November 28, 2014
A rest day in Nong Khiaw: And a key moment for my relationship with Dea
With Suzy and Dino planning to take another rest day in Nong Khiaw it made perfect sense for Dea and I to do the same. The small town was in an almost unbelievably picturesque setting on the banks of the Nam Ou and seeing as our guesthouse had a balcony with the best view in town, not to mention hammocks, I was happy to settle in for a while. The town itself was overrun with white faces, evidently with it being such a beautiful location and a jumping off point for boat trips up the river it had become a popular choice with the Lonely Planet crowd. I couldn't help feeling that the town may have lost some of its charm as a result of this, but it did mean we could enjoy a little more variety in our diet than the standard rice or noodles that we had become accustomed to. Pizza, burgers, fresh bread, and fruit shakes were some of the things on offer to cater to the whims of a western crowd. We indulged.
Somehow mustering the collective energy to steal ourselves from our hammocks and away from our pineapple shakes, in the afternoon we decided to cycle out to take a look at some nearby caves. Although I should just add, before anyone mistakenly becomes too impressed by this unexpected show of energy, that the caves were only two kilometres from our beds.
We paid a fairly nominal amount for a ticket to see the caves and were the only ones there, save for a couple of Vietnamese men that lurked rather optimistically around in the darkness in the hope that we would pay them to act as our tour guides. We might have thrown a few kip their way had they been able to speak any English, or been able to tell us anything at all about the caves, or if they had done anything at all more than simply trail along behind us. As for the caves, they weren't so very special, but they were certainly quite big. The most interesting thing about them was that they provided a sheltered place to hide for the local people during the Second Indochina War. You probably know this war more commonly as the 'Vietnam' War, a name that fails to recognise that the war was not confined to Vietnam, and that the actions of the Americans in Northern Laos represented the heaviest bombing campaign in history. 270 million subminitions were dropped on Laos, an estimated 30 percent of which failed to explode. Forty years on and tragically 300 people are still killed every year in this country because of these unexploded bombs. That's why we weren't doing much wild camping.
After thinking about these sad and humbling things it was nice to be reminded by some of the local children that the world is also filled with happiness and joy. There was a river at the foot of the caves that had a fallen tree trunk across it, which somebody dared me to walk across. I'm a silly man, and so I decided to attempt it. All was going well until I got halfway across to a point where the trunk went under the water. Partially submerged under fast-flowing water it looked terribly slippery and I knew that one mistake and I would tumble into the the ice-cold water and be carried away by it to certain embarrassment. I felt like this was a key moment for my relationship with Dea - succeed and she would see what a brave and heroic man I was, fall and she would understand the truth. But looking at this dangerous slippery section I honestly wasn't sure if I could do it.
And then, out from nowhere, a young rapscallion of a boy came suddenly dancing along the log towards me. At first I thought maybe he had come to help, but then he turned away from me and began to crawl up a branch of the tree that was protruding up at a 45 degree angle from the prone trunk. He climbed it with the skill of a monkey until he was high in the air and then, to my abject horror, he stood up on the branch and started jumping up and down. The effect of this was to make the whole tree rock and shake, and I was now in terrible peril, at any moment I could be shaken into the water and Dea's illusion of me as something other than a hopeless fool was sure to be broken. I crouched down and held on. What was this jungle-boy doing?! Didn't he know what was at stake here? I clung on for all I was worth. Then the boy, looking for all the world like Mowgli, suddenly swung down, held onto the branch and dangled by his arms briefly, before catapulting himself into the river below. Relieved to be no longer held captive by this young tormentor I edged my way along the slippery part of the log and across to the safety of the other bank.
Because I was now sweating from the anxiety of this stressful experience I myself also jumped into the river for a cooling swim back to my no-doubt-very-impressed friends on the other side. As I was in the middle of doing so a couple more children arrived, the most notable being a young boy of about six, who I looked up to see charging full throttle, and fully nude, across the grass towards the water. He came at it at quite a sprint and fairly steamrollered into it, half-diving and half-tripping his way amidst a flurry of flailing limbs and splashing water into the river before me. Laughter filled the air, and everything was just fine.
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28/11/14 - 5km (unloaded)
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