Nam Kading

March 6, 2008

Today I tried to go into the Nam Kading Protected Area, an allegedly pristine paradise of wildlife. I had it from the Lonely Planet that there was a research station up the river and I was keen to visit it.
I started the day in Vientiane, out the door at 6am to catch a bus to Phonsi, and from there a boat to the Nam Kading Research Station. This was to be my first foray into a Laos Protected Area, after two failed attempts up north. I was deflected in Nam Ha, rejected from Bokeo.
Everything was fine out from Vientiane – the bus left on time, it was quick, the Thai karaoke videos they were showing actually had some storylines, and I even slept a bit. But then one of the copilots was shouting at me that we had arrived in Phonsi. I bustled out, got my pack off the roof, and the bus took off in a cloud of dust. A few people lounged here and there in the heat of the morning, in a cluster of roadside shacks and prefabricated concrete and corrugated metal strip malls. Some young women were drinking laolao in the shade, and directed me toward the river. I walked through what looked like a pleasant little village. Then Mai found me.
He was in his early twenties, with a slack, dull expression. He spoke only Lao, and that very low and quick. He sounded as if his voice box were made of damp felt. He could not be induced to speak more slowly or clearly. He walked very close to me and kept pointing his pale flat face at me like a hopeful radar dish. I disliked him instantly and hoped he would leave me alone. He knew I needed a boat, and was insistent. He could not fathom what I meant by “Science Village,” “Many Scientist,” “Science Station,” or any other permutation. We were obviously not making ourselves understood, so he steered me over to a fabric shop under a stilt-house.
Women in their early twenties were sitting on the concrete benches, drinking warm Beerlao and watching toddlers and babies. Mai mushed out a wet string of words, delivered in monotone with his eyes askance. One of the women flicked her eyes at me, then leaned back and brayed “Gää!” From a nearby house came a tall, well-dressed young Thai man with spectacles. He approached quickly, loomed over me and spoke English. “Do you need a boat to go to the water fall?” His lenses and waxen coif made him menacing. “The price is one hundred fifty thousand kip.” His English was impeccable, and inflected with a terseness that warned me not to vacillate. His eyes were sharp and hot. I asked: “I want to go to the Science Station.” He replied: “Yes I know it. The price is the same to go there.” I asked him to tell me the word for Research Station in Lao but he refused. He turned to Mai and said a few arch words and walked away.
Mai sagged like a jellyfish out of water, but soon recovered and approached me sideways, mumbling and swaying, and began tugging at my backpack in a most distasteful fashion. He pointed at the boat. I told him I wanted to eat first, and we started walking back through the village. We came to his stilthouse and he weaved into the shadows to get out his motorcycle. He then flapped his hands at my backpack, and said “Heu-uh?” which means boat. Whatever he wanted to do, I was not into it. I refused and he became very confused. It simply did not make sense to him that I would not give him the backpack, and he had to consult with several relatives in the house by shouting up through the floor. At last he nodded and uttered the affirmative Lao particle “ahng,” and put the bike away, and we started walking again. His hand kept limply slithering around on the back of my backpack, and I gave him a sharp look.
We got to the noodle shack, where I lay the pack on a raised bamboo platform that employees sleep on during slow hours, and saw Mai scuttling around the table, indecisively moving chairs and arranging condiments. He was making me very tense. The noodle woman started preparing a bowl of soup without a word, and Mai pulled pink toilet paper out of the dispenser on the table, balled it up, and frantically polished a pair of chopsticks and a Chinese spoon. These he held in a carefully un-poised fashion, to broadcast that he was merely holding them but had no intention to use them. He continuously made mealy little comments and direct questions, neither of which made sense. The noodles came: the standard Lao fare, beef broth and little grains of gristly fragments, big blobule of noodles in the middle, and green onions. A skein of lurid orange grease ringed the edge of the broth. Mai gently placed the chopsticks and spoon in the bowl, then started pantomiming the use of condiments. I looked him straight in the eye and told him in a deep voice that I’d been in Lao for three weeks and I knew how to eat noodles. This got a smile out of the noodle-woman. Mai made a flabby sound that may have been a fake giggle and sank back to his seat. The woman prepared a bowl for him as well, and he doused it soundly with doses of every available sauce. He then commenced to eat with a tremendous sucking-slurping sound. I looked away from him and surveyed the town. Nothing was going on. Occasionally a small private vehicle would fly through at Warp 5. My luncheon partner devoured every drop of his soup, and cleaned himself with a handful of pink toilet paper. Then he tore another fresh handful off the roll and clumsily pushed it toward my face. I recoiled and pushed his hand away. I stared him straight on with full wattage, but his blank, empty expression did not change one whit. I paid for both bowls of noodles at a somewhat amplified price, and we started walking to the boat.
