The morning after our cave hike was warm and sunny. At breakfast I spied Annika, one of the Swedes from Nong Khiao. Pasco, her companion, was laid-up with a hangover, and they were planning a rest day. I told her about my plan to hike up to Ban Phoon tomorrow, and she said that sounded good.
The rest of the day was spent lazily, walks around the village, chats with mynah birds, hammock and Thomas Mann, waging war on the little black ants that were trying to colonize my bed, and swimming in the river. Night fell, the stars came out in resplendent sparkles, joined by fireflies and the flash of distant lightning.
The next day I met the Swedes at 7:30. This was the earliest they were willing to rise. We had a slow breakfast, then set off on the same trail as before. Two days of sun had largely dried it out, and there were far less gooey patches. We made good time to the first village, where we had big mugs of coffee. I mentioned to the proprietress that we were heading up to Ban Phoon, and she immediately began telling me the shortcomings of that place. There was no guesthouse, she said, and no water. The first was frustrating to hear because just yesterday she said there was a guesthouse. I reminded her of this, but my Lao evidently wasn’t good enough to convey the idea of “You said two different things, and they can’t both be right.” It’s a fairly common problem here, inherited no doubt from the Thais, who are so eager to please visitors that they tell you what they think you want to hear, regardless of the reality they are allegedly referring to. The proprietress suggested we go up to Ban Phoon and then come down and stay in her bungalows. It was tiresome. I walked around town and asked other people if foreigners could stay in Ban Phoon, and they all agreed it was so. The water thing was slightly more perplexing. I simply could not believe that a whole village full of people could sustain themselves without water. Nevertheless, we loaded up with as many water bottles as we could carry, and set off.
BREASTWORKS OF BAN NA PADDY
A simple fellow with a smiling mouth that hung open guided us to the trailhead, and indicated with his hand that we were in for a long climb. This proved 100% accurate. The initial three hundred meters or so were dizzyingly steep and left us sagging in the shade. Annika had particular trouble with the beginning, panting redfaced and thinking of going back. But she swallowed some water, and looked resolute. Pasco and I assured her it was not a race, and we were not impatient. She nodded and we continued to climb.
There were several large millipedes on the trail, both living and in various stages of decomposition. Those who had been dead for some time looked like empty suits of armor, all rings and coils. I surmised they were on the trail to lick salt dripped by buffalo and humans, and had been trodden on.
Unknown Bug, Ban Na
Buffalo clearly used this trail. Their tracks were everywhere, and on especially steep parts, their feet had gouged smooth slide-marks into the clay. I wondered about the economics and practicality of marching a buffalo up and down this incline.
We eventually came to a crest, and thought that things must now level out or descend. A little further on, the trail began to rise again, slightly less steep than before, but still hard going. This repeated itself several times, till we began to see sky through the trees and the broad expanse of valley on either side.
Pasco and I chatted quite a bit, each time we stopped to watch Annika labor up behind us. He had an extraordinary command of English, a rich vocabulary and a mastery of the little particles that usually identify a native speaker, like “yeah” and “stuff” and “you guys.” He told me he changed his name to Lotharion during his Dungeons and Dragons years, and couldn’t be bothered to change it back. It seemed he was amused at his past self, and kept the elvish-sounding name as a shrine to passions of youth. He did look something like an elf, as well, very fine-featured and fey, but wiry and untiring. His gaming days were over, and now his fascination was with shamanism, energy-healing, and the forces of life and earth. The pair of them were planning to head down to a small village in southern Laos for several months, where he was going to learn about some kind of meditative energy practice.
The Swedes talked amongst themselves in English, out of politeness, they said. Annika had a thicker accent than Pasco but no trouble whatsoever expressing herself. It was charming to observe them uttering endearments to one another, or having the minor spats that are part and parcel of any relationship, all in very precise and somewhat slow English.
On the flat parts, Annika walked side by side with me and we talked about life, work, vacation, family, and interests. I was surprised and pleased at the confidence Annika and Pasco had in each other – often, travelling couples are plagued with a wide variety of issues when it comes to communicating with strangers. And, let’s face it, it can be extremely hard to have a casual three-way conversation in which one person doesn’t have much chance or substance to contribute. It was refreshing that there was not an expectation that each member of the group would be included in each discussion, as our interests were widely divergent. I have often encountered resentment from the third party, whomever that may be, when the other two parties discover a mutual love of Star Trek or sphragistics or what-have-you.
