Foreign Devils of the Mekong

Foreign Devils of the Mekong

It seems I have created great confusion with my last post. One road may have ended but we're not quite done yet. But gone is the dust! Gone are the barren plains! For, dear reader, we are now in a world of lush vegetation and unimaginable humidity, watching the monsoon skies explode above our heads.

This new chapter of our trip began on a train in China, a train that headed ever south into stifling valleys of palm and bamboo. This verdant corridor would break now and again to reveal glinting paddies full of coolie-hatted peasants planting rice. [If anyone has less colonial name for the 'coolie' hat, do let me know.] We found ourselves in the southern Chinese town of Jinghong where a diverse population includes Han, Thai and Burmese peoples. Dipping our feet in the Mekong, which was stained luminous colours by the neon of the karaoke bars, we watched the great river flow ever southwards. We took a bus to the border with Laos and crossed into this sleepy little republic. Laos is a place where the people seem to wilt like bamboo, one often has to wake them in order to buy a bus ticket or a bottle of water. Even the name, Laos, is pronounced with an almost feline listlessness.

After a few days, we were standing by the Mekong once more, hoping for a passenger boat to materialise on the lazy brown waters. A morning mist lay on the green hills of the Burmese shore, rain fell on the rattan cabin in which we'd slept. The cabin was a wonderfully authentic affair of rusting fans and mosquito netting. The wooden shutters
would open to a world of green and rain and a wall of sound, raindrops drumming on palm fronds, crickets and cicadas trilling like a thousand tiny machines. As we waited for a boat that would never come, we watched local tribal women hauling sacks of potatoes up the muddy banks from dugout canoes. They wore fantastic headdresses dripping with silver medallions and many were naked from the waist up.

When we finally understood that a boat wasn't going to come, we back-tracked through lanes of stilted rattan houses and wet-nosed water buffalo before catching a bus to Luang Prabang. Our guesthouse there displayed a list of rules from the local police office warning us of potential criminal activities. To my great disappointment, we were not allowed to 'bring drugs, crambling or bringing both women and men which is not your own husband or wife into the room for making love.' This I could just about handle, but the next rule dealt a serious blow to our entertainment plans. We were not allowed to 'bring prostate or others into your accomodation to make sex movies'. I wasn't entirely sure how to prevent my prostate from entering the room without a serious operation but we did put our porn movie plans on ice.

Somehow we managed to enjoy Luang Prabang without resorting to such deviance, relying instead on massages, ornate temples and Lao coffee to keep us entertained. The strange thing in Laos is that a thousand other backpackers have already walked the puddle-ridden streets we now look upon. Laos suffers from a spill-over of fun seeking backpackers from nearby Thailand. People that wear vests sporting the names of their last destination, people that flock to the infamous Vang Vieng to party all day and watch episodes of Friends while smoking opium (I'm not sure which is more mind-rotting). There was a Guardian article recently detailing the madness in Vang Vieng which explained how 26 travellers have died there in the past year after taking drunken dives into the river. The locals are now afraid of the waters, scared that they are cursed with evil spirits. Just idiotic foreign devils. We ended up in a bar in Luang Prabang that was filled with western revellers. Appalling commercial R'n'B pumped out as muscle-bound Aussies played volleyball and fluff-faced backpackers did shots. It felt like a party scene from an American teen movie. Perhaps, we thought, Laos is not the place for us.

Lao culture is already in great danger from its powerful neighbours. China is spreading south with neo-colonialist tendencies, stripping the hills of timber as they pass, Thailand and Vietnam are squeezing in from the flanks. And perhaps we are no better. Though I believe that independent travel (if done sensitively) can be a force for good, in Laos it is bringing the very worst parts of our culture to a little developed country. Sometimes we don't feel like we're even in Laos, just a playground for stoned and drunken westerners. Buddhist monks crossing paths with girls in bikini tops.

While travelling the Silk Road it felt like we had purpose (however illusionary that may have been) and were learning and, to a lesser extent, teaching as we went along. We were never really treated as tourists, simply foreign guests. We now feel like we've fallen into a world of meaningless travel, a world where the backpackers are simply on extended beach holidays. I am possibly being a little superior here (imagine!) and perhaps we cannot so easily separate ourselves from them. However, it doesn't really seem right here and so we're heading southward toward Cambodia. Apparently it's not been entirely colonised by f**kwits just yet. Unless, of course, you count the Khmer Rouge. On that rather tasteless note, I shall bid you farewell and hope that I won't resort to more whinging in the next exciting post...