I tried to explain that I didn’t know yet whether I would stay one, two or three nights at the research station. Mai asked if I was sleeping up there, and I said yes, then he asked me if he could sleep up there. I said no. He asked me if I slept alone or slept two-people (nawn khondiau or nawn sorngkhon) and I firmly said khondiau. He became very insistent and mawkish, tilting his head up and repeating nawn sorngkhon, nawn sorngkhon. It was desperately uncomfortable. I tried to account for anything I might have said that would lead him to be so suggestive. I had bought his lunch, sure, but I had also been behaving in a short and hostile way with him at every turn. I wondered if “research station” was some kind of local code for foreigners seeking native partners for rural disportage. Mai finally accepted my refusal and began talking about the price.
Tall Glasses had said 150,000 for both ways, but evidently that was a same-day offer only, and he wanted 100,000 for each trip up the river. I refused. That was too expensive. Besides he could float down the river at no cost both times, so he was actually just making one full trip. This train of logic was derailed by a stare so vapid Mai’s eyes seemed to congeal, and then a linty reiteration of the number 100,000. We had to start drawing diagrams in my notebook, and after much discussion, arrived at 90,000 for each trip. So we set off.
He was a decent boatman. The river was in low flow and filled with sandbars and stones, but he never once had to get out and push, even with the lading of my packs and my personal organic matter. We went up a long straight stretch, then curved to the left, flanked on both sides by occasional wooden huts and playing children.
The river narrowed and became faster as we went up. Eventually all the human habitation ceased, and the sides of the river were stacked with jagged boulders. Everything from the size of a beachball to the size of a Vanagon was piled hurly-burly along both sides, with very little in the river and nothing on the hillside above. It was an eerie sensation, as if we were approaching something that had long stone gates. It was tremendously hot, though the sky was hazy, and the air itself seemed to glow. We sometimes passed water buffalo wallowing in the shallows, or seine fishermen wearing diving masks, or other longtail canoes, heading down the river laden with dark-complected people. One man with intense gaze, a mustache, and a jutting chin locked eyes with me and we just stared at each other while we passed.
We came to a ferocious scar in the hillside. The orange clay was exposed, and roads crisscrossed the scar. No plant was left living in a semicircle at least two hundred meters long and one hundred up the hillside. There were great flat square marks in the clay, as of a colossal chisel. It took us a while to get past the base of the scar.
The river took another sharp bend, and we saw a little wooden platform, floating on empty barrels, that was connected to the hillside by way of a primitive wooden ladder-walkway. At the base of it, a big gas-powered pump was chorkling noisily.
A little further up, we came to the first rapids, and Mai shut the boat off. We began to drift backwards, so I turned and gave him a look. His mouth was open and he was staring at nothing.
“Where is the place?” he asked me.
“You don’t know?”
“Don’t know. Do you know?”
“No.” I frowned at him and he shrugged limply, his shoulders sturdy as damp socks. He turned his head and muttered downstream. I pressed him to account for himself, and he told me he thought that platform we passed might be it. So we zipped back downstream and I got onto the platform and looked at the staircase. Obviously effort had been expended in its creation, although it was about as rude as technology can be. But then there was this pump, unsupervised, running off gas and pushing water up the hill. My tired, angry, hot mind told me that Research Stations probably need plenty of water pressure, and that Lao people left to their own devices never construct this kind of ladder, so it must be the work of foreigners, and foreigners might equal scientists.
