Blessings and Borders

I sat quietly in the dark on the kerb opposite our guesthouse. I could see the first hints of dawn in the sky, it wouldn’t be long before the monks were walking silently towards me.

Everything was familiar, the same women were there setting up for the morning, laying out carpets and stools. Baskets of sweets and pots of rice ready to sell to any tourists who wanted to take part, their income assured during the festival.

On the other side of the street, the three local women I remembered from before, sitting with large woven bamboo bowls in their laps. I couldn’t see the elderly gentlemen I had talked with back in October, was he okay? A quick nip across the street, and a few hand gestures later I had learned he had gone away for the Festival…all was well, and I went back to waiting.

What was it I loved about this simple ritual? …the daily acts of generosity, the courage to ask for what you needed?…the fact that it stretched back in time, older than the trees that lined the streets…

Yes, I loved that this earth, these roads, had kissed the feet of thousands of monks in the 600 years of every, single, day – those watching and those taking part were continuing a connection between the past and the future.

…and this morning the monks were not the only ones barefoot and looking for alms.

A small group of children were gathering, one of their number kneeling at the end of the line of tourists and locals. They took it in turns to sit in line with plastic bags and buckets in their hands, and every now and again a monk would give them a yoghurt bar or some rice.

The children had the classic ‘street urchin’ look, some with flip flops some without – they had grubby faces and clothes that didn’t quite fit …whatever their lives were like day to day they were loving every minute of this, each bar a victory to be shared.

There was an older woman asking for alms as well, she had wild matted hair, clothes that hung off her thin frame, and the most beautiful smile. She could have been the mother or the grandmother of the kids – coming together with them after each group of monks had walked by, celebrating their successes and sharing her own.

She was the one I gave my money to. Making sure the amount was significant enough that it changed her day, but not her life.

After the last monk had bowed his thanks and walked barefoot back to his temple, I went down to the river.

The air was tinged with yellow and felt ‘soupy’, probably caused by the same sort of fires in the Laos jungle as the ones that were affecting the air quality in Chaing Mai. Songkran was a festival held to celebrate the beginning of the rains coming, and they needed to come soon…

Theo and Rosa would sleep until at least nine o’clock so I had a couple more hours to myself. I walked purposefully along, past our favourite place to have breakfast, popping in to check what time they finished serving. Eleven, no problem.

I carried on into one of the side streets and stopped to help a woman clean up the leaves the wind had blown off the trees the night before. Holding the bag open so half the leaves didn’t spill back onto the floor again. As we finished a sleek black cat came out of the dark interior of the woman’s home, the cat was willing to be stroked for a while and then, with a flick of her tail, leapt up onto a wall and was gone. I walked on again, more slowly now, admiring the beauty of one of the temples, the glorious rich colours and the intricate carvings.

…the intensity of the last three days was beginning to dissolve.

I ended up back at the river and going at my new gentler pace I noticed a sign I hadn’t seen before – ‘Solar powered river Cruise. Come and watch the sunset, free mojito with every cruise!’

Well, if that didn’t sound like the best thing I’d ever heard…

We hadn’t done a river cruise last time we were here, it had seemed a bit too ‘touristy’… but we’d done quite a few touristy things now and pretty much all of them had been wonderful.

Further along the river there was a coconut stand with huge pictures of Barack Obama on it. It was clearly the place he had bought a coconut when he had visited Laos. The fact that he had visited the country at all made me love the man even more, and in buying a coconut from a simple street stall he had immortalised that business. When it opened later, I would be one of its customers.

Wherever I walked there were people clearing up from the partying the night before. We hadn’t been up for much when we arrived, dumping our bags, showering off a layer of dirt and grime from the last two days and heading out to our favourite Indian restaurant on the riverfront…Tomorrow we could get into the spirit of things a bit more : )

The clearing up was being done in that leisurely way people have about them when there’s enough time to do things, chatting away to each other and getting the job done…

As I headed back to the hotel I passed a large group of workers, all in purple overalls, fixing something electrical, four of them clustered around a central box and ten or so others found something further up the street. The electricians were out in force – not surprising really with the amount of water being chucked everywhere, probably quite a busy time of year for your electricians!

Rosa and Theo were awake when I got back, and after a quick shower (attempting to get at the deeper layers of dirt) we headed off for breakfast, a table overlooking the river coming available just as we walked down the steps.

Theo and Rosa filled up on vegetable fried rice, toast and tea, and me a delicious fruit salad and yoghurt. I told them about the solar powered river cruise and the coconut stand and we made a plan for the day. Theo wanted  to check and see if the boat really was solar powered …and Rosa and I decided we would go back to the UXO (Un-eXploded Ordinance) museum.

