The Golden Triangle

Page 5

t the break of dawn, the boat engine seemed to sputter to life much in the same way it sputtered quiet the night before. All of us uncoupled ourselves from one another, massaging those parts that had been "stuck in place" all night. Within an hour, we had reached our destination. We had planned on hopping on a truck and heading into Central Laos that day, but decided our bodies needed a break.

day later we found ourselves in the back of a pickup. A soldier from the Lao military seated himself next to Dave. As we waited for the truck to fill up, the soldier took the opportunity to load his weapon, and ominous looking AK-47. We thought Laos was relatively safe apart from a few tribal skirmishes and some restricted fields known to be full of unexploded ordinance. Was this loaded machine gun really necessary? We may never know if there was an outside danger, nor will the soldier be able to tell us. Not more than 15 minutes into our ride, he fell asleep holding his gun. As his lolled on Dave's shoulder, and his body relaxed and bobbed around, our bodies tensed and all eyes were on the loaded gun as its barrel seemed to take turns menacingly pointing at others.

nce we got used to the fact that we weren't going to get shot, we began to realize how uncomfortable our truck ride was - cramped quarters, dusty dirt roads, unmaintained paved roads riddled with bumpy potholes that made you wish for the dusty dirt ones back again. Throughout Laos, truck travel seemed to take a full day to go anywhere. And once you reached your destination, a shower and change of clothes were warranted before anything else.

ll this seemed an easy price to pay. Truck travel gave us a real feel for Laos. Unlike on the river where villages are set back from the shore and sometimes difficult to see, villages along the road were often using it as a front yard. We found it intriguing as we peaked and valley-ed through the raw uncultivated mountains and jungles of the North to pass by tiny villages sprouting up in the middle of nowhere. Driving by, we felt like we were in a museum moving through live exhibits of native Asian hilltribes. In one village, older women worked without shirts in the hot midday sun while young, more modest women wore just the latest fashion, a bra. In the next, village women wore tribal black clothing and were languorously relaxing on bamboo porches to avoid the sun, and work.

cenes like this seem to continue for hours in a panorama of culture. It seemed that apart from a few material things, life hasn't really changed much here for many years. When we thought we had seen it all, we rounded a corner and saw a whole clan of women in costumes we'd never seen before. They were standing off the road in a line, almost as if they'd been posed there by National Geographic just for our interest.