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Published: October 2nd 2009
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There was a fabulous morning market close to where I was staying. Well, everything was close to where I was staying. Don Kong is a tiny island. To get to the market I exited my guesthouse, walked across the street, and walked across a big rice field, via a dirt path cut through the middle.
This market amused me to no end. It was a collection of maybe 30 stalls, but it was obviously this was where the town action was. Buying, selling, trading and most of all, socializing. A few men and women sat off to the side, in a house under construction, drinking beer and lao-lao. At 5:30 in the morning. And they arrived earlier than I had! That I could not figure out. Had they been up all night working? Where they just finishing their day? Or were they really starting their day with booze? Because for a people as productive as the Lao, I’d never seen such early morning relaxing. Maybe it was a holiday I didn’t know about?
Many people were eating noodle soup, others ate a gelatinous concoction, and still others ate fresh-rolled spring rolls. Women squatted on the ground behind big, shiny,
still wriggling fish laid out on banana leaves, ready to sell. Rhambutan, a hot pink fruit with neon green spiky tips, similar to a lychee, was present in abundance. Chickens and ducks lay stunned on the ground, alive but tied up and resigned to their fate. Tables were covered in slabs of red meat and flanked by bowls of blood.
All the ladies there cracked me up, because they each had serious attitude, loads of confidence and a great sense of humor. They were having a good time! They were friendly to me; I’d hear them all laugh after spotting me and say “Falang..tye hoop”, or “Foreigner, taking photos”. Every one of them wore the traditional long patterned wrap-around skirt, with some variety of shirt that featured an equally interesting, but totally different pattern than the skirt. There was a really cute little boy, one of the butcher’s kids, who was dressed one day in a collared three-button polo-shirt dress, and the next day in a long skirt with ruffled layers of green, blue and purple. My only guess is that because he was one of three brothers, and he had the most feminine face, his mom was like,
“Screw this, I need a girl and I’m not having another kid. This little guy is a bit feminine; he’s gonna be my girl.” I still need to learn more about this phenomenon but as far as I‘ve learned, it is not an uncommon choice; the parents decide at some point to raise a boy as a girl, and from now on that boy is a girl.
I found village life on Don Khong to be fascinating, and spent five days biking and walking around, watching people, talking to people and taking pictures. Many of my favorite photos from my entire trip are from Don Khong. A lot of kids did not go to school. I would see them fishing or playing during the day. I don’t know if it was because of a lack of money to buy school supplies or if their parents needed their help for the planting season. There were definitely schools there.
The island boasted a large temple with a twenty-foot tall Buddha, flanked by green-serpents rising up in to the air above his head. There are four special days each month for most Lao Buddhists, according to the lunar calendar and the activities
the Buddha did on those days. The two quarter moons, the new moon and the full moon are when these holidays are celebrated, and some people get the day off from work and school. (I’m not just clear yet on how it’s decided who gets the time off, as it doesn’t seem that everyone does.) On these days, the monks beat the drums early in the morning, and in the evening, to remind the people to come pray at the temple. On the island of Kong, the people make big piles of dirt in front of the temple on the day of the full moon, and thrust sticks they have taped money to in to the dirt, creating money-covered piles of dirt. Then everyone goes in to the temple and the abbot, head of the temple, speaks and leads the praying and the chanting of the monks. As Lao Buddhists do throughout Laos, they welcomed me in to the ceremony, instructing me on how to act and what to do at each part of the ceremony. They were surprised that I knew how to pray and how to participate Lao-style. I’ve always enjoyed Buddhist practice but do so even more
after knowing Lao Buddhism. I was very impressed by the size and splendor of the temple for such a small, poor island. The grounds of the temple were laced with graves, ten-foot tall stupas, with the ashes of those buried within, and a photo of the deceased on the exterior. One grave by the entrance to the temple grounds showed a French man and his grave said, “ Such a shame he was assassinated, he was a loyal friend to the Lao people.” The one Lao girl here who spoke English had earlier told me that this man was her uncle and that he had died in a car accident in Luang Prabang. Very curious.
I kept wondering if I was on Martha’s Vineyard or Long Island when I was on Kong Island, because it was so flat and looking out across the water it looked non-descript enough to be anywhere. But then I’d see the people and the lifestyle and feel very far away from home. But the strong sense of community, the friendliness to strangers, the laid-back peaceful feeling, the fascinating differences in lifestyle, made me feel like this was a place anyone would love. It’d be
a good place for an anthropologist to study. I would like to see it again in a few months, mid-rainy season, when the water is halfway up the stilted houses. How do the people get water when their wells are underneath the rain-water?
I was very happy to discover that my Lao was good enough to talk with people on the island. This had been my first time being in a place in Laos where nearly every word out of my mouth needed to be in Lao. But my Lao wasn’t good enough to have complex conversations unfortunately, and the island had no access to internet or English newspapers. Thus, eventually I missed the bigger world, and I had to leave this idyllic place. So I waited by the temple for the bus to come and it eventually did, honking and not stopping, just slowing down a bit. A ferry, just big enough to hold the bus and two cars, took us across the Mekong River to the mainland, and we were off on a fascinating ten-hour bus trip to Savannakhet.
Next blog, Savannakhet, Laos...
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