Sean Casey - Freelance Writer

[Photos by Jay Sturdevant]

Evening descended upon the Ou river in Laos, and still we had not found shelter. Our hand-scrawled map of the river was not drawn to scale. The next village could be mere minutes away, or many miles yet.

Arms sore, I laid down my paddle across the front of our canoe. Looking up at the towering limestone cliffs that enclosed both sides of the river, I asked the question on everyone’s mind:

“What if they don’t let us stay?”

We had encountered only one other village that day. They dismissed us with a simple head shake. Whether out of mistrust or misunderstanding, we didn’t know.

The canoe rounded a bend in the river. The American, James, sat up suddenly at the stern. “There it is!” he shouted, pointing towards the river’s edge.

Along the shore, women in argyle sarongs bathed themselves in the murky river water. A lone man in shorts scrubbed his laundry against a boulder. Children chased each other along the water’s edge. One child spotted our approaching canoe and halted.

“Fallang!” the boy shouted out. Foreigners.

The villagers stopped and faced us. In the middle of our boat, Annike turned around towards Ellen. “Get the paper out.”

Ellen stopped bailing out water, then pulled out our Rosetta stone: a single piece of paper containing every phrase of Lao we knew.

“Sabaidee!” she read aloud. “Náwn yuu nîi dâi baw?” Can we stay here tonight?

The villagers continued staring for a moment. The man turned to the women. The women shrugged. He faced us again, evaluating the four canoeing backpackers in front of him. A radiant smile dawned upon his face. He dived into the river, swam out to the canoe, and towed us back to shore.

Annike and Ellen were stereotypical Swedes, tall and blonde; sisters in every way except by blood. They had first found me two months earlier in a Cambodian bar, curing a case of travel romance heartache with a bottle of Thai whiskey. The three of us clicked together easily in that strange way travellers are able to do in far-away lands, despite having nothing in common other than the bags on their backs. Memory of that first night blurs into darkness as the empty glasses piled up on the bar counter. I remember neither the final rounds of drinks, nor literally being carried back to my guesthouse.

The next morning when I came to, I was in the back of a bus with the Swedes, heading out of Cambodia and into Vietnam. I had been kidnapped.

“We rescued you, Sean,” Annike would interject as I recounted the tale to others we met later along the road.

We took the scenic route together through Vietnam, one bar at a time. From Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, we drank at sidewalk speakeasies, danced on the pool tables at the Apocalypse Now, and pounded back snake whiskey while floating in Halong Bay. We trekked through the country seeking new places to drink and dance, culture and history be damned.

“It’s incredible how well you three travel together,” a girl once commented to us at the border crossing from northern Vietnam into Laos.

Ellen laughed. “That’s because none of us have slept with each other.”

“Yeah, there’s absolutely no tension,” I said in feigned agreement with Ellen, making sure not to keep eye contact with her for too long.

In between thatched cottages and palm trees, an unpaved space served as the village center. Dozens of the villagers formed a circle around us. The adults kept a cautious distance. The children clung tightly to each other, giggling and pointing, venturous enough to come close, yet too shy to talk to us. We stood still, grinning idiotically.

“Now what?” James asked through clenched teeth. We had just introduced ourselves and were running low on language.

An idea formed in my mind. I took a deck of playing cards from my bag, shuffled, and fanned them out to the children.

“Pick a card, any card.”

Giggles erupted. The crowd pushed forward a reluctant volunteer. She took a card. “Now show it to your friends,” I said, pantomiming the action. I flipped the bottom card of the deck upside down while her back was turned, then turned the entire deck over.

The girl slid her card back into the deck. I waved my hands over the cards, chanted a spell, then secretly flipped the deck over once more. I fanned the cards out to the children again. The girl’s card was the only one facing face up.

A collective oooohhh went up. I performed the trick once more, showing them how it worked. The children took the cards, performed it a few times with each other, then rushed over to the adults to show off their new magical powers. The adults laughed. The tension broke.

A light flashed. Everyone jumped back. James snapped another photo of the children playing with the cards. The adults scowled.

“This isn’t National Geographic,” I muttered.

“It’s cool, man,” James said, adjusting the focus on his camera. “It’s cool.”

* * *

Three’s company. James made it a fucking crowd.

Annike introduced the interloper into our travelling posse. They met in northern Laos, where we bought our dilapidated canoe. Infatuated at first sight, she charmed James into making the week-long journey down the Ou river with us.

