TREK: PART II

On that second morning of the trek, as is often the case when waking abruptly in a new place for the first time, it took me a moment to remember where I was and how I had gotten there. But unlike waking in a hotel room or a stranger's bed, where the surroundings may be different but still familiar enough, waking in a village hut, startled from sleep by a chorus-line of rooster caws, with a clay cistern boiling at my toes, the low lying mountain fog threatening to seep through the cracks in the thatched bamboo wall, and 10 or so agog children staring at me in stunned silence, the question of where and how, was supplanted by the question of whether or not I just was, whether these things were merely hypnagogic delusions or in fact based in the reality that I felt and smelled all around me.

As I sat upright from my sleeping bag and lifted my hands to rub the sleep from my eyes, the children, as though I might attack them at any moment, scampered from their position in the doorway and bolted for the outlaying forest. The thought that I might make one of them my breakfast, surely must have crossed their minds. The village chief, in the typical Asian squat (go to Chinatown and observe if you don't know what I mean) smoking a large hand rolled cigarette, and his wife, herself squatted over the cistern in which boiled our day's supply of water, both turned to me and smiled as the children fled. Though, they too, while laughing with me, still retained an element of distrust in their gaze, or if not distrust than uncertainty. To the adults we were as much an oddity as we were to the children. Our guides would explain that the adults from this village knew about white people, several had in fact seen them on trips to the Mekong villages, but only as they passed on boats going to or from Luang Prabang. Sometime in the 1950's a few French soldiers had come through the village to recruit them to fight against invading Vietnamese forces, but even the oldest villager was just an infant then and the story of the Frenchmen exists now in myth as much as in truth. We would learn later, after we had left, that next February this particular tribe, 21 families in all, who had occupied this land for the last 200 years, was abandoning the village to assimilate with the tribes closer to the Mekong. Kong explained that over the last few years the tribe had experienced an epidemic of mysterious deaths and that their land was now being haunted by the ghosts of those who had past. The village chief had informed Gao that our unlikely appearance was just another ominous portent demanding their immediate evacuation. We did not stay long that second morning as we had another long day of hiking before us, but as we packed our things and left we could all sense a general unease, a foreboding that resonated amongst the agape onlookers, something we could not discern until contrasted with our arrival at the next village where we were greeted with smiles, and laughter, and games, and a feast worthy of the day. It was Thanksgiving.

After only a few hours of relatively tranquil, if difficult, hiking, we stopped at a farmer's hut in the middle of a mountainside rice field to catch our breath, cool down in the shade of the hut, and have lunch. We ate some sticky rice and a few slices of melon and within a half hour were up again and trekking. All in all, the 2nd day of hiking went by smoothly and uneventfully; our guides opted to hire someone from the village to guide us to our next destination. The double-backing and general uncertainty that marked the first day's hike was no longer an issue. Around 3pm we descended a steep trail and came upon a pellucid mountain stream that cut a bending path through the otherwise hilly terrain. We walked the shallow banks of the stream for only 20 minutes before seeing a boy of maybe 12 clutching a jerry-rigged harpoon and sporting those old Connery-era James Bond snorkeling goggles. As we approached, the boy quickly dove back into the water and stayed submerged until we were several yards past him. Around the next bend we came upon a few young girls washing some garments. In no position to dive into the water and hide, these girls just watched and giggled as we stumbled past. What a bizarre group we must have looked to them. Within minutes we were stepping over a bamboo fence that gated the village where we would spend the rest of our 2nd day.