We finally came to a crest where the earth sloped away steeply on both sides, and we had a view. The valleys had been completely stripped of trees, as far as we could see in both directions. Each minor hill had a miniature shade-structure on it where peasants slept during the heat of the day, surrounded by stubbly stumps and burn scars. Hardwoods had been cut, and the rest burned, and nothing had been replanted. It was dismaying and puzzling. Why would they do this? There was no way to transport giant tropical trunks from here to the river. Where was the wood?
We thought the crest must surely be the apex of our climb, and that soon the trail would begin winding down into the valley. It did descend, but only because we went across a long hogback saddle, and began going up again. We came to a gated fence and took that as a sign of approaching the village, and inside the fenced area were broad grassy meadows one usually associates with Alps, replete with a passel of browsing cattle. There were a few jackfruit trees, and cow pads full of jackfruit seeds. The view was the same as before, but now in the distance we could see a few higher hills that still had cloudforest crowns.
At a small creek, I stepped on what I thought was a rock in the water, only to have it squish. It was a cow pad, and though I washed my foot carefully, the smell lingered for a long time. We passed another gate and began to climb again, reaching some older forest that was cool and shady. Mushrooms grew in profusion, including some giants that were as tall as my forearm and bigger than my handspan across the cap.
Three teenage boys came down the trail and barely looked at us. They were wearing ragged T-shirts and flip flops, and carrying homemade guns. To me, they were indistinguishable from the three youths I had seen on my first trip up Puhipii in February, and I wondered if somehow they were the same people, roving from hilltop to hilltop in search of targets.
We stopped after another long climb and had to make a plan. Ban Phoon was supposed to be three hours from the last village, but it was already four and a half hours later, with no sign of a settlement. We needed to allow ourselves enough time to get down off the mountain if we didn’t reach the village, and none of us wanted to go down in the dark. I volunteered to scout ahead, leaving my heavy pack behind and zipping up the hill at top speed. I came to a flat place where there was a mud pit full of water buffalo. They stared at me as if ready to be alarmed, but I had no wish to deal with huge panicked herd beasts, so I did not tease them. I kept going for about fifteen minutes with no sign of a village, only a continuously-climbing path. I returned and reported my findings. I then calculated we could safely go another forty-five minutes up and still have time to get to Ban Na and the promised bungalows.
So, on we went. Shortly after we came to the spot where I last turned around, we spotted a wooden building on a ridge above us. At last! Heartened, we continued, and soon came to a little group of children playing in the mud.
“Sa-leep?” they asked, pantomiming sleep. We nodded, and they pointed up the path. We passed another buffalo-wallow, and then found ourselves looking up at the very top of the hill, where a wooden fence surrounded a cluster of wood buildings on stilts. We climbed over the fence, and found ourselves under the stares of a dozen people. They had dark skin and very strong features, pointed chins, high cheekbones, and large eyes. None of them smiled, waved, or made any kind of greeting. We felt uneasy, but made our way to the center of the village. A few children started following us, but hung back a safe distance. We were either openly stared-at or ignored outright.
Ban Phoon
We walked past a house on stilts that was full of people and noise. A radio blared from within. The street was clean of animals and garbage. A young man approached us and said “Sa-leep?” We followed him to a house, and he showed us a long platform-bed that would easily accommodate the three of us. We nodded, and he gestured at the bed as if we were so tired that we wanted to sleep right now. I brought up the age-old question, “How much?” This led to a long and uncomfortable haggling session, as the price he initially quoted was completely ridiculous. His father, a man with wiry steel-gray hair and a machete, sat nearby on a bench, glaring at us. Although he was two heads shorter than me, he had a solidity and authority that lent considerable heft to the glare. I employed a standard bargaining technique, telling the young man that the accommodation he offered was not worth the price he was asking, and the older man’s gaze turned even more steely. I realized that it sounded like I was criticizing his house. Another man, with a mustache and a yellow stare, pounded his stomach and said “We’re all hungry here!”
Although I can converse perfectly clearly in Lao, especially when it comes to numbers and prices, the young man wanted to scratch the prices into the hard orange earth with a twig. Somehow we could come to no common ground. I tried to tell him we wanted to eat as well, but he would not assent that he understood, no matter how much pantomime I employed. Finally we sat in the shade and started making faces at the children, who were losing their suspicion. Another man came down from a house and trumped the young man, quoting us a reasonable price that included a meal. We agreed, and then to alleviate the cold vibes coming off the older man, I gave him a roll of duct tape. I gave a roll of steel wire to the reasonable man, and to the young man, nothing.
