Women Of Cho (1st draft)

Women Of Cho (1^st draft)

My time in Vientiane, Lao is over. The purpose of going to Lao was to see a friend and his family and also to see if I could finish a first draft of the Women Of Cho. Seeing old friends is always a joy and even more importantly they allowed me to stay and write. I owe gratitude for the time and space.

I’m calling it a first draft but we will see if the editor ‘abides’. There’s still a lot of work to be done. Before I left I took my friends and their son to a restaurant in Vientiane called the Bistro 22 known for its food and French chef. We had to leave a little before schedule due to the child having a chocolate attack. You can imagine the smile on the face on a 10 month old child watching chocolate pour out of a brownie cake and ice cream melting just as fast.

I boarded a plane for Bangkok, Thailand and headed back to familiar ground, Koh Samui and Koh Tao. Since I’ve been here I’ve been diving every day and enjoy seeing many friendly faces that I’ve met in the past. I’ve been here for only a few days but I feel this is also a place I can write as well as enjoy myself with a walk down the beach at sunset or sunrise and still manage to get things done.

I already miss walking down the banks of the Mekong watching the fishermen or boats transporting goods and people up and down the river and of course the sunsets are breath taking.

Another manuscript is taking a loose form in my head. I can see it mystically swimming through a curtain of fog with shapes and shadows coming and going moving like an eel across the rocky ocean floor hunting with a grouper close by. I’m back at Asia Divers Resort allowing the dust to settle around ‘The Women Of Cho’ before a major edit begins.

Another bit of business to attend to while I’m here is Nepal. I leave for Nepal in the near future for two months and luckily for me I have made friends in the past with some trekking guides and hospital volunteers and their previous experience has proven invaluable. They have a tendency to grab a piece of paper and start jotting down places they loved and tell the story as they go. One guide I met at the Strand in Rangoon. This is how my travel guide comes to fruition, people I respect giving information about where they would go if they were going to do it all over again.

It was St. Patrick’s Day here yesterday and I went to a beach party where I knew a friend would be DJ for some serious funk and I could hear it from down the beach. There were lots of green bathing suits, sparkled body painting, food and music. It was a lovely day and the sunset over the Gulf of Siam was filled with smiles and good cheer.

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Highlights Of Lao

Highlights of Lao

The most beautiful thing in Lao, an incredible country, is the Mekong River. A close second are the people, what of amazing people. To the north the mountains are sheer and full of life. The people are the same. It’s an embarrassment to me that we bombed the snot out Lao during the Vietnam conflict and they never even knew who or where we were from.

I left Pai, Thailand around the same time as two English, one from Liverpool and the other from Durham, she’s almost Scottish on our way to the Mekong River and into Lao. They took their own path with a quick stop in Chiang Mai and I turned off and went up to Thaton on the Burma border for another short beautiful boat ride down to Chiang Rai. From Chiang Rai I took an early morning van to the Mekong to the east and boarded a small riverboat to the immigration office for a one-month visa. A quick look around town and off back to the Mekong to board a big boat with more than 50 tourists and locals all heading toward Luang Prabang or Maung Pakbang, the halfway river town.

During the rainy season the Mekong swells its banks and the water runs swift with few major rapids. I found my English friends on the boat and made acquaintances from all over the world within the next two-day journey down the Mekong.

I took so many pictures in Lao its hard to pick the best ones but here are some that follow the story line.

Luang Prabang is a little touristy but definitely worth the time spent there. It’s an international melting pot of construction, food, cultures, and people. South East Asia isn’t known for their bread but France is and it shows up in Lao, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Luang Prabang has an ease about it with cafes, art galleries, and local woven fabric shops.

In the heat of the day, people can take a break at La Pistoche, a public pool area with a restaurant and bar. There’s a bowling alley that has quite the reputation with the young tourists where they party well past curfew and then go immediately to their guesthouses. There’s an Australian Sports Bar where people can find out what their favorite teams are doing and have some great food while doing it.

Some of the waterfalls in the area are amazing and refreshing again to get out of the heat if only for an afternoon. The waterfalls are only a short tuk-tuk ride from Luang Prabang and well worth the afternoon.

