The Crossing

January 22, 2015

From Champasak to a Temple - 37.75 miles

Sunday, January 18, 2015

It was our latest start but so what. We had met a very interesting Israeli man, Oded, at our guest house the day before and as we ate our breakfast on the big deck overhanging the Mekong we had a great conversation with him. In age I could easily be Oded’s father but age differences didn’t enter. Traveling the world for fourteen years he seems to have gained wisdom as well as knowledge and perspective.

I knew we had something in common during our first encounter. He and I hadn’t met yet when he came into the dining area holding something gingerly. With a child’s curiosity and amazement in his voice I heard him say first to his girlfriend, Selma, and then to others on the deck, “Look what I found in a pair of my trousers, a miniature mummified gecko.”

No one seemed to care much about it and then for some reason Oded turned to me. He stared right at me holding the dried gecko. I wasn’t saying a word but I was remembering a similar incident in my life. I was in my first semester of college and my parents visited me in my dorm room one day. My father said, “I have something for you.” He gingerly pulled out something from his coat pocket and handed it to me. With a child’s amazement in his voice he said, “I found it in the driveway! He’s perfectly preserved. I thought you would like to have it.” It was a perfectly dried miniature frog which my father had put in a plastic bag and then carefully folded over the edges and stapled them together.

It was as if Oded was psychic when he said to me, a complete stranger, “Do you want it? Do you have a collection of these sorts of things?” I just started laughing. Oded came over and showed me the mummified gecko. It was rather cute and I accepted his offer. It was an endearing act by this person I had never seen before and I instantly knew he was special.

So, when we were having a great conversation over breakfast, jumping on our bikes and racing off was the last thing on our minds.

When Andrea and I did finally get going we rode just a few feet and commented to each other how perfect the day had begun and how beautiful the weather was. There was a slight wind from the north which meant it would be at our backs keeping us cool as well as pushing us south. The air had been cleared of smoke once again and the sky was bright. On the outskirts of Champasak a few rice paddy fields had recently been irrigated and planted with the winter crop. Bright juicy green contrasted with dull dry brown. The morning sunshine lit up the mountains to the west making for a splendid backdrop. The day was absolutely gorgeous and our late start was long gone from our thoughts.

Just outside of Champasak water was being pumped from the Mekong to irrigate the first rice crop of the year. We saw huge pumps here and there but couldn't figure out why some were pumping and some not.

A beautiful old temple south of Champasak a few miles.

After the second bridge on the small road I saw a woman frying some fritter-like things and I did a quick U-Turn. I thought they looked like bananas, and I brake for fried bananas, but these were things I had never seen before. I still don’t know exactly what they were but I bought one and ate it on the spot. Then I got two more. (I knew I should have bought ten more.) They looked like a grouping of French fries in a batter and although they were a root they were definitely not potatoes. They were either yam, taro or a turnip. The batter was the delicious part since the root was not particularly sweet. I loved that they were not too sweet - more earthy tasting. We munched them now and then.

Our route as close to the Mekong River as possible took us on some of the smallest paths of our trip. Often we rode on walking paths right along the edge of drop offs down to the river. Houses lined the other side and everyone said “Hello” or “Sabaidee” to us. Since it was Sunday everyone was home. It was a lazy day and possibly the highlight, for the kids at least, was seeing two foreigners ride basically right through their front yards. The excited greetings pretty much told us that few tourists bike from Champasak to the Four Thousand Islands area along the west side of the Mekong. The kids all lined up with beautiful smiles for us and waved furiously. Many of the adults were as excited to see us as the kids. Very nice, sweet people. We were having the time of our lives except our faces hurt from smiling.

The views from the path along the Mekong stopped me many times. The path, shaded much of the time, made for ideal temperatures. And this bench beckoned.

Sometimes the road was wide enough for a car but we saw only a couple.

We came across the cutest little store/coffee shop which ground us to a halt with a cloud of dust. The small eating area hung way out over the river. We absolutely had to try their Lao coffee just so we could enjoy the amazing view at one of their two tables. The Mekong had grown to at least a mile wide. The wind had pretty much stopped and the river was mostly like glass all the way across. We have seen many different facets, many Mekong personalities but this wide flat slow one it reserves for southern Laos and Cambodia. To drink the thick, chocolaty, Lao, ice coffee and get to know this new personality from our perch was a big treat. We looked at each other and knew what we were both thinking; we were the luckiest people on earth.

Cutest little store/cafe on the Mekong. Cutest "road" too.

Great coffee - Great view. The Mekong gets very wide in southern Laos.

We were not at all sure if we would be able to ride all the way to the biggest island, Don Khong, one of the first islands to the north in the Four Thousand Island area. When I asked the man who made us the coffee he was so emphatic about it being possible that all my doubts went down with the coffee.

