LAOS
In the Laos adventure, there will be illness and snake wine, but the only death came to a roach who entered my room. So read on...
The few more hours of bus travel meant that that we arrived in the town of Luang Prabang; the sun had gone down and we were tired and hungry. Only the Dutch girl had booked a room at a place called SpicyLaos Hostel, so the rest of us decided to tag along. We stopped a Tuk Tuk in front of the bus station and managed to get all of us and our backpacks into the back, squeezing together. Fortunately, Luang Prabang is a town, not a city, and we arrived within minutes in front of the hostel. The place was well located on a quiet residential street (which pretty much described most of Luang Prabang.
SpicyLaos was in actuality a UNESCO World Heritage site; in the past it had been the residence of Lao royalty. The old dark wood looked of high quality, and the hostel was on the second floor. A sign at the base of the steps asked us to remove our shoes. Up in the office, we checked in. The wide front wooden doors looked permanently open and there were a couple of computers near the front desk, and beyond the office, a large open room with some seating. I wound up sharing a room with a couple of Asian girls (some guys have to pay a lot for that), and the contingent of Europeans wound up in one room together. To satisfy hungry tummies, the Europeans and I walked down a couple roads to a night market where there were some cafes. One restaurant, the Tam Tam, had nice outdoor seating so we sat, chatted and ate. Paul told us that the next day, he and Martin would go out and buy a boat. “For what?” asked Andreas.
“To float down the Mekong into Cambodia,” Paul said. We were all impressed by the adventurous spirit of this pair of Germans. Driving an ambulance through Europe and Russia to Mongolia was not an easy task, and now they wanted to head down the long and perhaps somewhat treacherous Mekong, well, better them than me. The rest of us were hardly chickens; it takes a certain brand to venture out to the far places from home and backpack, often not knowing where you’re going. But apparently that wasn’t enough for Martin and Paul.
The following morning, I decided to go to some nearby waterfalls that the hostel manager had told us about. Paul and Martin were getting an early start on their boat search, and Impke and Andreas were content to laze about the hostel. I hopped into the back of a tuk tuk along with three women also staying at the hostel: Mary and Linda from Scotland, and Rebecca from LA. The driver drove on a nicely paved road that snaked through beautiful countryside: rice fields, open grassy areas cluttered with palms here and there, and lush green mountains in the distance. The landscape was hilly and I was thankful I had decided against renting a bike. The entrance to the falls generated one surprise: we had to pay 200 Kip to enter (about fifteen dollars); we’d been told at the hostel that the entire trip there including transport was 500 Kip, but we forked over the cash at the wooden booth and entered.
I’d been to Niagara Falls and knew this would be nothing more than a gush of water over a cliff, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Really nice, but not more; however, the delights were to be found in the pools of water that formed below the falls. At various levels, aqua-marine pools had formed, and mini falls three to eight feet in height. One of them was fairly large and made a great old-fashioned swimming hole. First, of course, after paying the entrance fee (with some general whining emanating from all four of us), we headed up a trail to a fenced-off area where a few minor league black bears were housed. I tried to snap a few shots, but for some reason, bears always know I’m taking their picture and either turn around or twist themselves into some pose that guarantees a bad picture. Rebecca was quite taken with them and hung out there a bit longer as Mary, Linda and myself continued up the slightly rising path (there were several paths actually), stopping only once to take pictures of some Lao children playing in a narrow muddy stream set in the woodland.
After awhile, we came to the ‘swimming hole’, as I call it. The water called out at me to jump in and join the half dozen others already treading water and watching the utterly delightful mini-falls a mere dozen feet away. “Let’s continue up to the main falls first,” suggested Mary, “and then come back and swim.” We were cool with that, and as Rebecca joined us, we continued up past other smaller pools of water, streamlets, Lao and Western tourists all with smiles on their faces. All manner of colorful tropical flowers decorated the pathway and pools, and when we came to a little bridge, we could see the main falls, a thunderous cascade of water falling a hundred feet or more—and quite inspiringly.
