Lao-wy Wowy

Our first sunset in Laos.

Heaven is in the Luang Prabang night market.

Somebody's heaven, I suppose.

Vang Vien

Happy Hawaiian Pizza

Buddha Park

The Mouth of Kung Lor Cave

Kung Lor Cave from the inside.

The view from the only road in Kung Lor Village.

Sunrise in the 4,000 Islands.

Laos got off to a slow start. The border official almost sent me back across the Mekong because I didn't have a full blank page in my passport for my Laos visa. Eventually, I convinced her manager to put it on the inside back cover, promising I would go to the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane for more pages. Even then, as we settled in for a night in a dingy border hotel, we wished we were still in Thailand. The Thai side of the border had street markets selling fresh fruit and spring rolls and charming quirky little restaurants and guest houses.

At our Laos guest house, I had to wake the proprietor dozing on a lobby couch in front of a competitive billiards broadcast. He lit up a cigarette before greeting us, gave us two choices of dingy rooms with electric blue walls, and promised us a great sunset on the roof with Beer Lao when we discussed looking elsewhere. We accepted, worn out from our first day navigating the world after ten days of only navigating our minds and emotions, a formidable task of its own. The sun disappeared into the haze long before it met the horizon. We sat on the rooftop as we disappeared Beer Lao like we had just spent ten days in silence. Meanwhile, ash rained on us periodically in long strands and bunches like Spanish moss from a brush fire upwind and down river. We reflected on our lives and discussed our hopes and dreams with the tranquility and space remaining from the retreat. We watched the Mekong meander, knowing it will shape our lives for the next month until we return to the mighty Mississippi.

Nam Tha

We wake, anxious to move on from Huay Xai and shake the hangover it left us. One dollar plate of fried rice with egg on top assists us. Windy roads past dusty wooden houses on stilts doesn't. But eventually, we are deposited at a bus station near Nam Tha that feels like it is in the middle of nowhere. We crowd into a tuk tuk with chickens and old women with scarves and defunct Lao coins on their heads for the bumpy twenty minute ride into town.

We find our way past eco-trekking companies to our guidebook recommended guest house. Private bathroom, king-sized bed, small verandah with sitting area, and hot water for $7.50. We soon find an old tribal woman trying to sell us jewelry that reminds me of Tibet. When we don't bite on the jewelry, she tries to sell us opium. No bites there either.

We settle on a two-day, one-night trek in the Nam Tha National Protected Area. It starts with a creek crossing in a leaky boat and proceeds through a bamboo forest. Twenty-meter branches of bamboo hang over the water like baited fishing poles awaiting a nibble. The trail is steep, steps cut into the mud in wetter days like a well-broken snowy mountain trail. Our tiny guide with flip flops smaller than his feet pulls his pant legs up past his calves to reveal nothing but vein and muscle. The bamboo sways and rustles in the breeze. I think about my father-in-law and a generation of 19-year-olds who spent their days in combat in jungle much like this one. This forest and trail are challenging enough without the added omnipotent threat of war. And in such unfamiliar territory, where every bamboo stand could cover a killer—human or otherwise. Fighting in foreign forests like these. I would write home too, tell them not to wait for me. Tell them I might not make it back.

The dusty bamboo forest turns to old growth trees—huge silk cottons and banyan(?) trees entangled in roots. These latter are spirit trees, our guide explains, sacred to the animistic hill people of Northern Laos.

We sit on a small log for lunch. Banana leaves are unwrapped to reveal a feast of sticky rice, pork, green beans and pumpkin. Our guide tosses a small ball of sticky rice in each direction off the trail for the spirits before we dig in. There are two of us and two guides, only one of whom speaks English. As I watch them ball the sticky rice in their palms, I am struck by how universally the world eats. The grainy staple is balled in the palm the same way, be it fufu, banku, nsima, injera, or rice.

As we settle into our raised bamboo hut camp for the night, we are joined by a third guide who speaks no English and carries even more food. We drink lao-lao (homemade rice whiskey) out of shot glasses our guides chop freshly from bamboo. We nap and wake to water buffalo being chopped for dinner. I retreat a few hundred meters down the hill to dunk my head in the coolness of the creek trickling through a bamboo pipe four feet high for showering. This is my first time being guided on an overnight hike. At times, it feels luxurious. At others, completely unnecessary.

We walk slowly the following day, Annette hobbled by a newly sore knee. The smell of our guides reminds me of Bradley, one of the Wongatha people we worked with almost a decade ago in rural Western Australia. It smells like a week of sweat, dirt, and the blood of wild game killed in the last 48 hours. We linger at the creek, swimming and sunbathing leisurely only to find the road closed for construction. We wait in a small village by the dusty roadside, befriending two Canadians and an older couple from New Hampshire for more than two hours. I listen with my left ear and write about the retreat with my right hand. If we had left the river five minutes earlier, we would have made it through while the road was still open. But, we have no place to be.

