Ferry Across the Mekong: Travels in Laos

I was in Louangphabang
over the January full moon–the last couple days of waxing and the first
few of waning. So the old royal capital of Laos–now a backwater outpost
with just a trickle of Westerners passing through to see the wats and the palace
of King Sisavangvong–was bathed in moonlight, the temples and the crumbling
colonial architecture washed over in paleness, the palm branches dark silhouettes
against the blue night. And for fun, I would venture into the streets looking
for monks to talk to.

The onset of
night was the only item on my agenda. I would walk up the steps to the stupa
at the top of Mount Phou Si–said not Foo See, but Pussy–and watch
the sun set in the green hills lining the Mekong River; I would descend as an
overwhelming orange seeped from the crack of the west–the trail of the
sun–and by the time the orange was bleeding into pink I would be walking
down Samsenthai Road (literally, 300,000 Thais, which was the population
of Laos when Samsenthai was King). These dusks were astonishing–unbelievable
colors streaked across clouds that loomed like billowy hallucinations.

I was staying
at the Auberge Calao, a Portuguese villa near the edge of the town, near the
promontory where the Nam Khan tributary is swept into the Mekong. There’s
an old wat standing on the tip–Wat Xieng Thong–and on the opposite
bank gardens carved in steps into the slope. From there stretched rolling hills
of jungle for eternity, and China beyond. When the pink light turned purple
I would be standing on the Auberge’s balcony. The moon came up and its
light was on the Mekong’s dark water, which rushed south to Vientiane,
to Phnom Penh, to Saigon.

When the sun
still stands a few degrees above the river the temple gongs start sounding.
There are something like 20 wats in the old town of Louangphabang–holiness
is the local industry, the monks absolutely everywhere in their orange robes–and
standing in the midst of it, the solemn clanging sounds at all distances from
all directions, like a transcendental exercise in surround-sound. Then the monks
file into the sims–the gathering-halls of the wats–and start chanting.
It is the most absolutely transfixing sound. My first night there, I was at
a cafe sipping Lao coffee–the blackest, suspended in supersweet condensed
milk–and I heard the singing faintly in the dark. I was just drawn to it.
When I found it, I stood there listening outside the temple gate when it occurred
to me I didn’t have to stand there; I could walk down the road and pass
10 wats from which the same chants were emanating.

It’s a
weird and magical place; still, I found the Lao to be less immediately forthcoming
than the Khmer were when I was in Cambodia the week before. And I was alone–though
mostly I was hanging out with the guitar on the Auberge balcony, writing verses
for songs I was unable to finish back home; there was a nagging need for a minimum
of personal contact. I learned, as I did in Cambodia, the starkest essentials
of speech–Hello, how are you? Thank you–and would wander up and down
the backroads, the residential stretches where languid Lao folk sat idling on
mats in the open first levels of their houses. Sabaidee, I said, and the guy’s
face would light up in the warmest way. Sabaidee! It was the most retarded vacation
I had ever been on; I spent hours staring at the Mekong passing by from my balcony,
scratching a word down here or there, and then I would go out searching for
people to say hello to. And a week of nothing but shouting greetings to strangers
was the most bizarrely satisfying holiday I’d ever had.

I took a liking
to a cafe on the main drag, Sisavangvong Road, a quiet boulevard of old French
and Chinese shophouses, exuding a decrepit elegance, that stretched from the
Phou Si to the Wat Xieng Thong. The place was called Le Potiron–the Pumpkin–but
I’m certain that the Lao script on the sign read The House of Gay Waiters.
There was a little strip of bistros there, actually, seemingly staffed by an
amorphous squad of slender Lao boys in eye makeup who appeared to be freelancers,
switching from joint to joint. I would order the soup from one guy, who would
swish off into the kitchen, and another guy, kitted out like a Williamsburg
hipster, would emerge, place the bowl down, and dash into the restaurant next
door, his hips swaying.

European backpackers
would occasionally drift down the road, Hammer-pantsed and t-shirted, looking
a little beaten up, possibly by the unfortunate phenomenon of opium tourism.
It’s baffling to me that I can look into the googly eyes of someone, see
him shuffling and stumbling, dirty-faced and woozy, and think–I want to
be that guy. Journaling as I waited for the soup to come, I had to keep reminding
myself of the time that heroin tacked up an eviction notice on my heart, bulldozed
it and put up a strip mall.

There was an
idiot who tended to inhabit that stretch, too, some disturbed Lao soul who frolicked
maniacally between the shops and the cafes. He came up to me once while I was
eating pumpkin soup and made some frenzied inquiry of me in Lao, slurring with
a fat tongue, and I shrugged in bewilderment. I thought he was hitting me up
for change, but in fact he was trying to converse with me; finally I said something
to the effect of, Look, man, I don’t understand a thing you’re saying,
and he answered me in Lao as if we were actually having a conversation.