I’d been carrying a bunch of junk around for five months, for handing out to village kids, but somehow there hadn’t been the right occasion for a lot of the stuff. Now I unloaded the last of my bug cards, some sheets of stickers, various small toys, and some pens and pencils. I let them look at my book of pictures from around the world. Then we walked around the village, and every time I saw a mother, I gave her a little bar of soap. The old women of the village came toward us one by one and pointed at their eyes, then held out their hands. What did they want? Eyedrops? Later, it was clarified to me that they wanted glasses.
A younger woman approached us and showed us the top of her foot. She had some kind of smooth, puffy infestation that looked painful, and she clearly wanted us to treat it. All we had was a tube of aloe lotion in Annika’s bag, which we gave to the woman. She sat down next to us and applied it to the affected area with the tip of a feather.
The village was about thirty houses, surrounded by a low wooden fence. Although it was perched on the very edge of the highest part of the hill, there were no views of the valleys available from any vantage. Banana trees, bamboo, and tapioca obscured the view in every direction. Just inside the fence were small houses, also on stilts, that held pigs and chickens. I was impressed at the will of the villagers to keep their livestock segregated from their children and food, unlike in the Hmong village I visited earlier.
One of the houses had a second-story window with an old man leaning out. He had a weary, pained expression on his face. His arms were resplendent with tribal tattoos. He looked at me and spoke in Khamu, but I could not understand him. He gestured to his stomach. Then, above his shoulder, appeared the steely man to whom I had given duct tape. The steely man explained this was his father, eighty-six years old, and suffering from a stomach malady. All I had was buffered analgesic, which I gave him, hoping it would alleviate some of his pain.
We walked further, past a severely-slanting house. Another of the village’s young men followed us furtively, fingering his mustache and obviously keeping an eye on us. A little horde of kids ran up, and I noticed several of them had pictures out of my picture book. The savages! They had dismembered my picture collection! Oh well, they were easily replaced, and now it was one less thing to carry. Still, it nettled me somehow that the children had destroyed a book in about ten minutes.
Around a corner, I spotted a man carrying an inexplicable object. It looked like a mobile or a bird-feeder, some strange arrangement hanging from a string on a stick. He was moving with a purpose, and I had to hurry to catch up with him. Hanging from the string was a platter with four bowls on it, and each bowl contained a dead bird and a piece of metal. I intercepted the man as he was about to climb over the fence.
“Are you a shaman?” I asked him. He grinned and said no, and pointed. I moved in the direction of his finger, and he climbed over the fence and disappeared. Soon I was near the house that had the noise coming out of it, and a shirtless old man with a sword was staggering around in the street. The Swedes caught up to me, and we steered clear of the old man. I asked a woman with a baby where the shaman was, and she pointed vaguely. Then a hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around.
The old man was glaring fiercely at me with pale eyes, and pointing the sword at my sternum. It was a homemade weapon, slightly curved like a katana, with a handle made of bamboo and sinew. “You want a shaman?” he asked, and then started to bustle me forward. I didn’t want to get stabbed, so I let him escort me up the stairs and into the noisy house.
Inside, about twenty people were sitting around on the floor. The old man shoved me toward one corner and told me to sit. The Swedes came in as well but sat in a different section. I looked around. The people inside were all ages, male and female. They were taking turns sipping through long bamboo straws that stuck out of big lacquered bamboo jugs clustered in the center. A radio squawked out the daily news in Lao.
The old man seated himself near me, and faced outward into the room. He set his sword down and tied a piece of faded cloth onto his head. Then he leaned back and started sneezing and twitching. When he sat up, his eyes had a wild look.
The man we had seen outside brought in a bowl with a dead bird in it. It was some kind of jungle bird with the feathers boiled off. The old man, who was apparently the village shaman, took the bowl and waved it slowly around, as if he were wafting its odors into the air. Then a woman came forward out of the crowd, carrying a child of about two. The child was decked out in colorful clothes and silver bangles, all of which were several sizes too large. Some of the bangles had been tied onto her wrists and ankles with white string. Her hair had been teased into a little tuft on top.
The shaman muttered and chanted some more, then unwound a long, knotted, multicolored string from his sword-handle. He used a small knife to slit the abdomen of the dead bird, and pushed the string in, bit by bit, dragging it through the entrails. Then he withdrew it and leaned in toward the child, who struggled and cried. The shaman wrapped the string around the child’s wrists, one at a time, and began on the ankles, but the child panicked and kicked at him. The mother tried to soothe her, but to no avail. The shaman said something; the mother shrugged, lifted her shirt, and offered the child a nipple. She calmed instantly, and the shaman returned to the string project. After that, someone produced a large basket of sticky rice, and the shaman held little clumps of rice against the child’s forehead, chin, and the backs of her hands. He chanted some more, and then the mother tied white strings around his wrists. He burned the excess string off in a candle. He and his assistant, the man from outside, then picked up the bird and examined it from all angles. Satisfied, the shaman shredded the boiled bird’s breasts and thighs with quick motions of his fingers. The mother ate the pieces, offering them to the shaman, but he refused. Then she rose and backed away.