Luang Prabang

The road to Luang Prabang is even windier and longer than the one to Nam Tha. We are dropped at a busy bus station. It's a bustling town of motorbikes, household goods markets and auto repair shops. More than anything, I notice the smoke and the haze. It is a few minutes past four, yet an eerie twilight envelopes the city. We ride a tuk tuk across one river to the junction with another. Our guidebook-chosen guest house proves a disappointment. So, we begin another afternoon guesthouse crawl in search of some nicer digs. Annette's knee groans as two more from the guidebook turn out to be full. After declining several offers from passing motorbike and tuk tuk drivers to show us “good guesthouse,” we finally and reluctantly accept one. He points past a parked tuk tuk and down an alley alongside a construction site of some sort. We settle in quickly to a classy room with dark stained wood walls, huge crown molding, recessed lighting, and a private balcony for $15. Luang Prabang is a sleepy, charming town. Hardly the city I expected. We fall in love with it as we sip Beer Lao along the Mekong. We wander past faded temples through the candlelit night market to find lemongrass stuffed fish and plates of vegetables and barbecued meats for less than five dollars.

Vang Vien

We are enchanted by Luang Prabang and leave only for the promise of happy pizza, river tubing and caving several hours south in Vang Vien. Our pace has been quickening these last few weeks as our March 30^th flight from Ho Chi Minh City approaches. I wake up to find our van stopping amidst limestone cliffs and a series of seven roadside stalls. I get out to find baskets of crabs, shaved rats grilled between chop sticks, and furry tails that look like they come from a ferret. The Chinese tourists in our van lad the photographic feast, the only feast in which we indulge. But soon, we are in Vang Vien.

The guesthouse crawl is aborted by a boisterous proprietor with a huge smile. The rooms are affordable, nice, and have incredible views over the limestone cliffs to the west. Having dropped our bags, we explore the town. We wander down to a restaurant overlooking the river for a few Beer Laos and a snack. Bicycles and motos rustle over a rickety bamboo bridge across the river nearby. A young couple in kayaks floats into the beach, all smiles. I hear the rumble of a motorcycle engine followed by a crash and a splash. I look up to find two white people and their small motorcycle in two feet of water. They fell off the bridge, maybe six or eight feet. They seem unhurt. The man has dreadlocks and is pale as a ghost. He is maybe twenty-two. The woman is skinny and stunned. Together, they look like zombies. Several people quickly jump to assist them, helping them and their bike out of the water.

As we finish our beers and walk through town, we realize these two are not the only zombies. Menus have special pages with happy pizza and shakes, which the guidebook says is enhanced with marijuana. But the menus all have mushrooms, opium, Valium, and countless other drugs on them, usually handwritten. Often the page says, “no photographs please” at the bottom. All this is illegal, of course. And it all adds up to a charming small Laos town amidst a dramatic and beautiful landscape with white zombies roaming the streets. Well after dark, we find barefoot, topless tourists, tattoos scribbled on their arms in permanent marker, wandering the streets, inner tubes and beers in hands.

We try the happy pizza. The bill comes with four fat joints wrapped in notebook paper tucked underneath, which we soon discover we absolutely do not need. Soon, the streets all look the same. Every bar, restaurant and guesthouse has televisions broadcasting one of three shows—Family Guy, Friends, or European football. Each show draws a slightly different crowd. We opt for Family Guy to find opium on page one of the menu. We look around to realize everybody is horizontal on cushions. One scraggly guy walks past our table. He is beyond stoned. Looks like he has been here for weeks, maybe months. I vote against ordering even a beer in search of another place. There we make it through a Family Guy episode and a beer before needing another change of scenery. It reminds me a bit of Amsterdam.

My body sweats as if it is a foreign entity. We stop at a shop that has a four-faced silver Buddha. Sadness, anger, happiness and bliss. The eyes express each emotion, wrinkling at the edges. Perhaps happy pizza helps one see the bliss in Buddha. Tomorrow morning I will be sure we saw this Buddha in Luang Prabang, not in one long slow-motion night in Vang Vien. We walk some more until we find a few high and drunk Australians. “Are you lost too?” one asks. “Don't go that way. We went that way. It is definitely the wrong way.”

“OK,” I respond. We walk the way he told us not to go. Indeed, it does lead us back to our hotel.

We wake the next morning to rent inner tubes from the only game in town. It feels like a family cartel, operating out of a garage. For $7 a person, they rent you an inner tube and give you a tuk tuk ride five kilometers up the river. “It takes three hours to get back....without stops,” we are told. The stops soon make sense. The river feels like Bourbon Street with rope swings, water slides and harder drugs. And replace the strippers with bikini-clad college girls, whom as far as I can tell, keep their clothes on. It all feels extra strange in a Buddhist country where women swim fully clothed. We are given free shots before we set a toe in the water. Several people lounge on a deck in their tubes with drinks. They seem to have no intention of even entering the water. We decline further drinks to let the river lazily push us down the river.