It turned out that Gao's now deceased father, a chief in his own day, used to frequent this village, maybe 10 times each year to trade livestock or exchange news or whatever, and as a young boy Gao would often tag along. It had been several years since Gao had been back, and several more since his father's death, but Gao was a well known figure amongst the nearby villages – the boy who had been sent off to the city to be educated, and who might likely never return. So upon seeing our guide, his adolescent features still recognizable to those who had not seen him for many years, a few of the older men anxiously came forward to greet him, whereupon we were all regaled with handshakes and an array of alien gestures that could only be interpreted as warm and welcoming. Certainly, any doubts that may have accompanied our arrival were put squarely to rest with Gao there to vouch for our goodwill. Indeed, it took some rather belabored explaining before the villagers would understand the nature of our visit; that we would hike all this way with no ulterior motive apart from to simply observe, was a concept that did not immediately strike the locals as genuine, and once they did come around to believing in our innocuous interests, our venture to them was seen as merely crazy. It is unlikely that in our time there we were ever able to convince the villagers (or ourselves, for that matter) otherwise.

The original plan had not been to spend the night at that 2nd village, but only to stop there just long enough for a proper meal before moving onward. However, our cheery reception and the very obvious excitement surrounding Gao's arrival, convinced us that this would be as good a place to spend the night as any. Soon after we had placed our bags down and been fed a meal of sticky-rice and boiled chicken (do you see a pattern developing here?), Kong, acting as interpreter, informed us that we were the first foreigners ever to be in this village and that the chief wished us to interact with the people as much as possible, particularly the children, despite the initial reluctance that we were likely to come across. Unsure of what social boundaries might restrict our interaction with the villagers, it was a great relief that the chief was so encouraging of our presence there. And his enthusiasm was palpable – literally – there was hardly a moment that he wasn't clutching one of our shoulders, or reaching out for another handshake, or running his hand through Gao's hair. It was like being in the company of an affectionate grandparent.

Despite the chief's cordiality, and the like of nearly all the villagers over the age of, say, 15, warming up to the children would prove a more gradual process. As in the first village, the youngsters crowded around our hut with the same cautious yet rapt curiosity that one might affect while watching a snake charmer. When I first came out of the hut holding a kataw (a small ball woven from rattan, and as ubiquitous in Laos as a basketball in the States), most of the children turned and ran, only peering back when they felt that they were at a safe distance, the girls appropriating their mother's for a shield, and the boys huddled anxiously under one of the raised huts. One kid was so startled that he turned and ran face first into a fence, which, though bringing the poor thing to tears, sent a wave of laughter through the crowd of adults and had the effect of tempering the youngsters' apprehension. One of the larger boys, taking a cue from the elders, stood courageously in the open yard, hardly flinching at my appearance. I showed him the ball and he tentatively stepped forward. I gave him an underhand toss, and though awkwardly backing up on his heels, clearly not accustomed to using his hands, he managed to clumsily coral the ricochet off of his forearm. To the delighted applause of the onlookers, he returned my throw, and the two of us were soon engaged in an old fashioned game of catch. Slowly, the boys huddled underneath the hut started inching forward. One by one they came close enough to intercept my throws and after several minutes there were 5 or 6 of us throwing the ball around in a circle. Andy and Fergus then emerged from the hut. The children instinctually stepped back and reassumed their defensive posture, but their fears vanished almost instantaneously. The children were much relieved to have Andy and Fergus join our game, two Brits as I mentioned, who quickly did away with all the catching and throwing, and instead started kicking the ball around like a hacky-sack. Suddenly, the same boys who'd been playing catch as gracefully as my sister (that is, not gracefully at all), were now handling the ball so effortlessly it was as though it was attached to their feet by an invisible string. At this unfortunate development (soccer winning out again, ugh) I resigned myself to spectator, not wanting to disrupt their play with my pathetic pedial dexterity.

