I sit here at the first part of the day which is cool enough for me to actually put my mind into a straight line to type.
Its been a while since I updated my blog, or even attempted to as every time i sit at a computer the heat either scrambles me or theres someone waiting or a cambodian peering over my shoulder watching words they may or may not be able to read on the screen as i try to send emails to my loved ones. But I'm here and I'm going to do my best to recall everything which has happened in the past month, and trust me a lot has happened.
I believe I left you somewhere in the north of Laos (sorry about that but i'm sure your enjoying it) and now here i am in the
east of Cambodia in a province called Mondlekiri… but more of here later… first back to there where I left you so you don't get too lost along the way.
After leaving Mong Ngoy and waving our goodbyes to Conrad (the Belgian Bunny) on the beach, all black eyed and beaten up (just to recap you) Lily and I sailed our way back to Nong Kieu (sorry my spelling of name places might be a bit wrong as i have nothing to check them up against at the moment) before boarding a bus and heading south to Luang Prabang, where I think i left you with the tale of the Monk and his fascination with Westlife.
So.. From Luang Prabang Lily and I headed further south still straight past the popular (beer drinking, tubing, drug consuming hell) tourist town called VanVieng without stopping and onto the capital city of Laos. Vientiane. Here i spent a few days sorting out my Thai Visa, hoping to get myself a double entry, two month Thai Visa. What I got was a single entry visa for a length of time that i'm still unsure of, but im sure they'll let me know at the boarder. As a side note if anyone finds themselves in Vientiane and is looking for some interesting people too meet and chat with I fully recommend hanging around on the grounds of the Thai Consulate, here there were multitudes of diverse people from Thai people working in Laos to dreadlocked hippies on a Visa run with no interest in Laos, gagging to get back to their hammocks in Pai. Anyway a few Watts and a Thai Visa later Lily and I boarded another bus (this one an all night Falang (*falang, a word directly meaning French but applied to all foreigners) bed bus where two people share a largish single bed.. so know who you book your seats with is my advice) down towards Paxse where our plan was to get some moped/motorbikes and head off onto the Bolevan Plateau. Now a bit of background information on me and my relationships with motorbikes, my mother was a bike racer and i spent a lot of time around very big, fast and loud beasts… and that was just the hairy blokes riding them, my dad on the other had was a mod in the past and is about as anti motorbikes as anyone i know (understandably considering the amount of people i know damaged and dead from road accidents) I on the other hand was a virgin at the handlebars of anything without pedals. Lily however assured me that as long as i didn't get too confident I would be safe and if i really didn't feel comfortable i could just go on the back of hers and we'd find a way to carry the rucksacks. So. Lily rents one bike as a trial run and takes me off to a back road (road being dirt track) where she gives me a 20 minute no-crash course in how to ride a motorbike and before i know it we're on the road driving the 40 km to the first town along the plateau. Paxon. Aside from a slight nervousness (if you have ever seen the roads in south east asia and the way people drive you would understand what i mean) at how to navigate i felt pretty good and with the wind tangling up my hair and the dust in my eyes i felt pretty alive. However i did notice that you get to see a hell of a lot more from a push bike than a motorbike.
That evening as the sun lowered in the sky and set fire to the red sand which makes up the earth of south east asia we rolled into Paxon, past the market covered in red dust, past a guesthouse or two covered in reddust, past a few Falang covered in red dust and past sheets and sheets of red coffee berries drying by the side of the road (also covered in red dust) waiting to be hulled and the beans to be roasted. We drove out the other side of the town looking for a more appealing guesthouse and found a beautiful wooden place with a small smiley proprietor and happy children to greet us. He took us to our room and said it had the best view of the tree in the garden, which we though was an odd plus point until we took a harder look at the tree he was staring at with gooey eyes. Something moved up in the branches, a large black shape, which split in half and became two large black limby shapes swinging from branch to branch with white patches around their eyes. Black Gibbons! (I'm pretty sure thats what they are, an endangered species but also a culinary treat in the area… perhaps one of these facts has lead to the other) Lily and i ventured into the garden to get a closer look, however it seems we went too close and "whoop"ing and "oooaaaaaa"ing at us one swooped down with an angry opposable thumb barely missing my head as we ran away screeching to see our friend laughing at us, still doey eyed over his furry treetop friends. They then proceeded to mark their territory from a great height.
