Monday 14 February 2011

Part 21 - Cambodia

Entering Cambodia brought with it a sensation of darkness and fear i was not expecting. Boarders always make me uneasy but this one was full of unexpected "additional fees" which when i challenged them I was told i would not be allowed my stamps without paying. Then an hour or two's wait on the other side of the boarder for the bus to decided it wasn't to continue. Here i had time to ponder the heat which it felt had doubled since northern Laos. As the bus took Conrad and I down I looked out the window at the changing scenery. Here the flame trees were more than just bright dots amongst the forrest, they were the only colour amongst the dust. Brown was set against brown broken only by the black of the scorched earth which connected the trunks of the forests. Some stumps still smoking. occasionally just a white line remained of what would once have been a fallen tree, like the white lines of a crime scene mapping out the dead. We headed East for Ratanakiri Province where where had heard there was nice waterfalls and a volcanic crater lake. My sence of darkness didn't leave me until i met the Khmer people. Wow. What a people they are.



We spent a few nights in Ratanakiri cycling to see waterfalls and swimming in the lake. It was a nice area but nothing which jumped out to me. To be honest the Mekong has stolen part of my heart and being so far from it amongst this barren dusty landscape felt a little strange.



We headed back towards the Mekong and went to an Island near Krattie where we spent two nights sleeping at a home stay. This was my first homestead and here i saw to true beauty and shine and light of the Khmer people. In the house we were staying in there was a lady and at least one daughter, a husband and grandma. Grandma could have been over 100 and spent most of her time lying/sitting on the floor of the house avoiding the sun. She was hunchbacked and bald with long dangly buddah ear lobes. We cycled round the Island, the sand dunes between the grasslands and the mekong took 10 minutes to walk over under the scorching mid day sun. I watched Conrad disappear into the quavering air for his refreshing dip in the Mekong and felt that my shady tree was perhaps the best place for me.

The afternoon was spent surrounded by a group of locals (none of whome spoke any English) with the guitar. Some of them were incredibly drunk on a homebrew being ladled out of a large paint bucket and danced around and sang noises along with the guitar. I made up songs for the many kids which had garnered using my lilted Khmer and we partied with them until the sun went down.



This was my last day with Conrad and the next morning we took the boat back to the mainland and bid each other goodbye as i boarded a minibus off to Mondlekiri back in the east to a place I had seen a poster for called "Nature Lodge" where i was hoping to rest for a while in a hammock after all the moving. He was off to the big city. It was a bit of a sad goodbye, the end of an era but soon I was whizzing across Cambodia in a minivan with over 30 people crushed in (the boot open and people hanging out the back).



Now I just need to leave a place here to focus on something other than my trip, as in this one week in Cambodia i have been filled with a fascination and almost obsession with recent Cambodian history. The fear of Land Mines i guess is what sparked it off. A land where even over 10 years after the production and planting of the mines was stopped people are still dieing. On average 30 people a month die in a war when the country is supposed to be in a time of peace. Some of the people who die were not even born when the war was actually happening. I think of Princess Di coming out here in the 90's to help with the Landmine Aid and how brave everyone viewed her to be (and im not denying that) however I can not help but think when i look into the eyes of these smiling beautiful Khmer people that the true bravery lays there, within them. Behind their smiles where the pain of a nation ripped, torn, raped and murders still sits. On the bus to Mondlekiri I read the book "first they killed my father" by Ung Leung. This is an autobiography of a girl who at the age of 5 years old was witnessing things i pray no one would ever have to witness again. I cried with almost every page. I call to anyone who remembers what it is to be a child to read this book and see the pure strength and soul which lies in the Kymer people and the horrific acts of hell which were placed upon them. This is not ancient history, this is the history of the people who's eyes I look into daily. This book is not the story of one girl, its the story of a whole nation of people told from the mouth of one girl. It is perhaps the best and most heart breaking books i have ever read. After finishing this book i then went on to read "the killing fields" a novel based on the true story of an american journalist during the Kymer Rouge take over of Cambodia. I have got half way through and have had to stop for a while as I can not lay my head to sleep without feeling the pain of millions of starving people ring through my heart. The thought of watching my father watch me starve to death while the whelk family daily harvest rice being shipped off to pay for weapons, watching my mother full of fear for her life daily, seeing my siblings die from eating poisons just to escape the hell on earth, the though of my family being ripped from me and tortured or burried alive all in the name of an ignorant revolution which proceeded in the space of 3 years, 8 months and 20 days to kill 1.7 million innocent people. Some people were murdered just for the crime of wearing glasses, having been to school, having been privileged enough to have tasted chocolate in their life, even for having lighter skin than the ideal peasant people of the Khmer Rouge's perfect nation image.



