Nong Muang Khiaw-Khoua
Yesterday evening, I walked among the garlands flashing restaurants and accommodations that have flourished along the main road. The night rang with raucous laughter of white youths stranded here because of the wonderful Lonely Planet, which certifies that Laos is a country "easy" and serves on a board organized tours for a safe journey: in ten days, "the fact North. " Excited by the huge quantities of bottles of Beer Lao as their purchasing power almost without limit allows them to swallow - bottles that will start this morning by the truckload to the reference - they sit down arms and legs spread, and speak with a complacency that makes me shudder.
Standing in their old thongs, shirt rosie by dirt roads, "servers" are there to "serve." Converted farmers, fingers still cracked by the earth and tanned skin, cautious and mute. They never look at customers in the eye more than a second, they never answered anything but "yes", they never linger to chat with these aliens millionaires.
wake up this morning, the smell of mud and dead in my room and voices that speak Hebrew on the other side of the bulkhead.
Deprived of light by clouds, the barren mountains surrounding stone has turned black. An icy wind. Today, tourists will not go certainly not lie on their towels beside the River.
is the hour when, after sweeping the dirt floor, the garbage is burned. Before each house, a small pile of leaves, cardboard, plastic disappears into smoke in the lungs and is inevitably scrape the throat loudly and spit.
A quick look at the small vegetable market.
seaweed, fern shoots, raw herbs, mushrooms, a few peppers. Not much to supply. It will be rice and bananas. On my way, we whisper "Falang! Falang! Falang! "Showing me the finger, as if we had never seen a white Nong Khiaw.
At the pier, only Westerners. Half trying to ride an hour away, in Muang Ngoi, terminus of the Lonely Planet. The other goes down to Luang Prabang. Me, I want to go much further north to Muang Khoua. But this is not possible, "said the jailer.
- There is no other tourist interested ... No way ... Oil is very expensive. Not possible ... unless you pay one hundred dollars.
I do not have time to get on my high horse: two giant Austrian face adorned with a beard and dressed like Indiana Jones to climb Annapurna m'écartent without a word from the office and leave each a fifty dollar bill in their sock. They turn to me and from the top of their two feet, arise:
- Me, Christian, and he is Christian. We'll take you with us, if you want.
When boarding, out of nowhere about thirty people panicked, with children, luggage and provisions. Residents of villages on the banks of the Nam Ou who benefit from the windfall. How long they waited as rowdy as Christian and Christian shoot one hundred dollars of their socks, the ones who have no other means of transport the boat?
Among the passengers, an old man, with a large stone baggage taken into a system of strings that form a loop. He carries my bag like me.
It is very cold during the trip. As I shiver, Christian and Christian pulled their giant bags of treasures they fleece me muffle. I feel like a mummified queen. Straight in my little chair in front of the boat, buried under piles of sweaters, I chuckle to the malice of the driver that I sat there with authority: this is my place of honor both the respect of passengers and splash into the rapids.
more we advance, the more the boat is empty. Passengers disembark at the dropper on the beaches to reach the villages hidden in the forest above the River.
the middle of the day, I take a decision to go pee in a bush. On the shore, three men and two women huddled over a fire, busy cooking something in bamboos. Young women, worthy in the towels they used fluorescent shawl, round eyes are like marbles when he saw me get off the boat. They think I'll stop there.
Yes, if I was accompanied, I would ask the captain to throw my bag on the bank and leave me. But I am a single woman and I go my way. While I take my place as queen, people from the shore out of the bamboo fire, and shaking them by burning the fingers, are falling hard boiled eggs.
At dusk Muang Khoua appears.
Alerted by the boat engine, a forty children came laughing observe the arrival of falanga. They point the woman mummy flanked by his two bodyguards giant screaming with laughter. I do not ask me which of them or us is the most exotic.
Today was a border. I'm finally coming true in a country, hard, hard.
It is very cold.
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