The real fun was back at the swimming hole. There were several benches set here and there, some with wet, happy tourists sitting on them. The area was shaded by tall trees, the sun only falling upon the pools. Placing our daypacks on a bench near the pool, we stripped off the excess clothing and stood like the rest in bathing suits. The water, as my toes soon discovered, was frigid and sent a shiver up my spine. Mary cried out as if in pain and laughed; Rebecca looked at the pool with doubt on her face. I walked over stones and a few flat rocks into the pool. There was nothing to do but jump in bravely—and yet I tip toed out like a big wimp until crotch deep, and took the plunge, I’m happy to say with a minimum of screaming. Within a minute or two though, my body warmed, and considering how we’d been sweating like pigs a few minutes earlier, this was heaven. I swam out to join a few others, the water being a bit deeper here. And then I spotted the tree.
An old oak leaned halfway over the pool, and attached to it was a rope. A young European looking guy was carefully climbing out on a nearly horizontal branch. Someone long ago had pounded some pieces of wood into the branch so that you could get a foothold and make it across the otherwise slippery branch. When he came to where the tree angled upwards, he took the rope, held on for dear life, and swung out over the water. He splashed into the water from perhaps ten feet up. I thought it looked incredibly fun, so got out of the pool and made my way over to the tree. Naturally, the “swing tree” was the main source of viewing entertainment for the gathering crowd in the woods and those in the water. I didn’t want to make too much of a fool of myself (difficult in the best of circumstances), but sure enough, by the time I’d awkwardly climbed the horizontal branch with the footholds (it wasn’t as easy as it had looked) and came to the bent tree trunk, I discovered to my embarrassment that I couldn’t reach the rope. Actually, anyone without the long arms of a chimp would be able to reach the rope; others after me had difficulty too; we all figured out that the best way was to follow someone with long arms out to the tree, and after they jumped, and the rope was still swinging, to grab hold of it and then take a turn.
Anyway, a guy who’d made the jump previously came and made his jump, thus providing me with the rope. I found out, when jumping off the tree branch, why everyone let go of the rope almost immediately: the thing was slippery; there was no way of hanging on and swinging back and forth. My plunge was exhilarating and for the second time, the cold jolted my dry skin. I stayed in the water chatting with some Canadians; we all watched a beautiful young girl in a white bikini make the jump. She had the attention of all the males, at any rate. Then a rather hefty young man with an ample supply of stomach made the jump, to the general hilarity of the folks in the pool. His crash into the water created a few waves.
When it came time to go (the tuk tuk driver had been waiting all this time in the parking lot with all the other tuk tuk drivers), the four of us had a quick bite to eat at one of several outdoor cafes. These were the “plastic table” kind of cafes, with a wall or two of bamboo, and quite open to the forest. I ate some fried rice with veggies and egg and downed it all with cola zero. There were oodles of knick knack stands selling everything from T-shirts to beads to stuffed animals. We idled past them and into the lot, finding our driver asleep in the back of the tuk tuk. The drive home was nice but by this time a feeling of fatigue had settled over me. Sun and swimming do that. All I wanted was a nap back at Spicylaos, not an argument with a tuk tuk driver. But that’s what happened when we got back to the hostel and he wanted 500 Kip from each of us, not the 200 we’d been expecting. “But the whole trip, including everything, should have been 500 Kip,” Mary argued with the man, whose English had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. She turned to me. “We checked with the manager, and the sign on the wall even says ‘all inclusive’ for 500 Kip.” I tried to hand the man 200 kip but he waved it off. “No, no, 500 Kip,” he insisted. Well, we all wound up paying, because at the end of the day, the mix-up hadn’t been his fault. Once in the lobby, we tried explaining the deceptive sign to the manager, who’d been a pretty laid back guy who spoke decent English, but now he too had suddenly lost his command of the English language, trying on the look of a dolt for size. None of us were happy about it, but there it is, the world of travel.