I could go one for pages about this with the passion and fire in my heart but i shall stop here. However I encourage you to read "first they killed my father".



Now after a few days in "the nature Lodge" (where they do indeed have both nature, and lodging… though i think the two are still trying to work out how to work harmoniously and symbiotically, but its heading in the right direction) I am planning to take a bus tomorrow across to the West to Siem Reap where hopefully i will meet Brighton Buddy Simon and some others who happen to be in the country.





Thanks again for reading another epic tale, and please just take am oment to send love and healing to a nation still dealing with the scars. A brave and beautiful and shiny people who have inspired me bend words… and if you have a moment or some money to spare please support one of the many charities based on working with victims of Landmines. They are real people, real brave people with real lives and real hearts.

part 20 - black eyes, motorbikes, and waterfalls

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.

Monday 7 February 2011

Chatted Up by a Monk

so.... now here i am in Laos... :) my mind is too here to really get into writing about the past week but i will give you an overview ..and pictures will follow sometime.

There was a shift with the sunshine and and the mountains rose up green so did my heart and hopes it seems.

Tiger leaping gorge was breath taking and in heindsight too short a stay..i hope to return to hike it properly one day for sure.

Dali was a great rest up place. i spent a week at a hostel called the Hump drawing a mural on the main wall in the bar in return for my stay. there was adventures around the town, up the mountain, music was played and white russians were drunk.

At the end of the week i bid farewell to my friends (and the owners of the hostel who had sworn i was not alowed to leave and have shackles on my feet) and with a freidn who i had met on the bus from tiger leaping gorge i headed south towards laos.

We boarded the night bus to Jinghong and swapped places with a man so we could share the giant bed space in the back rather then being opposite ends of the bus. It was myself, Chris (my friend, who as a side note had just spent a week in a budhist monistary with child monks learning kung fu! no messing with him! hhiiiiya!) and a belgian guy called fransoiurs who was on the bus. As it got darker and the raods became less of a road we lay back for outr long 16 hour ride. Most of this time was spent moving in the space between the bed and the ceiling up and down as the road was un tarmacked and pretty much made of pot holes linked together with a series of bumps. Still it was a nice ride and to have a friend to cuddle up with was nice as it gets lonely on these long journeys sometimes.

We arrived in jinghong and as we got off the bus Fransouir found his wallet on the end of the bed minus 100 euros :( another victim of the night bus experience unfortunatly. We bid him farewell and good luck and got on our next bus, a little mini van which would takes us down and over the laos boarder. During the night something remarkable had happened. The harsh mountains which backed onto the Himalayas had given way to lush jutting rock mountains covered in banana plantations and bamboo forests. Beautiful children played by the dusty road and waved as we passed, and when i lent across and opened the window i could smell nature. I could litterally smell the life and vibrancy which i had been lacking since leaving yakushima all those months ago. WE arrived in Luang Nam Tha and found ourselves a guesthouse. Here hostels dont exist, but many people can share a room in a guesthouse to cut down costs so we got a two bed room and settled down to being in Laos. We went out with a couple we had met in Dali at the hostel there who also had arrived that day on a different bus and ate the best indian food i have had in a loooong time. Then after sharing a bottle of beer lao Chris and I bought some chocolate, another beer and headed back to the room to finally get some sleep after our 2 days of traveling. We lay on my bed and put on some Laos TV to fill the air, and i rolled over to eat a bit of Chocky and gave chris a satisfied hug.... "comfy?" he asked.... "i could be more comfy" i responded about 3 seconds before falling asleep. :)

Wow real sleep...all night... i woke up half way through the night to turn of the blabbering TV and to snuggle under my covers but wow, a bed that wasn't moving was like a blessing.