I paid Mai a large fraction of what we agreed on, but he did not have the correct change to break a bigger bill so I just gave him what I could in cash shrapnel. I told him I would get back by myself and didn’t want another ride. I was happy to see him go, but he stared at me over his slumped shoulder until the boat went around the bend.
Now I had full packs and walking stick, and tried to ascend the ladder. It consisted of serial iterations of the same design: three long tree trunks tilted against the hill, with lengths of sticks and branches nailed perpendicular. Each branch had three nails, and they were bright new steel. Money and effort had flowed into this construction, and that heartened me. Progress was extremely difficult. Unencumbered, a person could use all four limbs for stability and balance, but lugging the two giant backpacks and holding a bamboo stick made for very slow going. Sweating and cursing, I made it up to a kind of platform. Two men were sleeping in the shade next to a bottle of laolao. The ladder continued upward at a much steeper angle. This was somewhat easier to cope with, and I progressed up next to the pulsating black tube that carried water from the river. It continually made a squork-squork-squork in time with the chorkle-chunter of the pump.
The next platform had a curious piece of equipment, also gas-powered, also running. There was a big bag of water in a square frame, and the river-hose emptied into it. Another, wider hose led out of it, to a large pump that was dug deep into the clay. It was a pulsatile water cannon, running off a two stroke motor, building up a pressurized charge and then blasting it into a recess in the hillside. At the bottom of the recess was a mosquito-hell slurry pool. The apparatus had writing in Russian and Vietnamese.
I heard the sound of a boat and watched as another longtail canoe, identical to the one I had arrived in, puttered past with a single passenger riding in the front. It was a heavyset white woman in jungle clothes. I took two steps down the ladder without paying close attention, and my left leg slid down between the rungs, while I lost my balance. I managed to jerk myself to a stop, before the inertia of the pack rolled over me. It cost me three patches of skin over my left tibia. I watched the boat disappear up the river and then considered my position. I was still able to walk to the road, should it become necessary. I had seen several trails parallel to the river on the way up. I thought it unlikely that this was a research station but resolved to follow the path all the way up, just in case. I set the packs under some leaves and shimmied up the rest of the ladders. They terminated at a garbage-strewn hillside that had a small platform with a burn scar on it. This was evidently Party Central, and there was nothing uphill of it except jungle.
I went back for my bags, then heard another boat. This one cut its motor and I saw two people debark onto the platform. I dragged my bags down one at a time, and the two men watched me descend. One was bigger and obviously better-fed, and wore nice clothes. The other looked like many Lao people, small, wrinkled, and bright-eyed. He noticed me first, and froze, his bright eyes like searchbeams on me. He tapped the big fellow on the arm, and that man reacted the same way. They silently watched me descend, and helped me sit down. They smiled invitingly at me. I explained as best I could, again trying the battery of words for “Research Station,” but eliciting no flicker of recognition. They looked at each other and had a short discussion which I could not understand. Then the big man answered me in Thai that this was a work project, and that the other man would take me somewhere else. The other man beckoned me down, offered to help carry my packs, and got me situated in his canoe. There was a wiry confidence in his manner and a twinkle in his eye that made me trust him. We cast off and started downstream. A few minutes into the journey, we hit a submerged rock and the canoe swayed sickeningly to the left. I saw my big bag in front, leaning out toward the water, but then we righted and it fell back to security.
We came to the base of the big scar on the hill. There was a small set of steps hacked into the red mud, and the little fellow insisted on carrying my smaller pack for me. We emerged into a villa, with colonial wooden buildings overlooking the river, and big shady trees. There was a party going on at an outdoor table, eight or nine people in airy clothes with smiles on their faces. There were also several servants, and the boatman spoke to one of these, who ran off. Meanwhile the dinner people were behaving in a most handsome fashion, inviting me to share their food and pouring me a glass of cold beer. I tried to explain my situation to them but they were just as puzzled as everyone else. Research station? Never heard of it. Where are you from? How old are you? Travelling by yourself? Do you have a wife? Are you staying here tonight?
It seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t have much time to entertain it because a man with a mustache and green military fatigues came out of on of the buildings, sized me up with one glance, and said “No.” He then looked me in the eye and asked me what I was doing out here. I told him the truth, laying as much blame on Mai as I could. The military man spoke to the boat driver, who again picked up my small bag and led me down the hill to the boat. The diners were disappointed, but none of them raised an objection.
I asked the boatman where we were going now, and he said, in English, “Work camp.” I pondered the possibility of simply walking away, but the direction he indicated was further downstream and therefore closer to the road, so a walk-away from there would be more efficient. Besides, I was curious to visit ‘work camp.”
As I loaded my bags onto the canoe, Green Uniform came down the steps after us, breathless and giggling. He said something to the boatman, who pointed at me and replied. Green Uniform doubled up laughing. He looked at me and shook his head, then stood akimbo, his laughter booming after us as we floated away.
We went to the far end of the scar, and as before, climbed steps onto the hill. This was unmistakably Work Camp, a dozen large bamboo buildings in the mud, each one open on one side to form a kind of bay. There were large power tools, sawbucks, fifty gallon drums, hoses, pumps, and shovels. Garbage and bottles were conspicuously absent. Only one man was working, and the rest were slumped around the area, on steps or against stilt-house posts, watching him. He was trying to repair one of the teeth on a circular saw-blade with an arc-welder and pliers. There were also two women, wearing the same dull green fatigues as all the men, but they also wore makeup and had styled hair. Both of them were beautiful and relaxed. The work crew gathered around me while one of them went to fetch a big boss. They gave me water and laughed at my Lao.
A man in a very clean yellow shirt with slick hair and glittery rings emerged from the depths of the biggest bay. He was Thai, and like the last one, larger and meatier than any of the Lao. He spoke some English, so I tried to explain my story to him. He pointed across the scar to the villa and said “It’s over there.” I raised my eyebrows and told him we’d just come from there. The boatman threw in a few words, clarifying that we had applied to the villa and been rejected. Then he waved at me and smiled, and took off down the hill, leaving me in the power of this new Thai and his dozen dozing workers.
By now I was ready to just get back to the main road. Internally I had declared the Research Station expedition a failure, and the bloody torn spots on my calf were attracting swarms of tiny flies. The Thai bid me wait, and went back into his cavern. I had some more water and chatted with the workers. The Thai came back and hunched forward as if to discuss a confidentiality. “Today is last day for my workers, we finish project,” he said in English. “I want to have small party for them. You invited, but maybe you can buy some beverage for them?”
“How much?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, squinting exaggeratedly, “maybe one thousand.”
“Ah,” I said inscrutably. One thousand what? There was no beverage I could afford a thousand of, or that these people could drink. The smallest beverage available was the M-150 energy drink, and forty or fifty bottles would make a worker’s heart burst. The Thai seemed to think it was settled, and led me over to the truck. He rode in the middle of the cab, a Lao drove, and I sat in passenger. We drove through the scar, which was extensive on the other side of the hill – huge water-filled pits, expanses of blue canvas held down by rocks, tubes and hoses sprawling like drowned worms. It was a colossal operation. No vegetation remained anywhere in the whole area, on both sides of the road, for several hundred meters. We eventually came to an austere, military-looking set of concrete buildings with blue tile roofs: one large building front and center, and then at least two dozen smaller rectangular box-buildings in straight rows behind it. It would have provided lodging for hundreds of people.
The Thai spoke again about the party. He repeated the information as before, but concluded by suggesting that I donate one hundred thousand kip to their cause. I liked his low-pressure dissimulation, because it was not relentless and it offered me a polite avenue for refusal. When we finally reached the main road, I gave him fifty thousand kip because I was honestly grateful for his help, but I told him that was all I could do. He thanked me and drove off.
I was left in front of a very small-scale store, really just the front area of the space under a stilt-house, but they had electricity and an ice-cream coffin, so I treated myself to my first ice-cream in seven weeks. It was heavenly. I kept my eye on the road, but there were no buses, only trucks and private vehicles. I decided to try hitchhiker technique. I got a scrap of cardboard and wrote “Tha Khek,” my desired destination, and then affixed it to my net-pole.
