Luang Prabang

               It was a rainy day in Luang Prabang as a septuagenarian Lao femme held her pinched thumb and forefinger to her lips whispering �smoke.�
               �No.� Later soon noticing a cookie-jar-sized container of codeine right out on the counter of a local market pharmacie. The �cist is asleep behind the counter and I�m drooling like a hungry gecko.
               Do geckos drool?
               Can you bargain with these people? Trip to la bureau de poste. Rains harder. Stamps pour l�internationale. Hi mom and dad. �hi kids� from teacher john, stumbling through Southeast Asia. [knock at the door � no one there � up the hall naive and unshaven sub-mammal clueless in the lobby looking nervous and overly apologetic for knocking at the wrong door � so late at night? � 11:15 � everything closed by ten and even 9 � a cottagey feel].
               La banque et la bureau de poste in house style. Old French influence. This could be anywhere. Back at the bank �2000 baht�ll getcha� near half a mill� kip.� It goes a long way, but hard to get used to these strange currents in money fashion essence. A myriad kip for noodles and a shake? All those zeros causing confusion. Giant wads in the pocket � no wonder people walk with their stash left in open-view breast pocket. But that 10000 kip (is only <50 baht which) is only about one American dollar.
               What a beautiful place. Geckos roaming free. Should have seen this one on the side of a �French� house (I will call the new-looking places �French� to differentiate from those they are interspersed with � the Lao houses: wooden, rustic, and empty), could have taken your finger (so the rumor goes...). No scavengers here yet. Too hard to get there. The meat�ll have gone bad already and picked clean by local insects. Is it going to happen? A terrorist/tourist takeover here too? (Too) Quaint and tricky for the moment.
               But the locals are sitting prey for the scavengers. Glued to their television sets. Into The Book Store 4 or 5 sit around looking at the glow (like any place around), don�t even glance at us walking in. [advantage: no hassle and badger of �Special price for you!� from the other side of the Mekong and over aways through the jungle in Thailand....still, at times just to pay is a distraction and effort for their attention to be diverted].
               Luang Prabang walkabout.
               Sabaii dii. Sabaii dii.

Blue glass blossoms not quite shining in the pouring rain. Funeral chariot of a long-deceased king and a thousand more Buddhas. Flower image. Buddha image. Rain and happiness by crystal glass blue. Royal funeral carriage guides our steps of legs of tired being to: Royal Palace (aka: National Museum).                Quick tour in bare feet. Less museum, more royal gallery. And of course, myriad Buddha image. Gift room, gifts of other nations. U.S. case: an offering from Honest Dick Nixon. Bequeathment of two moon rocks, a model moon lander and the nation�s flag sent up into space. Congratulations Laos, you have entered outer space. The Eagle has landed. * One point for originality: �This flag of your nation was brought to the moon 1972.�                An old inscribed stone tablet of the 16th century there for the touching. No glass cases or velvet ropes. On the way out a woman points at my ankle, drip stream bleeding down my heel, and me with no tissues. That�s twice now, I think. End anecdote.

* Grammatically, the quote should read: This flag of your nation was taken to the moon 1972. Final score: 0.