The next day i bid farewell to chris as he headed off to the bus station to head to Thai Land and meet his girlfriend and i met an american couple outside this lady's roadside snack bar.
My plan was to head to a small village, and from there get a boat along the river to a smaller village to meet a friend of mine called Lilly. I met her 4/5 years ago in South Spain and traveling into portugal with her and rosie. Now she is teaching english in a tiny village in laos, and its school holidays starting this week so we are going to adventure together though Laos.
As i told my new american chums about this they decided to come along with me to see if they could find nice places to hike... i guess its impossible to be alone when traveling. As they got their bags ready the lady who owns the snak spot jived with me across the dirt floor space around the picnic table.

At the bus station (which we reached via tuk tuk) I saw Chris again for a proper goodbye as his leaving earlier had been a rushed wave as he shot off to catch a bus (which he missed) on a tuk tuk. Soon anough i was rolling my way through Northern Laos, heading EAst towards Vietnam. Chickens, cows, children all running around the road side and women in traditional laos dress.

We spend the night in a village called Pak Mon in the "alone guesthouse" ...ironically as there was now three of us in a double bed.

The next morning we boarded the tuk tuk to mong kieu.

A woman roasting a rat on a stick over a little fire, tail and all.

Chickens.

Waving faces.

Beautiful Laos waving faces.

As we get on the low wooden thin boat alongside the other Farang (foreigners) and locals a woman (i can only suppose to be his mother) shouted at the boat man and a situation ensued which appeared to be "you can not! go on that boat, get back here" "awww but muuuum, look at all the people on the boat" "no get back here, if you go your not comming back" "sorry mum, got all these people" and off we whooshed....

Swimming buffalo.

Bamboo.

Huge root systems on trees line the bank.

The water in the boat rises.

Fishermen.

A girl pales water laughing nervously.

Swimming naked children on the bank.

Our feet get wet.

...oh shit... suddenly we are banking up and rescueing swiftly dampening bags and guitars from the back of the boat and piling out onto a sand bank island.


eventually they bail out enough water and where as i thought the sensible idea was to put half the amount of people back on the boat and do a double run it seemed this was not the plan. On we all piled again and this time as the water bailing girls stop was the next stop i took up the challange of keeping the water levels low enough so as not to sink. So under the humm of the motor i pailed and pailed and sang to myself a little song of "pailing out the water, pailing out the water, pailing out a pailing out a pailing out the water, gunna keep this boat afloat untill we get to the other siiiide" and eventually we did get to the "other side" to the little village of Mong Ngoi where i was due to meet Lilly.

Mong Ngoi is an interesting place, touristised enough to have a steady tourist trade (a constant flow of new farang arriving ever day on the two little boats that roll in) with a few bars and buffet places. However being unacessable by road, only by boat it keeps a real traditional charm, most of the buildings being wooden and bambo weave walls and the electricity only comiong on for 3 hours a day in the evening. As we walked down the one "street" of the village i hear a cry of "i found you!" as Lilly ran up to me. Not only was i a day late to meet her but she had been postponed by a day also comming from the little village 2 hours up river by a day. She had sat with her stuff on the boat for 5 hours the day before while they told her the boat would be leaving soon... inevitably the boat never left and the mother of her host family had to come down to the river bank and tell her to give up and come home :) however as is always the way the timing was perfect and we both arrived on the same day.


