CHIANG OF FOOLS
I recovered from my illness and felt like a born again Christian, minus the Christian part. It's amazing how good you feel after being ill for a few days - I actually jumped off the roof of the guesthouse in the belief I could fly. Fortunately I managed it.
I began slowly to explore Chiang Mai. It's cooler, in temperature, than the steamy South. It is crammed with peaceful wats (Buddhist temples) each with their particular sense of calm serenity as soon as you enter their courtyards. The breed of farang (foreigners, money burners, tourists, slags) is more shaven headed and vegan, and they do all manner of cookery courses and hikes and other horizon broadening activity. The Thai people who live there seem a little more trendy. The book shops are immense in scope, if not size.
Hannah from Bangkok stopped by. We spent a couple of days together sniffing spices in a market and getting drunk with ladyboys.
RAY'S PLACE AND THE LADYBOY ARMY
Dan, Hannah and I went to a covered marketplace where the stalls were in fact tiny bars looking into the centre space, which sported a Muay Thai boxing ring. Most of the bars were overflowing with prostitutes and white haired fat men (latter not for sale), but one place was clear. We played pool there and talked to Ray, the English tattoed proprietor, who resembled a former boxing manager. He only has to sell ten beers a day to keep his place running. We sat out front and watched Thai boxing matches. We bet each other the equivalent of 30p on each fight. The fights seemed tired, and a little staged. After the fights the boxers do a lap of the marketplace with a tipbox. That always gets 'em up off the mat.
When we'd had enough of the boxing, we went next door to a ladyboy bar and drank shots of tequila with the ladyboys, who responded by playing deafening cheesy music and dancing with us and vigour. The boss, a stout (wo)man with a stout face, pulled out a variety of coloured wigs and silly hats, and the photos rained down in their thousands.
Ray foisted some sachets of viagara jelly on us. Hannah and I tried a sachet each. It tasted like bitter colgate. Both of our last memories were throwing the empty sachet into the bin, before we woke up fully clothed 7 hours later. Must have been good stuff.
AND HE'S OFF... OR I AM
Dan left Chiang Mai on a rainy Saturday evening with Louisa from Cambridge to head to Borneo via Bangkok. He was heading for the Mecca of diving, Pulau Sipadan, where whalesharks abound, and 5 metre Manta Rays embrace you with their majesty. I had missed my bus that morning which gave us the chance to go through every detail of our journey together, over a chicken tikka lunch on the veranda. We said goodbye, and I waved as his open backed taxi trundled off down the rocky back street to be enveloped in darkness. Strange to be without someone to whom I can babble my endless stream of repetitive anxieties. Somehow anyone else saying 'Shut your fat yap' just isn't the same.
It was fantastic travelling with someone with a perfect understanding and complete absence of issues. It was sad to part and I felt a little lost and alone that night. What I miss the most is being able to discuss and process the variety of bizarre events that saturate each day. Now I feel like I am losing experiences like the brown water that oozes down the Mekong. I feel a bit weaker without the endless strength of Dan, but will adapt I'm sure. Dan, wherever you are, eat a Manta Ray for me. With rice and salad.
I rose early the next morning and was politely shoehorned aboard a tiny hot minibus with 8 other travellers to drive to Chiang Kong for the night; and thence to Laos down the Mighty Mekong River.
MEKONG
The bus wound up and down the tree covered hills and sloping valleys of Northern Thailand and deposited us at a guesthouse in Chiang Kong, where I glimpsed for the first time the Mekong River, and, on the other bank in the guise of lush greenery and ramshackle houses perched on the hillside, the country of Laos.
The river is as wide as the Thames, and is the orange brown colour of earth in this part of the world. The river is swollen with the rains and rushes in creases and ripples through Indochina, carrying Himalayan rocks to the South China Sea. The brown is hypnotic, inscrutable. It dominates the landscape with its rich opacity.
OVER THE BORDER
I bonded with Cameron, an Ozzie drummer on an indefinite trip towards Europe, over a few games of pool on a snooker table and we ended up in a Cowboy Bar which advertised 'Food, drink, disco'. What else is there? Inside it was empty except for four Thais at a small table. A live band was nonetheless earnestly playing the cheesy love pop that Thais adore.