It should be noted that all the while we played, off and on for a few hours, not once did a girl come and join in. Instead, the young girls remained guarded, as they would for the remainder of our stay, and though they did at some point venture out from behind their mothers, they would only point and giggle from a distance, and would very comically take off sprinting any time one of us would walk near them (they were always in small groups), or even look in their direction. But the girls' curiosity was indeed robust, perhaps more so than that of the young boys whose interest in us as people was eventually outdone by their interest in our things – our digital cameras, pocketknives, watches, and other modern effects. The girls though, would not leave us be. Anytime we went down to the water to bath or brush our teeth, we could see their smiling faces gawking at us from behind trees or through the bushes. When we ate, a wallpaper of gleaming eyes and teeth filled the interstices of the thatched hut. Like a team of spies they were. On that first evening, several hours after our arrival, we all noticed one particular group of girls, who from the start had been perhaps our most assiduous admirers, the oldest of whom couldn't have been more than 12, were now wearing all kinds of makeup – bright red lipstick, perhaps blush, the corner of their eyes elongated by a faint whisk of color, and their once barren arms and necks now cluttered with beads. If their dressing up was for our sake, I couldn't say, but to be sure, their coquettish behavior had a kind of beguiling charm, like that of a girlfriend's younger sister stealing innocent glances from across a dinner table and then offering you another scoop of ice-cream before her older sibling has time to act. (If that makes sense.)

Reliving the whole adventure now as I write this, our interactions with the young children, girls and boys alike, was probably the most gratifying of all we experienced. Whereas the children were at all times completely captivated by our presence, the adults, while observing with permanent smiles, were more subdued in their curiosity. But for an eager few, the older villagers would stand apart from our games, whether performing card tricks (a futile enterprise, I would learn, as the very cards themselves were magic enough), kicking around the ball, or the absolutely hilarious episode in which Donnelly assembled and conducted an entire orchestra of children to play various body instruments, of which the making-a-high-pitched-noise-while-banging-your-throat and the flicking-your-distended-cheek-to-make-a-teardrop-sound sections were my personal favorites. In spite of their very adultish reserve, there was one thing for which even the most stoic villager could not restrain his excitement. When we got the okay from Kong to break out our digital cameras we went from being merely sideshow oddities to center-stage magicians. It is probably impossible for anyone reading this to comprehend how those villagers might have understood the concept of digital photography. As far as I could tell, these people didn't even have mirrors (in the 4 villages we were at, and the 20 or so huts we were in, I never saw a single mirror). How then, could they possibly fathom an instrument that by the single click of a button has the capacity to arrest some moment in time, preserve that moment on a viewable screen, then store that image for later viewing, while also having the capacity to capture, display, and store a seemingly infinite number of successive moments? And it is a trivial thing then to even consider their reaction to our cameras' video-and-sound recording feature (if you presented an ancient Roman with an '73 Ford Pinto and a brand new Mustang, would he even know the difference, or care?). Though even from being there I have no greater insight into their thoughts about the cameras than you, what I can provide is a description of their outward reactions. They were at the same time entertained, confused, excited, and even horrified. Some of the villagers, even the older ones, would shrink from the camera lens as it panned the crowd, while others would clamber to be the centerpiece of every picture, while still others would jump in front of the lens for a split-second only to then dart sideways like an elusive matador. But no matter their conduct during the actual picture taking, they were all equally eager to catch a glimpse of the image as it showed on the display screen. As if the image itself wasn't enough, early on we learned that zooming in on each face and allowing them to see themselves and their friends close-up, was quite nearly a revelation, most certainly a cause for elated pleasure. Even after an hour of non-stop picture taking and viewing, even among the adults, the very profound fascination with the cameras did not dissipate one ounce. The entire village was completely absorbed. And it was only by the call of the dinner bell that we were finally able to take our cameras back inside.

