Thu 25/12/08 22:09

This entry is being posted after Christmas, written as I was on the river.

Pakbeng was the small river town that we spent the night last night. I don’t know for sure but I think that this town’s sole existence is for a halfway point along the river. From what our guide told me was that nobody navigates the Mekong during the night because of the dangers of hidden rocks and other various objects. It makes Pakbeng the place to stop for the night. It’s a small town that seems to have embraced its role as a small tourist spot. There are as many hotels and restaurants as there are houses or stores on its one street. Don’t miss understand me, there is no way that this town is tourist”y”  it is real in every sense of the word. The people are busy working at making a living and except for the shopkeepers they barely seem to notice the tourists. Our hotel was excellent, there was a large open area/deck that overlooks the Mekong where we spent the night drinking and talking… not exactly true, we spent most of the night at a restaurant across the street from our hotel, but when it got close to 10:30 we went back to the hotel to chat, listen to Christmas music and hang. The reason we left then was that the city doesn’t have electricity from a grid, they have to run generators, so at 10:30 at night the town shuts off the lights. It’s something that seems so foreign to most people in developed countries, but the people here seem to take it in stride. To be honest it didn’t bother any of us at all… in fact it was kind of quaint.

The temperature here is kind of chilly, probably in the 50s or so right now. It really cools down when the sun is down, or like now, when it’s blocked by clouds. The clouds are really more like fog than anything, and the way it is hugging the hills that line the river is something kind of surreal. It’s 9:30 in the morning and everyone on the boat is bundled up in all the extra clothes that they brought. Coming from a place where a jacket isn’t needed, it really wasn’t something that I thought to bring with me. I did bring a hooded sweatshirt so I’m not completely cold…

Yesterday we stopped at one of the villages that are scattered around the bank of the river. I have to say that it was one of the best things and one of the worst things I’ve seen in a while. As we pulled up to a sandy area on the bank I could see small kids all lined up watching us. Now if you’ve ever seen any of the old Vietnam war movies you probably are familiar with the type of buildings they live in, I think they’re called hootches. I don’t know though maybe that’s slang. They’re made out of bamboo and sit on stilts. The village consisted of about 30 or 40 of these “hootches” which were scattered around so no front door was facing another. The people were poor… dirt poor. Chickens, dogs, and other animals walked among us as we made our way through the village. The young children rarely had a set of clothing, some had underwear, some only a shirt. The best way to describe the situation was if you’ve ever seen the infomercial that has the tagline, “for about the cup of a coffee, you can help feed a child for a month” you would know what this village was like. It really was almost sad that we were spectators in their lives though, I don’t know about everyone in the group, but a few of us were talking later about how it felt like we were exploiting them. We didn’t do anything purposefully bad, but just the fact that we were walking around, some of us taking pictures, seemed like we were wrong to be there. Almost like their misery was something for our benefit. I guess just like a zoo raises awareness of the animals of the world, showing us the real misery of some people in the world raised our understanding of how lucky we actually are. I don’t know if “misery” is the right word, it seems like I’m suggesting that they were sad, and I don’t really mean to say that, they were poor, but maybe their life is harder, and in some ways, better than the average westerner that makes the rounds through their village.

This village is not the only example of lack of wealth that we’ve seen since we crossed over to Laos. It’s sad in some regards, but in the last two days that we’ve been here there hasn’t been any examples of people that have enough to live comfortably… and I’m not talking about cable television or café lattes in the morning, I’m talking about living.

Thu 25/12/08 22:06

As I write this, it’s Christmas eve and I’m on a slow riverboat going down the Mekong River. The river has so much mystery to me it’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s the dozens of war movies that use it as a backdrop to the horrors of the Vietnam war, maybe it’s the idea of being somewhere that I heard of during my youth, that I didn’t understand what the river was to so many people. Whatever the reason it has been great to see it. We crossed the border from Thailand to Laos yesterday afternoon and spent the rest of the day just walking around this sleepy little border town. The town was what I envision when I think of a developing country. People cook outside with fire, so they’re dozens of smoky billows coming from everywhere. Dogs are wandering around the streets, seemingly ignored by the villagers, but now and again you see a dog with a shirt on. It’s almost like they’re revered or something. The town is at the base of a mountain that has a temple at the top. We went to the temple last night, but it was too dark to take any pictures. One thing that was kind of funny last night was I’m sitting outside having a cigarette by myself, and a guy on a motorcycle rides up to me and says in a broken accent, “good evening, how are you.” I say that I’m good. He comes back with, “I have cancer.” I’m like what? I’m thinking that he is going to ask for money or something. We go back and forth with him telling me that he has cancer, and me telling him that, that’s too bad. He gets of his bike and sits down next to me and I start to get a little nervous like he was going to take my backpack or something. Then he tells me again that he has cancer and reaches into his pocket and pulls out some weed. Turns out that he was saying Gonza… I guess. When I convince him that I don’t smoke it and don’t want it he says, “ You have boom-boom?” I knew exactly what he meant then. He points to the street and says, “you pick any girl for boom-boom.” I turned him down, but it was so funny. We used to play around about “boom-boom” when I was a kid, probably from hearing stories about Vietnam, now I’m living it. So cool!

This morning, after a cold shower we loaded up in a truck for the river. It’s not far away, and within just a few minutes we were on our way down the river. Our boat is about 60 feet long and fairly narrow. The Mekong is lined with very small villages, these villages, unlike the one we stayed in last night are something straight out of history, maybe like hundreds of years ago. The villagers have drying fish hanging out, people squatting at the rivers edge, and although I don’t know for sure, my guess is that they don’t have electricity or any of the basics that I take for granted. Not that it’s bad, in fact the villagers that I’ve seen seem content. Few of them even seem to notice our boat, or even care. There is a difference between the personalities of the Thais and the Laotians, the Thais are much more outgoing and fun loving. Maybe it’s because they have a more capitalistic society that requires talking to people, maybe it’s something else too, who knows? It is noticeable how reserved the Laotians are.

The sun is out and the weather is just about perfect, we’re lined by mountains and jungle and the day couldn’t be any better.