While walking around the neighborhoods, I’d seen several signs for guesthouses and investigated a couple of them; one man showed me a private room with AC and a private shower, and was only asking 60 Kip; back at the Spicylaos, I told the manager that I’d check out because for the same price of 60 Kip, I could get a private room with a shower a couple houses down. He looked through a couple of his books laying on a cluttered desk in the open lobby/office, then ushered me back to the hall with the rooms. He opened a set of tall, narrow doors and let me see the room that obviously he was hoping I’d take. The tiny room, a bit barren except for two single beds, was primitive but I liked the view outside a screened window: an overgrown backyard with banana trees, palms, a couple dilapidated shacks, one of them open on one side and apparently a shed of some kind, and a couple of chickens clucking about. The scene was the quintessential “Asia” for me, and I acted half interested. “How much?” I asked.
“60 Kip,” he said. “This is emergency room, but I let you have for sleeping, no problem.”
I accepted and laid my backpack out on the one bed. One of the reasons to stay here was because the old place was an UNESCO site, a cool old place to hang out, and I liked the social atmosphere of a hostel as opposed to being alone in a guesthouse. Plus I was simply too lazy to carry my pack two houses down. Oh, and there was free wireless Internet here, too.
In the evening, I strolled with Linda, Mary and Rebecca down to the night market, where again we ate at the Tam Tam, from where we viewed the market. Women, for the most part, sat on carpets and blankets and under protective awnings, their wares spread out in front of them. Tourists strolled by, looking, bargaining, and sometimes buying scarves, jewelry, knick knacks, clothing, food items, or old sketching of temples. After eating, I returned to the hostel because I’d promised Impke and Andreas that they could interview me. They were not only on a lengthy backpacking trip, but keeping a blog and recording “the sounds of a journey”, as they explained to me as we sat at a picnic table that evening. “I work in a sound studio,” Andreas explained, “so we thought we’d put together various sounds, everything from a temple prayer to traveler’s ideas about life.” I’d sparked their interest after all our conversations on the sleeper bus, so I was a likely candidate. The recorder going, we had a natural conversation about how traveling had changed over the years, which was true enough. Backpackers, for one thing, were no longer bums on the road who accepted a two-dollar bed for the night with its accompanying bed bugs. Now hostels had to offer clean accommodations, food, free internet, and a host of other services just to compete. Even traveling youth had become a demanding lot. All this we discussed, and more, until I returned to my cute little primitive room to do some writing. From the backyard came the sounds of animals lurking, some muffled conversation from the shed along with some weakly illuminated light, and the rustling of palm fronds.
The next morning, I got a shock as I sat out on the front deck (where guests plopped onto comfy cushions and munched on corn flakes, bananas and bread). After shoveling a spoonful of cornflakes into my mouth, I found that I couldn’t swallow! It was as if some force prevented the well-masticated flakes from descending into the esophagus. I focused on chewing a few more times, and found that I could push the pulp down—with effort. The second time, the stuff just slid down, making my poor heart pound with new fear. It’s bloody discomfiting to be in a 3rd world nation and discover that you can’t swallow. My tea would absolutely refuse to go down. If I tried, it just flowed down, and for a moment I panicked, but immediately knew I could breathe, so it wasn’t going down the wrong way at least. Well, I knew that medical treatment in northern Laos would be dodgy at best, so there was nothing to do but play it by ear and see if it got better on its own.
Impke and Andreas came onto the deck, saying they were going to walk about town and invited me to join them. I thought it a fine idea, especially since I wasn’t going to be downing more corn flakes. The humidity was sky-high, and we were drenched in sweat before we’d gone two blocks, but we explored a temple after climbing what felt to be a hundred stairs, found a hilltop view of the mighty Mekong River and gleaming red and gold temples rising out of rain forest. The beauty made me forget my swallowing problem. After descending to the main road, we had a wander through an old bookshop, and then walked down to a main road fronting the wide and brown Mekong, a river which begins somewhere in southwest China (in the Himalayas I presume) before winding through China, Laos and Cambodia into the sea.
