Walk the plank

The first sign we might be in a for a rough couple of days came in Chiang Khong, on the northeast Thai-Lao border, where the guest house we had booked was a dump run by a family of sour Chinese. I resorted to an old Peace Corps trick of inserting wads of toilet paper in my nostrils in order not to gag when entering the WC. Thank you, Sargent Shriver, for preparing me for Chiang Khong, lo those 45 years ago.

Thursday morning looked promising, cool but bright, and the crossing of the Mekong on a long-tailed skiff was thrilling. Joe and I both thought, this is the SE Asia we came here for. And as soon as we landed at Hoi Son on the Lao side of the river, we knew we were somewhere else. The efficient, easy-going Thai immigration officials had had telephones and computers in their cubicles; officials of the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic sat at tables next to bulging file cabinets, and scratched out notations on ledgers as long queues of farang backpackers stood watching in wonder. Above the Lao officials hung the national flag---the flag of the Pathet Lao, which took over in 1975 when the U.S. packed up its last cluster bomb and departed the region----and next to that a hammer and sickle. We hadn't seen one of those for a while.

Thailand had paved roads; Laos had red-dirt roads that threw up a fog of iron-colored dust as we rode by tuk-tuk to the main boat landing. Thai travel agency personnel in Chiang Mai were cheery; the Lao woman who checked our credentials and handed us bundles of kip, the useless-outside-Laos local currency, was tense and beset. The Dutch kid who had been on our bus from Chiang Mai watched all this and declared, audibly, that he'd heard the Laos were "lazy." But he plainly did not know the difference between the differently energized and those sapped and ground down by a hopeless system.

By mid-morning we had negotiated the Lao bureaucracy and filed down a set of concrete steps to the muddy and churning Mekong a hundred feet or so beneath the town. Up here in the mountains, the Mekong valley is narrow and all the towns and villages along the river are up on hillsides. This makes for gorgeous views but also for a lot of clambering up and down. The two boats bound for Luang Prabang, 140 miles downstream, held about a hundred passengers each.
Each wooden skiff is eight feet wide and maybe a hundred feet long. Passengers sit two by two on wooden benches arranged as on a slave galley ship. There's not much leg room. The sides are open and protection from the sun is provided by a wood and metal canopy, atop which crew members sometimes scamper noisily. The rear of the boat is enclosed and contains the diesel engine---garlanded with flowers to propitiate the engine god---and a room where baggage is heaped, plus the two WCs, which Joe once visited and declared not too bad. Also at the rear of the passenger cabin is a woman selling beer, bottled water and Lay's potato chips.

The passengers on our boat were 95 percent farang backpackers, mostly European and Australian, nearly all in their twenties. A Swedish lady and I were the token oldsters. Even Joe---who turned 48 in Chiang Mai---said at one point, "I'm so glad I'm not young anymore." By that he meant he was no longer obligated, as the packers seemed to be, to consume large quantities of Singa beer at night and then feel rotten in the morning. The urge among the First World's young to travel long distances in order to puke in countries with weaker currencies is a peculiar one. Though by and large the kids we met on this boat were altogether decent sorts doing good work back home---teaching handicapped children to swim, rescuing animals---and they were not the heedless rave and party crowd we'd seen in Thailand. They were a hardier breed, and their hardiness was about to come in handy.

The Mekong flows fast through the Lao mountains, with jagged rocks jutting out of the muddy water and others lurking just below the sometimes turbulent surface. It's a job navigating, and the boat's captain, at the front of the passenger cabin wearing a shiny blue jacket that read Body Body Body, rarely took his eyes of the river. But he must have miscalculated a bit, and about 40 minutes into the journey, at 11.50 a.m.---I made a note---a current caught us weirdly and dragged us over a rock.

We heard a scraping sound and the boat lurched. Then the engine quit. We were maybe 75 feet from shore. Joe said, "The propellor must be gone." A crew member bounded onto the bow with a long, thick bamboo pole. He alternately took soundings and used the pole to shove us away from more rocks. A small boy we believed to be the captain's son also leaped onto the bow, stripped off his red T-shirt, and began to wave it energetically at a boat like ours except with no passengers that had recently passed us heading upstream. The man with the pole was now guiding us toward the river bank, which luckily was broad and sandy. The German man seated in front of Joe and me pointed at the other boat, which was turning around, and said, "It's the rescue boat." You could see people all around us thinking, "Rescue?"

It is inevitable in situations like this one that into your head pop the cliches of American journalism about Asian boat disasters.
"Authorities believe the boat may have been overloaded."
"Earlier the captain had been seen drinking."
"Survivors said the crew saved themselves and left many foreign tourists to drown."

But it was not our day to make headlines. The rescue boat not only showed up in short order but had a spare propellor on board. Our boat was poled and dragged to the beach. We all took off our sandals and climbed ashore and lolled about by dunes as welcoming and friendly as those at Wellfleet. The new propellor didn't quite fit over our boat's drive shaft, but a hammer and screwdriver were brought to bear on a protruding bit of steel. To everyone's amazement, the boat had been refitted and we were on our way again in under an hour.

Now there was some apprehension in the air. Mostly, though, we went back to enjoying the green mountain vistas and watching the villagers on shore with their water buffalo herds and small vegetable farms on the hillsides. It was so ancient Asia, so peaceful.

But wait. Trouble soon erupted again. While we had passed through a number of rapids, which the captain had negotiated skillfully, apparently he had again erred. For there were sudden loud cries from the bow to "Sit down! Sit down!" We were really barreling along, through crags and boulders and whirlpools, barely missing some of them. More cries of "Sit down! Sit down!" The German ahead of us, who stood and gawked frequently, had to be personally instructed to take his seat. ("The boat may have capsized when all the Bavarians aboard rose as one and rushed to starboard.") Joe, by the rail, said, "Oooo---whoa." ("Lipez said, 'Wheaton's last words to him before they were separated in the chaos were "Oooo---whoa.'") Should we have been reassured or alarmed by the actions of the captain's wife? For she was praying and hurling flower petals over the side at the boulder spirits for all she was worth. I pointed this out to Joe, who said, "Maybe it's just garbage." But an Englishwoman seated up front told us later, not it was flowers, and the woman was praying like crazy.

And then we were through it. And sailed on. The Aussies had another beer.

[Sometimes the power here in Luang Prabang goes out inexplicably and I'm afraid I'm going to somehow lose what I just wrote. So I'm going to post this on the blog and then continue this entry on the next posting in one minute.]