Just to remind you that there’s no FedEx here. No Amazon.com either. If there were, I wouldn’t be riding upcountry with a pig. Actually, I’m in the front seat, comfortable with a clear view of the next pothole. The pig is strapped to the back, ropes tracing lines for the butcher might cut and prematurely smoked by truck exhaust. Not first class at all.
I’m trying to get to Udomxai before dark. The driver is making the late run because he’s
run out of noodles. He’s the sole distributor and there’s no soup the next morning if he doesn’t get the supply. I know he’s done this road a hundred times, but I can’t figure out his strategy. Is he aiming for the potholes? Maybe he’s deciding what axel he wants to crack first. Sometimes, he simply opts for the shoulder.
I have to admit I’m looking forward to getting to a “big” city. You know you’re in a small town when you end up eating at the same place three times a day. I tried to find options in the market that didn’t have spoonfuls of MSG in tt, but all I could find was biscuits, bananas and boiled eggs, which still ended up full of MSG. If you can imagine.
If this is the road to civilization, it’s got some high mountains to go through first. Villages flash by. This one is Hmong, this one is Khamu, this one is Lue. The Hmong villages are balanced on the very crests of the mountains. You’d think they’d have porches for the astounding views, but the houses are boarded up against the cold. It’s probably not about verandas and views. It must be something about getting away from everyone else or living as close to the sky as possible.
The driver fills me in. The power plant and electricity lines were put in by the Japanese several years ago, but now it’s all kaput. They’re getting electricians from Luang Prabang, so he says. I don’t think that’s a good idea because Luang Prabang is where the lights go out every Saturday. Maybe it’s the same for the road. It looks like it was good at one point, but now there are Godzilla gouges and rocky piles making for 130 km. one long stretch of massive speedbumps. He says the Chinese built the roads after liberation, and use them now to haul out natural resources.
The environment is messed up and the Khamu spirits are gone. It’s beyond my understanding, but I gather that what he’s saying is that his cosmology doesn’t function anymore. Now we’re higher up and he tells me what the pink sacks are. Piled on the roadside, they’re bags of pig poop for fertilizer. It’s natural, but they’re vulnerable to climate change. It rained too much last year and the harvest was bad. There won’t be enough rice. What do people do? I can’t hear his mumbled response.
He says people used to get rich by growing poppies, but people including his father got addicted and became poppies themselves. Some international reports say that farmers can’t survive on alternative crops after opium was eradicated. They’re technically not supposed to do slash and burn farming, but doesn’t leave them with much options. Most of the landscape is barren and smoldering. It’s still about survival.
It’s evening and people are coming home from the fields. Women have baskets on their backs full of kindling. Their load is so high that they’ve become twice their height.
More passes and potholes and we’re down in the lowlands again. Now there are satellite dishes and concrete houses, but know I now how far kids have to go to find a high school. When they do, many don’t make it because Lao is not their first language.
The pig got dropped off at the pass. I get dropped off in the dark in Udomxai, but with my bicycle, I can get around. It’s a new town; no connections, no knowledge of the schools. I’ll start up tomorrow morning.
This is how things are sold in Laos. Noodles have to get to their bowls and pigs to the market. There’s no sense in complaining because we all know there’s no easy way. Books have got to get to their readers so I’ve got some work to do.
