Advertisement
Published: March 19th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Dinner in Sauvanakett
We were invited to a 'house festival' of a family which put on a dinner for their neighbours. Four Thousand Islands is the name given to the southernmost region of Laos where the Mekong River, having already wound its way thousands of kilometres from the mountains of Nepal, decides to broaden and pokily thread its way among a nest of islands. The number of islands is certainly not the nice round number of 4000: it differs depending on the season. In the wet time, the Mekong swells, submerging some of the islets and rubbing the silt off the banks, turning its waters from green to turbid brown. In the dry time though, as now, mopheads of jungle pop up everywhere, and you'd even be forgiven for mistaking a water buffalo, plying these byways with just nose and eyes levelled above the surface, for one of the four thousand. It is here in this gentle place, I make myself most at home.
On Saturday we sign ourselves up for a pig roast at one of the restaurants perched on the river bank. A Brit, here on a working visa, explains that it took himself and two of his Laos brothers to wrestle the pig into submission. Pig must have had an inkling his number was up. They killed him
by inserting a blade down the artery at his throat, letting his heart pump the blood out of him until it could pump no more. It is twelve o'clock noon, the pig roast is for seven, and around the side of the restaurant he is already roasting. Flayed out on bamboo shoots, snout and trotters all, he spits fat on the bed of hot ashes and coals below. We laugh when a woman looking on licks her lips and says to the man standing next to her, 'Doesn't it look delicious?' He shakes his head. She doesn't realize that he is Israeli, and pork, let alone a whole cooked pig, is not kosher.
After an afternoon of swimming upstream and the sun tinting our skin another, deeper tone of copper, our stomaches are churning with hunger. Stoney, Erik, Kai, and I climb onto our bikes and pedal three kilometres north along the edge of the island to the pig roast. Within minutes of our arrival, people begin filing in, and soon the place is overflowing onto the picnic bench outside. Over forty people and only one pig to feed us all. But it is enough. More than enough. Each of
us gets a big bowl of pork, potato, and veggies, then a second helping, then a third if we like. There appears to be no end to the pig's largess, though I wish in his lifetime he had trotted around more, he is equal parts fat and meat. The pieces of fat we pass down to the dogs who are always stalking by the chair legs.
We are about to leave for a night-time swim with a couple Israeli girls who have shown up post-feast, when we hear drumming around the side of the restaurant, and when we inspect, we find the Lao men having their own party. They invite us to join them, and we sit on plastic Beer Lao crates around a low table where our pig was chopped up with heavy square-ended machettes. I pick up one of the greasy knives and tap the blade against my bottle of Beer Lao in time with the bongo drummer while they sing. After a few songs, the drummer offers me a glass of Lao Lao, their homemade whiskey. Rituals surround the drinking of Lao Lao, and it is considered impolite to refuse an offer. I hoist the glass and
Die Austrians
Erik and Stoney, my great travelling companions in Laos tip it back in one swallow. It's potent, vapourous stuff, warming my throat the whole way down. 'Kawp-chai, Kawp-chai.'
We bicycle home at the end of the night through the inky darkness, my headlamp catching pairs of cats' and dogs' eyes reflecting luminous green. Before going to sleep I lay down on the grass by the river and look up at the stars. They are brilliant in this dark country. White sparks standing out. I could be floating in space. I think I see the Big Dipper, yet it looks upside-down, strangely situated.
I awake in the morning to the usual whir of insects and the hiccoughing sound of the small lizards called jing-jock. The odd blubbering of a boat-motor cutting up or down the river. The rooster, too, I know is doing his best strut around the yard. I hear him announcing the morning with a hoarse but fervent crow.
The wood shutters at the head of my bed are open and I can hear soft voices and footsteps picking their way through the grass. I turn over and through the fine weave of the mosquito net I see Mr Boun's younger sister and son standing under a
Serene Mekong Tributary
Taken from a bridge the French built between Don Khon and Don Det tree. They are picking the wild cherries from the branches, or the sister is: he is too short and can only prod at them ineffectually with a length of bamboo. The girl eats three or four then grants the boy one. They are so close, if I pulled back the mosquito net I could touch them. I can't believe they don't see me, or maybe they have. They go about the day blissfully unaware of their visitors.
I rise out of bed and wander over to the thatch-roofed deck, their own little family restaurant, like every Mr and Miss Bungalo have. I could easily spend another couple weeks here, I can feel myself pulled by the easy rhythm of the island life. I watch another girl who is on 'loan' from another family, and Mrs Boun perform their morning chores. One slab of ice as big as a briefcase is delivered to them each day. (On the mainland I saw them unloading a truck. 'Snow,' said Mr Boun, grinning, 'like in Canada.' At first I didn't understand: it just looked like a load of sawdust shavings; then a man dusted away a corner, revealing the precious cargo of ice hidden
within. Cloudy slabs of frozen water!)
The girl runs over with a big cleaver in hand and begins hacking at the slab, hewing it into manageable sections. The pieces are then carried over and put in their coolers to keep their food and drinks cold the whole day. As always, the little boy is in the thick of it, stuffing the leftover shards of ice into his mouth.
The women do all of the cooking off the side of the house under a tarp awning. At the back of the house, though, Mr. Boun is working on the foundation of an indoor kitchen. Today he is brought a supply of lumber for it in his longtail boat. He asks me to help him bring it up from the river bank and I am more than happy to help. It's the least I can do, considering I broke one of his bikes going over rough terrain twice now. Balancing one of the planks on my shoulder and walking it up the muddy bank is no easy feat: the wood's as heavy as iron, plus I continually loose one of my flip-flops in the mud. Mr. Boun is amused. 'Strong man,' he
says, as the sweat beads off me and stings my eyes.
The day I leave Don Det, I make a wish that it won't change too fast. The Laos I've met, especially Mr Boun's family, appear happy, content without the cluttering accoutrements of technology. An indoor kitchen, maybe, not much more.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0426s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mom
non-member comment
Ice
hey, Brad, I really enjoy your journal. When I was a child, we got ice from a friend in Princeton who cut it out of the river in the winter and it kept all year in sawdust and shavings. It must have been nice to stay with families and not just hostels. You were lucky. Mom