The last three days have been a whirlwind and I haven’t had a ton of time to update the blog. Last night the rain let up as I finished dinner and I walked home blindly in the dark, squelching into muddy puddle after muddy puddle.
We got up at 6:45 to meet the mysterious “Mr. Mo” who runs the side gig shuttling vietnamese plated motorcycles across the border. Despite us trying to negotiate a lower price with a newly made Indian friend, we only managed to knock off ten dollars off the $150 price tag.
Unlike Thailand, it seems negotiating and bargaining aren’t a part of the culture in Laos. Often times when we offer lower prices at markets we’re met with looks of confusion and, sometimes, disdain.
We mulled over the financial logic of the illegal ferry over breakfast. Ultimately, we decided to go with option 4: continuing to travel in Laos. With ten days left in our trip, the cost of the Cambodian visa, and the uncertainty of an illegal border crossing, we decided it’d be better to live lavishly for our final week and fully enjoy our motorcycle investment.
After a ferry back to the mainland we began North. The most exciting moment of the ride came when a hornet flew into my shirt and Louise helped me shake it out while hurtling downhill.
The burnt red road towards Kiet Ngong was mangled from the recent rain and our tires struggled to get traction. We plowed through opaque puddles, showering the thick mud over us and the bike.
A local man working at the Kingfisher Ecolodge (unfortunately closed until Oct) pointed us towards a reputable guest house and we checked into to a quiet bungalow style room overlooking a swampy lake. The owner of the hostel spoke English well and drew us a small map directing us towards the larger lake nearby.
At the lake shallow dug out canoes lined the waters edge. Buffalo peacefully milled around, some leading a slow charge into the refreshing water. Mud sucked and pulled at our sandals.
Women and men stood in the canoes with nets in hand, propelling themselves through the water with bamboo poles to push off the submerged mud. I motioned to one of the younger girls quietly observing us, asking her if I could try. She called to her friend, and they dragged out one of the unoccupied boats and invited us inside. The older girl stood in the front of the narrow boat wielding the bamboo rod, I sat in the middle, and Louise in the rear. The other girl joined us in another canoe.
The boat was incredibly wobbly, and as we pulled into the reeds I was confident we would tip over. However, the girl leading our vessel counterbalanced our inexperienced weight loads expertly, subconsciously shifting her weight between her feet to keep our boat somewhat centered. Gradually we learned to keep our centers low, further stabilizing the boat. Even so, we only had an inch or two of clearance from the water on either side.
As we pushed further from shore, close calls with capsizing kept us laughing and laughing. The girls pulled the two boats behind a bush for shade.
In the other boat the girl grabbed a tin bowl. Reaching her hand inside she removed a small, translucent shrimp, let it wiggle in her fingers as she positioned the head, and promptly bit off the tail raw. We grinned.
Of course, we had to try. The shrimp tasted exactly the way a raw shrimp smells.
In exchange, we shared the double chocolate oreos from our pack. Some twisted version of a genuine cultural swap… freshly caught raw shrimp in exchange for highly processed western snack food? Either way, they were stoked on the treat and we giggled about the chocolaty cookies coating our teeth.
Through a mimed demonstration, the older girl showed us how she hooks the shrimp onto a hook lined to a piece of styrofoam. Judging from the canvas bag filled with the styrofoam bobbers it looks like they put out many at a time in order to catch tiny fish. Our friend motioned that she would bring the tin bowl back home after we left to boil the shrimp and fish with her family.
Although we couldn’t speak, we communicated our names, ages, if we had children, what pets we had, and our mutual appreciation for a quality burp. I sang a goofy nursery rhyme and together we filled out the melody with hums and whistles.
We thanked the girls endlessly as we returned to shore. In this scenario, the issue of money always becomes strange… we wanted to say thank you for this surreal experience, but also didn’t want to taint it with a monetary exchange. We didn’t see the international symbol for money float around and we assumed the experience was mutual, but the confusion was there. I’ve always found this aspect of travel difficult to navigate.
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