Crunch and there goes the propeller. As cause and effect set us adrift on the Mekong, with no propulsion we found ourselves a pig of a vessel helplessly skating on a shiny brown rink, up shits creek without a paddle, so to speak.
The Mekong River is a phenomenon in Asia. I was glad to get up close and personal, as Hollywood had given me all kinds of misconceptions about it. One does expect Rambo to swish past with a machine gun barreling out rounds and slurring incomprehensible punchlines at puzzled village folk. I kept a keen eye and ear out, but to no avail. Guess he’s getting a bit tired in his old age.
Most passengers stood in stunned silence as we floated helplessly with the current, the sense of cautious unease before something tragic thick in the air. Me, I was laughing my tits off, and how could I not? Watching our Laos friends jumping out of the boat in their underwear in a frenzied attempt to secure us to the side and get the propeller repaired was too funny for me to keep quiet. Little light brown bodies nuding about in the water with ropes in a race against time. I imagine the view from above, a travelling Alien maybe, and his musings on the proceedings. We are just monkeys scratching our asses, caught on a raft by the turns of fate. Probably not how Darwin imagined evolution, but what can you do?
We arrived in Luang Prabang with little incident barring our propeller once again relinquishing itself from duty and causing a chain of events that eventuated in us T-Boning another boat. A boat crash is something I will highlight on my resume, along with being in the Laos mountains surrounded by opium smoking villagefolk. What a trip, Laos is what people seek when they imagine the Wild East.
Luang Prabang is every bit a small quiet oasis from the busy rest-of-world. The pace is unhurried, the villagers are content and their movements are smooth. And as the Utopia bar closed and we barged into the tuk tuk, in this tiny isolated part of the world I was unexpectedly re-introduced to the extreme pleasure of drunken ten-pin bowling.
As we wound out of town and onwards into the early morning, I was sold on the fact that the mornings light would find me minus my kidneys and possibly chastity of my back doors. Swinging open the doors like a glaze eyed cowboy into the saloon, the light and sound gives way to a spectacle; Laos youth and travelling Europeans cheering their ten pin triumphs and defeats, embracing each other and exploding with sound and body language. What a magnificent turn of events. We went two nights in a row, it was magic.
The next day, we jumped in a mini van and spiraled up into the mountains. Clenching my jaw to hold back the nausea, I was drinkers remorse manifest in flesh. Action and reaction is not always positive, curse you Jesus. In hindsight, I look back on this innocence as an elder reflecting on the naivity of youth, for our next top was Vang Vieng to go tubing, and the unease of a hangover would be a spindly talon around my neck I would soon know with great intimacy.
Vang Vieng is in a bubble from the rest of the modest Asian world, a bubble burped in a bathtub of culture by the insane lungs of a submerged Charlie Manson. Or maybe it is a cocoon from the world, a cocoon in the closet of your morals and standards that mutates and bursts forth a moth that destroys your regular weekend clothes. Either way, it takes a mallet and smashes your notions of Saturday night live.
For the uninitiated, you start at one end of a long river that floats downstream back into the town, occupying a large tyre tube as you make your journey onward. Along the way, lines are cast to pull you into awaiting bars, in full swing with drunken revelry, laughing gas hilarity and sexual decision tainted with post-coitus remorse. It was some of the most fun partying I have ever had.
The normal fear based social defense of human interaction did not apply here, we were unified in the fact that we were all strangers, and the only attempts at pre-status were by the staff who all did an excellent job of convincing everyone that they were nobheads. In the face of this contrast it was so easy to make friends, from bar to bar the crews grew larger and larger, lubricated by buckets, free shots and loose limbs on bamboo dance floors. Avid weekend veterans: save it and get over to Vang Vieng, I promise it will be better than a years worth of those 11 dollar beers you pound every weekend.
Some of the bars had tyre swings and high platforms to jump into an uncertain torrential river. I’d like to say I was smarter than to attempt such idiocy, with a death toll that averages 1 every fortnight. I’d like to be able to say that, but I would be lying. Sorry Mum. I not only attempted it, I loved it. It was like the watering holes of my childhood, only a bit more shit-face-ier.
Brennan, Liam and I decided to jump in at the same time, and as we surfaced from the fall downstream I realized I had swallowed half of the river. After numerous buckets my stomach signaled there was not enough room for this new introduction and I began vomiting. My two chums, affected by the vulgarity of the spectacle and perhaps some primal kinship, began to follow suit. Every time each of us thought we had finished expulsion, we were spurred on again by the proximity of each other in full swing.
Picture this, a trio of grown men bent over facing each other in a river, laughing through chunks of chunder, caught in an infinite loop of stomach contraction. We are the three wise men of an age gone wrong, and somewhere in the back of my mind I felt we may have to stay in this river spewing until we grew old, hoping that maybe the years could make us wiser. I’m smiling as I write this, as out of context it sounds insane, but in the moment it was as normal as the sky and earth.
The immediacy of something serious jerked me from the loop. Into my field of vision drifted a wayward angel. We three wise men bearing gifts of pizza chunks, vodka bile and second hand Laos whiskey stood to bear witness to our savior.
I’ve never looked into the eyes of death. I’ve only ever seen where death has been, the aftermath, a lingering vibe or scent of something ultimate. Here and now, there was something sobering as I innately remembered it written across her face and in the depths of her eyes. This woman was drowning, that reptilian part of my being told me so. The wide eyed meeting of our maker, the gentle and yet violent movement from fighting for life to forgiveness of fate. I jolted forward and gripped her by the shoulders, delivering her spluttering limpness onto the shoreline and into safety. She gazed into my soul as she said thankyou, holding back tears and most probably her registration of the event to her memory as she was quite clearly intoxicated. I wonder if she remembers how close she came to being just another phone call to the worst fears of her parents. The experience bore many strange fruits.
For instance, I had always assumed fake breasts would aid in floatation, and after this event realize that such thoughts are just an unchecked understanding of an 8 year old mind justifying the world. Watch out for those, I’ve been deep and found there is more in your reality from before you knew of yourself than you could ever know. But am I a better person for this understanding you may ask? Who cares, it’s all just a big playground. Stop being so serious all your life. And whatever you do, don’t get a breast enlargement with the assumption that it will make you more buoyant.
So after a week in Vang Vieng we travelled down to beautiful Vientiene, transitory as it was time for my crew and I to part ways. As the morning came I embraced my friends goodbye and flew off into the morning sun, back to Thailand and back to the Permaculture farm in Nong Wyang I had grown to love for a bit of peace and rebuilding. Alone again, but never truly alone. My post-breakup partying was complete, and as the date of my return to the West loomed ever closer, it was time to get my soul in line. More next time.
