The Pastoral Life

The sleeper bus down from Vientiane got my visit to Si Phan Don, the 4000 Islands, off to a rough start.

"Sleeper bus", for any traveller, is a term that holds ugly associations. The bunks on these buses wage war on arms and legs, on joints and muscles, on sleep. They're very short, you see. I had managed to survive many nights staying in them without serious injury, though others hadn't been so lucky.

"I have a bruise right here that's the size of your face!" said Khas, a 6-foot Australian in Hue, as he pointed to his hip. He limped over to pay his restaurant bill. "We'll take the train to Saigon."

I had high hopes for the trip to southern Laos. The bunks, if not long, were luxuriously wide. Hooray!, I silently exclaimed. Too soon, alas, and my hopes were dashed, nipped in the travelling bud. It seemed the width was to allow for two people's residence.

My bunk mates were an elderly Laotian and his cane. They had the inside half by the window; I, the outside. My legs stretched into the passageway searching for a kind of comfort.

The two next to me got up to use the toilet, right across from us, several times during the night. Without the commonality of a shared language, they resorted to physical gestures. Poke, poke. Oh, sure. Poke, poke. Okay, alright. Poke, poke. Again?!

I now know what it is to sleep with a 70-year old man.

After such an up-and-down, though confining experience, I spent my first full day on Si Phan Don in pursuit of exercise. The southern island of Don Khon was supposed to have a number of waterfalls and dolphins. I walked from my home on Don Det past dried fields and cows picking at trees and a solitary hut here, there. Trucks full of tour-goers charged ahead and covered me with dust.

An hour or so of walking found me at Somphamit Falls - somewhat of a misnomer. They were not so much cliffs that dropped water from a great height, as they were a collection of large rapids. Water crashed through jagged chunks of rock and, without settling for an instant, crashed again. At the very bottom, the falls became a stream that sang along as if nothing dramatic had happened.

I carried on and found where dolphins were supposed to make an appearance. None did, but the Laotian boys who swam and dove off the rocks and played made for a charming scene. Sunlight sparkled on the Mekong. They laughed. I stopped wading, put on my shoes and headed back.

My legs, the next day, complained about their exertions and insisted on spending time hammock-bound. Bread, cheese and fruit settled with me into a day of literary pursuit.

I read The Little Drummer Girl. There was Gavron the Rook in his castle on the hill. There was Kurtz running the thing for everyone to see, but for no one to know about. There was Charlie: sacrifice and willing participant. And Joseph. Oh, poor Joseph.

Flip, flip, flip, and Charlie had saved the world for some. I looked over my bungalow railing to see a farmyard fight in the making. A dog had a piece of bread at its paws; a rooster eyed him up, weighing his chances. The bird decided against certain death and retreated to look for other food. To scratch his claw in the dirt. To brood. Bugger.

These two were part of a larger country life. Two women rumbled a wheelbarrow by, stacked with bamboo. A group of men carried their picks and hoes down the track. Children played in the dirt or splashed each other in the river, and old women lounged in the shade, chewing their betel nut. It was a window on a pastoral world.

That, I suppose, is the point of travel: to see sights, people, ways of life that one wouldn't at home. I live in a city. I work in an office, occasionally wear a tie and take coffee breaks. I don't live in a hut, never use a pick or a hoe and wouldn't know how to fix the lack of running water in a shower - we lacked running water in our shower one morning.

I am not a country boy. Nor, I would imagine, is anyone else in Canada by Laotian standards. So it's interesting to see people who live completely different to me and other Canadians.

The waterfall was cool too.