Southeast Asia #3: the Coming of the Mango Rains (3/23/2008)

Another week has passed in Laos, and the workshop has successfully come to a close.  We were not reunited with our equipment, unfortunately, but luckily, there were no other major mishaps. The week went by slowly and quickly, at the same time.

The slow part was the heat.  And the sickness.  In my fourth week in southeast Asia, after successfully navigating the traveler's sickness question for so long, I finally succumbed...at the same time that my air conditioning kicked into overdrive and gave me a headcold.  Outdoors, however, the heat continued...and then the stillness in the air.  With the stillness came the heaviness of moisture, the feeling the sky has when it is up to something.  It crescendoed with the pressure of the workshop, ascending until the final Friday of presentations...and then goodbyes to our new friends.   Then the mango rains came.  They came with smashing bolts of lightning that illuminated the sky and cracked away into thunder that was deafening in the wide valley of the Mekong.  These rains, the beginning of the rainy season, are called mango rains because the mango trees begin to flower, and once they do, the rains inevitably come.  To me, the name is so beautiful, and captures the heady smell of earth, tree, and flower that the rains brought with them.  There are times of dry and times of wet, and you should revere and honor both.  The Lao celebrate the ending of the dry season with many lompong (pagoda parties!), so every night we were there, there was another lompong, because once the rainy season arrives, there isn't much to do...but sit and watch the rain!  So, the message is, enjoy what you can when you can and have patience with the rest!

Friday after the presentations, we closed the workshop.  Everyone went home to take a shower (mandatory when you're sweating through your shirt at 8:30am) and clean up before meeting at the boat dock at 5:30p.  Champasak is on the western bank of the Mekong, and our closing dinner was to be held on the island of Don Daeng.  So we boarded the boat, performed the necessary roll call ("Myanmar? Thailand? Vietnam?  Khmer?  Oh yeah, who else?") and we were off.  Almost.  After the boat was about 50M into the Mekong, we heard a shouting behind us.  Turning, we saw a man wading into the water after us.  Who is that?  The Lao and the Thai immediately burst out laughing.  It was the driver of the boat.

Once we managed to pick up our driver, then we went across the water, skimming over as the sun dropped behind the looming black outline of the hills and the Lingaparvata especially.  We were dropped at the edge of a wide, sandy beach, and made our way slowly up to the resort for our dinner (La Folie Lodge).  It was incredibly beautiful, and we had a wonderful dinner.  There was a slideshow to everyone's delight, and some good-natured national pride in swimming races – and in throwing people into the pool.  Before long, it was time to leave, and we made our way gingerly (and some drunkenly) back across the beach in the pitch black to find the boat.   Perhaps it was the Beerlao, but people started to sing their country songs, and everyone else would clap along.  It was beautiful, with their voices echoing across the water.  And then Aye Nilar (one of my favorites, this sassy Burmese girl) got up in the dark and began to dance.  We could all feel her rhythm in the beams of the boat, gently rocking us back across the river.

On Friday, my health improved, largely because I ate nothing for two and a half days so there was nothing left in me to either come out or be food for a virus or parasite.  Kecia has been sick too, as was Rohit, and two of the Thais – so questions around the breakfast table typically ran, "Are you eating today?" "How are you digesting?"  "Need any Cipro/Loperamide/Immodium/Vitamin C?" "Can you go to the classroom or are you staying in?"   Being sick abroad like this is a miserable experience – you get so lonely, and you are immediately convinced that the entire world has forgotten you, and why aren't people calling you, and you are going to die here and show those bastards.  Then four hours later you wake up and realize you fell asleep drooling again and it's time for more Cipro.  Hopefully this quells the notion that this kind of travel is romantic or glamorous or all laughs – it is incredible, to be sure, but riddled with sickness, loneliness, and in this case, necessary interaction and cooperation (and thus support of) an incredibly corrupt local government. 