The next morning we ferried across the river to Laos immigration. I changed my 2500 Thai bart into over 600,000 Lao Kip, which they could only give me in 5000 notes (worth just under 20p each). The money came in several bricks bound by elastic bands. I was forced to turn immediately and wop the girl next to me on the head with a brick of kip. Then I stuffed it all into my bag. Shortly afterwards I discovered Lao people prefer to take Bart or Dollars.
We boarded the 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang. It was packed already. Not bad, benches just big enough for two people on each side with an aisle down the middle and a distinctly okay toilet at the back. They also sold Beer Lao, the Dom Perignon of South East Asian beers (in quality not price). Some people had been sitting on the boat for 3 hours already. We waited around for an hour for no particular reason. Perhaps we were waiting for the engine to be delivered. A man in a smart shirt inched down the boat in slow motion taking tickets. Time creaked. We set off.
SLOW BOAT
The cliffs hang over the river as it passes into Laos country. Occasional huts perch on inconceivable inclines. Wild cows graze on the banks. Even at one point, a solitary elephant, tossing its trunk, oblivious to our wonder.
You chat to a few people when you're shoulder to shoulder on a boat for two days. I had fantastic conversations with two Quebecoise women, the kind of chat you can only have in French. I asked them to help me translate a few parts of Ne me quitte pas, by Jacques Brel, that I didn't understand and we moved onto talk of Love and Fate, Buddha and Eternity. Was Romance dead? Well, Jacques Brel is. Sylvie was an activist with a message for the pope. She also leads seminars on personal improvement. Helene was a graduate of Sylvie's course to her own salvation, and a university professor. Sylvie had a theory that the world was moving from the masculine principle, embodied by the Church's perversion of Christ's teachings, to the feminine principle, encapsulated by Buddha and to be instigated by China's impending domination of the world. She drew me diagrams and told me I was a genius. I liked her.
We stopped for the night in Pakbeng and divided off into various guesthouses. The proprietor of my guesthouse offered me weed and opium before saying hello. During the night a large rat scrabbled around under my bed making unspeakable noises. The lights didn't work but I caught a glimpse of him in the bathroom before shrieking and locking the door in terror. He was the size of a cat and seemed to be dragging something. Possibly my rucksack. The next morning he'd vanished. I discovered a chewed open packet of malaria medication with a few of the tablets gone and one half eaten. I like to think I've contributed something to the global problem of enormous rats with tropical diseases.
The next morning the same number of people were stuffed onto a boat half the size with tiny hard wooden benches and no cushions, for a six hour journey. The boat stopped roughly every half an hour to pick up more Lao people who came free with enormous sacks of gravel and massive dead fish. By the end of the journey my arse was singing with pain. I wished for the first time that I had a prosthetic bottom. I had bought Heart of Darkness to read for that authentic Apocalypse Now Mekong sensation, but the noise of my backside screaming obliterated my concentration. It's still grumbling even now, though that might be the Lao sausage.
LUANG PRABANG THANK YOU MA'AM
We were greeted on the bank by a host of boys wearing only briefs. My new Ozzie pardner Cameron and I took a room together. I have taken to calling him Steve and speaking in a comical Australian accent. The whole of Laos shuts down at 11:30pm. Half an hour better than London. Even the few places that stay open have to turn off their music and keep everyone quiet. I went exploring with Dutch Iris from the boat and we ended up back outside our place. The whole town was dark and quiet, except this outdoor restaurant on a veranda over the Mekong. They were pumping out a looped mix of 5 brash hip hop tunes incredibly loudly. It was the 18th birthday party of the proprietor's niece. Iris and I were invited to join all the Lao teenagers. Their hospitality bordered on torture when it came to drinking shots of whiskey and eating sickly birthday cake. I had a chat with a French guy who laid the blame squarely on my shoulders for the English bombing of the French countryside during World War II. It was good to see 18th birthday parties are the same all over the world.
I think I'll stay in Luang Prabang another day. It is charming, and at times like a village in the Loire valley. The architecture is somewhere between French and Buddhist. Last night I ate a 'Pizza Lao' which had Lao sausage and Mekong seaweed pressed into large square cards embrailled with sesame seeds. When paying for dinner, I remove an enormous wad of kip and peel off fifteen to twenty 5,000 kip notes. I feel like a big man.
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