Leaving Laos

Sabai Dee

This post is a retro-active summery of Laos – land of the Mekong.
In the beginning I naively thought I was traveling in laos, but now when it’s finished I realize that I was mainly traveling along the Mekong river…
Most of laos’ cities are built along the Mekong and the river basically creates and sustains the eco-system of the whole region.

Mekong fauna:

Mekong flora:

The widest waterfall in Asia (Si Phon Don area):

The people of laos are an intriguing case, the whole population nation consists of only 5 million people.
They are famous for being the most laid-back people around the globe…
Reading into the ancient history of the area, you will find a slow inhabitation process by migrating tribes from the north (south China).

Why am I writing this?
I stumbled upon an interesting thought…
Imagine the world before it was over-populated, imagine the times when people could migrate into UNINHABITED areas of the earth, adapting to the new regions’ climate, vagitation, wildlife and so on… Now imagine being there.
Traveling over unfamiliar mountains into unknown territories… accompanied by not many but your extended family.
How do you think people felt towards each other? How did they treat each other?
Sharing destiny with only a few dozens – how precious is human life?

It seems that the point at which people turned away from valuing each other is when they were no longer on a quest for survival…
Once they got comfortable and secure, they abandoned their alligence to life, that basic alliance they joined by being born human. A void has opened up in their life and soon it was filled by competition, greed and selfishness – what eventually led to voilence towards each other.
How unnatural it is to not cherish each and every one of the people you share your home-town with…

Again, why am I writing this?
The reason is that the lao people seem to be different, it seems like they stopped at some point and said:
“Why should we take this road? We are safe and comfortable, let’s just live”.
And so they became laid-back, it may sound like laziness, but in fact… what are our ambitions in life?
To be safe, to be loved, to have a family, to be generally happy?
The avarage lao man seems to spend most of his day swinging in a hammock while the river waters his rice paddies… then twice a day he takes his boat out to see if some fish were cought in his net… stopping for a few visits to his friends, have an occasional lao-lao drink…
That’s it.
They never developed a marvelous culture, they never embarked on great conquests, they never produced any revolutionary arts… they just seem to have settled in this breath-taking land along the great Mekong – and are trying to live there in peace.
I may be wrong, for sure I am exadurating… but the general vibe I got from this land and people is this.

Enough of this,
A week after I landed on Don Det there was a boat racing competition! The small bank village of Nakasan was full with festivity, hordes of children running around with toys and sweets, music everywhere and A LOT of LAO-LAO.

The boat race and people drunk on lao-lao, happy days:

This is a manual amusement park for children, there was a genuine feeling of a happiness about this place… I could barely stop myself from connecting to the child in me and trying to get on the caroussel

and now… for the traditional ending…

Now I am in Vietnam, I have stories that start with the sentance “When I was back in ‘Nam…”

The bus ride from Laos to Vietnam was quite an intense experience, the bus was stuffed with massive rice bags that didn’t leave any space for feet… The tricky part is that you cannot raise or flex your feet because it is conidered very impolite to point your feet at people in buddhist buddhist countries.
In addition to that, I have discovered that small cartboard boxes containing chicken produce quite a lot of smell… especially if they break out of the box and shit on your bag.

This is the last Sabai Dee…
From now on it’s Sin Chao.
me.