Sweat trickled from my brow, liquid guilt splashing onto the visa documents held in my trembling hand. Clammy fingers carelessly worked the perspiration into the pages, the ink bleeding, vital information becoming malformed, indecipherable. Bloody hell I thought, it was happening again. I was done for, as good as dead. They’d find something this time, I was sure of it. Probably drugs – it always is, invariably.
There he was, the border guard, concealed behind a pane of glass in an isolated corner of northern Laos. And there I was, passing into his lair, visa form in hand, his meal ticket for the next few months at least. Far away from the jurisdiction of the capital I was entirely at his whims, handing over a carte blanche co-signed by Messrs Sadism and Opportunity. There was nothing petty about the extortion about to be exacted upon me; I’d been told it was endemic, but here, now, under a sheet of corrugated iron sheltering me from the midday sun, the situation felt terminal. And if I resisted, well, you could be sure the prisons up here were even more fetid than those back in Thailand. A few months of hard labour and I’d be broken; a few weeks if the diet was measly. It probably was.
I glanced back at the river, rusty brown, its strong current disturbed only slightly by the toing and froing of longtails, ferrying people from one country to the next. Beyond it lay Chiang Khong, from whence we came. The sun had turned the air glutinous, as if the eyeballs had been smeared with Vaseline, and only a vague outline of the village remained. In retrospect it seemed such a nice place – civilised, even. Huay Xai was something of a hinterland in comparison, the Mekong forming a watery DMZ across which wealth and modernity feared to venture.
A throat unblocked itself. The noise was coming from the guard behind the glass. The moment had come for him to usher me into a backroom; to be pushed into a chair, harangued, allegations of spying for the Americans thrown in my direction, the bag of heroin slammed down upon the table once more. A Cold War nightmare with a South East Asian twist – fait accompli, harrowingly inescapable.
Only, upon closer inspection, ‘he’ turned out to be a she. Underneath the broad hat rim I saw a hint of fringe and, moreover, a smile. Then, maintaining the smile, she welcomed me into her country, in crisp, barley accented English. This was weird; it wasn’t going to script. How embarrassing the situation was: the prejudice I’d held – if not displayed – regarding this poor woman. Where was the corrupt, snarling, illiterate, unintelligible man my mind had conjured? Perhaps I ought to have a stern word with myself… But not now, this heat was too oppressive an environment for a dressing down, even when merely with oneself.
It was only when the lady bowed, hands together, for the second time that I realised I’d been rendered immobile by her politeness, and should probably move on. My feet finally unstuck and, slinging my rucksack onto my back, I walked across to the final arbitrary barrier, a road block.
Full of sleep, the guard’s head was propped up by one arm, whilst the hand of the other held a filterless cigarette burnt down perilously close to the knuckles, ash spilling across the desk. Either the crunch of gravel underfoot or the glare from the visa’s hologram roused him. Pretending we hadn’t noticed, he inspected our newly-adorned passports as if he were the very model of professionalism. He pressed a button and the barrier was winched upwards. Freedom. The guard waved us through, before dropping the pole quickly behind us with an unceremonious clang. I looked back to see he’d already returned to his slumber, ignoring the flow of Laotians skirting unhindered around the blockade. So much for security.
We were soon bedded down for the night in a creepily furnished guesthouse, bedecked with mannequins lazily dressed in what appeared to be the unsellable items from a charity shop. They would have been kitsch, even cute, if it weren’t for their vividly drawn faces. Demonic, those faces had the inconvenience to leap out from dark recesses in the dead of night, causing one to stumble through the door of one’s room clutching one’s chest, panting, spluttering, barely articulate, fielding awkward questions from one’s other half. It was only for one night, we’d be off at first light.
