River Meditations
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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.
