I could have stayed longer in Luang Prabang, the charming city with its flower lined streets, slow motion movement and embroidered pillowcases that I intended but failed to buy.
Like so many places in Laos, it would have been easy to stay there for days, loiter through the streets and not remember how the days were spent there or regret a one. Your wallet is fat with 5000 kip notes and the bulk depletes slowly no matter how you try. Your pace slows, thoughts drift in time with the soft pace of the city. And it was when I was taking an aimless walk down the main street in Luang Prabang, the heat of mid-day gearing up to take the city by siege for the rest of the afternoon, I saw my old friend Max.
He was sitting on the porch of a bakery digging into a small square of cake and trying to look comfortable in a chair that was not big enough for his tall, lanky frame. It was unmistakably him. It becomes easy to spot tall, blonde-haired people with a pink complexion in Asia. I had met Max on the border of Cambodia, spent a week with him and a few others in the Mekong Delta and last saw him in Saigon. I would have ducked and covered from many of the travelers from my past, but Max was someone who I was hoping to run into again. A sarcastic American living in San Francisco who did animal imitations to explain to food vendors what he wanted to eat. And Americans speak American English. No need to annunciate or speak slow English. You can mumble and speed talk to your heart's desire.
Unlike me, Max had not been rushing through Laos. He had been one who had gotten happily stuck in every city. He was also ready to wind down the last two weeks of his trip in Thailand. All air conditioned busses and hot showers from here on out, he said with a smile. He had that complacent, settled feeling about him too. He described things as if it had all happened to him already, as if all the memories were bundles and ready to go home to be neatly unpacked into stories when he got there.
I explained to him my pressing ticket to Nepal on April 2, my need to rush through Laos and my plans to see more of the North. He was a little intrigued, especially since it would get him out of a 2-day boat trip out of Laos that he was not looking forward to. At first the laziness of the end of a trip was still ruling his judgment.
By dinner, he had changed his mind, as long as we could leave the following morning. By the following morning, we were jumping on a bus to Nong Khiaw, a three hour journey north through the mountains. Another hour ride on a longtail boat with our knees into our chests and our bags piled onto the back and the motor just loud enough to keep everyone from chatting -- landed us at Mong Ngoi.
We pulled up to the muddy shore, climbed a steep dirt incline to the main road of town and turned right at This Sideheaven Bungalows sign. We booked two bungalows, typical ones built up on short bamboo stilts with walls made of woven bamboo and roofs made of dry rambuttan leaves. Inside was a big bed, mosquito net and a single lightbult, and outside was a porch with a hammock, small table and view of the river and the sun sinking into a crease between two mountains.
Mong Ngoi is a village on the Nam Ou river. There are no vehicles and one main road through the center where shops sell snacks, flashlights and towels. There are also two small pharamacies that fit all of their medicines and bandages in a small glass case, and a road that leads to a school with a dirt soccer field and bamboo goal posts. In the morning, the main road is where women gather to chat and eat noodle soups around charcoal fires.
The river is the real hotbed of activity. Naked, brown children splash around in the low parts, throwing mud and running along the banks, swimming and playing from noon until dusk. Women climb down the steep dirt bank with baskets of laundry or vegetables on one hip where they wash and scrub or bathe themselves. The younger ones bathe discreetly, the women wrap sarongs under their armpits and the men walk to distant coves or hide behind a boat to expose as little as possible. The older ones just sit, squat and lather up in full view.
At six o'clock, the generators kicked in. We played cards on the porch of the restaurant under strips of flourescent bulbs. When it was nearly time for the power to kick off, we went into our huts and when I was nestled into my sleeping sheet under the mosquito net, the single bulb in my hut flickered and went off.
Hours later, I was groping for my flashlight, struggling to get out of the mosquito net and stumbling over bamboo stumps to get to the bathroom. The moon was full and high in the sky and the huts, the dirt path, and the cluster of bamboo stumps on the side of my hut were illuminated in the moonlight -- a dark light, no brighter than the footlights of a movie theater or the cast from a neon sign, but enough so that I could see everything clearly without my flashlight. From the porch of my hut, the river still looked dark, but the riverbank and the recesses of the mountains glowed white, like looking at a negative image of the day.
I crawled back under the net and into my sheet, a little more awake then I would have liked after the walk and the squat. But the chorus of insects, geckos, birds crackled and buzzed and lulled me back to sleep.