We took a bus over hairpin turn dirt roads over the mountains with a couple day stop on the Nong Khiaw River for some caving and sight seeing. It is a quaint little river town right on the main road crossing northern Lao through jutting limestone mountains covered in impenetrable jungle and river valleys.

The bus ride from Nong Khiaw was long and relatively uncomfortable but the scenery made up for it even at night in the torrential rain. There were landslides and fallen trees in our path but we managed without too many delays. We stopped one night in a small town and headed it out the next morning for Viengxay.

 (click on the picture to read)

Viengxay was the communist head quarters for the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Army and Vietnamese communists that were hidden out of sight while the U.S. bombed Vietnam AND Viengxay, Lao, which wasn’t in the war. The caves are an amazing feat of survival and strategically located. Even in the fields the locals would cull their cows and chickens from anything that looked domesticated so the planes flying overhead wouldn’t think there were people living there. A tribute to desire whether right or wrong. We stayed here a few days before going into Vietnam but I came back to Lao twice more and will continue with Lao and get into Vietnam next blog.

Two months later I flew into Vientiane, Lao capital, to visit a high school friend and to get two-two month visas for Thailand. He lives with his beautiful wife and newborn baby and a stack of family support on the banks of the Mekong River. Every night the sun sets to the west over the Mekong and I continued to take pictures of its beauty and of the metropolitan city. Vientiane is growing internationally into a powerhouse of South East Asia complete with massive golf courses and western grocery stores and Beer Lao. I’ll be back.

I flew south to Pakse, which is renovating a large section of its main roads down town and went directly out to 4,000 islands for a couple weeks of writing and exploring. I didn’t have to go far to find a nice place to stay. I do have to go back because I only saw a few islands and I know the deeper I go the more I’m going to like it. Of course ran into a couple from Spain and a couple from England and we had a ball fishing the Mekong and checking out the waterfalls on the Mekong. 

The Khone Phapheng Waterfalls stopped the French from turning the Mekong into a major trade route deep into western China. Explorers were convinced it could be done and spent years surveying, dynamiting, searching for a way past the falls. Time, distance, Malaria, Typhoid, jungle, heat, and rock, all warriors of South East Asia, fought against the explorers. Impressive.

4000 Islands is a tranquil place full of village life and fishing, all focused on the Mekong River and the islands. There are no main roads, just motorcycle and ox cart tracks. Life seems easy.

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Vientiane to 4,000 Islands

I pulled out of Kata Beach in a cab around noon for a flight at 2 pm. It takes about 45 minutes from the south end of Phuket to the International Airport. It was a sorrowful drive with Kings of Leon and earphones. I flew back to Udon Thani and considered a night in town but chose to go to Friendship Bridge and carry on as loosely as I can plan. I ended up crossing the bridge and grabbing a very nice cab driver that felt the need of a stop at the store and get a beer. I thought that was an excellent idea, I even bought him one, if it keeps his concentration on a particular plane.

As we drove I recognized things and then realized I had past my destination. He pulled a U-turn and off we went back the other way. The Friendship Bridge is south of Vientiane; I thought it was north so there were some small difficulties to overcome but with beer anything can be accomplished. J He dropped me off and I scurried through the dark back to what I know and to a house on the Mekong River that I know. The gate was locked and they knew I was coming. I whistled and the gate was opened. All’s well, they didn’t think I’d make it but then again they should have known better.

We spent four days with little Will, two week old baby, and caught up with Will senior and ran into the past for that’s where we know each other best. We watched the Mekong from reclined positions and local Lao food and family. After four days of R&R I hit the 5am taxi to the airport and headed south to Pakse, Lao that I unfortunately missed before. I don’t have a lot of time here but some is going to have to do. I can always come back, and will.

