host. Most of us compromised by sipping instead of knocking the jigger back, but Jacques developed a taste for it. Aside from numbing my lips, I thought it fairly standard distilled spirit, I just didn't want to drink at lunchtime with a hike ahead of me.
The hike through the rice paddies was beautiful -- green and gold, stalks bent with the weight of the grain, the rice was ready for harvest. The rain forest, where we clambered up and down muddy slopes and tried to avoid the leeches, was another matter. I filed it under "been there, done that" for future reference.
We had been anticipating our final day's drive to the Thai border since our first day's drive in Laos -- twelve hours of dust, Vicki had said. The tour before ours, at the start of the rainy season, had endured twelve hours of mud, and arrived at the border after it closed. We were lucky -- it only took us about six relatively undusty hours. We were in Toyota 4x4s with songthaew fittings -- I spent a couple of hours bouncing around in the back before moving up front for better views. Our reward, after a quick boat ride across the Mekong from Huay Xai to Chiang Khong, was a wonderful teak guest house -- Ruan Thai Sopaphan Lodge -- where our rooms opened onto a wide corridor furnished with comfortable chairs and wooden tables set by open windows looking over the river.
The guesthouse, a hot shower, a great meal and dawn over the Mekong all combined to materially improve my opinion of Thailand. Unfortunately, Chiang Mai, where we spent the next night, was no longer the sleepy town I remembered. While there were still some quiet side streets and elaborate wats in the old town center, traffic seemed to have increased dramatically in only four years.
I skipped the Night Bazaar, but did sign up for a cooking class at the Chiang Mai Cooking School ("the original"), and unlike a previous class I had taken in Bangkok, everyone got to cook. Some of the preparation -- notably mixing the curry pastes and de-veining the prawns -- was done for us, but we spent the morning slicing and dicing and stir frying, producing hot and sour prawn soup, green coconut chicken curry, stir fried mushrooms and baby corn in oyster sauce, and pad thai. Mine were delicious! As part of the class we were given cookery books with recipes and photos, including the recipes for the curry pastes. I'm looking forward to trying to duplicate my results at home.
We spent our last official night as a group on the train to Bangkok -- essentially the same as the previous night train, but a little more luxurious -- there seemed to be more space. The station in Chiang Mai, clean and virtually empty, hardly seemed Asian at all. I also noticed that only official vendors visited us in 2nd class, instead of the colorful parade that had streamed through 3rd, with loops of sausage, fruit, nuts, soft drinks, and later on, alcohol. We did have a women selling beer, though, along with the coke we drank with Kirsten's rum to celebrate her birthday. Vicki even produced a magnificent chocolate cake for the occasion.
Joan and Jan (the Aussies), were joining another Intrepid tour, to Southern Thailand, but all the others were flying out around midnight, so we got together for one last meal at the same outdoor restaurant where we had eaten our first. It started to rain, heavily, as we sat down, and an awning was hurriedly pulled into place. Afterwards I waved goodbye and went back into the Viengtai for a good night's sleep before catching my own plane to Kuala Lumpur at a more civilized hour.
Malaysia Airlines once again demonstrated their talent for making the worst of airline food -- the chicken curry and rice weren't heated enough and the sauce was still a congealed mass. I passed. I spent my one night in K.L. at an airport hotel -- not the pricey and no doubt luxurious Pan Pacific, but the Concorde Inn -- half the price and very comfortable. I did take the train into town for dinner, but it rained, hard, virtually the whole time. Instead of heading into Chinatown for a cappuccino I wandered round the (indoor) Central Market, finding fried fish bladders stacked beside macadamia nuts, Lord of the Rings chess sets at Royal Selangor Pewter, and lots of special sweets for Ramadan.
On the LRT train back to K.L. Sentral I was once again amused by the sign above the seats nearest the doors: "These seats are reserved for senior citizens, pregnant ladies, and the disabled. Aren't we courteous?" Based on my observation, the answer is "no". The next morning I was back at the airport for my flight to Ho Chi Minh City.
Originally sent from Ho Chi Minh City, Dec. 12, 2002 about Northern Lao, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Nov. 9-18, 2002
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