June 19th

What is it about rivers that fascinate?

I sat high above the Mekong in a stilt house restaurant, a beer in one hand a book in another, but my eye was always drawn down to the scene below.

Barges were loading and unloading, elephants the same dun colour as the dust continued to slowly haul logs onto a barge, trumpeting and bellowing as their mahoots coaxed them in their labour, with cruel looking steel hooks to dig into their skin.

It always seems wrong somehow to make thee huge, graceful and intelligent beasts labour rather than roam free. I realise that I'm simply anthropomorphising, I recall the working dogs on the farms in Ireland where they were rarely happier than when rounding sheep. The oxen in Thailand and Africa, the donkeys in South America, the horses in Eastern Europe, not all well treated of course, often the contrary, but an elephant is no different to a horse I suppose.

And their strength is undisputed. I remember seeing an elephant in a tug of war contest against fifty humans back in Chiang Mai, I was astounded at the creatures phenomenal power.

Beneath me, a barge was being unloaded by about twenty men, thin gangly creatures, dancing across thin planks with sacks of who knows what up on their skinny shoulders, as they piled a three axled lorry high with the sacks, and boxes and crates.

Several children are kicking a plastic football around on the nearly empty dock, the only other there were dirt covered labourors scractching in a trench with hands and blunt picks, digging some sort of ditch; another woman with a charcoal brazier was frying some pieces of sinewy meat; small naked boys were throwing themselves in and out of the Mekong, shouting in excitement at their frolicking; the clap clap clap of flapping sandalled feet as another child joined them leaping in to join his yabbering friends.

It’s easy to be hypnotized by the lazy river, winding round the bend, a quick glance and you’re suddenly stolen for many minutes at a time, the sawing of lobster size crickets somewhere in the jungle behind somehow fills the scheme and only the sharp cry of a joyful child still plunging himself in and out of the river snaps the moment. The lethargy of the river rubs soon enough onto the soul, and in my stilted house overlooking its gentle flow, a fine mist descends like a soothing curtain, calling the day to an end in a long and slow announcement. Any moment now, mothers will wearily call, bidding the children home; no child can understand why a good day should ever be done by the mere bidding of his parents.

Those loading the lorry are finally done, it’s engines gun, and briefly the lorry crushes into the sand bags used to stop it slipping down the slope and into the river, then the gears grind and catch and the overloaded lorry barely manages to reverse up the rocky road.

The fatigue that had marred much of my day had miraculously lifted as soon as I had found somewhere to sleep for the night. At the Pakbeng dock there are a small army of Laotians, each offering you paradise for a few pence.There doesn’t seem to be much between them, so I go with a young but assuring girl, somehow I trusted her more when she said ‘very clean room’ than some of the others there.

With my over heavy pack, largely due to the fifteen odd books that I carry – I really must lighten the load – my barge legs wobbled as I made my way up a winding dirt track, road would be too kind, and ten minutes later the girl delivered what she promised, clean enough, with the luxury of a fan, not that this was much use as I later found out, as the electricity tended to sputter out for most of the night.

As soon as I saw the bed my tiredness left me and so instead I went to hunt for something to eat.

I passed squalid shops and empty restaurants, in the high season no doubt they would be full, but the lack of people lent a quiet desperation to the obviously poor port. But the locals seemed friendly enough, though not as ingratiatingly friendly as the Thai people. Eventually I located the stilt house with the view over the river, with passably good Indian food of all things, and settled to watch my first night in Laos spend before me.

As I left my musings and said goodnight to cooks and waiters, I turned on the torch and headed back through the inky night to the guesthouse. Everything shut by 10.00pm with bar owners anxiously persuading reluctant visitors to go to bed. Several of us sat chatting on a veranda with a smuggled beer from the bar below, occasionally pestered by grinning men offering bags of ropey dope for our pleasure.

And then as one, we all fell tired, and turned in for what we hoped would be a solid sleep, for the next day was another eight hours of cramped hell on the slowboat along the Mekong.

yechydda