One minute after doing this, an SUV pulled over and spilled out five very-well-dressed Lao people, men and women, who fanned themselves in the heat. One of them came up to me with a smile and said “You are going to Tha Khek?” At that very moment, the giant intercity bus came hurtling past, and I flung my arm up to hail them. The bus creaked to a halt two hundred meters down the road, and I hastened to grab my bags. I thought it would have been nice to go in an SUV, but they hadn’t offered anything, and the bus was right there after all. In just a couple minutes I was on the bus and rolling down the East bank of the Mekong.
We got to Tha Khek as the sun was going down. As in many, many Asian communities, city planners locate the bus stop as far out of town as it can reasonably be and still be considered “in” town. So I was faced with a long slog of unknown duration, or a tuktuk ride. The tuktuk driver assured me it was four kilometers to the guesthouse. We agreed on a price, and then he more or less drove me down the road and around a corner, about a mile, to the guesthouse, which bore a cardboard sign saying “Full.” I got into an argument with the driver about how far a kilometer was, and in my agitated state did not think to merely ask him to drive me to another guesthouse. So I ended up 10,000 kip poorer and on foot.
It was still very hot, and the sun was slanting down through the palm trees. The Vietnamese influence was obviously very strong in this town, from the words on the signs to the long angular faces and high cheekbones of the people. They were very friendly, children and adults alike crying out greetings as I walked past. I was aimed at the second cheapest guesthouse in town, wanting only a bed and a bath. There were plenty of empty lots I could have camped in, and I considered it, but thought I should clean my flyblown wounds out with soap even if it meant spending some kip.
The guesthouse I finally came to was about half a mile from the river, set back among some very grand old bean trees. They had a room listed for 35000 kip but it evidently didn’t exist anymore, so I took a double room for 65000 after many attempts to haggle. I tried to say I was only sleeping in one bed and taking one shower, but they were firm.
When I got into the room, I immediately pulled the pink blanket off one bed, wet it in the shower, and wiped my hide with it. I threw it back onto the bed and then indulged in a double-long shower. I luxuriated in the warm water, and discovering many pulled muscles in the injured leg: gracilis, tibialis anterior, gluteus medius, and whatever the little one is that is responsible for posterolateral abduction in the thigh. As I was showering, I heard a series of thumps and raps. I shut off the water, and sure enough, someone was hammering on my door like a madman. I wrapped up in a towel and opened the door, to find the young man who offered me the room standing there with a tray and two tropical drinks.
“You order this?”
“No I did not!” I said.
“OK, sorry,” he said, and I closed the door. I dried off and got ready for bed. I went to the clean bed and pulled the blanket up, preparing to embark for dreamland. Suddenly I spied a foreign object on the sheets: limp and soiled, an ex-agent of the Prophylaxy. Revolted, I left it there and went to the messed-up bed instead. At least I knew the provenance of that disarray.
Wrapped in the somewhat cleaner, dryer side of the pink sheet, I tried to sort through the day. I got three sharp raps on the shin, and demerits to the tune of 315,000 kip. That was my total expenditure today – about $37, and nothing to show for it except a few less hit-points on my tibia. I might have insisted Mai take me all the way to the waterfall, but so strong was my discomfort at being a passenger in his vessel, I was instantly relieved when I debarked. I surmised I had stumbled into a gem-mining operation, as every in-charge person had conveyed me away from it fairly promptly. Out of everyone, only Tall Glasses had professed to know that there even was a research station at all.
was visited by a memory from childhood. When I was five years old, at Children’s World daycare, I got into an argument with a girl of about the same age, and emotions were hot. To amplify my point of view, I decided to urinate on her legs, clad in pink sweat pants. This outrage was promptly reported by her young cronies, and the Adult was summoned. Both of us were transported into the Office, where I was made to sit in a chair and wait while dry pants were fetched from some closet. The wet pants were then put in a paper bag and carried over to me. The Adult explained that my punishment was to wear these wet pants for the rest of the day. I was outraged and infuriated, not because of the urine, but because the pants were pink. You’d think I would have learned my lesson early on.