The joy of a river

Lunar New Year, and Korea is shutting down. So once again, I'm climbing on a plane and going to have a look at someplace new! Hooray!

From Korea to Vientiane is just 7 hours on a plane. Unfortunately, the Laotian capital isn't on a major route from Seoul, so after a frantic drive to the airport after work on Wednesday and a flight to Bangkok, I get to, once again, spend a night on the obliging Starbucks couch. I have a ten-hour layover and it's bringing back memories of the long night on the way to Bali last year...

Sadly they're building a new shop right next to Starbucks, presumably to avoid inconveniencing day travellers, and I can't block out the screeches and whines of their tools. So after a gruelling night spent moving from chair to chair, trying to find a quiet and comfy place to sleep and eventually giving up, I made it to morning and to my 11:45 flight to Vientiane. It took just over an hour, flying north into the peninsular hinterland, over miles and miles of rice paddies and the odd hill. Coming in to land, it was only at the very last minute that the ground beneath us turned from field to concrete runway. Through tedious customs and visa formalities, a driver waited for me in the heat; he had very little English, so, with a minimum of words, he hustled me into his battered Peugeot and set off through the city streets. The buildings lining the wide avenues reminded me of Madagascar: with faded French colonial pretensions, the shabby beauty of the verandah-lined stilted houses appealed to me straight away.

It wasn't until we reached the outskirts, though, that I realised I was going to fall madly and irrevocably in love with this country. We turned onto a dirt road and drove through tiny villages centred around shops operating from wooden shacks. The houses, set on large plots of land, were all built on stilts, and in the spaces beneath, whole families were gathered, eating lunch, or chatting, or simply sharing a smoke. Goats meandered along the edge of the road, paying no heed to the drivers, who were, if we're honest, simply meandering themselves. Some were meandering so successfully they'd come to a complete stop on the road and were now engaged in talking to stall owners, maybe buying a baguette or two for lunch. It was great. I couldn't have come further from the grey high-rises and farm-quilted valleys of South Korea. And we were only a short drive outside the capital city!

My lodge was on the banks of a river, the Nam Ngum, just a collection of rough huts with verandahs and an outhouse or two.



Steps led down the steep bank right to the water's edge, where, having now run out of land, the owners built a restaurant on the water. The deck enclosed a section of the fast-moving river as a makeshift pool.




Tables and chairs were scattered over several moored rafts under thatch, and at the far end, when I arrived, the kitchen was filled with chattering Lao, all of whom stop at the sight of me and come over with warm smiles to wish me welcome to their country. I settled on the edge of the restaurant, my legs dangling in the cool water, a book in one hand, in the other a bottle of Beer Lao, the best lager I've ever tasted. Can life actually get any better than this? The next few days will tell...

Across the river, a village lies, carved out of the forest. A ferry carries people and scooters back and forth, but I make my way there on a section of the restaurant, which detaches to become a thatched raft.



We land next to some women washing clothes in the river and Joy, my guide, leads me up the steep bank to the village. (Joy is a nickname; it means 'skinny' and he lives up to it.) Although Hmong people are increasingly coming down from their traditional mountainous homes to live and work alongside lowland tribes, this village is entirely Lao. The Lao are strictly Buddhist and a bright gold and green temple occupies prime position. Joy takes me inside. He is Hmong so his knowledge is limited, but the images on the wall bear close resemblance to the ones I saw in India, if a little more graphic; one shows a man, surrounded by a feasting family, his guts graphically spilling from his belly.

We walk to the village school, where around 50 children are taught by a single teacher. When we arrive, a pack of kids waves at me from the verandah, but then the teacher walks up and they all disappear back inside to learn about mountains and valleys (Joy translates for me).



I discover that the students are divided into classes, the teacher moving from room to room, handing out work to be done in her absence.



I don't want to interrupt, so I quietly look in through the windows; the children seem fascinated by me though and so I move on for the teacher's sake.

The afternoon, hot and sticky, begs to be observed from the cool vantage point of a tube on the pool, and I find myself very obliging in this respect.

The next day I ventured to the restaurant next door where I bought a Fanta and sat down under a thatch roof at the top of the riverbank, above pumpkin patches and tomato stakes - an organic vegetable garden which has to be abandoned once a year when the river swells, but which otherwise feeds the restaurant, the attached families, and my lodge.

It wasn't quiet. Mohawked boys drank Beer Lao and laughed in the larger hut next to mine, and Thai pop blared from the loudspeakers. The ferry roared its way across the river beneath. But it was calming in its cheerful simplicity. Families of chickens stalked grubs in the overgrown garden. Whenever I glanced up from my book, my eye was invariably caught by one of the legions of butterflies - sometimes a tiny yellow buttercup butterfly, someimtes a giant blue-black Birdwing, 15cm across its span. A silken cream butterfly, its wingtips brushed with orange paint, veered by to inspect my Fanta but went off in search of more natural sugar. And just down the bank, an abandoned hut, marigolds testing its boundaries, played sunny host to an almost chameleon-like lizard, its skin glowing bright red in the noon light, fading to a muddy green at the tip of its tail. He watched me with as much interest as I showed him, turning his head to stare into the camera lens.

I was talking about India a few days ago with some colleagues going there, and found it strange that my enduring memories are of the myriad cafes Sara and I sat in, not talking, often, but simply writing, reading, watching people. It seems that often the best impressions I get from a place are from doing absolutely nothing! Score!

Sometimes in Bali I got frustrated with the thought that everything was just for show, that the only industry was the tourist one, that even the most genuine-looking restaurant was too pricy for locals. It's different here. When lunchtime comes along, the huts fill up with Lao, chattering, bantering with the owners and eating the same food as I've just ordered.

Like I said earlier. Love at first sight.