For Thanksgiving dinner we ate boiled chicken and sticky-rice, were treated to several servings of their homemade rice whiskey concoction, and had the special delicacy of boiled eggs and ground chilies (what did you expect?). Though the food wasn't exactly the usual Thanksgiving fare (and by this point the sticky rice and boiled chicken were on the brink of being a loathsome sight), the whole day, as well as the very idea of the meal, managed to honor the spirit of the holiday in its own understated way. Maybe it's something that I've projected onto the occasion for my own sake, but the general theme of the native taking in and feeding the foreign outsider and thereby forging some understanding between the parties, and also providing the foundation for the possibility of some immutable goodwill, did cross my mind as a pretty decent way to make sense of our time there. And still does. It's a high-minded sentiment, and probably out of proportion considering our very brief stay and the unlikely incident that we will ever return, but our visit to that village is not without meaning. The circumstances of our arrival, the chance encounter of two distinctly alien peoples, not marred by political or economic incentive, but borne of a mutual humanity and no other pretense, was an occasion that the 4 of us will always relish, knowing well that our being there was a time of enjoyment and revelation for those villagers as well. To me that spells Thanksgiving as well as anything.

Again on the 3rd day, as on the 2nd, we woke early to our rooster alarm clocks, bid our gracious hosts adieux, blew some mock kisses to our female admirers, and began trekking before the sun could beat down on us in earnest. Though the terrain on the 3rd day was mostly flat and along the cool banks of the water, two of our group were battling some nasty stomach issues and we were all beset by the glum notion that the best of our trek had past, that our time at that last village was the apogee of a still very elevated experience, but that the remainder of our journey was just the long walk home. That would hardly be the case.

Our hike to the 3rd village was indeed a long one. But for a few stops along the way – 20 minutes for lunch (guess what we ate), 10 minutes to watch Donnelly throw up, 30 minutes for some swimming and some cave exploring (it was only after we had entered the cave that Kong casually mentioned that this particular spot was a known breeding ground for cobras, especially this time of year; thanks for the heads up, Kong), 20 minutes while Andy rather loudly and laboriously took refuge in some nearby bushes to spew his entire stomach out of his ass, 10 minutes for more vomiting, and a somewhat brief incident in which Donnelly stubbed his toe and in a boiling rage, exacerbated by his stomach problems, started breaking all kinds of branches and cursing violently at the world (hillllllarious) – the hike was a continuous 8 hour march. We made it to the next village at the onset of dusk. As a function of this village being closer to the Mekong (so we assumed), we were greeted with the same kind of reserved enthusiasm as on the 1st night. The utter fascination of our appearance that marked the 2nd day was lacking here. And as far as we were concerned, so much for the better. We were all exhausted and needed a nap desperately.

Our experience at the 3rd village was not essentially any different from our time in the other villages. The children were reluctant and then eager. The girls were passive but seemingly infatuated by our being there. The food consisted of boiled chicken and sticky rice. The villagers became suddenly animated and enthralled at the spectacle of our digital cameras. The adults were kind, though for the most part reserved...at least at the beginning. What made that 3rd village unique, and what made it worth the time to write about, was what happened after night had fallen, after the children had gone to bed, and the jar of whiskey appeared in the chief's hut.

