Oh, rats!

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Thursday, 01/28/10

We got up at 5:30 in the morning to see the Alms Giving. Every morning in the town of Luang Prabang the monks walk up and down the streets with metal bowls and the faithful kneel respectfully to give them fruit and balls of sticky rice. It is the only food they eat for the day. I love learning about other cultures and religions and I was looking forward to witnessing this particular ritual. On our first day in the town we had visited a small museum teaching about the local culture. It gave specific guidelines for attending the Alms Giving. It was simple: Give food only if it is meaningful for you to do so. Kneel. It is disrespectful for your head to be above those of the monks. If you are not giving food, stand at a distance. Do not use flash photography. The flashes are unsettling to the monks.

I didn’t want to give food. Doing something just because it would be cool or novel would be disrespectful to their religious beliefs. But I did want to see it. So, at 6:00 in the morning Kim and I set off down the street. At the corner we found a handful of people kneeling on the curb with bowls of food at the ready. We saw in the darkness a line of monks coming our way. Two Asian tourists were standing by with their cameras. I was very disappointed to see that as soon as the monks arrived to receive the offerings the two tourists immediately started flashing away. They took turns posing next to the monks and those kneeling, smiling and posing. Once they even knelt next to those giving food and posed as if they were also offering rice to the monks while the other took pictures. Flash after flash after flash. It was so completely disrespectful.

We left the scene hoping we could find another area where, perhaps, the monks and the offering bearers were left in peace. We walked towards the night market and found where it appeared the majority of the people waited to give food. Light was just starting to wash across the gray sky. Dozens of people were waiting on the curb. Several were obviously tourists, but I didn’t begrudge others if they wanted to participate. Who am I to say to whom it would be meaningful and to whom it was only some ‘cool’ to do. As the monks approached it became very apparent which tourists took the offering seriously and which did not. I saw a very blonde girl throwing rice into the monks’ bowls. She laughed and threw up peace signs as her friend snapped pictures, sometimes blocking the progress of the monks. The other tourists did not behave any better. Kim and I stood on the opposite side of the street. I dutifully had my flash turned off. We were definitely among the minority. Most were following alongside the monks, running around them, standing as they gave them food, and flashing their cameras into their down-turned faces. Some of the monks looked no older than 7 or 8 and they scurried past many of the foreigners, attempting to escape the onslaught. It made me so angry. Instead of being an enlightening experience, I left the street livid. How could so many people be so entirely discourteous? How would some of them like it if a busload of tourists rolled into their church, knelt next to them for communion and had their friends flash cameras in their faces as they tried to pray? It was not the best way to spend our last morning in Luang Prabang. I was so perturbed and had no outlet for my irritation.

At 8:30 we met up at the bus stop to catch our minivan to Phonsavan. There were five other in our van: two French women, two Indian women, and one girl from the south of London. The English girl was very talkative. Unfortunately, I could barely understand her English and so took to nodding and chuckling whenever I thought it might be appropriate. One of the French women talked a bit to me as well. I mentioned the Alms Giving and she mirrored my feelings of disgust. We spent a few minutes verbally abusing the rude tourists and I felt a little better.

The six hour drive took us up, over, and through the mountains. The tortuous road was unrelenting and our driver seemed to be determined to take each turn at top speed. I was sitting in the middle seat of the first row and with every single twist I had to brace myself so as not to fall into Kim or the French women. It was like riding a roller coaster with no seatbelt. There was no chance to rest. My legs were burning with fatigue at having to support myself. The views outside were breathtaking. We were above the clouds. The mountains peaked out of them and seemed to go on forever. But the lovely the scenery flying by outside did nothing to assuage the physical anguish of the trip. Our only small consolation is that we were in a small minivan. I can’t even imagine what the trip might have been like had we taken one of the huge coach buses, which appeared to be going nearly as fast as we were.

We all fled from the van as soon as it stopped in the bus station at Phonsavan. If I hadn’t been in a third world country I would have kissed the ground. I settled by air hugging the general landscape. Our hostel man in Luang Prabang had called ahead for us at the Kong Keo Guesthouse and, after being told it was within walking distance, we set off for it. Unlike the picturesque Luang Prabang, there was nothing aesthetically pleasing about Phonsavan. There was one barren main street with a few side streets. A handful of bedraggled diner-type restaurants and a couple of cafes shared the thoroughfare with a half dozen hostels and guesthouses. In between each restaurant and hostel were travel agents advertising trips to the Plain of Jars, Phonsavan’s only claim to fame.

Kim and I found our hostel tucked behind some trees on the far side of an empty lot. A girl showed us to a bungalow. It looked like an old camp cabin from a Friday the 13th movie. But we were exhausted and it only cost $7.00/night, so we shrugged and collapsed onto our beds and took a three hour nap. When we woke up we walked back to the main street and both ate a mediocre $2.50 steak dinner. There was absolutely nothing to do or see in town. After we finished our food we returned to our bungalow. I noticed that a package of Oreos was missing from my bed. I asked Kim if she had seen them and she remembered seeing them on my bed too. I looked everywhere finally checking the floor on the other side of the bed. And there they were crammed into a corner. I picked them up and my stomach turned. The end had been nibbled open. And this was not the work of a mouse. The roll of cookies was far too big for a mouse to drag off a bed and carry across the floor. This was done by a rat. A RAT! Ewwwww….. A rat had been on my bed. So gross.

Now, normally I would have grabbed all my belongings, checked out, and trekked all over town until I found another place to stay. But, when traveling in developing nations, one has to be a little more tolerant. I didn’t want to throw the open cookies into the rubbish bin in our room (to lure the rats back in), so I went outside and found another receptacle. I saw the girl that had showed us to our room earlier and notified her that rats had been in our room. She apologized, offered us another bungalow, but I figured if ours had rats the others probably did too, so I declined. I naively believed that the rats might not come back into the room with us there. We put our other food (a bag of cashews and a bag of Cheetos, both zipped locked) high on a wall hook and crawled into bed. Kim inserted her earplugs and went promptly to sleep. Despite our long nap we were both still very tired. I had also intended to drop off but as my eyes grew increasingly heavy I was startled back to awareness by the sound of scampering. Oh, no! The rats were back! Apparently my mere presence in the room was not enough to keep them away. I lay awake all night, terrified that one would crawl up onto my bed to look for more cookies. I’m not usually frightened by rodents, but who knows was diseases Laotian rats carry. They ran this way and that and I even heard them rustling through one of the food bags (high on the wall). Halfway through the night my bladder started knocking on the front door but I dared not leave my bed. In the dark, my brain created scores of red-eyed sharp-fanged vampire rats scurrying around the bungalow. I stared in the direction of the window, willing the sun to come up.

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Photos

The Alms Giving
It should be a time for peaceful reflection and offering

Nope! Going to work!
Quite literally. We saw whole families digging trenches alongside the road.

Kong Keo
Avoid at all costs

Comments

[Trish]

Working kids? Rats!
That picture of the little boy made me want to cry. The rats made me giggle :)

[Tiffany Journeys East]

I'm glad someone's laughing...
Because I didn't find the rats humorous in the least. ;)