The journey we’d be embarking on would set off in the morning and take two days snaking down the Mekong; along the border with Thailand before cutting back into the heart of Laos, dropping anchor on the banks of Luang Prabang. The modus operandi would be that of a slowboat, gently chugging its way down the river, safe and serene, allowing unprecedented views of rural Laos – at least that’s what I wanted to believe the garble of Indic script pinned on the guesthouse noticeboard meant. In reality we were told to meet at 07:00, not to be late, and given a handwritten receipt worth a lot less than the $38 we’d handed over.
Soon it was 06:30 and the early morning sun was toying with the curtains, exposing the poor fabric for what it was. Pale shafts of light pierced through the threadbare weave, illuminating the sparse room, an unmade bed and two hastily repacked rucksacks its sole contents. It was time to head out.
Seven o’clock came and we were sat on the riverbank, the slowboat below us but no sign of activity from within. They were peculiar looking things: like barges that plied the canals back at home, only larger and built to maximise floor space. Instead of a living area, quaint stoves and the like, the boat was packed with row upon row of seats like a cheap ferry – only these were reclaimed from old minibuses and aligned so haphazardly as to suggest none of them were fixed to the wooden floor beneath. Leg room might be an issue, especially if Amy and I were anywhere near the group of obese former frat boys sharing the riverbank with us. Narcissistic, priapic has-beens, they sat perched on crates of cheap Beer Lao, already swilling down their first bottles of the day whilst making crude impressions of the locals. Something told me we wouldn’t become boat buddies.
There were some more intriguing characters however: a group whispering in hushed Dutch, a dreadlocked Brazilian couple, the ubiquitous Canadian contingent and a one-eyed grizzled Frenchman to name but a few. All in all we made a motley crew. Before long our captain reared his head, stepping ashore and beckoning us onto the boat with neither a hint of ceremony nor welcome.
Quintessentially Asian, we were late in setting off. Despite being all aboard by half-past, we sat, rocking atop the Mekong’s current, knees crushed under our chins, for nearly two hours without explanation. When we did finally pull away the Americans were onto their liquid brunch. Whilst their drinking was fast the boat’s going was slow – even though we were heading downstream – and for a while I did wonder if we had an engine at all. One of the frat boys launched a spent bottle into the drink; he must have resealed the neck, as when it hit the water it bobbed along, caught between the flow of the river and the boat’s wake. We were quickly outstripping it and soon the bottle was out of sight, drifting along with all the other refuse somewhere beyond the horizon. Perhaps this boat had an engine after all.
The hours drifted by, but not at the sedate pace I’d anticipated. It hadn’t take long before all signs of life disappeared from the banks, and, as we floated away from the Thai border, the forest encroached, narrowing the river and deepening it, carrying us onward into an altogether more turbulent and aggressive landscape. Mountainsides rose upwards, hemming us in, their edges softened by a dense canopy but retaining a lingering malevolence beneath the lush exterior. The pace quickened and a breeze swept down the valley. The slowboat accelerated further into jungle upon the churning waters, swirling thick with rich brown sediment, itself eroded from the sun-scorched earth. The mahabhuta were pushing us forward, the Great Elements brewing violently beneath the hull. The metaphysical world wanted rid of us, invoking a swift exit from Mother Earth’s cradle.
We were floating in the middle of a vast river in an equally vast expanse of rainforest, yet the scarcity of life beyond our slowboat rendered the experience isolating, even claustrophobic. Occasionally fishing rods lurched out, their lines held taught in the current, but their owners seemed long gone. We had entered the Heart of Darkness, except no one was home. For many an hour no eyes stared out from amongst the trees; even the forest itself was eerily silent. Kurtz had long abandoned the place and the cicadas were the only voices to be heard by any unwitting Marlows.
As the day began to ebb, rich yolky light poured into the valley. Patches of silt began to stretch back from the Mekong up into the undergrowth, transient foundations upon which life had taken hold. Wooden posts lodged themselves into the dirt, their shapes forming rudimentary dwellings, but where walls and roofs should have been the breeze swept through unabated. They were the bare bones of houses, unfleshed and uninhabitable, and yet here life was, running along the riverbank and waving with vigour.
