Welcome To The Jungle

Beijing at this time of the year is the equivalent of a winter desert, a cold and windy desert. I don't say this with exaggeration as there hasn't been a hint of precipitation in more than two months. For this reason, Luhan and I decided to escape to somewhere with sun, moisture, and a little edge. We are in the jungle in Laos. At the moment, we're in Luang Prabang and I'll get to that in another post, but in the meantime I wanted to write a bit about our last 4 days deep in the jungle.

Deep in the jungle we were, but not entirely without comfort and I would even go as far as to say bliss. Both of us like to work hard and play hard we do as well. We stayed in one of five bungalows built by a German couple about ten years ago. Comprised mainly of local teak wood, stone and bamboo, the bungalow was a sanctuary. Beautiful furniture imported from Thailand, a stone enclosed outdoor shower and a deep bathtub below french windows that peered out onto an enormous veranda overlooking the Nham Khan river. It would be difficult to think of anywhere else in the world I could more thoroughly enjoy my novel, "The Quiet American" and ponder the 1950's U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the French colonialism that preceded it.

Having our base in place we set out on a seven hour hike through the surrounding jungle with our local guide. It was a grueling, but fascinating trek and I can't say I didn't relish in the fact that the exercise alone meant something to me after all the beerlaos I had been drinking. Throughout this journey we would come across two tribes, the Khmer, who fled from Cambodia during the Khemer Rouge and the Mong who migrated from Mongolia about 50 years ago. Besides the jungle itself this is what we were mainly going to see. Although encouraged, we took very few pictures of the villagers after we were simultaneously overcome with this awkward notion of photographing at will. It really just seemed unfair and invasive.

In terms of both of these tribes, I must say, these were in fact the most remote people I have seen. They seemed a bit more distant than even the autonomous groups in the mountains of Nepal we visited last year. Upon entering the Khmer village the first thing that struck me was the obvious abundance of children and even more obvious lack of birth control. Whats more is that these children were mainly naked and caked in dirt and what appeared to be ash. At the same time they all seemed to have the sniffles which seemed a strange phenomenon to be considering the heat. Needless to say, they were happy as most children are. We walked around for a bit then sat silently and observed a man melting metal so that he could craft new knives to prepare for the slash and burn agricultural warfare they would soon unleash in various parts of the mountain. I had our guide ask him about the origin of the metal to be melted. After translating, the man showed us small pieces of cars from which I have no clue how he obtained and then with a grin pulled out a piece of what he said was an American bomb.

Further into the day we reached the Mong tribe buried way up in the hills. The families and villages were scattered and we made short visits. Like the Khmer, the Mongs had many children as well. In fact, our guide introduced us to a man who had two wives and an accumulation of 21 children. When we met him inside his smoke filled home, he was preparing soup and one of his daughters lay on a bamboo bed beside him while his wives and remaining children were split up between his pig farm and chicken farm far outside of the village. Inside his home I saw various hanging calendars with what I believe were Laos superstars, all fading and browning from the moisture. I also saw what I think was a framed wedding picture also hanging, but unlike the calendars it was preserved in a cloudy plastic bag. This one daughter of his was chosen to be the one that could go to school and therefore, I joked that she was sort of the princess - they agreed.

The remaining trails, sharp switchbacks and creek walking led us to see very little wildlife. Our guide explained that there is in fact very little wildlife because anything and everything will be eaten. Every once in a while we would hear a gunshot and we talked about the possibility of which animal it might have been, a bird, a monkey, a rat, the occasional leopard, all fair game and present in this jungle. Near the end of our little adventure we came across the remains on a tiny fire and some feathers. Someone out gathering wood must have had a quick lunch.

As cliche as it may be, yes, we also rode elephants, or an elephant I should say. What a spiky beast this was, but strong indeed trudging us along through the river and patiently stopping and starting at each command from our guide as he took nearly 30 pictures. Why do we want 30 pictures of us on the elephant? Really, why do we want pictures at all? I can't be sure that pictures have much capturing power in this environment that occupies many more senses than are accessible by photograph alone. On the other hand, I love me some nice pictures.