I wasn’t sure how much time passed while I drifted in and out of incredible worlds of color, but when I emerged it was to a very different landscape than the one I had been mentally criticizing since I arrived in Asia from Seattle two months before.
I stopped noticing the lack of sanitary facilities, I quit being embarrassed when I came upon old women washing themselves in the river, and I lost all interest in sitting in the guesthouse restaurant with fellow travelers and playing cards while the Lao people served beers and banana pancakes. I had gone bamboo.
And now I stood on my porch wanting to escape the giggling French couple in the next bungalow, wanting to howl with the tribes as lightning flashed age old fears across the visor of my humanity.
Fear of a different sort held me in stasis. My civilized mind told me of the impossibility of becoming anything other than a civilized American from Seattle. It told me everything I couldn’t do, but offered no positive alternatives.
I was in a dilemma, the monkey brain tying the human consciousness up in knots so that I didn’t even notice as the beast removed my clothing, wrapped the sarong around my waste and walked me into the chaos of my senses where the people howled with fearful joy.
The Dread Pirate Saechao
A half million kip to take us from Xiangkok to Huey Xai on the Mekong River.
“Song hoi hasib phanh kip,” the one eyed man said pointing at me and then at Johnny as he said it again. Two hundred and fifty thousand kip…each.
“No,” Johnny said in his perfect Oxford English, “ I refuse to give this…pirate…so much. He won’t even bargain with us.” He tried one last time, however. “Si Hoi Pan Kip.” He consulted his phrasebook and then said it again pointing at us both.
It was only a savings of one hundred thousand kip, or $10 US, but it was the principle. We couldn’t maintain face if we paid the full fare the speedboat man had asked for to begin with. By refusing to bargain with us he was sneering in our faces, showing his contempt for our skin, our race, and our attempts at bargaining.
Saechao smiled broadly and shook his head. “Ha hoi pan kip.” Half million, firm. He reached under his eye patch and turned away from the Englishman and me to go back to the table where he had been eating his lunch.
“Hey, it’s no problem,” I said in my bright American way. “We’ll find another boatman, somebody who will haggle with us, hell, maybe we could even take a slow boat all the way to Luang Prabang. Let’s go get something to eat and then we’ll find another boat.”
“I don’t see many other boatmen around here,” Johnny surveyed the dusty streets of the village.
The Mekong River flowed brownly through the deep gorge below. Twisted rock formations lay like shipwrecks scattered through the water. The village was made up of a half dozen open sided restaurants built on bamboo platforms leaning over the cliffs. The restaurants were little more than a wood barrel stove, bamboo mats, low tables, and a roof. We picked up our backpacks and trudged up the dusty street in search of a cool resting spot from the blistering Lao sun.
We’d arrived an hour earlier after a bumpy ride from Muang Singh by a combination of truck and bus on the semi developed dirt roads which connect one tiny Northern Lao town with another one. Just holding on to the truck itself had been an incredible physical feat that left us both exhausted and dirty.
The feeling of elation at finally seeing the Mekong was quickly replaced with exasperation when Saechao was the only one who would talk with us about transport to Huey Xai. Negotiations had led nowhere despite our attempts at bargaining, pleading, and finally humorous exasperation. Which left us in our present circumstances.
Walking across a swaying bamboo floor it felt like the weight of our packs would bring us tumbling down the cliffs and into the filthy Mekong.
We’d read that morning about the “speedboat mafia” in Xiangkok. The corrupt river men who extorted money from travelers and intimidated all competition into sending foreign business to them. We’d taken the warnings in Lonely Planet lightly, figuring that two seasoned travelers such as ourselves would be able to skirt any potential price gouging.
The restaurant too was overpriced and the villagers had none of the friendly looks other Lao people had seemed defined by.
“Chicken fried rice, please” Johnny pointed at the menu.
“No chicken,” the woman told him.
“Pork fried rice then,” he feeling slightly offended that the menu was inaccurate.
“No pork,” she told him.
“What do you have then?” he asked.
“Chicken and vegetables,” she said.
“I thought you had no chicken, I’ll have the chicken fried rice, please.” Johnny was beginning to feel slightly persecuted.
“No chicken,” she said again, “Chicken and vegetables.”
He started to argue, realized the futility and nodded his head. “Okay, chicken and vegetables.” She stepped three feet away to prepare the food.
“What do we do now mate?”
I held back the laugh I felt inside me. “Well, I figure we eat, then we go back and offer him 200,000 kip each. Give him time to think he lost us. Hey, all I’ve got is travelers checks, do you have enough to loan me 200,000.” It felt ridiculous to ask for such a huge amount of money.
Johnny pulled a paper sack out of his side bag and dumped it on the table. Three two inch thick piles of 5000 kip notes. “Here’s 250,000. Pull fifty thousand from the pile and put it in your other pocket. If he won’t take 400,000, we can offer him 450.” The food arrived. The portions were small and the taste was bland. “It might be worth getting ripped off just to get out of here.” I looked at the small table on the other side of the restaurant where three old men were glaring at us. “This doesn’t feel like a very friendly place.”
We finished up our food and walked back down the street. We put our packs down and when Saechao looked like he was going to get up we motioned to him and he sat back down with a grin.
“Now, you stay here with the packs, and I’m going to go down to the water and see if those other boatmen will give us a ride,” I said, “It’ll be good to let him know we’ve got other options.”
I scrambled down the rocky cliff to the waterline where three slow boats and a half dozen cigar shaped yellow speedboats were tied up. I stopped when I got to the waters edge and watched as a man stripped down to his underpants, waded into the river, and began moving the speedboats so that his slow boat could push out to the water.
“Hey, um, excuse me…” the swimmer looked up at me “You go Huey Xai? Huey Xai? Rakkha thao dai?” How much? The man frowned and looked at the water.
“No. No Huey Xai. Saechao. You..Saechao Huey Xai.” He refused to say anything more, just gesturing up the hill where I could see the pirate eating his noodles and looking down at me. I could see Johnny talking to two other river men in the street. Maybe he was having more luck. I tried to talk to three more boatmen with the same result. Each time they frowned and pointed up to the now laughing Saechao. Nobody would deal with us. Nobody but the pirate.
Finally, disappointed and frustrated, I climbed the hill to find Johnny attempting to negotiate a price with the two men. They refused to budge from the initial price.
“I checked on a bus, mate, and it seems there is only one each day. We’re stuck here until tomorrow unless we pay these scoundrels. They won’t budge. I refuse to pay that much.”