I’d gone three times the first time we’d been here and each time I’d seen new things… details that touched and moved me.

For nine years a bomb was dropped on Laos every eight minutes. An unthinkable number of bombs in a war that was completely denied by the Americans.

The work the museum was doing with the money it raised was helping save lives and supporting families whose children had been injured by the bombs still buried in the land. We had decided it was the best place to buy gifts for people we loved back home.

We enjoyed walking through the town again, knowing our way without needing to use a map. We passed a shop offering massages, facials and treatments of all kinds…a quick glance was enough to make sure we checked it out on the way back – £2.50 for an hour long foot massage!

We turned onto the main street and the ‘blessings’ began, dodging large blokes with even larger water pistols and excitable teenagers with hoses. Little children would spring out of doorways and chuck plastic buckets full of water in random directions… and after four or five of those you’re going to get one squarely in the face 🙂

It was fun…it was hot!

If you’re gonna have a massive water fight festival, this was the place to do it…

When we arrived the museum was closed. Sad for us, but lovely for the woman who worked there. I hoped she was celebrating New Year with her family.

We would have to be picky about who got the gifts we had already bought! At least some small portion of one of the 79,000,000 cluster bombs still left out in the jungle was coming back to England with us…everything they sold was made from reclaimed bombs.

On the way back, we got totally drenched. I joined in with a group of kids at one point…it was such good fun throwing water over people on motorbikes. They were all going slowly enough that it was never dangerous and in the two days we were there, we didn’t see one accident, just a lot of wet motorcyclists : )

We got back to the massage shop and looked at the ‘menu’, could I allow myself to spend £2.50 after wasting £40 of our money?

Yes I flippin’ well could…I decided it was ‘not giving myself a hard time’ therapy! Rosa fancied a foot massage as well and we brought a slightly reluctant Theo back with us too…his back and neck had taken a hammering in the last couple of days, he struggles to spend money on himself like this so it was our way of looking after him.

Within minutes my feet were in heaven…Rosa’s not so much!

Her massage lady had been swapped out for some reason and the young lad who took her place was using this as a chance to strengthen his hand muscles, ‘it was so painful mum!’ ‘Even when I winced and pulled my feet away he carried on…!’

I managed to be sympathetic without feeling guilty – I had lost my scissors after all : )

Theo’s massage had been ‘okay’, not worthy of a comment on Trip Advisor but he wasn’t hobbling home like Rosa…

Theo had decided the river cruise was ‘solar powered enough’ and Rosa had decided it was ‘cheap enough’, so we booked. Two hours gently floating along on the Mekong river with the sun low, big and red in the sky. It didn’t so much set as slide further into the smog but travelling by boat was peaceful and relaxing …and the mojito tasted great : )

We had a toast to ‘surviving’ and then a man came round with a catfish in a golden bowl and asked me to put in a tank. He said we were going to release the fish back into the river with ‘all our wishes’.

I like the idea of releasing wild things back into their natural habitat but where had it come from?! Was it someone’s job to catch catfish and give them to the river cruises to release…?! We decided ‘wild back to wild’ was better than ‘wild onto a grill plate’ …and that for this fish it might end up being able to call itself ‘lucky’, so when two women came round with banana leaves for us to write down both our ‘wishes’ and our ‘burdens’ we focused in.

Both were easily accessible for me after the last three days and I liked the the plan for the ‘burdens’. They all got wrapped up with a heavy stone and dropped to the bottom of the river, where they belonged!

When the moment finally came for the fish to go I did feel my heart travel with it a little…go little catfish!!

We ate another fabulous, simple Indian meal that night, in the restaurant next door to ours because ours was closed for some reason  (…we wondered if everything was okay, we would come and check tomorrow).

We wandered around the streets afterwards offering ourselves up for the occasional drenching and watching more than participating in the crazy revelry. We didn’t have a bucket and didn’t want to buy a plastic water gun… so we contented ourselves with getting thoroughly soaked before going back to our guesthouse.

What to do with our extra day? Over breakfast we decided we would go back to the jungle waterfall we’d been to last time – it had felt like the beginning of our journey into the tropical parts of the world.

Going into the jungle at all had taken courage, the climb away from the river had not been easy, the humidity had been off the scale, and there had been lots of large bugs and mosquitoes… All of that had made finding the shady green pools at the end of the jungle path all the more special, and their beauty (and serenity!) lived in our memories.