Children ran out into the muddied waters with shouted greetings, whilst adults watched from the tree line, seemingly indifferent to our presence. All were either naked or dressed in ethnic garb, black cloth providing a canvas for intricate neon tessellations, painstakingly stitched by hand. These people looked to have been Hmong – they certainly dressed like it – but I’ll never know for sure.
Driven out into the wilderness by the Pathet Lao during the Indochinese Wars, the Hmong people were persecuted and left on the margins of society; prisoners of conscience confined in a verdant jail. These were the lucky few; those who escaped the genocide, the re-education camps and indeterminate sentences; those who refused to homogenise and found themselves outcasts, washed up on the shores of misfortune, scratching a subsistence living. The children would not understand the scope of their suffering, but it was written all over the faces of the adults. Inert, they stood staring out into the middle distance. The barge, packed with white faces, was a reminder of the bonds the Hmong people had once shared; equals in the eyes of the colonial French, brothers in arms with the Americans. They had been abandoned by both in their hour of need.
Floating down the Mekong, the diorama before us seemed a living, breathing exhibit to human cruelty and intolerance. It’s a Small World (After All).
We arrived in Pak Beng at dusk, day ceding to night just as the slowboat turned for shore. It felt thoroughly remote, nestled into the mountainside, the Mekong the only way in or out. The steep steps up from the banks revealed to us the village itself. It was miniscule, an outpost constructed around and geared towards those making the same journey as our own. A handful of guesthouses lined the single inclined street, interspersed with a smattering of basic eateries. The locals – distinctly Lao – all emerged from their doors, vying for trade – we were their sole source of income; a few boatloads of prospective tenants ashore each day, and they’d be loath to miss out. But they would be; Amy and I had booked ahead, beating the scrum now forming as backpackers clambered to get the cheapest bed for the night.
Bypassing the crowd we headed to the top of the road and to our guesthouse. It turned out to be little more than a wooden box nestled away above a shop, accessible by a rickety ladder with a missing rung. Back in Thailand I would have been up in arms, but in remote and rural Laos, it felt like an adventure. I didn’t mind the sanitation (or lack thereof) – no running water, no flushing toilet; nor the broken light, the welcoming party of mosquitoes and the net to keep them out which refused to hang. Moonlight was exposing the gaps in the wooden slats, but that was enough light for me; hand sanitizer was invented for times like these, and the host of blood-sucking insects was merely adding to the lodging’s mystique. By all rights I should have been exhausted and thoroughly irritable, but as I lay down for the night, the dogs howling in the street below, I felt more contented than I had for a long stretch of travelling. No one was trying to kill, brainwash or imprison me; I wasn’t brassic, nor shunned by society and former friends. Context is a powerful tonic for the inner diva.
Pak Beng at Dusk
Pak Beng at Dawn
A baby cried out and one of the dogs below struck up an unlikely duet. Not enough sleep but it would have to do. The moonlight has disappeared from between the slats, replaced with a dull grey that barely penetrated the room. Dawn had come and it was time to leave.
Angry clouds rolled along the mountainsides and across the Mekong downstream, the scant sunlight yet to break apart their sense of foreboding. We’d be heading that way soon, and it looked far from inviting. We lost the view as we descended the anaemic ladder and walked down towards the quay, the village waking up around us as we did so. Vendors hawked incongruously Western goods, Pringles and Oreos by the crateload, much-maligned but necessary on the uncatered slowboats. All sense of remoteness and exoticism was tainted somewhat by their presence, but it would be unpragmatic to ignore them – cold noodle soup half spilled across the deck wasn’t a viable option.