 

Strolling
toward the Mekong,
down a side street where wooden Lao houses were clung to by vines like beards
of shadow, I passed a gang of monks lolling in front of their wat in the moonlight.
How are you! How are you! they called to me.

I stopped.
There were four of them, stretched out lazily on the steps. None of them could
have been older than 19. Their heads and eyebrows were shaved and their limbs
were sharp adolescent shapes in their orange robes.

Where are you
going? one asked.

I’m going
to eat, I said.

Eat! he said,
merrily. I don’t eat since noon! You eat for me!

I’ll eat
for you, I said.

All the monks
laughed–such a warm and lovely sound.

It much impressed
me how these kids could stand the hardships of a monk’s life–begging
for their rice, not being able to touch a woman–if you’re a woman
and you need to hand something to a monk, you have to put it on the ground near
him and let him pick it up–the intense lessons in Pali and Sanskrit, not
being able to eat after midday. Considering my own dissolute hipster years in
college it’s doubly astonishing to me. The chief pleasure of some monks’
lives, I discovered, was trying to ensnare Western tourists into English conversation.

I figured out
that after the chanting was the best time to find them, so I started actively
searching for them after a bowl of pumpkin soup at the House of Gay Lao Waiters.
Sometimes their bag of English phrases was limited–monks shouting Good
Morning! at the strolling tourist in the dusk. Other times I had fabulous conversations
with these kids that as 14-year-olds had given up everything in their lives
to study the teachings of Buddha, and to whom the identity of an English-speaker
was absolutely as first-class supergroovy as an American kid might find being
gifted at snowboarding or website design.

All the conversations
followed a basic form: Where are you from? New York. Oh, United States. How
old are you? Thirty. Are you married? No.

Ohhhhhhh, said
the monks with sudden nervous embarrassment.

On my last
night I was there I decided I was sick of looking like a loser to the monks,
and they asked, are you married? I said Yes. Oh! They said. Do you have children?
No, I said.

Ohhhhhhh, said
the monks with doubled nervous embarrassment.

 

I did a
couple touristy things–went to the palace, which is a museum now.
There’s a Soviet-built iron statue of Sisavangvong, who looks like an blazing-eyed,
crew-cut, 9-foot-tall wizard-king in an outfit assembled from a bellhop’s
uniform and silk knickers, standing on the lawn. Across from it there’s
a wat that appears to have walls encrusted with emeralds–it glints blindingly
when the morning mist dissipates and the sun is just right. In the palace itself
there are throne rooms and sub-throne-rooms with huge gilt pillows, and a hall
of gifts from foreign powers that includes a tiny Lao flag–the old, royalist
kind, with three elephants–that went to the moon on Apollo XI, and a piece
of moon rock on a plaque signed Richard Nixon, 1973. There are trinkets from
Soviet space expeditions there, too–Sputnik trophies that look like medieval
weapons–presented to Sisavang Vattana, the last Lao king. Which, along
with the statue outside, is a little peculiar, considering that the monarchy
was ousted by a communist uprising in 1975. There is a glass case displaying
the keys to American cities–Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and a
medal bearing the seal of New York state. The key to Knoxville is a crude wooden
thing that looks like it was made by a seventh-grader in shop class.

There wasn’t
anything else quite as interesting to me as the gift room–some Lao mosaics,
another image–a painting–of the awesome, massive, demonic-looking
Sisavangvong, and the old royal bedroom, a lonely, windowless room with a huge
wooden sleigh-bed presided over by a big photo of Sisavang Vattana, who looks
melancholy and withdrawn, like a banker with a broken heart.

I took a long
skinny motorboat up the Mekong to see the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas at Pak
Ou. After a two-hour ride upstream, I blinked at the Buddhas a couple times–they
give you a flashlight and let you walk into the sooty hole–and got back
on the boat. There were water buffalo oafing along the dirt shoreline. Some
of the trees right on the river showed massive, tangled root systems that lay
underwater when the Mekong bloats in the wet season. On either side were towering
limestone formations with wild lushness racing up their sides. Occasionally
a jet boat–garishly painted in smooth airbrush colors, with a rudimentary
Union Jack decal on the side and a giant rocket-like exhaust pipe, shiny chrome,
pointing out the back–would roar by, chock-full of Japanese tourists in
crash helmets. My narrow wooden boat, putting down the Mekong, would rock alarmingly
in their wake. The boat’s pilot, crammed up against a steering wheel in
the very tip of the craft, was comically serene.

But these days
were diversions, mostly done because I felt a strange touristic pressure to
do something–a fleeting pressure anyway. My average day in Louangphabang
was a little more esoteric, and poetic–lingering in front of a wat, the
sky above blue and flawless. The top spike of a golden stupa poking above the
trees. The sun, almost down, luminous behind a lattice of leaves–the sharp-shining,
waning, pale orange sun. And a child running up and down the street, pulling
a kite fashioned from a pink plastic bag.

