Mekong Blue

reetings,

The road is made by walking. The road from Pakse, Laos to Cambodia is paved or sealed.

At the border, old rusty red and white metal bars weighted by rocks in a rusty bucket netted by wire hangs suspended. The VIP double decked candy cane colored bus is packed with babbling European backpackers destined for the 9th Century at Angkor Wat. They have a long way to go. Back in time. 

The efficient bus boy hands out departure and arrival forms, collects passports, a $2 Lao departure fee, a $25 Cambodia visa fee and $2 entry fee. He takes everything to a Lao shack. The bar goes up and we roll through no man's land at the speed of a landless snail. 

Being landless is fun, dramatic and exciting. No country, no documents, no money, no food, no medicine, no family, no friends, no chance. Abandoned by a strip of land on Earth. A solitary traveler walks north from Cambodia to Laos. 

A female Cambodian health care worker wearing a uniform with an official patch and face mask gets on the bus and points a small medical toy gun into each face, registering body temperature. Someone says, "If you're sick you stay here." "On the bus?" "No, on the road."

Crossing a border is a transcendental act.

On the C side it's business as usual; immigration shacks, money changers, women pushing food and beverage, fruits, naked children, scavenging emaciated dogs, torn cell phone umbrellas and food stalls where tourists sit waiting for the boy to come back with the government issued passports. An incomplete grandiose empty towering new C immigration building with Angkor temple motifs signifies grand plans.

How does it feel to back in C after 28 days in Laos? Laos was a time warp in the sense of pace, connecting with gentle people, relaxed attitudes, floating on high mountain rushing rivers and exploring soaring elevations.

Stung Treng is 87 clicks south of the border along the wide Mekong. Most travelers pass through this sleepy little town. It reminds me of Kampot on the southern coast five years ago.

Mekong Blue is the Stung Treng Women's Development Center. 50 women are trained in a six month silk weaving course, dyeing and creating beautiful silk textiles. It has been recognized by U.N. as a UNESCO award winner for superior quality, creativity and originality. 

The center improves the standard of living and breaks the cycle of poverty through vocational training and educational programs. There is a primary school with 35 kids and two teachers. Everyone receives lunch. After the local government it is the single biggest employer in town. 

Metta.

Elevations

Greetings,

From the HatSa river zone to Phongsali at 1430 metres is a twisting 20K dirt road ride. It is cold and delicious with splendid mountains. It reminds me of Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan and Tibetan landscapes.

At 5 a.m. loudspeakers blare a mantra from a bare tree. "Welcome to a new day in your eternal mindfulness..." This continues forever. 

Mountains and valleys are shrouded in early clouds. The old town rocky paths feature Tibetan and Chinese red wooden homes made from bamboo, straw, packed dirt, wood and cement plaster. "Modern" homes are cinder block. 

This is the simple complete rhythm in a northern tribal zone of human energies peaceful laughter inside language music.

In the market village women lay fresh green veggies on banana leaf mats.

• A woman chops chillies, a mother hauls water.
• A woman puts on her bright yellow socks.
• A woman tears lettuce leaves for her steaming noodle soup.
• A woman sells crabs wrapped in banana leaves.
• A woman unloads her heavy head yoked woven basket filled with greens.
• A woman carries her world on her back.

In slow motion I meet many children. We draw the chalk alphabet on cinderblock walls. We sing and dance. They sing, You are fool whether you dance or not so you may as well dance. 

Metta.

River Meditations

Greetings,

The recent water journey encompassed long musical boats on the Nam Ou River. The Nam Ou flows south from Yunnan, China and meets the Mekong originating in Tibet, near Luang Prabang, Laos. The Mekong continues through Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to the South China Sea.

From Luang Prabang its seven hours to Nong Khiaw. The narrow boat and narrow seats held 15 tourists. Nong Khiaw has 4,000 people and is surrounded by mountains, villages, many guesthouses and eco-tourism opportunities for trekking and home stays with local people.

Neurotic foreigners speak of their angst, anxiety, trembling heart stories. Bye-bye tourists.

The timeless Lao river: a woman breastfeeds her baby, smiling, floating clouds in yellow green forest rising above bamboo homes, cooking fires, women washing clothing and their long black hair in the river. Singing. 

In the morning a mother, young boy and husband, with the help of villagers load five bags of cement and 20 sheets of corrugated tin roofing material into a long thin boat for the upriver voyage to Muang Khua. Along the seven hour trip we stop at their small hamlet to unload their building materials.

We are surrounded by rising limestone and karst peaks, diverse vegetation and wild green nature.

Scores of yellow butterflies dance near wet sand. Naked children play, dance and swim in day's heat. Water buffalo wallow in mud. Fishermen cast nets. Bamboo rafts with generators collect rapid wave energy, converting it into electricity through suspended wires to elevated villages.

We ride swirling rapids. The propeller breaks in a series of rapids and we float backwards to a calm area, beaching the boat. The driver strips down, hammers off the bent blade, attaches a spare and fortifies the connection with a nail. We head upstream. Life is but a dream.

Muang Khua is a small river town for tourists arriving or departing by bus from the eastern Vietnam border. 

Three of us find a boat driver with a narrow boat willing to take us to HatSa six hours north. By Jan-Feb this section of the river will be too shallow for navigation.

It's all this slowing down, energies and breath. A reconfirmation of the daily flow with mythic extremities. It is clear flowing water, many turbulent rapids, narrow canyons, wind, clouds, forests, and green eyed dragonflies.

Along the way a local man tells the driver to stop near a wide tributary flowing from the forest. He gets out, puts his bag on stones, washes his hands, waves and walks into the river disappearing into deep forest shade.

He is home.

Metta.

Northern Laos

Greetings,

Four new image galleries are in Northern Laos. Live, immediate and direct. A visual river. They transmit sand, waves, tides, fresh air, mountains, communities, dancing light and humans.

For example: 

This boy said, Before dawn follow the woman on the one red dust road to the market. It is small, near a school. Women spread their produce all green and fresh on blue tarps, natural fibers weaving their muted voices inside cool mist mountain air and baskets of chillies wearing happy leather faces.

Across the bridge children climb mountains to harvest wood for home fires.

Somewhere in Laos a child is carrying the world on their back.

Metta.

River Music

Greetings,

Three days and 400 kilometers north on the Nam Ou river into Pongsali province between China and Vietnam were magical and marveLaos.

Serene, wild, majestic rapids and calm zones. Pure nature. Rough, steep, verdant. The river is life's highway providing food, electricity, water for crops, bathing and transport. Images are being processed.

One clear mind-at-large image is of six young naked girls sitting on a sand bank in afternoon sun waving, yelling, dancing, running into the river...Hi! Hi!

Here are a three links to web sites to enjoy.

Elaine Ling is a professional photographer based in Toronto. We met here. She does amazing work and it's well worth a look. She uses a large format. Her recent book is Land of the Deer Stone. Mongolia, Cuba, Baobab trees, Tibet, Chile.

Legend and meaning in Lao textile motifs. Fibre2Fabric Gallery.

Literacy is an ongoing need in Laos. When I lived in Indonesia I met a teacher on Gili Air island off Lombok. She'd travelled by train from England across Russia, Mongolia and down to Laos. She mentioned Big Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang. 

It's a well established essential Lao center for local kids and literacy programs in remote villages. 

Metta.