It was hard negotiating a taxi to take us there. They all seem to want double what we paid last time, was that ‘festival prices’ or some other factor we didn’t know about…? We eventually found someone willing to take us for only a little more, he was a chatty man called Kou (pronounced Cow) who decided that some work was better than none…

When we set off he seemed to be going in the wrong direction, my habit of checking every journey on my map app still firmly in place. I checked in with him and he confirmed we were going to the Ta Sae waterfall, he turned left at the next crossroads and I could see we were on the right road.

Most of the journey was along the same route we had cycled when we’d gone to wash the elephants and we had forgotten just how much uphill there was.

Did we really cycle all that way back with only one pedal on Theo’s bike?

That journey was part of family folklore now …epic and a bit funny, remembered with fondness and nostalgia – it was no longer the intensely difficult, slightly scary journey it had actually been…

When we arrived at the river we parked next to the stunning red and gold temple that sits at the top of the track leading down to where the boats are kept for getting travellers across the river. It was at this point that Kou’s conscience pricked a little…’I’m not sure how much water there is in the waterfall at the moment…’

‘What do you mean you don’t know how much water there is in the waterfall at the moment…?’

He shrugged and went and talked to one of the monks who was sweeping the floor at the front of the temple.

Observing the conversation it was pretty clear that we weren’t going to find the same waterfall that we had before…lots of head shaking doesn’t usually mean ‘Yep, all good!’

What to do? We were here now… we decided to go and look at least and agreed a time that we would be back by and went down to the river. Gone were the stands selling hats, snacks and tickets for boat journeys across the water. There were just three or four boats with men sitting in them, not really expecting any work…

We paid the money to the one who‘s turn it was to get up and went across. On the way we saw a boat returning which cheered us up a little… they weren’t frantically waving, or running their hands across their throats – the universal symbol for ‘this is all a pointless waste of time’.

We made our way off the narrow boat and headed up the steps to the entranceway and the ticket office.

Which was closed.

We had paid to get in last time, this was not a good sign. We walked slowly up the path, guessing what we would see.

Nothing.

There was not a single drop of water anywhere… The entire waterfall was gone and in its place were dry dusty riverbeds.

Something sparked in my memory, hadn’t there been two waterfalls on the outskirts of Luang Prabang? Is that why everyone was wanting to charge us more money, was it further away?… and was that why our driver had been going in the ‘wrong direction’?

I rang him, and the conversation didn’t go well… He was willing to take us to the other waterfall, it did indeed have water, but only if we paid double what we had already agreed to pay him.

I ended the call and we stood and looked at each other. We could go back and pay someone who had brought us somewhere he knew was utterly rubbish at this time of year and now wanted to charge us double to take us to the place he had known was worth going to all along.

…he could easily have said: ‘There’s no water at Ta Sae waterfall you need to go to Kuang Si…’ That would’ve been the kind thing to do.

… But, we had haggled hard and where we decided to go was really our responsibility. We decided we would walk deeper into the forest while we thought about our options.

As we climbed we listened for sounds of water, but all we heard were the raised voices of the Indian family we’d met walking along the dry river bed below.

We met a young German man who went on ahead of us and on his return reported that there was no water anywhere… We sat and ate some of our delicious Thailand snacks and tried to negotiate with Kou.

He offered us £3.50 discount from his original price to take us to the other waterfall, or to take us back to town for £3.50 less than we’d agreed… maybe sitting in the temple for an hour had helped him be a little more generous. It wasn’t an easy decision for us. We had so wanted to see the stunning waterfall again and go for a swim, but we knew we couldn’t just keep spending money when things went wrong, money was tighter on the way home.

We walked back to the river, the wide, beautiful, Mekong, and decided to swim there… Why not? It was much cleaner and clearer than it had been last time we were here – we had been on boats in it, we had bathed elephants in it, why not swim in it?

We explained to the boat man with our hands and feet what we were going to do, and he pointed to the best place to get into the river…

After a lovely ten minutes splashing about, we were ready to go back. No need to go to the other waterfall, we still had this one clear in our memories. Our driver would have earned his money for the day and got off work early, and when we’d sat eating our snacks in the jungle Rosa and I had heard a gibbon high up in the trees over the other side of the valley… The first monkey we had heard in Luang Prabang.

We went for a ‘better the devil you know approach’ and asked Kou to take us to the railway station the next morning. He was dropping us off at our guesthouse and so would know where it was. We agreed to his price quickly and peace was restored between us. He drove us back into town, deliberately slowing down every time he saw someone with a bucket or a hose… he was definitely making sure we got a good blessing : )

There was a huge water fight raging on the corner by our guesthouse when Kou dropped us off. Ducking and weaving we managed to get back across the road and as I stepped onto the pavement the perfect opportunity presented itself.

