How Long the Lonely Road

Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on earth, Wandering companionless? —Shelley The monsoon rain, swept north out of India by the winds of that season, continued most all of the day for several day, clouds clinging to the karst cliffs of Vang Vieng like the canvas of a great dripping tent. I spent some time thus circumscribed and recovering from my injury; until, in between drizzles, I moved from the farm to a guesthouse in town. My foot was swollen from the rusty wounding and I was taking antibiotics. I did not trust the hospital. The nurses dumped iodine on my punctures, taped on a bit of bandage, and shouted, “Pay now!” In fever dreams I had visions of deeper infections: gangrene, cellulitis, blood poisoning, and amputation. I considered going south to Vientiane and crossing the border to see real doctors in Udon Thani, rather than risk an ambush by some medical complication in rural northern Laos, where medicine consisted of Band-Aids and papaya juice. The ne...

Oh, what a place, what people! What a civilization is this of ours—this godless civilization founded on whiskey, Blackwood’s and the ‘Bonzo’ pictures! God have mercy on us, for all are part of it. —George Orwell The farang in Luang Prabang came in two broad varieties. First, the tourists, who found Laos on their itemized Lonely Planet itinerary after the tsunami forced vacationers heading to Thailand to move inland in 2000. These would stroll the colonial graveyard of the city, drink Lào-Láo in Veng Vieng, and head back into Thailand via the Friendship Bridge, with a Third World stamp to liven up their passports, and several complaints about the condition of the Laotian roads burning venomous holes in their mouths from all the retellings. Second, the travelers, who stopped in Luang Prabang because it’s in the middle of Laos, and who are quick to leave for the country’s fringes: the Four Thousand Islands of the southern Mekong, the backwater towns like Muang Ngoi or Muang Sing or Phon...

You burn in the Mekong To prove your worth, Go long, go long, Right over the edge of the earth. —Joanna Newsom It took all day on a certain Saturday to bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong, a Golden Triangle town alongside the Mekong. A Thai woman was waiting at the bus station with a pick-up truck to take arriving farang to an enterprising guesthouse, the Ban Fai, run by a strangely-accented old Floridan and his Thai wife, aka The Boss; and I went there with two aspiring English teachers from British Columbia and two Dutch students. We all dined there as well, on a balcony over the Mekong, looking across to the lights of Huay Xai in Laos, and the two Netherlanders, Remy and Neinke, invited me to sit with them. Over dishes of rice and Thai curries, we spoke of Holland and America, our systems of education and welfare, and our sports passions. Remy finished off Neinke's meal, saying, “It's very good to travel with her. I always get extra food.” They both spoke excellent English...