We came upon a most unusual and, for me and Andreas, quite sickening stand. In the shade of some towering trees, along this quiet boulevard along the Mekong, an elderly salesman had a most unique item to sell: snake wine. Atop a plain table were several jars, of different sizes, but the largest holding three liters or so of…snake wine. Most of the interior contained two dead thick snakes, several rather hefty centipedes, two scorpions, and a couple of amphibious creatures I couldn’t identify—and didn’t want to identify. The corpses all lay in this jar of amber colored wine, and according to ancient belief, the drinking of such wine would cure all manner of ills; of course, were I to drink such a brew, I’d have all manner of ills. To tell the truth, I was surprised that I could even glance at the jar. Andreas couldn’t; he walked briskly away to take in the more pleasant sights of the moving river. But Impke was plainly fascinated; she asked the man questions, snapped a half dozen photos, and traced her finger along the glass following the snake’s body. “How many creatures are in there?” she asked in wonder.
The man laughed. “Oh, do not know, maybe three snakes and others.” These weren’t little garter snakes, either. The one looked like a cobra to me, it’s head flattened against the glass. In another smaller jar were two entire turtles. That was enough for me, and I followed Andreas.
After that refreshing little walk, I craved a coffee shop (though I doubted I could drink anything) and air conditioning. The German couple carried on with their explorations while I walked down the street until I stumbled upon the Noma Café, a real coffee shop/bakery. Other Westerners were sitting at quality tables eating quality baked goods and real food (i.e. pizza, sandwiches, etc). I ordered a latte and took a seat upstairs with a free copy of the Vientiane Times. In short, I passed a very nice time catching up on all the latest news from the capital of Laos (not very riveting stories, truth be told) and enjoying all the chilled air blowing down from the AC vents. I couldn’t swallow much of the latte, though, which freaked me out afresh.
Close to dusk, I was on my way down the road from the hostel towards the used bookstore when someone called my name. Sitting at a table on a deck extending to the street were the two Scottish girls. They invited me to join them, so I postponed the bookstore visit. We got to chatting; they’d been sipping marguerites, their glasses almost empty, and when a waitress came round, Mary said, “Oh, come one, we’ll have another, Linda.” They were both a tad tipsy, and Linda agreed that, yes, they really ought to have just one more fruit-flavored marguerite. Not wanting to be a party pooper, I ordered a beer. I never did believe that drinking a little alcohol on occasion was a big sin; usually, those who come down the hardest on great sins like drinking booze are the ones who quite ably ignore the hungry beggar on the street. At any rate, I knew I’d be unlikely to actually drink much of the beer in my current state, so no harm in ordering.
After my couple days in Luang Prabang, which I’d learned was actually a World Heritage site as a city, I boarded an 8am bus to go south to the capital, Vientiane. There, I would see my friend and ex-colleague, Don McKay, and see a doctor. I pretty much trusted that God would keep me alive and swallowing for the next eight hours. That I would be traveling through forested mountains far from civilization with a poorly functioning body did put me on edge a bit, but in such a situation, you just have to trust in God. If he wanted me to live, I’d live. It had been raining on this dreary morning. The Tuk Tuk driver, who looked to be a sixteen-year-old kid, had been waiting for me to come out of the hostel that morning; I’d used him the day before to take me back to the hostel and he’d agreed to take me to the bus station the next morning. At the station, I paid him and walked over to where a crowd was waiting to board the VIP Bus to Vientiane. The bus was a double decker, multi-colored, and quite comfortable looking, I could see. I got to talking to the only other white folks in the crowd, a young couple who turned out to be from Sweden. The guy, who wore dreadlocks, told me that he and his girlfriend were traveling around Asia for several weeks and then heading on to India. After a few minutes, the bus driver came along, opened up the wide storage doors so that we could stow our backpacks. We boarded, climbed some stairs, and luckily found that my assigned seat was in front of the Swedes. In the seat beside me was a monk draped in his saffron-colored robes. Just a kid, really; he couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. During the hours-long trip, I chatted back and forth with the Swedes, listened to my I-Pod (the monk had his own I-pod), and managed to swallow a bag of Lays, for which I gave thanks.