Apparently they moved in of their own accord, two males, and often people would come and try to buy them off him but he refused to sell them and just let them get on with their life free of rent in his garden. Every morning at 6am they let off a fantastic ceremony of screeching and singing, ending in a twittering sound like birds in an attempt to attract any remaining females in the area. At 7 our friend would go to the garden and throw bananas and coffee beans up to them and they would sit munching away spitting the banana seeds out as they went.
The next morning Lily and I took our bikes and headed off to find a nearby waterfall. Again off the tarmac roads and along a bumpy dirt track road. The road was covered with a thick layer of red dust which would occasionally make the back wheel slip slightly as we road but i was doing pretty well (though to be honest the whole time i had the bikes i never went over 70km per hour and mostly stuck to 40km/ph) Towards the end of the track there came a steep downwards slope, we stopped at the top and i looked at the eroded track which at this point was no longer a road at all, just a bumpy collection of rocks and dust. I thought "ok well we can just leave the bikes and walk" at this point Lily said "its dingy but doable" Lily being a very determined (and very capable) lady and she slowly started to work her way down, both feet out doing a few inches at a time. I watched her descend and began my own once she was half way down. Now a senseble Fleassy would have realized that on her second day of riding a bike perhaps serious off roaring was not the wisest thing to try, however sensible Fleassy often gets shouted down by Egotistical testosterone Fleassy who sees another woman do something and cant bear the though of looking like a weak un-capable Fleassy infront of the Capable, inspiring woman of a Lily who she is traveling with. (all of the above being self made observations in a mind which obviously was not thinking too straight at the time). However this Fleassy did forget that she hadn't quite got the grips of foot makes you stop, hand makes you go (considering pushbikes are the other way round) and with a nervous flick of the wrist I somehow ended up out of the small crevice of slippy sand and small stones and up onto the pile of big rocks on the other side of the "road". At this point i began to look a little more seriously at the situation, however still not with the clearest of mind. I saw i was on the worst part of the road to be on, I saw that i needed to rev to get up and off a rock to try and get back in direction, I saw i was tence and nervous, then i saw Lily at the bottom turning her bike off and beginning to walk back up. Now what happened here im still not clear of but the throttle went, the bike went, and I went… both of us went and we went sideways to the ground.
As i saw the rock approach my face my first thought was "The Bike!" then "The Mirror" then as the impending sharp edge came closer my mind turned to home "my glasses!" then finally "my nose!!" as it hit, CRUNCH, on to the appropriately shaped ridge along the top of the small rock. Then followed the mirror and the bike and a scream from Lily of "Fuck! Fleassy!" Luckily I had fallen in a different place from the bike so i didn't end up with the exhaust on me (which can be horrific). I lifted my head as two local women ran down the hill and Lily reached me at the same time. I looked downwards dazed and in pain thinking something was missing… yes something was defiantly missing… blood… why wasn't my nose bleeding… oh …wait… there it goes. A strange sence of relief that my nose was working properly and bleeding as it should ran through me as i began to catch the blood on my hand and put my head down as i had seem the kids at school do in the past. Lily ran to get me water from her bike as the Laos women flapped in my face talking about how i needed an injection (which is their answer to everything) She then proceeded to try to clean up the blood (this was littereslly just as everything had happened and i was a bit more focused on making sure i was alive before cleaning up) "not the silk!" Lily cried and the lady went for my Laos Silk scarf i had bought a few days earlier to mop up my hands, "here" she says handing me her own neckerchief. Once my mind cleared a bit I asked Lily to get the Ladies (who were obviously trying to help) to shut up and get out of my face and then said i needed to get into the shade as it was coming to the peak of the day and the sun was high. I went to stand and as i did i began to loose focus in a way i know so well (i fait with almost every period i have and was prone to panic attacks as a teenager) I began to feel heavy and Lily held me and said don't worry i will carry you, "I cant see" i told her as my way of not being dramatic about the fact i was passing out after having had a head injury. Soon enough though my vision cleared and i was sitting in the shade of a brushy bush and slowly began to clear up and dink some water. Lily (now my hero) rode to the local town (we were in the middle of nowhere practically) and got me some water and ice for my very painful knee and on her return a new Lady arrived and offered for me to go and sleep in her house. Slowly Lilly helped me hobble my way along to the wooden hut on stilts and i lay upon a mat for the rest of the day drinking water and tending my swollen knee (my nose had stopped bleeding pretty quick but i was aware of a very large scab forming across my face). I was hoping my black eye would be one to challenge Conrad's as a few minutes after the crash Lily's phone had run and Conrad had told her he was in Paxe and planning to hitch up the the plateau to meet us. Lily went doff alone at my assurance that i would be ok sleeping there and visited the waterfall before coming back to get me.
