laos, part deux

first, they loaded as many bags of rice as could be squeezed between and on top of the passengers' baggage, beneath the bus. then, they packed at least two-thousand brown eggs in open black crates (no doubt the collective product of luang probang's entire gaggle - or is it cackle?- of chickens) onto the top of the public bus. lastly, they managed to heave a 250cc honda dirtbike onto the roof, next to the eggs. the inside of the bus was comparatively empty. tracy and i each spread out onto two seats, riding comfortable the six-plus hours over the mountains and through the hills to vang vieng. our en-route entertainment was a loud rivalry of volume between the lao pop playing on the bus overhead speakers and the slightly different lao pop playing through the phone of a local teenager. i am convinced that she was selectively deaf to the first and considered her own music a contribution to the local mood. grace was sufficient.
vang vieng was a strange specimen. the exterior of the town was unsurprisingly laotian, with food markets, lush rice paddies, and children splashing happily in irrigation ditches. the interior of the town, on the other hand, ran next to an abandoned, overgrown airstrip laid and left by american forces during the secret war against the lao communist party in the sixties, and consisted of dozens of restaurants serving western food, each of which were (randomly) showing episodes of "friends" from every different season, no doubt in the hope that westerners would feel attracted to the familiar characters and theme song. they were right. in every "friends-featuring" restaurant 3 to 12 sunburned westerners sat eating pizza and self-treating their varying levels of homesickness and longing for familiarity.
tracy and i laughed and shook our heads at this spectacle; at the pathetic-ness of all these people travelling so far only to spend their time on what can be lazily enjoyed at home. then we stopped in, ordered some greasy fare, and watched an episode. it was delightful.
we made a valiant effort to volunteer at an organic farm on the outskirts of town. tracy helped to teach some local village children the wonders and ecstasies of microsoft word, we both helped to fill the troughs with greens for their milking goats, and to rope in customers to their poorly located food and drink stand "for a good cause". but in the end, the farm was a bit of a disappointment, in its almost complete lack of coordination and organization. the idea of it is good, despite the reality of it.
we biked the rutted roads connecting vang vieng to its small neighboring villages, swam in a small, brilliant blue lagoon until a monsoon swept in, and finally bid adieu to the city by floating down the brown waters of its arteriole(?) river, the namsong.
vientiane, the capital city, was our last, brief stop in the...the...mmm...laos is a hard country to describe with one or two adjectives. up and coming? maybe not. joyful and free? no. uncertainly independent? perhaps. though, this is hardly the way to characterize a country at which we've only just glanced. judgment is sometimes best in suspension. the place, by and large, felt a bit ominous to us.
we did, however, have a stellar italian dinner in the capital - ravioli, lasagna, and a long-craved-for cheese platter (there was nothing dark about this meal).
before we opened the door to leave laos, we visited the national museum, where we learned about the heinous, gruesome imperialism of everything western, and about the impeccable and virtuous heroism of every comrade in the history of the lao communist party. we sneaked out the fire escape of that place, and then crawled out of the country. thai visas renewed, we balled our way, again, through the night, back into the land of thai. it felt like a home-away-from-home coming. bangkok, chumphon, kno tao...ahh, kno tao.

oh yeah. our camera is, no more. we'll have to amp up the organic memory. God is still with us, we are certain.