Vientiane is the capital of Laos. It’s a small city of under 200,000 residents. It’s rather unremarkable, and there’s nothing of major interest for the tourist—but that’s part of what draws backpackers to Laos. “It’s like Thailand was twenty years ago,” said one traveler. Vientiane has one monument that makes it onto the postcards, the Patuxai Monument—reminiscent of Paris’ Arch De Triumphe. It was this structure that I was looking for as I walked along a busy road towards dusk. Once at the monument, I’d been told, the Lakeo Guest House would be nearby. And since my friend Don McKay had made a reservation for me at the Lakeo, that was my ultimate destination.
As usual, the pack was getting heavy after the first kilometer of walking, but turning a corner of a street occupied by cars and Songthaews (pick up trucks with two benches in the back and with a covering overhead), I spotted the monument and groaned. It looked quite a walk from where I stood, and the final pink curtain of sundown was beginning to dissolve. I surrendered the need to walk and hailed a songthaew. After a couple of minutes, at a rather large roundabout, one pulled over and I climbed in the back, set my pack down and said what Don had emailed me to say: “Lakeo gue hau”. The driver fretted for a few seconds and then grinned and nodded. “Ah, Lakeo guest house, okay.” He revved up the engine and off we went for all of two minutes. After pulling up to a nice-looking three-story building, I paid him and then went into the lobby. A young man came walking across the room, saying, “Mr. Scott?” I said, “Yes,” pleased that I was expected. The man led me to the desk and said, “Mr. Don, he said you coming. He was here ten minutes ago.”
I’d arranged to meet Don at the Lakeo, expecting to arrive at the latest by 5pm but our bus had been delayed and then a group from the bus, including the Swedes, had all squashed into one songthaew for a ride into town. Once on the main tourist street, everyone separated, and I was determined to walk to the Lakeo. But here I was, so I phoned Don using the clerk’s cell phone, and Don told me he’d meet me in the lobby in about fifteen minutes. This gave me a chance to dump my backpack in my room. I was thrilled to see a nice clean modern room with full bathroom and of course, air conditioning, none of which we’d had in Luang Prabang at Spicylaos.
In the lobby shortly afterwards, Don came strolling in and we shook hands, happy to see one another. I’d last seen Don, who’s in his early fifties, in Dubai on the grounds of Zayed University, but since then he’d resigned and taken a job working for United Nations Volunteers—teaching Lao UN staff here in Vientiane. I’d known that Don was in love with Asia, particularly Laos; in fact, Don’s hearty recommendation to visit Laos is what made me add this blessed country to the list of countries to visit on my journey. Glad I did it, too. Anyway, he asked me if I minded if we didn’t go far for dinner because he wanted to get to bed a bit early; that was fine with me, so we walked out to where he’d parked his newly purchased motor scooter. I hopped on the back and we drove a couple blocks to an outdoor café. There, we shared a big plate of sweet & sour chicken, which I mostly got down. After I explained about my swallowing difficulties, Don said, “Try the Australian or French embassies; they have clinics. The Americans won’t, though.”
The next day was fairly hot (this being Asia), and I basically wasted the morning looking for the Australian and French embassies. This was due to my not wanting to spend a ton of money on tuk tuks, songthaews or taxis (that left walking, naturally enough)—and on the fact that the guys at the Lakeo front desk, while wishing no doubt to be helpful, simply gave me bad information so that when I walked to where the Australian embassy should be, according to their circle on my map, there was nothing but a collection of tiny shops. Finally, one man at a shop told me that it was located about five kilometers away. I wasn’t far from the road, which for the most part was not really built up, with patches of grass and weeds interspersed with shops and short rows of low buildings. I stopped a songthaew and rode sweaty and tired for ten minutes until we got to the embassy. At a gate, a Laotian guard didn’t speak English, but there was a sign on the wall saying something about a clinic. “Where is doctor?” I asked, to which the guard replied, “After 1:30, come back after 1:30.” The clock now read 11am.