The shaman leaned back again, and repeated his barking/sneezing routine. When he sat back up, he pointed at a ferret-faced man with a jug. That man poured shots of rice whiskey for everyone sitting there. It was a hot afternoon, and we were low on water, but we accepted the drink anyway. The man from outside then helped the shaman with the next part of the ceremony. He balanced his sword on a very old, leaned-over Coke bottle and an empty rice basket, and placed two candles on the flat of the blade. He used a white paste to scrawl symbols onto the blade between the candles. His assistant lit the candles, and they both chanted for a minute or so. The shaman turned to the room at large and, with a simple gesture, instructed the fox-face to give everyone another drink. After the gasping had died down, he uttered something, and everyone began producing small objects. The shaman reached past the dead bird in the bowl and pulled out two very old coins. Other people offered bits of metal ornamentation, knives, shiny stones, and more old coins. I offered him two Sharpie markers and a piece of quartz. He took a basket full of uncooked sticky rice and dumped it out, making a little mountain. Then he adorned the mountain with all the odds and ends he had collected. More whiskey was distributed, then more chanting ensued.
The shaman raised an arm and pointed at everyone in the room, one by one, including the visitors. The natives rose and began heaping 2000 kip bills in front of him. I joined in. The Swedes did not have 2000s, so they threw in a 5000 and a 10000. The ferrety whiskey man made a statement and reached in to grab the 10000, but the shaman stared him down until he put it back. The shaman wrapped the colored string around the pile of bills and then handed it to a soot-stained old man with thick forearms who sat on his right. That man shuffled the bills together and then handed them to the woman with the baby, who bowed and accepted. The family resemblance was unmistakeable: this was surely her father and the baby’s grandfather.
This seemed to signify the end of a routine, for people started talking more loudly. They had been chatting through the entire ritual, but now they relaxed and began to move around in the room. The radio was turned back on. The shaman and his assistant continued to mutter and gibber over the pile of rice and the sword. Someone motioned me over to the center of the room where the big bamboo tubes lay against a centerpost. I took a drink through one of the long straws. It was like a punch: rice whiskey leavened with fruit juice and spices. It was warm and made my throat itch. I thanked the person who had motioned to me, using the Khamu “Ko par ngium,” which sounds like Coparnium. This got a big laugh from the whole room. I tried some of my other words and phrases; the one that seemed to delight them most was “Dtalang-tang,” meaning “dragonfly.”
The final phase of the ritual began a few minutes later, centered around the grandfather. He sat at a low round table with candles burning in bottles. The shaman sat next to him, humming and chanting and singing, and everyone in the room came and tied little pieces of white string around the grandfather’s wrist. Some of the people sang as they did so. I tried out a little Mongolian throatsinging as I tied my string; this earned me a look from the shaman that was a perfect mix of confusion, curiosity, and irritation. After all the strings were tied, the men started handing cigarettes to each other. I refused multiple offers, pantomiming gagging and coughing. The room soon filled up with acrid smoke, and we excused ourselves to step outside.
We sat on a bench in the shade for a while, marveling at what we had just witnessed. The villagers behaved in a much more friendly fashion toward us after that. Many of the young mothers brought their button-eyed babies over to stare at us.
As the sun began to set, the man with whom we had arranged to stay approached us with a battered-looking wok and asked us if we were ready to eat. We most certainly were, and we followed him back into the shaman’s house, where the little round table had been surrounded by three chairs. A long blanket was spread on the floor where the shaman had been sitting, and all the men in the room were sitting cross-legged on either side of it. It was covered with food, but I never got a good look at what they were eating. We were served ramen noodles in bowls, with extremely salty scrambled eggs and sticky rice on the side. It was simple but nourishing, and we ate it with gusto. The women and children lingered around the sides of the house, waiting for the men to finish.
We went back outside after the meal and sat in the last pink and orange rays of the sun as it disappeared behind distant mountains. Our landlord appeared instantly and suggested we go to sleep. It was far too early, and I told him so. We sat on the bench again, and I gave away the remainder of my loot to the crowd of children. They dispersed as soon as they realized no more treasures were coming out of my bag. The landlord had been hovering nearby, chain-smoking cigarettes, drew close and again suggested it was time to sleep. Since there was no electricity in the village, it did not sound quite so unreasonable to go to bed at this early hour. We followed him to the house, and on the way I asked if we could have some water.