You know that feeling you get sometimes, usually around 5pm on a Thursday or Saturday night, that certain itch, that premonition that it will not just be another night out, for some reason that bottle of J.D. starts to beckon like a siren on a rock-ridden shore, and though you won't admit it out loud you feel like dancing, or singing karaoke, or just losing it in whatever way shape or form presents itself? Well, apparently remote villages in the north of Laos are not impervious to that feeling either. As soon as we finished eating and that jar of whiskey was brought out from wherever it comes from, the impish urge to get drunk descended on that hut like a blitzkrieg. Fergus and I were the first to take to the straws. Between us we put down 10 cups with relative ease and were then immediately retained for 10 more. Stepping from the jar with a thorough 1st quarter buzz, we were each handed a huge Marley-esque spliff, the likes of which, we suddenly noticed, the majority of the hut's occupants were voraciously puffing away on. Even Donnelly and Andy, both infirmed by a stomach bug, could not resist the evening's infectious vibe. They, too, took to the whiskey in their turn, and though stopping short of where Mr. Donnelly is so capable of going, they both immediately perked up and joined the festivities. We, of course, were not the only ones drinking. For every 10 cups that Fergus and I drank, each of the diminutive men seemed to drink 10 on their own. The mood was ethereal and gregarious, and before long we were all talking loudly back and forth to each other in our own respective native tongues, which, in our drunken state, was totally immaterial. Who knows how these things get started but at some point the village chief started a sort of rhythmic clap, to which a few of the other men chimed in, and he then pointed at Donnelly, who was then informed by Kong that the chief wanted Ryan to sing some kind of song in rhythm with the clapping. Clearly at a loss, Ryan dug deep, and from some place in his psyche with a taste for the absurd, D busted out the full 2 minute version of Young M.C.'s Fastest Rhyme. Without time to properly digest what had just transpired, the chief next points at Andy, who is just utterly flummoxed at this point, and from sheer impulse he starts singing YMCA – the hand motions and everything. Good god, the comedy. Again, before there is time to think, the chief's finger is now on me, and after Fergus and I stumble through a few verses of Lodi Dodi, we both decide to just start dancing. And dance we did. Oh baby. We even gave them a little Robot for dessert (as if they have any clue what a robot is). The whole time this absolutely ludicrous talent show is taking place, the villagers are in a state of sheer amusement. They're all clapping and laughing and actually giving off the impression that they are genuinely impressed with our skills (actually, after listening to traditional Laotian music, I understand perfectly why they considered our offerings good). Eventually, after several more trips to the whiskey jar, a few more of those banana leaf spliffs, and a much-needed trigger-pull outside behind a tree, the long day of hiking caught up with me. Around 1am, the 4 of us called it a night and retired to our sleeping quarters while the villagers continued drinking and singing.

On the 4th day we beat the roosters to wake. We had to be back to the Mekong by 1pm to catch our boat to Luang Prabang. We had been warned repeatedly from our guides about this last day of hiking, that for the villagers it was 3 hours of severe uphill climbing and then 3 more going back down. The 4 of us could hope to do it in maybe 8 hours. We set off at 6am hoping to steal an hour by getting up the hill before it got too hot. Our guides' plan, for once, worked out. As it happened, the hiking on that last day was probably the easiest we had done. Though slightly hungover, the grueling haul that our guides made the day out to be simply never came to pass, and our hike was mostly carefree and light. We passed the time by playing trivia games and reflecting fondly on the highlights of the previous 3 days. With the exception of the sticky rice and boiled chicken, there was not a single bad thing to be said about our time.

We made it to the shore of the Mekong just in time to catch the boat. We were loaded on to the vessel which carried maybe 20 or so people, 4 goats on the roof, a very loud pig, some water buffalo, and about 500 pounds of various produce. This boat put the onion bus to shame. Crammed between a family and a smelly old man and sitting on top of a bag of sticks (really), I did my best to close my eyes and sleep. I couldn't. Along the way we slowed near the Phakoum caves, a very popular tourist spot for people staying in Luang Prabang, and as we did so, several tourists turned from the shore to watch our boat drift by. Nearly all of them simultaneously reached for their cameras and started pointing and taking pictures (I'm sure I would have too, those goats on the roof must have been something). I watched them as they laughed and snapped their photos and then I turned to look at the other people on our boat, their faces attentively turned forward and their once jovial expressions now stern. None of the Laotian people on our boat, I noticed, would face the cameras head on, but remained staring straight ahead, as if those onlookers didn't exist at all (and maybe they don't), until we were well out of eyesight. My disdain for tourists had never been stronger. This boat was just life, a thing so within the normal state of affairs, that if someone else on that boat, someone other than the 4 of us, that is, were writing this story it would hardly merit mentioning. And yet there we were, the center of a flurry of attention, the amusement of a set of outsiders who would never bother to consider who might feel the brunt of their laughter. I could see the ornate French architecture that characterizes Luang Prabang up ahead around the next turn. We were back.