On the touristy street, I stopped at a Noma Café to treat myself to Latte and eggs. The place was like its sister café in Luang Prabang, looking like any nice coffee shop in the US and air conditioned; I read through the Bangkok Post, tried some cautious sips of coffee, which either took up to several seconds to go down or slid down. The eggs mostly made it down, but when one forkful got temporarily lodged somewhere on the way down, with my eyes doubtless bulging, I pushed the plate away. I couldn’t even finish my coffee, and darn, I’d paid the extra few cents to be able to get free refills. It was time to find a doctor!
I spent the next couple hours or so searching for the French Embassy since they were closer in town here. Wandering down some of the more shady lanes past some lovely though worn-out buildings that displayed their French colonial grandness, and past a temple and stupa, and following a narrow dark river, I was enjoying being in Vientiane. I was actually in Laos! I was looking forward to another 3 weeks yet, hoping to remain here in the capital for a week or so and then head south to some islands and cross then into Cambodia. That was the plan. When I more or less stumbled upon the French Embassy, behind a concrete wall, a little guard came out to tell me that the clinic was no longer here but at a different location; he handed me a sketching he’d hastily drawn; according to it, I only had to walk about three blocks. I thanked him and continued on. Well, I found every landmark on his map except for the clinic, which was nowhere to be seen. And shop owners either didn’t speak English or had no idea where the French clinic was. The sun was beating down, I’d been beat for a couple of hours, so I gave up and decided that I’d simply call the Australian embassy from the Lakeo. To which I took a songthaew.
Once in the lobby, I asked the clerk behind the desk for help; his English wasn’t great but he spoke enough to be able to tell me that there was no phone directory, but he did pull out a tiny pamphlet that had ads for various entertainment in Vientiane, including, oddly, an ad for the Australian medical clinic at the embassy. “Can I use your phone to call?” I asked. The hotel phone sat right in front of me. “Sorry,” said the guy, who really did clearly want to be helpful, “But manager say ten Kip one minute.” This was like a dollar a minute for a local call, so I got a little hot under the collar. When he saw my irritation (and when I said that that was robbery), he pulled out his cell phone, the kind lad, and said, “You can use my phone, no problem.” I called the number listed in the ad, and basically learned from a nurse that I had to make an appointment; so I did just that, for 10am the next morning. I walked up the broad dark wooden steps to my room, pointed the AC controls at the unit, and showered while enjoying the artificial breeze. In the evening, Don came round and we took a songthaew down to the Mekong River, to one of his favorite restaurant bars. The place was on the second floor, was all wood and glassless windows, quite charming. I didn’t think the eating thing would go well, but I decided to experiment with French Toast. If I couldn’t get down French Toast with butter and syrup, things would be serious. After ordering from a lovely young waitress (which is all that they have, really, in Laos), Don talked about his decision to leave Dubai a few months earlier, telling me how he’d actually applied with the UN some time earlier but not heard from anyone. Then in the spring, the phone call had come—and he jumped at the chance to work here. “I mean, this is the place I love,” he said. He sipped from a glass of beer. Our view out the window was of the Mekong, a wide and graceful river, and the ubiquitous stands and stalls of Laos, workers hawking, selling, frying, eating, just enjoying life. “Still, you know, I might go back to Dubai. I can do it, I’m sure they’ll take me back. I don’t know, I haven’t figured everything out yet.” I understood the pull to Dubai, that damnable magnet that attracts you towards the acquisition of money; of course for me, it would be more than that. I have good friends there; I did miss going to Cocos Restaurant on Saturday night and playing UNO with them. But there were other things in my life now, other people, other opportunities. Things God wanted me to do, I knew. And earning the big tax-free bucks just wasn’t one of them. Well, the French Toast arrived along with Don’s delicious-smelling Thai meal, but after just three or four bites, I said to Don, “I just can’t swallow. Damn.”
The next day decided my immediate future. In short, I wound up sitting in the doctor’s office speaking with an Australian doctor in his thirties who seemed quite keen and interested and able, but after I described all my symptoms, he said, “I’ll be honest with you, it’s way beyond my scope. You need a good ENT to start with.” He suggested the hour’s trip to Udon Thani, a Thai town with a good hospital. “That’s where we send UN and embassy staff,” he said. “Or there’s Bangkok.”
“Bangkok?” I asked, “for good hospitals?”