Once in Pakse Airport I asked for a taxi to the southern bus station for either the Tourist bus or a blue taxi truck at 60,000 kip, $7.50 USD, to take me 3 hours to the Mekong and I would sort out my trip into 4,000 Islands. I hadn’t a clue and that’s exactly how I like it. I’m not one to read travel books; it takes all the fun out of it. I am more of a social worker, meet people and talk or introduce myself and just scuff along. On the blue taxi were two from ladies from Wales and one born in Britain and now living in Spain. Great trio, will probably cross their path again by accident and with a smile. At the end of the line we got out and looked for the Mekong River. I had loose intensions of going to Don Khoung but I was dropped off a little south and grabbed onto the three’s coat tails and crossed to Somphamit Guest House, Bane Donekhone, Khong District, Champasak Province Bane. Okay, so I’m on an island in the middle of the Mekong River at high summer, low water. Some of the photos I have show a 15 foot drop from rainy season to now. But now that I am where I am I’ve decided to stay for a few days. I don’t have a lot of time due to a friendship emergency in Bangkok. I want to be there for people when they are in need of me; she’s there and I’m on my way. She’s under the knife the day after I get there.

For now I’ve got a few days of uncluttered exploring. THE waterfall, Khone Pha Pheng, is coming tomorrow; its said to be the biggest in South East Asia, oh, did I say it’s on the Mekong and the French tried to find a way past it for a really long time of exploration to no avail. Sorry boys dynamite was not the answer, nor portaging really a consideration. The waterfall is 1 kilometer wide and drops 15 meters.

All the foreigners here are terrified of Malaria and Dinghy fever, well I’m from California but have been living in Alaska long enough to know what cold is and so forth. Everyday at this time of year in South East Asia is a sweating contest. You don’t have to move and it will come and you win, it’s like breaking a fever every day and you must drink water . . , or beer. It is not Malaria season and Dinghy is always present primarily by mosquito.

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Phuket to Koh Phi Phi

Phuket to Koh Phi Phi

I boarded a taxi van from my Garden House Hotel and the driver drove me to the pier near Phuket town and it took about an hour and one half to get to Koh Phi Phi. Inside the boat people slept, read books, listened to music, played on their ever-present phones and chatted with friends. On the outside above deck people sat half in the sun and cooled by the breeze. Beer was flowing on the upper deck. I chatted with a couple women from England, a guy from Italy, a couple from Australia and we had a quick and painless ride to Koh Phi Phi.

I didn’t have any reservations for a place to stay but during slow season you really don’t need one. I pulled into a travel agency and got all my questions answered and a man showed up with a push cart and a few of us loaded our bags into it and we followed the man to where we ere staying, The Mountain View. It seemed like the furthest away but the views were great of the bay and nighttime entertainment on the beach.

I was only planning on staying a couple days so I had to make the most of it. Of course I walked the beach at night where people played with fire, slack lined, juggled, sprayed flames into the night sky, and spun sparks all under an electronic throb of music. Each bar has it’s own ways and means of getting people to sit and watch the entertainment and the place still seemed packed with people, even in the off season. Of course the crowd is half my age and can wake up after 4 hours and start all over again. I don’t fit into that category anymore.

I took an evening snorkeling trip with about thirty other tourists all with smiles and a beer in their hand. It was 100 degrees again direct sunlight is to be avoided for long periods of time. You WILL burn. We saw monkeys playing on the limestone cliffs, snorkeled in blue clear water, jumped off the boat, walked through jungle to small empty beaches, had a simple dinner on the boat and watched the sunset. Everybody chose to meet at one Banana Bar which would really make a bartenders night.

Koh Phi Phi has fishing, snorkeling, scuba diving, boxing and training, boat tours of the neighboring islands and beaches, etc. During the day people are pretty scarce due to the heat but when the sun goes down everybody converges on the beach for a multitude of parties and entertainment.

My hotel had a pool that over looked the bay and beach so even at night one could stay in the fray and have a good time watching from afar with a beer of other refreshment in hand.

A relaxing breakfast with bag packed I returned to Phuket for a brief tour up to the big Buddha that watches over the southern half of the island. From Kata Beach it’s about 45 minutes to the top, from Phuket town its 30 minutes and worth a visit on a clear day.

Tomorrow I cross the Friendship Bridge back into Lao via Udon Thani to Vientiane. The bus takes about an hour to get to the border. $35 bucks for a visa and have exact change, because they give back nothing, just something to keep in mind.

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