Me with my kip bling to pay our vendors

Saturday was the day of loose ends and riding around with Top on his moped with a stack of money (63 million kip) to pay the restaurants and guesthouses.  At every place, you stop and drink and speak with the owner, who has helped you out over these 2 weeks.   It was a very long process.  But, at the same time, the easy friendly nature of the Lao, while it can be frustrating from a Western efficiency standpoint, was also a saving grace for us.  Our organization's bureaucracy tied up our cash for the entire duration of the workshop, only releasing it to us with one day's margin, and had the Lao not been trusting enough to front us 2 weeks of accommodation and meals for 30 people, we could never have had the workshop.  Imagine telling a hotel in the US, "Please let Simon come and stay and he will leave on the 18^th and we will come pay you on the 22^nd."  So, we are indebted to our Lao friends, although not financially anymore!

Lao soup additions...

Roadside market in Bolaven

Today, Jeff, Kecia and I – along with our instructor Rohit (or Lo-eet, as the Lao call him) were all that remained of the visitors, and we too loaded up a truck and headed towards the ferry to go to Pakse.  We got to our hotel in Pakse, a luxury hotel compared to what we have been living in for the past 3 weeks.  I realized today I haven't seen a TV in 3 weeks...and I was completely fine without it.  I have a bathtub, with a shower head with actual water pressure, and a temperature control for the shower.  My little room by the Mekong had hot water, or cold water, but no way to control the degree.  Part of me is afraid that returning to Bangkok will completely throw me.  Tonight in Pakse, we ate Indian food...so novel, for in Champasak, there is only local food.  No 7-11, no Mini-market with chips or packaged food if you're dying for something recognizable, or just something NOT Lao (for example, I have been having dreams of dairy products for about two weeks now).  Going home to my apartment in Los Angeles is unimaginable luxury – the variety of food waiting for MY selection at Trader Joe's and Pavilions, food waiting for me to come pluck it from shelves of plenty, is tantalizing. And overwhelming.

the ferry from Paxse to Champasak

We took the afternoon to take a tour of the Bolaven plateau.  We stopped in a textile village to buy these beautiful hand-and-feet woven fabrics – the women run a loom off their feet to their hands, and weave beads and incredibly complex patterns into the fabric.  They're incredibly beautiful.  The tribe is Katu, and they are hill tribes that are ethnically distinct from the Lao.  They are also polygamists.  We also saw a coffee processing plant, coffee being a particularly well-known product from the Bolavens, and then we went to several small tribal villages, including a Christian village of the Ta Oy tribe and an animist village.  The Christian village was full of children, who followed us around, and loved having their picture taken if we showed them the digital copy afterwards on our cameras.  They were incredibly sweet, and welcoming, and a crowd of 40 children (no exaggeration) followed us to the road and waved goodbye to us.  When I asked if they attended Catholic school or went to a public school, Oodon (our guide)  told me that they went to a public school when they are 5 or 6.  Many of the women give birth at home (the nearest hospital is in Pakse, 20km away, and they have no transportation), so there are no birth records, so age is an approximation at best.  Apparently the test to enter elementary school (no kindergarten) is if a student can reach their right arm over his head to touch his left ear.  If you fail, you're told to go age and come back in a year or two.

We turned off the paved road (mistake in rainy season) to go to the animist village.  About 10M down the track, the car lurched in the mud from the rainstorm earlier that afternoon.  And then lurched again.  Soon our tires were spinning mud pies out the back.  Ten kids came running out of the village to watch our van helplessly slither around in the red mud.  I was waiting for it, and finally, the driver turned around and said the inevitable: "Ok you push."

So, we pushed.

Eventually we made it out of the mud and into the village. Our guide said something about sacrificing buffalo, and Rohit and I turned to each other with the same look in our eye, and said, "Now?"  Thankfully, no, but unfortunately, these tribes have a ritual buffalo sacrifice annually.  Oodon took us to the spirit house in the middle of the village, where the buffalos are killed, and started to explain in detail how the sacrifice took place.  I wandered off to look at the well, unwilling to hear about animals being killed and also because I'm a wuss and might faint anyway, so I didn't hear too much.

Today I fly to Bangkok via Vientiane, and then tomorrow I go on to my vacation in Hanoi and Ha Long Bay.  Then Friday, finally Friday, beloved Friday, I am going home.  Home...