The short, uncomfortable episode that ensued will forever be a source of confusion for me. He stared at me without comprehension. The iron-haired man had appeared again, and stood with the younger man, facing us. I repeated my request, and there was still no sign that they understood. I acted out thirst and drinking from a cup, a bowl, and out of cupped hands. I said “People get thirsty, people drink water. Where is the water?” Their faces darkened, and the older man shot the younger one a look of controlled disapproval that seemed to say “They don’t know how it’s done here.” I looked at the older man and asked him “Where do you go when you’re thirsty?” He frowned and did not reply. I translated all of this to the Swedes, who had no suggestions. Finally we accepted that there was to be no water, and let the younger man urge us upstairs.
It was barely past seven when he ushered us into the main upper room of the house, where three sleeping mats had been laid on the floor. I asked him if he had mosquito nets. He was surprised that we wanted them, but I insisted. We sat on their porch and watched the village prepare for nighttime while the man prepared our nets. It took him a very long time, compared to the complexity of the task, but it was still fairly early by the time he came out and told us our beds were ready. I asked for a bathroom, and he said there were no bathrooms, just go anywhere near the boundary fence. I theorized that if the people here drank no water, their solid waste would form dense discrete nodules that could be easily eaten by pigs, with relatively little chance of spreading contamination.
There was a single candle burning in the bedchamber as we prepared for sleep. Three children played in their pajamas, and the landlord watched us carefully from his seat on the floor. We held a short conference about water, and decided we could not afford to drink any of our reserves tonight because we would need it for the hike down tomorrow. We resolved to rise as soon as the sun came up so we could hike during the cool part of the morning. We had two liters of water between the three of us, and we all had a burning thirst following the salty eggs, the whiskey, and the hot climb.
The landlord watched us until he was satisfied that we were going to sleep, then he extinguished the candle and left. I lay there in the strange bed, thinking of water. It is very hard to sleep when you are thirsty, and even harder when there is a container of water within arm’s reach. My thoughts were focused on that liter bottle of fresh, cool, delicious water, and I could not relax.
The other impediment to sleep was the noise from the street outside. The villagers decidedly did not go to sleep this early – the shouts of children mixed with the barking of dogs and the laughter of adults for several hours. The children quieted down, but the dogs never did. I felt like a child who had been sent to bed while the parents are having a dinner party, and listening to the sounds of people having fun on the other side of the dark door. After a long time, the sounds died down to one localized noise-source, which I presumed was the house where people were sitting around drinking rice-whiskey. There was a very yappy dog in the street just below us, and it was only intermittently loud, the cur. A constant source of noise is possible to ignore, but when it erupts at unpredictable intervals, it renders sleep all but impossible.
Much later, the landlord, his wife, and their youngest child came into the room. The wife and child were the ones we’d seen in the shaman’s house. They set up a bed in a little closet-like space and lay down. The reason for the shaman-ritual soon became apparent. We had conjectured that it was a naming-day or some other age-related affair, but in fact the child was sick. She had a loud, difficult cough, and after each bout, began to cry. This continued through the night; needless to say, I did not sleep much.
When the bluish light of dawn began to steal through the gaps in the wall, we rose and packed our belongings. The village was slowly coming to life. We skulked away, not wishing to speak to anybody. The water and bed situation had made us all feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, and we wanted to leave. On the way out I saw the grandfather, squatting near a fire and using a hand-powered bellows to heat it up. I saw metal-working tools nearby, including a big iron knob used to beat metal into bowls. I was extremely interested in Khamu metalwork, and wrestled for a few minutes with the idea of staying and watching him work. In the end my parched throat won out: even in the early morning, it was evident that the temperature was rising, and my animal brain was ringing with dire warnings. So we climbed the fence and headed down the hill, and four hours later reached Ban Na, where water was available in plenty.
Khamu Smithy
I wondered about the world view and cosmology of a group of people who were not exposed to constant advertisement and flashing images of technology-based capitalism. Unfortunately, with the lack of televisions, advertising and commerce came an absence of schools, doctors, and comfort. It is a great temptation in the Western world to idealize such a people, and project onto them a close-to-nature nobility or purity, an antediluvian innocence. The reality is that a sick toddler gets colored string and ritual in place of antibiotics, and that an old man must endure his pain without palliatives.
CRITTERS ALONG THE WAY
Arlo, Pasco, and Annika after the hike down.
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