Down the Mekong

The trip down the Mekong was amazing! We were loaded on a long wooden “slow boat” with about 100 other backpacker types. The average passenger is 20 years our junior and Maya and Zak are the only kids on board. We got a late start and are loaded well beyond the maximum seating capacity. Many of the kids are sitting on the gunwales. One has a guitar and softly provides a pleasant soundtrack to the images of water buffalo on the shore and young monks splashing in the river while their companions perch among the orange robes on the rocky beach. The trip turned out to be one of those zen parenting (parenting by not parenting) moments. For two days the kids were exposed to a cosmopolitan pile of young adults laying about, playing cards, and drinking Thai Whiskey and Beerlao. Our kids, outgoing and attractive as they are, were soon enlisted in the card games and even sent from one party to another to beg or steal bottles of Thai Whiskey when supplies began to dwindle; I’m not sure whether I should be proud of their forthrightness or embarrassed by the activities. In either case, we had two beautiful sunny days for cruising down the Mekong. Laos is the only landlocked country in SE Asia and the poorest. The Mekong snakes along and through the entire country. It provides food, water, transportation, and ties the country together. I was surprised at how rocky and narrow the river was in places and not at all surprised that boat traffic shut down at night. We spent the night at the little river town of Pakbeng. Pakbeng is the kind of rural outpost where the power is only on from six in the evening until midnight. In Pakbeng I was again reminded how the Laotians do not display the same type of pleasantness as the Thais. I was lied to by touts trying to get me to visit their hotels, lied to by touts trying to get me to buy boat tickets, etc., etc. Life must just be harder requiring more guile.

The next day it was back on the river. It was hard to believe I was actually on this big old wooden boat, floating down the Mekhong, drinking beerlao, sharing Billie Holiday with Mary on the ipod, looking at the jungle and the water buffalo and the Lao kids on the banks; transcendent.