My last night
I went trolling for monks and was mostly unsuccessful–though I saw a Lao
guitarist in a darkened housefront, strumming and crooning some Lao ballad.
Sabaidee! I called. Rock on!

Ha ha! he yelled
back. Sabaidee! Rock on! Good Morning!

I finally found
some monks at the top of the steps leading up to the Wat Xieng Thong–it’s
a giant staircase, guarded by monstrous stone lions, that leads all the way
down the cliff to the lapping lip of the river.

I climbed the
steps, calling to them. The moon had waned sufficiently that a few clear stars
were visible in the night. The hills across the Mekong were blue outlines. There
was an enormous cloud sailing sluggishly past the moon–magnificent, and
edged with platinum moonlight.

How are you?
I asked.

I am–unhappy,
said one monk.

He makes a
joke, said another monk. He will be in the wat his whole life.

Are you unhappy
that you’re in the wat your whole life?

Ahhhhhhh, says
the unhappy monk, waving off the rough question, and laughs a nervous laugh.

There were
three of them standing there. The unhappy monk wore a blood-colored robe. The
other two were in orange–one of them, looking not just a little like Jughead,
stood there silently with his mouth hanging open. He wore a knit, ochre balaclava
at a kind of cool-kid angle, such that the cap covered half his face. The third
monk was very cordial.

I asked the
cordial monk his name and he said: Andy. And I thought–how funny that a
Lao name should sound like such a banal Western name. I turned to Jughead. What’s
your name?

Bob, he said.

The angsty
monk in the blood-colored robe stomped off, and Bob and Andy and I sat there,
talking about the monk life, and my pretend wife that I told them I had.

Are you happy
being at the Wat Xieng Thong? I asked, looking at the sim, and the little room-sized
side chapels beside it–surely this is one of the most beautiful houses
of worship in the world.

It is good,
and sometimes it is bad, said Andy.

And we three
had a grand evening–Andy eagerly brought out his English textbook and I
critiqued his pronunciation as he read aloud rudimentary tales of Alice who
lives in Brisbane with her sister, Sarah, and who likes to ride her bicycle
and to go dancing. At one point I was trying to teach him how to pronounce the
Western "L" and there two monks and I stood, on the stairway to the
Wat Xieng Thong, in the shadow of the stupa, under the stars, in the moonlight,
going Luh-luh-luh-luh-luh-luh-luh…

It really was
a fantastic time.

We will go
with you to the airport tomorrow, said Andy.

And so they
did. The three of us piled into the back of a tuk-tuk–a kind of wagon welded
to the back of a motorcycle to create a single chimeric vehicle; in Savannakhet,
in the south of Laos, they call them "Sakayalobs," after a perceived
resemblance to Skylab–and hurtled in this rickety thing toward my flight
to Vientiane. Bob asked to try on my sunglasses–big chunky Gucci ones,
like the grooviest robot in history might wear–and he did, and was absolutely
delighted; he leaned his head back and grinned like a petite Lao Ray Charles.

Are you allowed
to own things?

O-own? repeated
Andy hesitantly.

Are you allowed
to have possessions?

Oh–said
Andy–no. Only the abbot can have–possessions.

And I thought–fuck
it. I said: Bob, I want you to keep those sunglasses. Then I pulled my paperback
of East of Eden out of my bag and handed it to Andy and said, So you
can have something to read in English. And then I gave them both copies of a
CD of music I had written.

There was a
terrible moment–a stunned silence. I had figured that if they weren’t
allowed to accept gifts they’d politely turn them down. But this was a
dynamic shift that seemed to drop from outer space; a mood of shock and tremendous
gravity.

I would like–to
thank you–from the bottom of my heart, said Andy, grasping for the English
formalities. And your wife–when you are with her again–to send my
greetings to her, and to hope that she also will someday come to Louangphabang.

When we got
there, everybody shook hands and I took some pictures, and Bob and Andy got
back in the tuk-tuk and sped down the dusty road back to the Wat Xieng Thong–with,
it seemed to me, a kind of sense of relief.

I met an Australian
biologist on the plane–he sought me out because I was carrying a guitar,
and he was looking for an American who might be able to explain to him the meaning
of the word "hobo." I told him the puzzling tale of the embarrassed
monks and he sighed with a kind of friendly condescension.

There is nothing
ruder to the Lao than to decline a gift, he said. And monks aren’t allowed
to own anything other than three pieces of clothing and a begging bowl. I’m
afraid you put them in a bad spot.

I was devastated
that I did something so obtuse, that I fucked up a beautiful hang so thoroughly.
And as the plane traced the muddy, mighty waters of the Mekong 100 miles, to
the very edge of Thailand, I thought–Ah. It’s not so bad. I can always
write Andy and Bob and tell them that I didn’t realize the depth of my
faux pas. After all, Andy gave me his e-mail address.