fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

The speedboat rapidly skimmed along the surface of the Mekong as though its waters were frozen; I was on my way out of Laos like Redux on fast-forward but unusually I found myself looking forward to Khao Sarn Road.
An hour earlier at a river-side restaurant I was flicking through my pictures from Laos as a Dutch package-tour group arrived in other ultra-light long-boats powered by screaming engines from hell. In fact it was the same jovially jabbering group that I had waited behind a week earlier at the Thai-Lao 'friendship-border' visa office and because of whom I had missed my Bangkok-organised sheep transport to Vientiane. I looked at their surreally tinted and flickering week-old picture on my camera's humidity damaged LCD and it felt like I was looking at a different world as though through an intense opium dream. I imagined that they must have seen a hundred times as many temples, hilltribes and waterfalls as I had in the same time but I wasn't jealous, I had no regrets. Laos had been worth it; I had seen enough even though I had seen nothing and hadn't budged an inch from the beaten track.
I guess Laos should have been exciting, fascinating and wild to me. And when compared to Thailand it certainly is - the combination of low-season, malaria, poverty and a 'communist' regime seemed to be keeping the visitors at bay slightly, meaning there is still the 'undiscovered'. From Luong Prabang for instance there were the hilltribes to visit, either on a "meet the primitive people" tour (as literally advertised) or by carving up dirt-tracks in the middle of nowhere independently on a motorbike.
Instead I picked up a book at a guesthouse, Graham Greene's The Quiet American, and found that this world of fiction was so much more exciting, fascinating and wild to me than anything I could be seeing in Laos with my own two eyes. In all honesty what was I expecting to do in my limited time there? Ride up to some 'primitive hilltribe people' and gawk at them as though they were Jawas from Tatooine? Did I expect being welcomed by them with open arms, opium pipes and just before leaving back to town being offered (but politely refusing) the chief's beautiful daughter in marriage with a dowry of fifty mountain-goats and one small, white elephant? What could I ever offer them that could possibly enrich their lives? They didn't ask for me to visit them just like they never asked for the wars about communism and drugs that have ravaged their countries and lives for years; Greene's fictional character Fowler had this to say: "they don't want to be shot at, they want one day to be much the same as any other and they don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
The morning after I finished the book I just lay in bed. The roosters were crowing like crazy, it was raining outside and I crawled happily back into the loving arms of sleep and dreams that tasted like softly rolling flowers.
Like every day in Laos I would check out of the guesthouse several hours later, sit in cafes and enjoy Laos vibes (which may be some of the best in the world). There was no-one telling me what I wanted and I carried all my possessions on my body not even psychologically encumbered by a backpack. Thus I floated homelessly through Luong Prabang and its surroundings on my rented bicycle only finding a bed for the night once I needed to sleep. It is an exhilarating feeling of freedom and independence.
But strangely that feeling has not left me now that I'm reunited with my multi-ton backpack and have been drawn back in by the magnetic and etherising pull of Khao Sarn Road. Most people here are still as ugly as they were when I left them a week ago. But maybe I have stopped taking sides like Fowler tried to or I'm looking forward to one day being much the same as any other soon. I am on the home-stretch of this journey but I don't mind, for now I have the keys of Paradise...

[Click here for Album Laos 1 with the photos - nothing of touristic value or otherwise to be found.
Tomorrow morning I'm catching a flight to Kathmandu. It's been nice knowing you South-East Asia, until next time.]