“Bangkok’s got world-class hospitals.” And now that he mentioned it, I knew he was right. I’d even had rich Arab friends in Dubai who’d gone off to Bangkok for treatments. I made the decision to go to Bangkok. What would happen if I went to Udon Thani only to discover that I had to go to Bangkok? Why not go to the best place first? The Aussie doctor was very helpful in writing out a report for a specialist.
Back at the Lakeo, the manager stood behind the desk. She was Chinese, in her fifties, I guessed, and spoke decent English. She heard my predicament and sent one of her clerks off to some travel agency to see about booking a train or plane ticket to Bangkok. I’m not sure why they simply didn’t phone, but the young thin guy went off for something like ten minutes before returning. “You can come?” he indicated, and I walked with him a few blocks to an efficient little travel office where a young woman got me a reservation on the train to Bangkok for the next afternoon. It meant another 24 hours in Vientiane, and at least another couple of days of not knowing what was wrong with me, but I figured at least I’d see a bit more of the city. I sat at my laptop in the lobby of the Lakeo getting some school work done until shortly before 5pm, at which time I was to meet Don at the UN building. He’d taken me there the day before, showing me his office and the complex where he worked.
On the way to the UN building, I stopped at a minimart for some ever-so-slightly glazed donuts and a diet coke. Then in the lobby of one of the wings of the UN building, I sat on a sofa and munched on the donuts and tried sips of the cola. Things seemed to go pretty well though I had to concentrate on swallowing. But solid food was going down—with a lot of help from my mind—but going. Cola was the usual combo job of sliding and swallowing with effort. When Don came out, we headed down to the Mekong and walked along a dirt lane that followed the river. Three and four story buildings, some wooden structures and looking grandly old, stood on one side; on the river side were shacks, trees, stalls, parked bikes, parked Toyota Corollas, dogs, women in long skirts, fishermen, boys running half naked to swim, the best of Laos, it seemed to me as the sun hung low in the sky.
Don sipped from a beer and I from a bottle of 7-up on a deck café on stilts just barely over the Mekong shore. In one corner was a ramshackle kitchen—open to the elements-- that looked none too clean, and the tables and chairs on the deck were all of a light wood and a bit rickety. But it was a charming moment. The sun was just touching the horizon, the river, sending gold across the water. In the reeds and grasses ten feet below us, several youngsters wearing only shorts were jumping off a log and into the river. “The current can be treacherous,” Don said. But the boys seemed to be swimming fine. Out on the water, some longboats puttered by. On the other side of the river, the town was Thai. The river marked the border here, but there were no river crossings. A few birds flew over the sandbars of the river; some insects and lizards made their tropical noises, and the distant voices of the boys in the river were fading as they swam further out. I could understand why Don felt peace here. Especially after the lunacy and gridlock of Dubai. “Don,” I said. “If you have health, love your students, and love this land, you have it made.” He nodded. “You’re right.”
We didn’t want to eat here, so we walked back along the same dirt road until we came to a restaurant which, as many were, was open on one side to the road and river. We sat inside, where I once again picked through some sweet & sour, doing more picking than swallowing. A tall, rather big middle-aged Canadian talked to us from the next table after we started chatting with him—as Westerners sometimes do in foreign places. But I’m afraid he was a bit much. He was teaching at some school in town and had been here for some time, having bought a house in a nearby village. His new white jeep was parked outside. “For the Lao wife,” he told us. “Gotta have all of the best if you’re married to the foreigner.” I asked him if he’d go back to Canada, to which he laughed. “Not a chance, hell no. Why? Money’s okay here, got me a Lao wife, a house, some cash. No taxes, no cold weather. No, done with Canada.” He was quite expressive, arms often flailing or motioning. He did most of the talking, too. After we’d paid for our food and said our so-longs to the Canadian, we headed back down the road. “That guy’s just a little too much, said Don. “Man, I just try to stay away from people like that.” I understood. Compared to soft-spoken Asians, or even the more sedate Europeans, North Americans can take some getting used to.
Well, that's it for Laos. Darn swallowing problem.