A young lad, probably in his early  twenties, stood with a bucket of water held loosely in his hands, he had a huge grin on his face and was clearly planning his next move.

I nipped up behind him, pulling the front edge of the bucket towards him. His screams were so loud and so funny… I legged it down the back stairs to our room. I only had a few seconds before he came after me.

Theo, clearly feeling for the lad, tried to persuade me to come back out, so he could get his revenge… ‘No chance!’ It had been too good …that was a blessing he could pass on : )

I eventually braved going back outside again, to go and watch the sunset at the temple on the little mountain, the very wet lad was nowhere to be seen, although to be honest there was no way we were going to make it up the mountain without getting soaked again.

We knew there was no chance of seeing the sunset in this smog, but we hiked up the mountain anyway when were the rains going to come?

Rosa thought they should come tonight, at the end of the water festival… after three days of huge amounts of fun, it would be perfect if the sky joined in.

On our way up the mountain, culture clashed with money making, and we were left feeling helpless in our love of all things wild…

We saw songbirds trapped in tiny cages, held there for tourists and locals to release for good luck.

The sentiment of letting a wild creature go was one we could all relate to, but for money…? How did that work? There were 40 birds trapped in 20 cages on the man’s tray and the cages were too small for the birds to even spread their wings…where could the luck be in treating a bird like that?

Theo’s anger and grief poured out of him… he loves birds, he sings like one every day, learning the songs of the new birds as we have travelled around the world, delighting in their music and their beauty.

He couldn’t bear to see them trapped, their only chance of release a payment that would ensure more birds suffered the same fate. How many birds were being bred in cages to be trapped like this? …and what happened to the ones that didn’t get released?

…this time it was me who remembered that anger rarely changes anyone’s mind. Even if the man selling the birds and the monks nearby couldn’t understand the words he was saying Theo’s feelings were clear.

There is of course a place for showing how we really feel, but there also needs to be an awareness of culture and this not being our country …how do we change a practice that may have been born of something genuine and kind before commercialisation got hold of it?

Rosa and I gently took Theo away. Me holding his hand all the way up the mountain, so he knew I was with him. By the time we got to the top, he started to be able to breathe again – the first rush of anger having left.

We all felt sad, and there were more songbirds birds at the top of the mountain… It was tempting to do a ‘Jesus and the money lenders’ and overturn the tray letting all the birds go but the people selling the birds were not rich…

Did the woman in the street I had seen earlier that morning have enough money to cope with us releasing all her birds …and would that mean the people selling them would not do it anymore?

I had spoken to her and shown that I felt sad about the birds being in the cages and that I wouldn’t be buying any birds but I didn’t do anything more…

I had known that the answer was no to both of my questions… I could see she didn’t have enough money, and what happened to the birds when they were released? If they’d been bred in captivity did they know how to feed themselves? …we needed to know more to make a difference here and we were leaving the next morning.

We were quiet heading back down the mountain. I reminded Theo of some of the things we do in the west to birds. There were literally thousands, perhaps millions, of chickens living in cages too small for them to open their wings, laying eggs every day and never seeing daylight.

Were we about to go and release all of them? … we can so easily forget the cruelty that happens to animals every day when we go shopping in our supermarkets…cruelty hidden from sight. This was hard because it was visible, but no less awful for that.

I have been hugely heartened in the UK by people wanting to buy free range and organic eggs, perhaps one day we will treat all animals with the respect and dignity they deserve, not just our cats and dogs.

Getting doused in water again helped us shift our sad feelings and delicious Indian food was waiting on the riverfront. Our restaurant was open, a staffing shortage the reason for yesterdays closure…

The couple on the table next to us were here from Australia doing voluntary work. She was a social worker and he was a doctor working in the local hospital. Theo talked to them about the difference they were making and Rosa and I talked about China.

We would be there this time tomorrow, and the light that came into Ross’s eyes as she talked about it was magical.

As our food arrived we saw two flashes of lightning split the sky, and then a peal of thunder loud enough to shut out all the sound systems in the street.

…and then the rains came.

Everyone was wet now : )

Walking home in the pouring rain, dancing a little to the insanely loud music …and not caring who threw water at us was liberating. It had been a great place to celebrate New Year.

Theo and Rosa joined me in the street to watch the monks before we left the next day and I watched with a practical eye – glad to see the Chinese and Western tourists lining the pockets of the women and the silver bowls of the monks… the street gang was doing pretty well too, a full bag of yoghurt bars, and rice between them. This ritual worked on lots of levels and I liked noticing the circles within circles.

