Yes, the best bamboo bridge did wash out last April and the concrete one has gone up, but it’s still cool when you’re walking home at night and come to the guard rail to haggle with the shirtless teens for the 40 cent one way tax, promise again to play them a song or two on the ancient guitar if they’d put some tuneable strings on the thing. You can always go back across the other bamboo bridge to avoid the tax, but best to catch this in daylight, as you’d also have to negotiate cowfields on the other side. And it’s all about the other side. Irish Joe is still there running the Maylyn with his Laotian wife and their brood, like some genius crumudgeon pirate guesthouse owner. Yes there are more buildings going up in town all the time, and you have to be a bit more slick with the man. But there is still all of the joy of before. And I’d forgotten about the butterflys, as Maylyn is essential just one giant garden. Oh, plus shelling, I honestly awoke to the sound of shelling yesterday morning….
The miltary is practicing some exercises up the valley. Rumor has it a farang was picked up while trying to enter the area, but you figure he might have been holding, which is foolish of course. Still, also evidence of a sort of checkpoint. An area the military doesn’t want foriegners in right now. Also rumors from Joe of Mong rebels, but you never know when he’s talking shit, and that’s half the fun of him. But let me tell you there is no mistaking the sound of artiltery and short machine gun bursts. More exciting than anything to worry about. And it wasn’t going on this morning…
Got some shots via Dutchman Marnix of the amazing Nang Khai sculpture garden made by Luang Pu Boun Luea Sourirat. Manunderstress saw the one on the Laos side in Vientiene but I opted for the newer one on the Thai side. Plus I got the added bonus of the other building, through which we toured with a heavy accented Thai man’s barely discernable recitation of the life story of the wacked-out artist. We saw multiple portraits with heavily stenciled-in eyebrows, photos of him in the hospital after falling from one of the huge sculptures, his bloody spitum on a framed snot rag, various buddhas that had been in his family for centurys; banged some gongs, and finally, there in another room, inside a giant snowglobe covered in chirstmas lights, the man himself, some ten years gone: ‘no formaldihyde’ ‘no pre zer va ti’ as the guide explained. It was so fucking bizarre I didn’t even think to urge Marnix to photo. Kind of thing you couldn’t capture from our angle outside ‘the chamber’ anyway, and there was a really holy vibe we were trying to respect too, so no photo - but unforgetable. You’ve heard of ‘man as godking’? This was ‘artist as godartist/holy man’. Far out.
Came up into Laos with Marnix and French/English ‘George Verat’ from Leon, great guys both. Also, it was time to move on from the Mutt Me guesthouse in Nang Khai, getting caught up in minor social shit, not writing enough, meeting lots of great folks but somehow never getting one recorded for the podcast. Really, eager to be here. Now for some writing and some R+R. I am so pleased this little taste of heaven from before still exists and I get to soak it, and the river tubing and the beerlao and everything else, up, for a nice long time…