               Later charter a boat for two dollars (USD) from a narrow old fellow happy to be of service. Dropped off at village of Chompet, just across the river. He will patiently wait for his fee, smiling at the naked brown children in the naked brown water, at the foot of a ghat-like stair. The village stands quiet and also naked, on the hillside, its only volume betrayed by one adolescent blasting a stereo.
               How many stairs climbed to Wat Chompet, lugging along three youngsters in tow. Am I interesting or a potential financial resource to be tapped? Ancient-looking stupas stand short yet needle-tipped and sharp. I catch my breath as the ground catches drop after drop of my dripping sweat. The three boys follow me all around the Wat.
               �Nothing, nothing,� they sing as I vacillate towards a path of yesterday.
               They show me into the crumbling wooden house-like temple, waving me over to an old stone Buddha. An aged patina urn stands before the image as a slender finger points into its well to the soft foreshadowing tune of �kip...kip.� Suckered and respectful I drop a 500 note into the bowl. Exiting the old dilapidated doors, one of the boys closes it behind me and plays the �watch-me-lock-my-friend-in-the-Wat-but-pay-no-attention-to-him-running-past-the-receiving-cup-as-I-open-it-again� game. Money in hand, no doubt, I�m sure of it.
               As I plod on down those stairs again, hesitating only to take a photo of the crafty trio, I hear a chorus of �kip? hello? kip. hello, kip?� And this song continues well down the path towards Xieng Man.
               �I pay to see Wat...and I pay to Buddha in Wat...and you take that...you have my kip.�
               More Chant.
               I do the dance of �no kip,� and remind them again of what they already got from my wallet, that actually stolen from the temple. I do a loon-call, and other behaviours intervowen with �no kip!� This does no good. In the end I throw my arms into the air, pretending to run, and eventually the long walk back to Chompet becomes more of a task in their minds than badgering a foreigner for a few more kip.
               Intermission of jungle path: one house.
               Open scene to: Wat Longkhoon and no one astir. I have entered Xieng Man, paying the �entrance fee� to a monk whose son tags along for the journey to the cave. My young guide turns out to be instrumental. Up the stairs (nothing in that rotting French house but a hive of mammoth wasps). He opens the gate with a needed key � useful right from the start. Flick the lights on with a stick. No key to the fuse box? It is pried open at one weakened corner.
               �Only key to door.�
               Light reveals a very large cave indeed, small stupas and a sarcophagus.

Shuttle down some rocks. Cave 3000 years (discovered) old housing wooden Buddhas 300 years old. Inside, all these decaying, crumbling wooden images. Idols of yesterday ongoing in moist darkness. Little pre-pubescent guide. �Yes,� to pictures. �Yes,� to touch (the Buddha images). No limitations, like the museum and its ancient inscribed tablets. One could have walked out with one of these things: a horrible thought.                Dank and moist cave walls. Clambering down rocks, steep and unrelenting. Flash the torch here, there. Rocks glisten with geologic time and wonder. Flash the torch there, here. Rock shapes of antiquated legends. I see the giant eagle we struggle up these perilous damp muddy rocks to look at. Giant eagle, guardian of stalactites.

               �Here � Buddha.�
               Old and dilapidated. Wooden.
               Boy kneels down, examining something, then rising back up, smiling and pointing with interest. I bend down (like he before me), looking at some wrinkly circular object...what is it? Squint eyes...pop neck forward (bio-zoom-in)... reach to pick up, until sudden semantic register informs otherwise. It�s a used condom. (Apparently the depths of this cave were not the only things penetrated). I pull my hand away, making a sound, and the boy is laughing. Cheeky lad. As I leave the cave, I hand him 2000 kip. Unlike the others (hello? kip? hello?), he actually led me around and showed me things.
               Walk back alone through humid ever-resting Wat Longkhoon and past silent narrow paths to hidden wooden stilt homes. Back to my private chartered longboat waiting by the �ghat� of Chompet village.
               Back in town, evening is coming, and night is not far behind. Night comes on and its anonymous darkness is as potent as ever.

               (As promised:) The French girl�s breasts are hanging out narrow and supple cheeks and wide flagrant hips shine out from too-thick quasi-silk skirt. Drops her camera in the river. Gets sucked down a whirlpool giving head to a buffalo log-rolled and stuffed and bloated by a Siamese crocodile...swimming to the top...tired and asleep on the muddy ant-ridden floor...she disappears into the floorboards fucking the propeller tearing her to shreds. Now her vagina�s infested with mosquito larvae, and the leech in her asshole crawls up urethra as she�s pounded from behind. Jackfruit-like beehives all around. She likes it rough. Asshole collapsing, all the French girls huddled in a circle of urination, with nothing to look forward to but a tasty case of malaria. Her breasts swell up to water-balloon size in your mouth. Nipples pop and it�s poison down into your throat as you pull yourself up out of the water whirlpool and brush yourself off and dust yourself up. It�s time to know that you�ve dealt with the likes of her.

               Insert this memory: walking down muddy market lane. Locals and their meat. The stench, nauseating me. Already there after anti-malarial medication (no STDs for me!). Women swishing makeshift fans to keep flies off the stenchy slabs of fleshmeat. The smell is all around like the rain. My passport gets soaked. Fairs okay w/ 2 exceptions:
                            1) Laos stamp GONE
                            2) MULTIPLE stamp for visaless re-entry back into Taiwan GONE

               The most important things are the easiest to fade away, and right now we�re fading fast. No geckos tonight, only more of that rain, cooling and malevolent.

