Heading down the Mekong...
...On the left is Laos, on the right is Thailand. Tell tale signs
show up on each side, Thailand more built and developed, Laos: a green and rural riverside. I feel overwhelmed surrounded by all this beauty: rolling green hills that spill down
cliffs to sandy banks and in to the waiting mouth of the river, dotted wooden
bamboo huts shrouded in grey cloud.I am impotent to do it
justice with my words, but rather lost in awe. As I write a shaft of I light
breaks through the sky behind me and on to my page, either ominously or
hopefully.
Many
travellers make their way to Luang Prabang via the legendary Mekong. Quite a
few trip across it, stumble in to a homestay and boat around the delta down in
Vietnam. How many people outside of that in the world can say the same? How
many photos have you noticed? What do you know of the Mekong apart from it's
relevance as a strategic area in the Indochina wars? So questions like these
should make any traveller on this trip realise how unlikely it is they should be
here.
Let me put it another way. Bamboo farms crop up regularly on hill edges, interspersed with terrainous farmland and distant rain huts perched perilously underneath pylons that hang on to the edge of the crumbling muddy hill wall. Jungle ferns, banks of beaches and occasional fishing boats hint to signs of human life in wilderness. Rocky outcrops hint at a vague promise of limestone karsks further in to the country.
Arriving
in Pak Beng for the evening stop I stepped on to a makeshift rubber bottle
jetty to the cries of a young goat. To my joy, a small child had commandeered
this small vessel like a horse. He tottered around, legs trailing the ground,
directing his rather unhappy bleating steed around the hillside before
disappearing out of view over a "curve" in the grass.
-
"Do you want some opium?" *Jen called to me from across the bar. "We're going to get some an de need five people to go in."
"Hmm",
I thought, temporarily losing my senses under the beer Lao and free banana
whiskey. I chewed on the prospect.
"I've
never done it, what's supposed to happen?"
Failing
an explanation, our wiry Laotian restaurateur, Mon, got out his pipe fashioned
from an m-150 bottle and some very brown and dead looking bamboo fixed to its' neck and showed us what to do.
"Wait
here, I have to get, five minutes". With that, money in hand he hopped on
his scooter and drove away returning exactly five minutes later.
"Shall
we try it now?" announced Jen.
Back
out came the exotic bong. The grassy resin was rubbed in to what I can only
describe as an incense stick, pushing it in a drilled hole mid-bottle. A dark
cloud drawn in by 5 mouths, tasted like wood, bonfire and dirt. As for the
effect I think my previous four accomplices had had most before my turn. The concoction
of Thai tequila and Lao Lao (home made whiskey) already had me feeling pretty
merry, so I resolved to myself that this new sensation of comfort was a mixed
bag (like weed but filthy). I left the others to the brown patch of hedonism
and went to bed to cough my way through an ironically restful sleep, waking
with a desire to cleanse my lungs.
But I wonder now, how did it become so accepted here? Opium has been smoked here for centuries, but something very much of impact is the huge amount of UEO. During the Vietnam war, the CIA left it's mark on Laos, making Laos the most bombed country in the world. The evidence isn't hard to find, and one documentary "the CIA's Secret War in Laos" details exactly how, as I was to find out when arriving in Nong Kiaw. 30% of bombs dropped on Laos during this time never exploded and it continues to be a harassment for thousands upon thousands of people. Incidentally there is no initiative to clean up the mess they created. So, many Hmong people have resorted to opium trade.
You
can see it in Phongsali where suited Chinese business men rush about on their
mobile phones among Hmong tribes women selling the brown elixir. In Luang
Nam Tha a band of three ladies patrols the night markets and any restaurant
selling bracelets. I asked to take a photo of one of the gang.
"Ok,
ok" came a reply with a bunch of outstretched adornments. She stood still
for me as I captured her weathered face, her forehead holding on to the strings
of her loaded bag. I gave her 10,000 kip for her time, feeling this was the
most respectable way. She left me to her comrades, returning briefly with a
smile and a bracelet for me. A black fabric strap prize with white painted
coffee beans and rows of blue beads.
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| Hmong tribes woman selling bracelets in Luang Nam Tha |
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