Its not the Pak Beng was not a "cute mountain village" as I expected - its rather that the footprint I feel I'm leaving is so BIG, mostly in terms of spending power. I know I wouldn't feel so bad in Europe, where I wouldn't be as noticeable of a leaky wallet.
In Bangkok, I'm just going to go ahead and say that EVERY Thai that talked to me was trying to get something out of me. Chiang Mai was a little better. Luang Prabang is a little better still, but COME ON. I've met tons of cool Westerners (including Australia, I guess) but I haven't really met any Thais or Laotians. The few people I have met, or at least have had an amicable relationship with, were the people I had just given money.
Yes, I'm comparably rich to these people. When you're poor in this place, you're REALLY poor - they don't have the same social net that we do. But, dammit. I'm here to experience culture, not get cheap beer. However, that's what some people are here for when the price for a big bottle of Beer Lao is 8,000 kip, less than a Canadian dollar. (That's correct, all those zeroes are supposed to be in there; wicked inflation)
Anyway, I had a wicked desire to get out of the Tourist area and meet some Lao, so I rented a nice mountain bike for $5/day and headed east on the closest road I could find. (This was on Monday) Very quickly, I was in the countryside, and it was cool. Everyone would say 'Saibaidee' to the sweaty white guy on the bike. I got to see non-tourist architecture, which was pretty cool. The french colonialism shows, with a roadside looking like
shanty-shanty-massive house-shanty-shanty-shanty-massive house-shanty-etc.
The experience was so good I got Taylor to grab a bike and go out today. We were gone for 5 hours, heading south at random. The handheld GPS is a great security blanket - we can lose ourselves but as long as there is a sky overhead we can find our way home. We rode for what seemed a REALLY long time and finally, as we were about to turn back, saw a sign that said "Waterfall 3.2 km" along a dirt road. Well, we had to do it, so we did. It was hilly to the extreme, and we ended up walking our bikes most of the way. 300 m from the actual waterfall was a guy in a tiny bamboo booth taking 10,000 kip for tickets. Well, we had come most of the way. In broken English, we found out that the falls were pretty low now, and would be at their prime in October. When we got there, the waterfall was nice, but not really the highlight. You know what was?
UNEXPLODED BOMB SHELLS!
Supposedly Laos is one of the most-bombed countries in the world, all during the Vietnam war. There are landmines all over the place if you go too far off the beaten trail - I think I heard 400 Laos die per year this way. I was secretly hoping that I would find something like this, but I never expected it would actually happen.
The bombs where 250-500 pounds, empty of any explosive material and just lying there on the side of the road. There was some construction nearby, so I assumed that they had been moved out of the way. Looking at the pieces of iron they are made of, its disgusting how much explosive force they must have had to blow even the cases apart.
The coords where we found them is: [N 19deg50'13.4" E102deg07'52.0"]
I decided to get serial numbers off the bombs, in some crazy hope that they would mean something to someone:
I felt pretty disgusted by the time I went through this. However, for the sake of satire, I had to do one more thing. Here's my impression of Slim Pickins' at the end of Dr. Strangelove:
Taylor says this is the most tasteless thing he's ever seen.
1 comment:
Glad you are getting so much from your journey.
Thanks for sharing it on blog.
Peter.
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