               Woke up to lights still on. Sinking floor and fumbling towards the bathroom with space spinning out of control this early morning. What time could this possibly be?
               Poverty retains integrity. These people create and exist.
               An evening walk led down a sidestreet into the home of a kind gentlemen and his faint smiling wife. Pictures and painting hung everywhere. Wonderful artwork. Giant sketchworks of Wat Xieng Thong, omnipotent in detail and priceless in value. Humble and willing to live, he asked for nothing more than a few dollars for such works. Existence is key, and passion is the key to existence.

               A field of waterfall for only us. Beautiful, beautiful, with the steep round hills all around. Curtains down, fan roaring above lights still on at a 2 a.m. juncture. Wrong side of the bed all the walls caving in, had the woman out front carve up my pineapple. Slice, slice, she did it like no tomorrow. Four pieces in and it all goes blank, table falling over myopic, macropic, myopic again.
               My first BeerLao, Luang Prabang. Late at night after some Laap and a taste of Lao lao whiskey. Free for the curious. Just yank the quart-size beer bottle out of the fridge. Honesty is the best policy and you can add it to the bill or pay whomever is around the desk at the time. Sort it all out at checkout time and it�s never a problem, beautiful people, beautiful honesty. Tonight is warm and starry and quiet and lovely. The guesthouse woman has carved my pineapple for me. Wants no money for the service.
               �I do it all the time,� she says. Doesn�t even want a taste, and why would she? She has access to all the sweetest pineapples she could ever ingest. She�s good with a machete, chopping up the fruit with deadly saccharine accuracy. And there�s so much there. So sweet and delicious. This is the truth of life. Nothing finer and the canned things from back home are no comparison, not even a mockery. A completely different chemical entity. Sweet sweet Luang Prabang pineapple and dry, dead BeerLao. Pulsing and exploding in everlasting joy in my stomach. The stars start falling out of the sky. Germans turn to Dutch on a cool breeze. Geckos smack down on insects, their own sweet pure sustenance. And pineapple juice all over my arms, seeping through regressed amphibious skin.
               And speaking in tongues, all the same words, over and over again in different languages. Woman out front? Where is front now? Ceiling fan in my eye. Pen trapped in hand; in a guesthouse; in Laos. No more details. Two a.m. crumble to the funhouse bathroom. Lights out to another hazy morning.
               Stars and quiescence accompanying love and memory. There is no shadow and no uncertainty tainting these revealing towns. There is only wandering. There is only understanding between the cultures. There is only one way to be yourself and this is to be yourself. The shadows of night overtake all shadows of doubt and there is a purity beyond all other things.
               Back in the bedroom, invisible walk to from outside on the wooden chairs. Like patio cottage furniture. Welcome to our home. On the bed, lights all on, and the fan scratching in my ears. Walls are caving in and geckos thrive through all thoughts and recent memories. Night ebbs to nothing. Pages and pages of delight.

(and then...) 2 days become one. One day in two. Getting it all together (leave in the morning).
                                                                                                                    found it in your heart
                                                                                                                 open markets markets
                                                                                                          pound it in your heart
                                                                                                             open targets targets
Putting two and two together and getting another number.
transcend �it�s not my fault�
< copy > you�re not to blame
   envelope wisdom                    < pause > full stop
[end transcript]

Making way to to to Tadsae waterfall. A field, fucking beautiful field of waterfalls. It rained. It stopped. Must start again. The most beautiful thing in a while. Climbing up rocks through the forest and all waterfall all around.                After Tadsae we get back to the longboat, past the entrance gate. Lone man at his kiosk in the middle of the wood, a legless crab helpless on its back, pinching at the ceiling sky. Longan and pineapple on the way back. No passport in my pocket this time, and how! (Yet to see how that unfolds � $200 fine or will they buy into my completely believable (and true!) story).                Recall now that bloody moment at the museum egression: Tadsae came with a leech hitch or two in its steadier, calmer zones. That�s the only explanation that works.

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