“Oh, come on Johnny, let’s see if he’ll negotiate now.” I started towards Saechao.
“Hey, what did you find out? What did the other boats say?” Johnny didn’t sound very hopeful, probably because I was already walking towards the restaurant.
“They pretty much refused to talk to me. They all told me to talk with him. He seems to be the godfather of the local speedboat mafia. We don’t have much choice here.”
I walked up to Saechao who now had a huge grin across his face.
“Song hoi hasib pahn kip,” he held out his hand with the air of one who knows he will get what he wants. He pointed at each of us and said slowly in turn “Song hoi hasib pahn kip.” His grin threatened to spread beyond his narrow face.
I pulled the wad of cash out of his pocket. “Song hoi pahn kip” I said as I handed it over. Saechao was all business as he counted the stack of notes.
“Okay,” he said and motioned to Johnny that he should pay next. Johnny handed him another stack of notes.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said pulling my camera from my bag “I gotta get a picture of this.” The pirate kept his big grin for the camera and held my notes while Johnny aped a pleading posture and held out the second stack.
Snap, the picture alone was worth the $40 he was asking.
Saechao counted Johnny’s wad. He motioned, irritated, “Hasib pahn kip.” He held out his hand for more money.
“No,” Johnny said, “Same, same.” He motioned to the two piles. I started to get an uneasy feeling. I’d only counted off fifty thousand from the top, not bothering to count the big pile.
“Wait a minute,” I reached for the first stack of bills, “Let me count that.” In a minutes time I no longer felt like smiling. “I apparently gave him 250,000. Fuck, I only counted fifty from the top…fuck it man, lets just pay him. We lose. It’s only $5 each.”
“Right,” Johnny said taking his 200,000 back, "But it’s the principle, I refuse to give this scoundrel my money. I’ll find someone else and pay them instead.” He walked out back to the street and stood by the packs with an offended look on his face.
“I’m gonna pay him Johnny. Fuck it. He’s the only game in town. C’mon it’s not worth it to get pissed off.” I handed the pile of cash back to Saechao who was still grinning. He motioned a dismissive gesture at Johnny and took the money, walking up the street to a rickety cantina where he changed the whole stack for a relatively small amount of Thai baht with an old Lao woman who drank whiskey from a dirty mason jar. He motioned to me and two old women inside the canteen and started down towards the boats.
“C’mon Johnny, just pay him,” I grabbed my pack and followed Saechao and the other passengers. Johnny’s face was set in an expression of English resolve. I was torn between staying with my stubborn friend or taking what I now realized was the only way out of this tourist hell. I figured Johnny might change his mind as he saw me get on the boat.
Saechao stowed the pack and the women’s colorful tarp bags in the front and indicated where we should sit. I stood on top of the sand dune and gestured to the irresolute Johnny who still stood on the hilltop like a statue, his body language indicating that he was thoroughly pissed off.
“C’mon Johnny… Fuck it… just c’mon!” I yelled it up the hill and saw my friend’s resolve crumble as he grabbed his pack and trotted down the hill to where Saechao was getting ready to cast off. Johnny held the money towards him but now the pirate simply shook his head. He wouldn’t let Johnny on the boat now.
“Oh, c’mon, give me a break!” I stepped out of the boat, grabbed Johnny’s pack and put it in the front with the other baggage. At this point, Saechao started to protest but then decided to take the Englishman’s money and made room for him in the narrow vessel.
It was about 15 feet long, painted bright yellow, and just wide enough to allow one person to sit in it. We four passengers sat in a line with our legs pulled tightly in front of us. Me first, then a middle aged woman, then the older woman, then Johnny, and in the back, the pirate, directly in front of the huge motor which extended the prop another 15 feet beyond the end of the craft on a metal pole. The engine made a high pitched, ultra loud mosquito sound as he started it.
The boat pulled back from the Lao shore and edged to the center of the Mekong, midway between Laos on one side and Burma on the other. I looked closely to see if there was any difference in the noticeable landscape or architecture but saw two sides of the same river. Both equally victim to massive slash and burn agriculture, both nestling equally impoverished villages, both victims of the poverty that gripped the entirety of the Golden Triangle, the area of the world where the majority of heroin is produced.
The only visible difference was the Burmese flag that flew on one side and the lack of any flag at all on the Lao side. The invisible difference was that Burmese rebels were extremely thick along this part of the river and atrocities, gunmen, and rebellion might be happening anywhere in the dense jungle that lay along the banks. Suddenly I realized a bullet could easily find it’s way into my head. I kept the thought to myself but hoped Saechao would drive quickly.
My hopes were quickly realized as Saechao brought the boat up to what seemed an extremely unsafe speed. The shallow keel of the boat kept us seemingly hovering on top of the water and the slightest wave or rapid threatened to send us careening out of control into one of the gigantic rock forms that Saechao jetted us through. The spray soaked me and the baggage riding in the front of the boat. It occurred to me that perhaps I should be scared, but the ride was too thrilling. To be zipping between river carved formations in a pirate speedboat down the Mekong. It sounded too fantastic to be real, but it was, and that made it thrilling.
The boat stopped first at a small Burmese village. Saechao pulled the boat close to the shore where some rocks blocked out the illegal landing from any authorities who might be watching. I reached out and touched the ground, excited to be momentarily making contact with a foreign country without any sort of official permission. No visa, no customs, just my hand grabbing Burmese rock. The middle aged woman grabbed her rainbow colored tarp bag and stepped onto the rocks. Saechao pushed the boat back out to the center of the river and resumed the high-speed journey.
The next woman was dropped off a short distance further at a Lao village where naked children dove from rotting dugout canoes and the villagers lined up on the ridge top to see who was coming. The woman’s family came down and waited for her and her many bags and boxes. I stepped out of the boat and helped the woman ashore while Johnny started to haul her bags to her waiting friends and family.
“Kop jai lai lai,” she sang to us as the boat pulled out, “”La kwarn.” Thank you, goodbye.
Local passengers gone, the pirate began to pilot his boat like a daredevil. Zipping past slow freighters, zig zagging in and out of hulking boulders, and splashing through massive rapids that filled the compartment housing Johnny and my bags with river water. We were soaked too. The pirate laughed as each new wave of water crashed into us over the bow.
He zoomed by a freighter heading up river and I lifted my hand in a wave to the man sitting on the boats bow. The man started to wave, saw whose boat it was, and lifted his fist in the air, shaking it and spitting what sounded like curses after me. He seemed to know the dread pirate Saechao, he seemed to know him and to hate him.
For the first time, I began to seriously worry. This guy was bad news. His laughter as the packs were slung around the front of the boat was menacing. In my worried state I scarcely noted when the Burmese riverbank disappeared and the Thai riverbank began. There were no markers for the invisible political boundary. One moment it was a landscape of desolation and smoking hillsides and the next it was giant golden temples, double decker tourist buses, and newly paved roads. The change was immediate and strangely surreal.