We rode on and occasionally the path led us away from the river a little bit to show us some funky bridge over a small tributary to the Mekong. Each bridge was funkier than the last as we rode further from the last town Champasak. Some of the bridges we weren’t sure would hold us but we never had to wait very long to see if they held a motorbike. They blasted across without a care, deftly placing their tires on two-inch wide boards with nothing on either side. We usually dismounted and walked our bikes over the gaps in the boards or bamboo or sticks that would make most people wheezy. Farther, the bridges got better and better in quality and some were nice suspension bridges with metal sheets for decking.

These bridges seemed to be no problem for the locals including fast moving motorbikes.

I wondered if they wait for the bridges to fall down as someone is crossing before they upgrade them. Why fix something until it absolutely has to be fixed? Why plan? Why think ahead more than a few minutes? This is the Lao way.

I wondered about a lot of things as I crossed all these bridges.

Occasionally the path led us to a dirt road on the other side of the houses a bit inland. We weren’t expecting an actual dirt road. It seemed like a fairly new road and we felt lucky because it was in good shape, in places. But sometimes it petered out and the trail led us back closer to the river on very rough hard clay tracks. It was slow going on the clay because ruts made in clay at the end of the rainy season freeze in place as if they’ve been fired in a kiln and then remain the same jagged ruts all through the dry season, hard as rock. The continuous shouts of joy from everyone kept the miles ticking by without us noticing just how hard the going was.

At the most major tributary we encountered there was no bridge. The dusty road led us down to the river where two old women were standing on a large wooden raft. They motioned for us to get on. There were no words, no smiles just a quick hand gesture to get on. I thought we maybe had reached the nether world: The Crossing. I was reluctant to get on. The two women were weathered old crones, witches. Then they smiled but only quickly, slightly, and I detected something sinister in their eyes. No one spoke which was just weird but we pushed our bikes aboard. We were in their hands now.

Their hands were on an overhead rope which stretched all the way across the river and was connected to the wooden platform via two separate ropes on pulleys. The women pulled on the overhead rope and the raft moved slowly across the river. The pulleys clanked along the overhead rope. Suddenly one of the pulley ropes got stuck on the splintered end of the vessel out too far to reach. We were dead in the water. I, of course, knew this had all been planned and there, trapped in the middle of the river, the women would perform their under-worldly things on us.

As one of them struggled to free the rope a gecko, one of the large blue geckos*, wound up to do his call which is very loud. The deal is with these geckos is that they make a windup call which announces they will soon begin their loud call, “Geck—-O……. Geck—-O……. Geck—-O”…….. and you count how many times they say Geck—-O. Thais think that hearing these geckos make this sound during the day is generally bad luck and the only way to turn it around is if they call seven times. Then it is considered very good luck.

So, as I watched the futile efforts of the old woman to free the line using the blunt end of a bamboo pole! I counted Geck——Os hoping for some good luck because it was looking like we needed it. The gecko came up short with only six. I thought, ‘Six…..Styx’. I’d been thinking of it already but now I was sure - we were crossing the River Styx!

The river Styx separates the world of the living from the world of the dead in Greek mythology. You cross it when you’re dead. How I became dead I’ll never know. It’s not free to cross even when you’re dead and if my family didn’t put a coin in my mouth for payment I was sunk. I checked my mouth. Nothing. But that figures because all the currency in Laos is paper and there was no chance I’d have a coin in my mouth.

At least for the moment the ferry women were more interested in getting that darn rope free. The one not working at freeing the rope was getting very frustrated with the other so she came storming over to take over. I glimpsed her bloodshot eyes as she pushed past me. I shot a look at Andrea who was standing stone still holding her bike upright. Was she dead as well? How did we die and were we ever going to get to the other side where we would be reborn?

The ancient Greeks didn’t spend time worrying about the afterlife because they figured they would be reborn quickly. But they also believed that sometimes things go wrong and your soul is stuck for a long time, sometimes forever. (Hmm, very similar to Buddhism.) What if the old women couldn’t ever free the rope? We’d be stuck in the middle of the river forever? Maybe that was the plan because they knew we didn’t have coins in our mouths because we were in Laos where no coins exist. What a mess.

The other old crone couldn’t free the rope either and she threw down the bamboo pole in frustration. It was one of the only times I’ve ever seen an outburst of anger by someone in S.E. Asia; another indication they were witches. Witches have little patience and bad tempers. Remember the Wicked Witch of the West? No patience. When things don’t go witches’ way, watch out!

Andrea and I realized a long time before that the line didn’t need to be freed and if we pulled on the overhead rope we would still move the raft forward, albeit less smoothly. I started pulling on the rope and then the two frustrated crones pulled with me and we all moved the ferry across in a kind of compromise for our lives.