Soon we find an empty water bottle in our lap. It is tied to a rope, which was thrown from a nearby bar. He yells something about drinks and dancing. It is definitely before noon. And all of the bars feel empty. Perhaps it is because it is early. Perhaps it is because it is low water. Perhaps it is because this is not high-tourist season. We float on, finally stopping at several covered bamboo huts with Laos children splashing, families picnicking, college-age Laos kids swimming, eating and drinking. We stop for lunch and a few beers before floating on. The current is slow. But we meander our way back to where we started by mid-afternoon and on southward to Vientiane.

Vientiane

In Vientiane, we indulge in modern urban pleasures—sushi and a U.S. Embassy. I arrive well before my appointment time, booked online from the comforts of a Luang Prabang hotel room using the embassy's online scheduling system. A security officer stops me as soon as I turn down the street, even before I lay eyes on the stars and stripes. I show my passport twice, pass through a metal detector, hand scanner, three locked doors through which I am buzzed until I am face to face with a man behind a glass window. Moments like these make me realize just how much we live in a security state in the United States. In all our travels and border crossings, we have seen machine-gunned fatigued military personnel, razor-wired borders, but nothing like this.

While I wait for them to magically double the size of my passport, Annette reads Family Circle and I browse the bulletin board. Article upon article reports on the horrors of Vang Vien. Mostly non-American media. One Australian disappears in the river, his body appearing four days later. Another 19-year-old and his girlfriend are found dead in a hotel room with bottles of prescription medication at their bedside. Another died falling from the slide into the river. I am unclear exactly how. The message from my government—be scared, be very very scared. The message I receive—don't be stupid; Be glad I didn't know Laos existed when I was seventeen. Thirty minutes, four news articles about dead Australians and 82 dollars later, I have 24 more pages in my passport, each with its own quote by some famous or unheard of American or another. That afternoon, we spend three hours wandering amidst huge concrete statues in the Buddha park. We buy two Beer Lao and sip them slowly in the cafe, marvelling at the place.

Kung Lor Caves

Less charmed by Vientiane than Luang Prabang, we continue our journey south, seven hours on a windy bus ride to the village of Kung Lor. There, we are deposited in a tiny village of tobacco farms below rocky cliffs on all sides. The valley is maybe a mile wide. We walk one kilometer to the end of the road to discover a beautiful emerald pool below a small pool. We cross a small bamboo bridge with a two-by-four across it and walk up river a few hundred meters. There lurks the darkness and mysticism of Kung Lor Cave. It is five miles long. Everything is quiet now. In the morning, we will ride a boat through it and back. Three hours seeing only what our insufficient headlamps will allow us. Mostly listening, jaw open, as we pass through an entirely different world than any I have known. Just Annette and I and an Italian man we met, and two guides with headlamps in a small flat-bottomed wooden long-tail boat. It is magical. And massive. One hundred meters high in parts. No more than five meters in others. Stalagtites and stalagmites drip and puddle like candle wax in parts. And through it all, flows the beautifully clear waters of the Ban Hui River.

Si Phon Don

From the caves, we hitch a ride in a mini-van as far as we can get before transferring for a bus. We make it for a late night and early morning in the small Mekong town of Savannahket before continuing onward. The following evening, we are floating across the Mekong in darkness to the Four Thousand Islands. The darkness yields only for several bright stars and a few lights on Don Det, the island of our destination. The mysticism quickly disappears as we crawl past Vang Vien-ish dreadlocked college kids to find the first seven guesthouses are full. Eventually, we find one with a view over the water that we won't truly discover until morning. In the morning, we also discover the entire island is run by 11-year-old girls. Every guesthouse, every restaurant. You want something, ask the pre-teen. Even happy pizza.

We ride bikes to more rural parts of the island, take a boat to see the irawaddy dolphins, the only freshwater dolphins in the world. They look more like manatees than dolphins. No bottle nose. More elephant-face without the trunk. We ride bikes to a massive waterfall, where the mighty Mekong squeezes between rock cliffs. Water pours forth on three sides. We swim in a small pool below the falls, careful of the current. The high water line is twenty feet over our heads. I can only imagine.

Then, we head for Cambodia and the end of our trip.

I leave thoroughly puzzled by Laos. On the one hand, it is a charming country. Small and quiet. Shaped like Italy with her boots off. Feels like it too. Smiling people offering greetings of saibaidee as we pass, always open for laughter and conversation. On the other hand, their beer and bootleg are named after their country. And for good reason, given the number of locals I have seen licking lao-lao shot after shot. There is clearly an underside to it. Tourism for sex and drugs. Was this created half a century ago by the GI presence in Vietnam? Or did it exist long before that?