We had just enough time to say goodbye to our breakfast place before our tuk-tuk arrived. It wasn’t Kou – he had sent a friend in his place. A friend who was determined to help me spend the money I had ear marked for the UXO museum. He was taking us to a handicraft place – good for the local people. He decided to teach me some Lao on the way as well…not the easiest language to learn but I loved his enthusiasm.

The items for sale were clearly made by the women selling them and I spent all my money quickly, there was generosity on both sides…

Back to learning how to say good morning (ສະບາຍດີຕອນເຊົ້າ!!) and thank you very much (ຂອບໃຈຫຼາຍໆ) before we arrived in good time for our first class train journey to China.

We thanked our driver …and Suitcase, the four rucksacks, the theee bags, Theo, Rosa and I headed up the steps and into the enormous train station waiting area.

No dramas with our luggage…no scissors to confiscate. We had a little time so I looked up the practice of releasing songbirds from cages and we had a good read of a brilliant thread, examining both the cultural autonomy implications and the issue of animal welfare…there were some beautiful thoughts and very clear thinking in that thread.

The time to board the train arrived and we all went out onto the platform – what would first class be like?

Turns out it was almost exactly the same as second class just a slightly bigger seat for a lot more money!

No snacks, no drinks, no free newspapers…good job we still had some fruit and nuts left from Thailand, although the customs announcements were making it very clear that fresh fruit was not allowed into China.

Rosa and I finally confessed the same secret fear to each other as we approached the border.

When we had first applied for our Chinese visas we had asked for ‘single entry for thirty days’ not thinking for a second we could get a double or multiple entry visa…but when we had picked up our passports they were clearly marked with an ‘M’ for ‘multiple entry’ and it looked like we’d been given ninety days over the next two years…? Go figure…we’d been stunned, and very happy, that was one major headache for our return trip gone.

…but what if we were wrong?

What if we did only have single entry visas and we were denied entry at the border. It didn’t make logical sense but neither of us could quite let go of the niggling uncertainty.

We arrived at the Laos side – did the full, get off with all our luggage, go through the building, fill in the exit forms, go through immigration, and then have ourselves and our luggage scanned again before we were guided back towards the train to be taken through no man’s land to the Chinese border.

My sense of humour disappears when I’m stressed (although it does come back when things get really bad)…but these intermediate levels of stress mean life is simply not funny for me. I sat on the train staring out of the window not responding to any of Theo’s attempts at levity.

Last time we had arrived at a Chinese border I had gone last to give Rosa the middle spot and to make sure we all got through okay but Theo had been asked most of the questions and as I had that kind of memory I knew most of the answers, so this time I went first.

Le Crunch!

As I arrived at the desk a man came into the back of my immigration officers booth, was that a coincidence? …he looked like her boss, definitely upping the stakes. The man before me received his stamp and another official walked up to the side of our line, right next to me.

He spoke to another guard and said ‘Ying guó rén’ – which I understood – he was either guessing I was English, or he already knew.

Time to be charming – I pointed to myself and said enthusiastically back – ‘dui, yīng guó rén!’ (Yes I’m English) – whatever his response I’d learn something about what was going on.

He smiled (luckily) and I turned towards the woman behind the counter not surprised to notice my hand was shaking slightly as I handed over my passport.

She asked me how long we were staying in China? Where we were staying in China? Had we been to China before? What date were we planning to leave China…were we travelling as a group? I had all the answers ready and to my IMMENSE relief I was allowed through…Rosa and Theo followed, too slowly for my slightly stressed state, but we had done it, just the bag checks and we would be officially in China.

The scanner flagged up something in Rosa’s bag and her tension came out in her inability to open her rucksack…it took a while but we got there. They wanted to see her necklace and she couldn’t remember where it was. She pulled a whole bunch of stuff out in that slightly frantic way most of us would when challenged by Chinese Customs Officials. She came across her bracelets eventually and I suggested she show those to the official – he nodded and waved her through…good enough!

We were in…

Heading back to Kunming, the city full of extras and nice street food…funny what sticks in our memories about a place.

Tomorrow we would be back in Guilin, preparing to head to Guangzhou to try and persuade a Russian Embassy in China to give three British tourists Transit Visa’s.

I wondered if I would meet Igor…?

…and I wondered how we would get back to Guilin without our passports. We had not travelled anywhere in the world without them, and in China it was unthinkable – everyone in China travelled with ID, our passports were our also our boarding passes, how were we meant to get back on a train?

Time to let our wide first class seats take the strain  – we had made it back into China and we would do our best…which for now, was enough.