Stocking up we made for the river, a murky shade of dun in the half-light. Much like the day before the slowboat took an age to leave, by which point the clouds had burnt away, easing our passing. That morning the boat contained none of the energy of yesterday, each person deflated by fatigue. The Americans were lolling in their seats, deep in the stupor of a Beer Lao hangover, whilst the Dutch seemed to have left their humour long behind. Conversation with the one-eyed Frenchman flowed readily on the other hand, most of it with myself.
An ex-pat living in the Gulf of Thailand, he and his native wife owned a hotel complex on one of the islands. Not liking travel herself, she let her husband take leave and cross borders once a year to explore the rest of Asia. This year he found himself in Laos. It transpired he’d sacrificed his eye for a life of exotic tranquillity; a workplace accident in a government-owned organisation had rendered him an invalid in the labour market, leaving a hefty and premature pension in his bank account. With this he’d started the bungalow business to pass the time, whilst the French state became little more than a patron for his adventures.
He’d seen most of South East Asia, had circled Everest from Nepal for $100 in a Cessna and lived to tell the tale, having landing in the Lukla’s infamous airport. No less intrepid, this time he was venturing to the mysterious Plain of Jars – a Megalithic group of giant stone jars, their origins and purpose mere speculation – which were situated in a minefield amid the most heavily bombed area in the world. Legends state they were the drinking vessels of a race of ancient giants; scientists speculated there were tombs. It piqued my curiosity, and in a fortnight I would find myself there, diligently following in his footsteps…
The conversation could not be sustained. He had too many stories, I too few, and soon his audience and attentions had segued across to the Dutch group, now appearing more spritely the further the day progressed. I had to mend some clothes anyhow, and my deftness with a needle was not such that I could do both simultaneously.
By the time I’d finished my fingers resembled a pin cushion, but my trousers were wearable once more. Looking up from my handiwork I found the landscape had changed. The hills had shrunk back toward the horizon, allowing the Mekong to breathe easy, coursing wider the further it progressed. Villages started emerging with increasing frequency. Houses with painted roofs, concrete walls: sure-fire signs civilisation approached. Children still ran down to the water’s edge, but now they wore fake Manchester United shirts and shouted greetings in English. Dragging in the day’s catch their parents smiled at us, displaying none of the anguish the ethnic tribes showed yesterday. These people were still poor, yes, but not ostracised, not alone in their struggles. Slowboats like our own meant custom and friendship, trade and merchants and the opportunity for relative prosperity.
We pulled in. Footsteps on the roof were followed by the dull thud of sacks on wet sand; Kip changed hands and new passengers stepped aboard, bound for Luang Prabang too no doubt. The sorrow on the faces of the Hmong people made more sense than ever.
This happened many times before we reached our destination, the slowboat becoming increasingly abuzz with chatter, both from travellers and locals. We passed the Pak Ou Caves, the faces of ruddy sunburnt tourists outnumbering the very Buddhas themselves: our arrival was imminent.
When it did, Luang Prabang stood proud atop a jagged rock face, looking out onto the wide river valley below. Necks strained, but a white painted wall obscured the view, teasing as to what lay within. Hotel touts meanwhile flitted along the bank undoing much of its good work, ready to divulge the city’s secrets for $10 a night. As we made for shore excitement overspilled and a rush on the luggage hold ensued. Shangri-La awaited us, and we all knew it. But at what price I thought…
The face of a tribesman returned to me, his eyes boring into the nothingness. If he knew of the prosperity downriver, he certainly had no part in it; nor could he, the regime had put paid to that idea. Luang Prabang was overtly Buddhist, himself Animist – the former selling itself to the West as such. They could have co-existed and given a fuller picture of the tapestry that made up Laos, but instead the two mixed like water and oil, the Hmong skimmed off the top and discarded by a non-secular government.
What price for the croissants and the imported vintages supped by the tourists? What price for the daily alms show, the restoration of the monasteries and the upkeep of the royal palace? What price for the burgeoning Lao middle class? He could tell you, but there was no one coming ashore to hear his answers.