Eaaaazzy Rider

Days 62-67: Southern Laos

Vroom vroom folks. And welcome to the open country roads of southern Laos. Our "hog" was no Harley; in fact, it was a toy-like Chinese motor-scooter that maxed out at speeds of 80 km/hr (no worries, mom, we never went over 60 km/hr), and better yet, the faux leather seat had an embroidered Mickey Mouse face on it. It was the "Mickey Mouse model." Nevertheless, zooming through the sleepy rural coffee plantation roads of Laos, where an eventful day for the locals might be a dog-on-pig tustle, we were a head-turner indeed. Two white folks on a scooter? Big news around here. And so, for a few days, we tasted our own Motorcycle Diaries in one of the more remote and rural parts of an already remote and rural country: the Bolaven Plateau of southern Laos. It is an enchanting and quiet area, where the lowlands of the giant Mekong River valley rise up in a series of steps, creating perfectly cool conditions for growing what the snooty Parisians consider to be the world's best coffee (most of the coffee grown in this area winds up in the cafes of France). And yes, the coffee was scrumptuous. Particularly when enjoyed beside this area's other big feature: massive waterfalls!! (That's a 400-footer behind Al's mug.) And so, having filled up the Mickey at the local wooden shack, aka gas station (see below . . . uuhhh, where's the ATM?), we spent our days selecting a waterfall on the map and cruising along with goofy helmets (particularly Al's; hers looked like a Stormtrooper helmet . . . endearing but definitely not sexy). Best of all was when we rolled through the coffee plantation villages. Once the children saw our white skin, they typically gave chase, unprepared for the powerful growl of Mickey's afterburners.

We broke up the pavement with dips in lovely swimming holes, a rainforest hike, and, best of all, and quite obligatory in this part of the world: an elephant ride. Check out Al teetering on that lovely beast! Best of all was watching him eat. The trunk is a glorious appendage. I have serious trunk envy.

Another, more subtle, layer to our explorations of the area was a historical one. This is the land of the Ho Chi Minh trail, and the site of America's "secret war" during the Vietnam conflict, when plain-clothes CIA agents and Air Force pilots bombed this major supply pipeline of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese armies. Compliments of Nixon and Kissinger, and unbeknownst to Congress and the rest of America, the U.S. dropped millions of tons of bombs on this part of Laos in an unsuccessful effort to shut down movement along this infamous jungle dirt road. Quite a shock, but we learnt that, on a per capita basis, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history, and much of that bombing took place in the southern regions we were happily scooting through. Strangely, except for the occasional earth depression which we guessed as a bomb crater, we saw little visible evidence of this history. Nevertheless, we could not help but shudder at the thought of distant B-52 bombers dropping 250-lb bombs all across what we experienced as a sublime, rolling rural landscape of waterfalls and coffee beans. Quite surreal, especially when juxtaposed against the simple smiles and energetic waves of the villagers. They seemed unconcerned that just 25 years ago, our country's leaders decimated their entire way of life.

After cruising around on Mickey Mouse, we went down to the "4000 Islands," the very southern tip of Laos, just on the Cambodian border, where the Mekong fans out to create a web of small islands and water channels. We stayed on a small island called Don Det, where time all but stops. Laos in general is a very laidback place, but Don Det takes it to a whole new level. The island has nothing on it but a few backpacker bungalows (bungalow = hut with a mattress in it and a mosquito net, but for $1 each a night, you can't complain!) among the rice paddies and small farms, no electricity, a few paths for walking and biking (no cars) and a few small cafes (no more than huts overlooking the very slow moving Mekong waters). On our first morning we went out for a "quick" breakfast, which ended up taking about three hours! So, we soon learned to predict when we would be hungry, and to arrive at the restaurant at least 2 hours before. Sidenote: on the menu were "happy shakes," "happy pizzas", and even "happy garlic bread." Hmmmm. You could essentially order anything "happy," just be sure to let the cook know how "happy" you want to get . . . Later that day, Jacob, following some locals, jumped off a make-shift diving board (checkout the pic) into the Mekong. He was obviously too happy for his own good, having learned later that this section of the Mekong is the one place on Earth that you can contract RIVER FLUKES through your skin. Yummy. This was further confirmed when I later witnessed Mr. Water Buffalo dropping some serious poo in the same waters. . . but he seems to be doing ok. And he is still "happy."

But, when meals were not stretching into days, we did manage to get out of the hammock and onto a bicycle seat. In the colonial days of yore, the Frenchies managed to build some cool old bridges, allowing us to explore multiple islands, including some truly remarkable waterfalls, which were really more like a continous wall of cataracts descending down into the Cambodian stretch of the Mekong.

The laziness of Don Det was further punctuated by a riverside feast. One of the backpackers staying at our place arranged with the locals that ran our place to have a pig roast to celebrate his birthday. A bunch of us decided to pitch in for it, and were really excited about it. . .until we learned that the pig that was going to "get it" was the one we had just taken a bunch of pictures of because he was so cute . . . Although it definitely gave Jacob pause, he showed no hesitation in piling on a second helping of pig meat.

Laos came full circle for us. Fast and furious on Mickey to slow and slooooooow amongst thousands of islands. A healthy balance that prepared us for the intensity of visiting Cambodia . . .