[Pakse, Laos on 10/6/23]
Pakse was most lovely. There, I made a few friends and got a lot of writing done. Just before boarding a mini bus for Cambodia, I made a point of saying goodbye to the owner of Lankham Hotel, where I had stayed for nearly four months altogether.
I love that sweet, tough and candid woman. When her husband was killed in a car accident, it was as if the sky had fallen, she said, yet she had persevered to see her children and grandchildren graduate from universities overseas. When a granddaughter thought a bribe to study in Australia too exorbitant, she said, “You still have grandma!” Now, that girl is a well-paid post-graduate teaching assistant in Melbourne.
Liên and Coredo, I couldn’t say goodbye to, since they were in Bangkok and Pietrasanta. Maybe I’ll see them again.
I didn’t say goodbye to Tuấn, the owner of 3839 Café. Too clever for his own good, he is what the Vietnamese call “lém.” He lies too casually.
On the minibus, I sat near three Brits who were going to Siem Reap. One had on this T-shirt, “CREATIVES ARE THE NEW ATHLETES.” An hour from Nakasong, we paused at Mai for a snack and bathroom break.
At the crudest wooden table, a boy of about 14 sat to collect a dime from each person. If you’re some freaky dude in a dress, good luck getting past him on your way to the ladies’ toilets. Laos aren’t insane. They know how to protect the dignity of their women.
Carrying lotus fruits, a tiny woman in her 70’s approached the Brits, but of course, they passed. I doubt they had any idea what they were looking at.
Though I had crossed so many borders, I still felt that tension of having everything riding on the whims of some alien official. Worse than being denied entry, you can be extorted, as happened to me in Bengaluru, India. Leaving South Africa, some joker toyed with me before I could enter Namibia. This time, everything went smoothly.
Just like that, I was again in Cambodia!
As we waited on another minibus, a two-year-old girl climbed into our vehicle. Between me and another man, she sat, very patient and dignified, until her mom came to whisk her away. With a look of profound disappointment, she was carried to a wooden shack where her family had an eatery, grocery store, exchange service and travel agency. Before we departed, she made another escape attempt. Again, she was thwarted! Like us all, that toddler had to be conditioned for a lifetime of disappointments.
My last glimpse of the border was a scowling man in a peach colored T-shirt, “I’M BROKEN.” Read vertically, though, it said, “I’M OK.” Broken, we’re still OK.
After Stilbo had lost his wife, children and everything he owned, due to the destruction wrought by Demetrius the City Sacker, he was taunted by Demetrius, “Have you lost anything?” Calmly, Stilbo answered, “No, I have everything with me.” What else do you expect him to say? This account, I read in Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, while sitting at Pakse’s Amor Fati Café. I spent many pleasant hours there. Love your fate.
In Stung Treng proper, we passed Sin Sisamouth’s family home. At age 43 or 44, Cambodia’s greatest singer ever was murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Educated in Paris, Pol Pot soaked up Jewish thinking. It’s always us against them, with demonized them to be destroyed.
Sixty miles north, they don’t care about Sisamouth. No matter how tiny, each society is its own endless universe.
Arriving in Kracheh, I walked towards the Mekong then turned left. It was drizzling. Having not eaten for more than 23 hours, I was hoping to see a restaurant, but the only one I passed was uninvitingly dark.
Wandering into Heng Heng 2, I couldn’t secure a discount for ten days, so paid for five, at just $10 a night for a room with fan. Leaving my backpack, I made my way to the central market, just a block away. There, I bought a stick of grilled chicken for under a buck. Of course, it tasted heavenly.
Returning to my room, I chanced upon a stand selling fermented pork, so bought a cluster for $1.22. In Cambodia, these nem chua are sold everywhere, along with sticky rice grilled in sections of bamboo. Eaten with chili and raw guava leaves, tiny nem chua delivers a mighty, nutritious kick. Relieved, satisfied and grateful, I slept.
Writing this, I sit in a cafe where four children are playing at a nearby table. Just now, they sang a song that included “one, two, three, four,” and a boy has just said, “no, no, no, no!” Often exuberant and unselfconscious among strangers, they’re still very much Southeast Asians, however.
Kracheh hugs the Mekong, where there are still irrawaddy dolphins, not that I expect to see any. These creatures made me think of Ian, the Irishman I met in Pakse.
Always hitting on young women, Ian tried to strike a conversation at some eatery with a visiting German, but she only gave him one word answers.
“What are you in Laos for?”
“Nature.”
Hearing Ian recount this with predictable bitterness, I said, “After talking to you, she probably went down to the Mekong to skinny dip! You should have been more patient, man.”
“I didn’t miss anything. She probably scared away the dolphins. They had to swim back to Cambodia! ‘Why did we come up this way?’ they were saying.”
Ian bitched about everybody, including babies, whom he called “squealers.” Despite this misanthropy, Ian noticed just about everything, so he still had a lust for life, as experienced directly. When not out and about, though, Ian had to watch movies to put himself to sleep.
Ordering my second cappuccino, I raised one finger and smilingly said to a young woman, “One more!” With delight, her son echoed me, “One more!”
Having just arrived, I have a world to discover. At dawn, I heard Buddhist chants which I mistook for a Muslim call to prayer. Suddenly, it was as if I had returned to Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt or Malaysia, etc. To serve its Cham population, there are mosques in Kracheh. Their kingdom long destroyed, they’re still here as themselves.
Not everyone is as fortunate as the Chams, or Stilbo. The tiniest men contain nothing but their narcissistic, embittered selves. Along with their emotions, their vocabulary shrinks. They think and feel in tiresome cliches.
“ORIENTA, A GOOD POSITION IN LIFE,” I saw this morning on a T-shirt, and its wearer was lovely, too.
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