Safely on the other side they demanded two and a half times the rate for locals. I started to object and point out the delay they caused us but then changed my mind and keep quiet. Everything was just fine. Anything to get off that raft. As we pushed our bikes up the embankment I had the distinct impression that if I turned around there would be no raft ferry, no rope and no old crones. I didn’t turn around. Memories of the past life disappear when you are reborn on the other side of the River Styx.

We rode on.

The wide, wide, beautiful Mekong River which we have come to know pretty well.

I was surprised by how many houses there were along the Mekong. It was nearly an unbroken string of houses and everyone was home. Unlike Thailand, there are loads and loads of kids. There was a major baby boom starting about nine years ago in Laos. And along with babies comes a huge building boom. Saws and hammers could be heard almost everywhere we rode; houses going up all over. Planers not cicadas.

It was the weekend so no kids were in school.

We knew all along we wouldn’t be finding a restaurant or a guest house the two days it would take for us to get to the island of Don Khong. We saw small stores but they didn’t have actual food, only junk in little sealed bags. We had brought some food and enough water. The bigger unknown was where we would sleep.

We started to scrutinize school yards, soccer fields and temple grounds as to pitchability of our tent. We didn’t relish the thought of kids watching us for hours while we set up the tent, washed our dusty selves in the Mekong and ate our meager food. So we rode until just before sunset to begin to look seriously.

We spied a nice looking temple and across from the front of the temple was a perfect camping area under a mango tree right next to the Mekong. We thought we should ask the head monk if we could set up our tent there, not that the temple owned that land but because it would be proper we ask someone important in the community.

I found the head monk smoking a cigarette (For some reason monks in Laos are allowed to smoke! A pact with the devil? They pulled some ropes on that same river? I don’t know.) near the rear of the temple compound. At first he was very reserved and didn’t even say hello to me in return. Maybe I had surprised him and he didn’t like me seeing that he was smoking. I have no idea. I showed him a picture of a tent and asked if we could set one up in front of the temple. He said, “Yes, I know tent.” He thought for a few seconds and then looked around and said in English, “It’s cold in the night. You can stay inside this house.”

He showed me to a perfect little guest house complete with a bathroom, cable TV, DVD player, fridge, fan, hot water unit for instant coffee and a bowl full of instant Lao coffee packages. The beds didn’t look like much but it sure looked a lot better than setting up the tent. Andrea and I don’t think it gets very cold at night but we’re happy the head monk thinks so. Again, our luck was quite good despite the number of gecko calls. It’s the nicest bungalow we’ve had in a long time. We’ll certainly leave a donation to the temple in the morning because we very much appreciate the generosity and hospitality.

It also came with a very sweet cat who apparently loves sweets, a little girl told us. We’ve named him “Khanom”, the word for sweets. There was an entourage of little kids and young monks who all watched us unload our bikes and bring our stuff into the little house. They are such cute innocent and good kids - super curious.

So, here we are. A while ago one of the little monks brought us four large bottles of water and another bowl full of instant Lao coffee packets. They are so nice to us! Andrea took her shower first and discovered behind the door right next to the hinge a very large tree frog all nestled in the corner. He didn’t move during each of our showers. There are nine louvered windows (teak louvers and no screens) to this little house and the clock has stopped on 12:15.

This is as luxurious as it gets when it comes to staying overnight at a temple.

The backside of the temple from our temple guest house porch.

Again, a perfect day from start to finish. We made it across the River Styx by pulling some ropes. We were not stranded in the middle and we didn’t have to be reborn and I don’t even think we were ever even dead. A head monk took pity on us and showered us with kindness. There is a large tree frog in our bathroom, always a big plus. The gecko at the river only called six times but maybe I didn’t hear one of them because I feel pretty lucky. I can’t believe how interesting this trip has been.

Lovebruce

Shell writing in cement on a really nice stairway down to the river from the temple where we stayed overnight.

This nice tree frog apparently needed accommodation as well.

* The big bluish geckos, tokays, are as big as my forearm around when full grown and a Thai told me they eat mice and rats. I have no idea if this is true but they must eat a lot of insects and are a good thing to have in a bamboo hut. They’re so shy I’ve only ever seen one and it scared me half to death. They’re bluish gray with very bumpy skin and orange spots! They’ve been in bamboo huts with me, I just don’t go looking for them. Someone told me to never touch them because they will bite and not let go unless they are put under water for some time. The wound will get extremely infected. They’re basically land Nagas. Fortunately they stay away from humans.

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Jen RahnI think the tree frog was there to stand in for the missing 7th gecko call. It's because if the frog that you were resuscitated to the land of the un-dead. The monks had the whole thing planned.

Thank goodness!
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4 years ago

Ron SuchanekRandom hospitality and kindness seems to happen to touring cyclists who are open.
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4 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Ron SuchanekYes, just when you think you are screwed something great happens. Well, not all the time but those are the times we remember. All those other times when we really were screwed we have either forgotten or we laugh about them now.
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4 years ago