We bought the lady a Pepsi from the shop as a thank you at one point, she tried to share it with us but we said no so she poured most of it into a glass and gave it to her daughter who then ran outside to share it with anyone else who was around. As we left we also gave the family some money as they had fed us and been so kind, though im certain they weren't expecting it they took it as a sign of our gratitude and nothing else which was nice.
My mum always told me that if you fall off a horse you should get straight on. This i agree with to a point (except the one time she was giving me a lesson and i fell off 6 times and was more tense each time i got back on…leading to another fall of course) and re-boarding my steed and revving it up I waves goodbye to the family who laughed a little at disbelief as not so many hours earlier i had been unable to walk (i'd tried to go with Lily to the waterfall but my leg had buckled as i stood up) Crazy Falang. When we got back to town we found Conrad playing guitar on a patch of grass surrounded by a group of kids. When he saw us he began to walk over and as he saw my face (which was swiftly getting more swollen and gaining colour) he pointed at his own fading black eye and said "same man?".
That night they two of them look after me, not letting me leave bed and leaving me to sleep when a migraine-esque headache flushed across my skull. The next day we decided to try again, the swelling on my knee had gone down enough to walk and although my whole forehead was swollen the cuts were all drying and looked clean. Back we went and this time Lily took both mikes down and Conrad and I walked.
Over the next 3 or 4 days we visited 3 or 4 waterfalls as we worked our way across the Plateau, ranging from tall rushing drops surrounded by local kids swimming to my favorite which was a steady wide river with a reasonably low fall going into a large pool, perfect for swimming in. Along the top of the fall was a line of rocks so you could after lie in the sun as it slowly dropped upriver and dry off. Along the way we sang together in the evenings at different hostels, teaching and sharing songs on Conrad's guitar (Lily and I had left ours in Paxse). We wanted to visit a specific Wat (temple) and the 4,000 islands before Lily had to return to the school she teaches in, and Conrad's visa ran out so soon we head back to town and Lily took both the bikes back one by one hoping that if they didn't see my face they might not check the bike over and charge us for the scratches that my fall had left on them. We were right and luckily got away without paying any extra. We stayed at a hostel where the proprietor had fled the country during the Communist take over in Laos and gone to live in Australia, he had recently returned for the first time in over 20 years to look after his sisters hotels for a while.
Then Lily, Conrad and I spent a few days in Champasac visiting this ancient Wat (build before even Ahnkor Wat in Cambodia) by bicycle. A row of old leafless Frangipani trees led up the broken steps to the temple leaving their beautifully scented white stars across the ground. The carvings were stunning and in the evening we found ourselves at a local festival where a shadow puppet show was happening. There was a coconut stand style game with balloons and weighted darts that we were determined to win but was foiled every time.
Soon enough we had made our way down towards the Cambodian boarder to the 4,000 Islands and found ourselves surrounded by bleach blond girls in singlet straps and shorts after crazy weekends in Vangvien. We headed to a slightly less touristic Island and settled down for our last few days together. Here further south the landscape has changed. The shocking sudden mountains rocks of northern laos covered in lush green jungle have faded out and here the trees are dryer. Here and there are dotted the odd Flame tree. Mangostien, and Mangos dangle unripe and teasing from their branches whilst spiky Jack fruits cling to the trunks making me glad that they dont smell like the Durien fruits that they look like.
One evening we cycled down to the old French train station at the bottom of the island where once upon a time French Colonialists would have road steamers between the islands instead of the little dug out boats the locals use. Here we boarded one of the boats and was run out towards Cambodia. We stopped mid water and spent an hour and a half watching the Mekong Irrawaddy dolphins breaking the surface and the sun went down.
The next morning it was Lily's turn to be left on a beach waving. We exchanged hugs and i gave thanks for the amazing time i had spent with her in Laos and hoped is wasn't another 5 years before we saw each other again. Conrad and I boarded a boat back to the mainland and slowly traversed the ancient Mekong, past buffalo's bathing in the waters which may have been brought all the way down from the source in Tibet and would continue until they reached the Pacific. The bus took us south further to the Cambodian boarded and i said goodbye to Laos sooner than i had imagined but with a million lush, green, ritch, memories.
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