Siam Chronicles 3 - A Quick Note About a Very Slow Boat

Yesterday
I puffed up the mountain with all the grace of a leprous hippo. I don’t have a good track record hiking up mountains, and the macerating heat and biting red ants aided a revival of my oft-made vow to abnegate this activity completely in the future. We bungled down boulders and stumbled through streambeds in search of the waterfall that Alyssa promised lay high above the soughing turquoise pools and dense green jungle like a panacea for the saturating heat. And finally there it was - just a few dangerous drops away – leaping like lemurs we crumbled into the cool waters. I take a moment to pause because though beyond my powers of description this moment was a cheesecake slice of pure bliss.We swam through other pools and waterfalls on the way back down, but none like that hidden pool high above that felt like floating through clouds over the mountain tops on the roof of the world.

2 Days Ago
“Those g-damn Canadians,” Alex spat vituperatively from the back of the pickup. His face was red, wet with sweat, uncharacteristically angry. It had been a slow, slow boat ride. There had been nothing but mountain and jungle and the occasional thatched village and the hammer of the sun for seven long hours before running aground finally, finally at Luang Prabang.The goateed lads in question had roomed across the rattan screen from us the night before in our duplex hut in the remote village of Pakbeng, loudly regaling the known world with their numerous close-encounters with casual sex. Now as they clotted the doorjamb of the French colonial guest house before us, we were enjoined with the prospect of reliving the experience.Fortunately for us, they shuffled on to find a better rate, and we had the place literally all to ourselves - so a shower then and off to explore what we hope will be our new home.It seemed almost natural to run into Alyssa Hamel (an MVP, Punk Rock Kickball 1 & 2) within 30 minutes of our arrival. Although I’ve known her for 11 years (since Hampshire College) she has a peculiar penchant for the chance encounter. After months of tsunami relief work on the Thai islands and kicking through Cambodia, Sunday found her on an unplanned trip to Luang Prabang to receive rabies treatment and reconnect with two hapless travelers from her past.

3 Days Ago
Pakbeng, a mountain town on the Mekong, was exploding into bi-level wooden houses with no electricity or plumbing, and looked exactly like a snapshot of the old west. The sticky night was filled with candlelight, and the cresting cacophony of the jungle. A young mother and her son cooked us the best food we’ve had in ages with a mortar and pestle and a Bunsen burner as we watched the promenade on the dirt road. First a crippled child limped down the street, beating a cur with a crutch, followed quickly by a motorcycle collision, which was followed even more quickly by a high-speed motorcycle chase.Replete on exquisite curry, we watched with fascination as the proprietress of our guest house beat lizards from the walls with a broom, only to fling kittens at them, who would of course lazily kill them as is their want.

4 days ago
I love this mountainous jungle. To be clear, I love driving through it in a comfortable van, the spicy scent of flowering vines shunting through the windows interspersed with the smell of fire, of trees burning. I don’t pretend to possess the internal fortitude to have my ardor undiminished by routine leech incinerations or galloping jungle rot or any of the other myriad botherations to be found on foot.We pass nothing for hours but lush green mountain after lush green mountain, and the occasional denuded one, red with embarrassment. That and the sporadic emaciated cow, picking its plodding way down the roadside, heavy horned head dragging in the dirt.We stayed the night in Chiang Khong, and while nothing to moo about architecturally, it is a place singularly abounding in spectacular butterflies – wisps of cerulean and scarlet and a flutter of green swallowtail like a snow globe filled with whirling confetti.

Now is Now – A Personal Aside
Alex is out again looking for work, on initial survey the prospects for employment are grim. My stomach problems have not subsided even with treatment, and I have begun to chalk it up to total gastronomic wussification brought on by too many years of clean Cali cuisine.But I am in love with this beautiful city, with its carious paths and moldy mansions snug between two great rivers. This is where I want to stay, this is what I had hoped, but this is not going to be a place where finding a job will be easy for Alex, with three schools only and all state run. So we cross fingers and toes with thumb on the nose…