My two friendlings headed off to a near by village to find some trecking and lilly and i settled into our little wooden hut we rented for a few days. Luxury. Later that day we sat in a "cafe" (i ordered a pancake which it turned out was a lot more litteral than i imagines, litterally a sponge cake made in a frying pan) and did some catch up and near by sat a belgian lad with a guitar. We invited him over. His name was conrad and after a bit of song sharing and chit chat we all decided to go visit a cave that lilly knew of where you could swim in the uber fresh clean waters in the darkness of the cavern where sunlight never reaches.
The lush entrance to the cave, bamboo and ferns.
We stiped bare by the light of the head torch and swan in the cold fresh waters singing with the ancient echos of the past, still quietly bouncing off the rocks.
The cold air which lives withing the mountain.
The cool cold waters.
My hand hovers in the space between a hanging rock and its reflection in the water.
We left the cave and let the soft sunlight dazzle our eyes, the leaves acting like lanterns in the sunlight, glowing. We walked for half an hour or so more across a bamboo bridge and the fields, now dry and harvested. Broccoli mountains paying no attention to our story.eventually we arrive at a little village, less touristy than mong ngoibut still home to the odd "guesthouse"and "guide". Families sit weaving from grasses and kids run past us, wide eyed from the strangers. Old women point and laugh at lillys Sin (tradtional Laos skirt) saying "laos, laos" over and over. we pass out the other side of the village and back into the dry fields, each patch lined with a thin raised mound to walk on.

We sat.

We watched the mountains. In the distance a curious local boy watches us, sling shot in hand. Slowly he draws closer, curious and careful. As lilly pulls out her tobbaco pouch and begins to roll he perches down beside her, the ripped shorts of an adventurous boy. He stares at the tobbaco and her face. She opens the pouch and lets him sniff at which he smiles nodding and saying "yeeeah" She rolls forhim and i watch him smoke his first cigarrette (or so it seemed) puffing on the dead fire cross eyed untill lilly pulls her lighter outand relights it. He says he's 16 but the young laos face could be a 10 year old all we know. he watches me draw so i hand him my pen. holding it awkwardly he writes something on my pages in scrawled laotian. Soon the guitar is the centre of attentiuon and i hand it to him, afraid of doing it wrong at first but eventually smiling mile wide and strumming gently on the strings. Eventually the sun begin to fall and we headed back through the village bidding our young friend fare well nd walked back to mong ngoi and our little hut. barefeet sore. dinner, music, jamming.

That night lilly and i lay in bad and a knock comes on the door, conrad comes in and listens to my russian folk song, we play by torchlight as the electricity has gone. then he bids us goodnight as he wonders off to his tent. Lilly and i snuggle down under the mosquito net, our big princess bed.


At about 12:30 we were woken by a knock on the door there was conrad topless and tend tdraped over our balcony. He had been attacked in the middle of the night, as he had drifted off to sleep he heared someone kicking sand onto his tent, he put his head out and under the light of the almost full moon he saw someone looming over him, arms raised with a plank in their hands. The plank soon found its way to conrads face and dazed he screamed to draw attention but no one came, the attacker fled. We think now they had wanted to rob him but hadn't done so.
Now he stood in our door way, shaken up, swolen head and what was soon to turn out to be blindr or a black eye which formed over the next few days. He slept in our hut with us and the next morning the police were called, though there was little thye could do as he didnt remember anything about the attacker. It was the first incident like this they had ever had.

However aside fromthis the area was idilic but soon it was time to head off, lilly only had a few weeks holiday time and we wanted to explore south of laos together before she had to be back in her village. We bid farewell to our friend Conrad who promised to come meet us in the south and headed off.

I drempt i was making love to God all night, a divine being caressing my heart and soul, he reenacted the creation of everything and we pointed out his mistakes during the three witches "Fair is fowl" speach...i awoke to the banana leaf rustle in the wind along the nam ou. That night a thousand tiny bunnies walked under a thin layer of snow through my dreams carrying me along.

In Luang Prabang we visited a Watt (temple) and some monks asked me to play my guitar, the conversation:
young monk: "is that a guitar?"
me: "yes"
young monk: "can you play?"
me: "yes..... would you like me to?"
young monk: "yes"
i sat down with my guitar upon my lap and plucked upon the strings

young monk: "are you single?" ....

me: .... "no".... "are you a monk?"

young monk: "yes....no.... a novice...."



young monk: "....can you play westlife?"

me: "...no"



So now i am in the capital of Laos, the Me Kong seperates laos from thai land and the sun rises into the window of our hostel room. Thai Embasy getting visas for the future and then tomorrow night we head to the south.

My heart feels light and free, the sun is warm, the air humid, the mosquitos....annoying.


I hope where ever you are your feeling just as at peace with every moment. As Green says "a moment can seem like eternity, so i choose to use this moment wisely"
Much love to all of you.

Fleassy