I knew his type, had him figured out from the start: loud, ignorant, neo-Conservative. Condemned to spend the next week in close-quarters with an American, my misguided sense of Canadian superiority became enraged. I held him personally responsible for the current state of world affairs.

“Hey James, who did you vote for in the election?” I asked guilelessly during the first day on the river.

“Gore, man. I can’t believe Bush got in.”

No doubt he was completely ignorant of the world, however.

“Have you guys ever been to Nepal?” he asked on the second day. “Beautiful country. Even with the Maoist uprising going on there.”

Dammit. I knew he was a prick at heart though.

“Hey Sean, the sun’s burning you up pretty badly there,” he said on the third morning. “Here, take my hat.”

I hated him even more for being such a nice guy. I told myself it had nothing to do with his Adonis looks, or the fact that Ellen kept glancing at him when she thought no one was looking.

* * *

One of the village families sheltered us within the bamboo-thatched walls of their home. As we dined with our host that night, an English-speaking Buddhist monk from a neighbouring village appeared at the door.

“You are the first foreigners to visit here in over a year,” he announced, digging into what was left of the sticky rice. “And your timing couldn’t have been better. There is a wedding in the village tomorrow. Would you like to stay for it?”

“I don’t know,” James said. “We really should be going –”

“We’d love to,” I interrupted. I locked eyes with James. “I mean, seriously, when will we get another chance to attend a Laotian wedding again?”

Annike and Ellen sided with me. Take that, USA.

The wedding began with a bachelor party in the early hours of the morning. The men gathered to throw back shot after shot of gasoline-flavoured rice whiskey. The four of us were invited to join the men, though whether as honoured guests or as foreign amusements, I wasn’t sure.

I excused myself after two hours of debauchery to sneak down to the river. There had been stories in Thailand of backpackers drowning while swimming intoxicated. But the appeal of a sobering dip on a humid day was too much to resist. I dived into the Ou river, and felt drunkenly rejuvenated.

I swam back to the shore. A group of children stood over a still body on the ground. James had passed out by the river bank. I stumbled over, looked down at James. “This, kids, is why Americans shouldn’t drink!” I slurred.

I led the kids back to the village, leaving James behind. We ran into Ellen along the dirt path. “You better check on James down there. Make sure he’s alive.” I staggered back into our cottage, climbed underneath a mosquito net, then promptly passed out.

* * *

Annike’s crying broke my reverie. The afternoon sun still snuck through the cracks of the walls. I rubbed my eyes open, then looked over at Annike on the other side of the room. “What’s going on?”

“Ellen and James, that’s what! I thought he liked me…” She burst into tears again before she could continue.

I pulled myself upright, stumbled past Annike towards the door. Outside, only a few lingering guests remained in the village center. The wedding had commenced and concluded while I’d been comatose.

I jogged back to the river’s edge. Several villagers were gathered in front of a tangle of bushes. They spoke in hushed tones, their body language betrayed vexation. I drew closer. The bushes rustled loudly. Ellen emerged, tucking up a bra strap up as she stepped out of the bushes. She gasped, taken aback by the gathered group. The leaves shifted again, this time James emerged, tying the cords of his shorts together as he walked out of the foliage, dazed and oblivious to others around him.

In a country where exposed shoulders are considered offensive, one massive cultural faux fucking pas had just been committed.

From honoured guests to ostracized delinquents in a matter of minutes. We hid in our hosts’ cottage for the rest of the evening, cut off from the rest of the village. Shouts and arguments broke out between Ellen, Annike and James long into the night. I passed the time by polishing off the rest of the rice whiskey in silence.

I woke up first the next morning, walked down to the shore, and prepped the canoe for departure. One of our hosts was down there as well, watching dawn mist rise from the river’s surface. We stood in silence together. I desperately wanted to say something, anything. Unfortunately, I had never learned to say I’m sorry in Lao.

* * *

We paddled the last two days down the river in relative silence, speaking only when necessary.

What had we taken away from the village? A hangover and a few photos. What had we left in return? We had been on the cusp of a moment, of a unique experience, and we squandered it. I couldn’t even remember our host’s name.

The water’s flow gained velocity as we reached the end of the Ou river. An airplane flew over us, the first engine heard in a week. The old colonial city of Luang Phabang appeared in the distance. We stopped paddling, put down our oars, and gave in to the river’s force as it merged and became part of the Mekong. I wanted to turn around, to go back, to do it over again, but couldn’t. The current was too strong, the course could not be changed.

Tags: Backpacking, Laos, South-East Asia