Fullmoon parties, pool parties, foam parties, black moon and half moon parties, reggae parties….anyone would think Koh Phangan in Thailand had something to do with parties.  They have a beach party on the fullmoon each month, that is indeed a bit of an international phenomena, and at the same time, same, same.

By coincidence, it was fullmoon the night I set foot on Koh Phangan, along with a D Day landing of international partygoers. I’ve never seen a ferry full of such excitement. They came from Dubai, Dublin and Damascus. Berlin, Beirut and Brighton. You name it, every nationality was represented.

About 750m of beach bars, and a couple of hundred franchisees bid for punters, like bull market traders after the Lehman’s crash. In most nightclubs, you need to cue, beg and wink to be given the privilege of being ripped off $8 for post-mix mess. In Phagnan, it’s the other way around, the barmen, women, and their families, each squeezed into about a meter of beach front  franchise, do performance acts and serious theatre, simply to sell a drink. But drinks don’t come by the glass, but by the bucket > so buy the bucket I did.  $7 gets you into a 6 inch bucket full of ice, a hip flask full of ya’ favourite poison, and a tin of soft drink to stomach it, and often, a shooter bottle of red bull, to keep you conscious. Ya gotta love that Red Bull’s Taurine…or whatever it’s called, the secret ingredient first invented to boost half dead soldiers under night after night of enemy fire in Nam. Night after night of heavy partying in Thailand obviously must have its similarities.

It’s all a bit toxic really, but hey, ever since tribal man was hoofing down the psilocybin laced psycodelics before a bit of foot stomping shamanic fun, tribal dance has not always been a health sport.

In Thailand a few years back, Thacksin , the rightwing  capitalist in left wing disguise, drove Thailand from worship of the spirits, to worship of the new TV, washing machine and condo, and in the process, he decided that the chilled-out, Thai stick culture of Siam had to go, along with most other traditional ways, and so he dutifully got about shooting, on sight, about 20 drug dealers each day. No filling the courts and prisons. No trials. No questions. Just shoot’em dead. The result was the whiskey and beer culture,  along with its sad bed partner, mindless materialism, sweeping over the old Thailand, in due reverence to the world’s command and control office the at the US’s FDA.  So the new pissed parties of the once hip Koh Phangan have a dancer-to-watcher ratio of about 1 to 4. Compare this to Melbourne, where 5000 head dance parties have 4 dancers for every 1 watcher. It would not be unreasonable to suggest some bio chemistry of the illegal kind is behind such ratios.

But on cue, and seemingly unnoticed by the crowds pouring onto the beach in 5 wide human streams, the Fullmoon rose over the water, adorned herself with a mystic ring, and dutifully oversaw all that is sexual and rhythmic about her partner, Gaia. Longtail’s powered on their turbo diesel Toyota’s, slicing silvery paths across the bay, as they shipped in yet more farungs, for their beach bucket bonaza.

It was the end of the footy season, with St Kilda just losing to Geelong in the last desperate minutes, after 40 years in the desert,  and now with maybe another 40 to go. Geelong, on the other hand, had to do what all footy teams do once the fitness season ends, and the booze and pillage season begins, by shipping the team out on mass (so as the Aussie press doesn’t see what the boys get up to). Some get blown up. All get pissed. Some get obviously more than just pissed. And in the safe knowledge that a million Kath and Kim’s are hanging out to give them happy endings, the Geelong boys tend to get a bit extraverted, shall we say, when let loose on the Fullmoon beach parties. They sure made enthusiastic drinking mates, as each bucket comes with 3 straws, and a range of flavours, all of which the boys insisted I sample. I had qualified as a  their drinking mate,  simply by being a Aussie male, oi, oi ,oi. Urp.

The under 30’s scene of Koh Phangan, a few miles from Samui, is a lot messier, but not to dissimilar to the goings on of the Lamai bars, in the outrageously over developed Koh Samui. I suppose I shouldn’t judge Samui as over developed, when in fact the same thing can be said of just about every Asian resort beach town. Infact, to the land bound traveller, just about any third world beach, has seen some disgusting side effects of tourism.

I sailed to Thailand about 22 years ago. I loved it so much back then, that we threw a 2 month party in which I ended up being married in a big raft up of yachts, in Ko Phi Phi bay. Back then Patong was a cluster of girlie bars and street vendors, not the highrise town planning debacle that even a good Tsumani couldn’t clean up. No one had refrigerators, and so the seafood was so fresh it wiggled.  Even straight laced retired bank managers, cruising  on their yachts , could be seen shopping in Phuket town for their groceries, giggling and eating munchies, in a land where a pound of pot was neither a big crime, nor more expensive than a slab of beer. Half the successful drug runners of the world, with their 60 footers and Milano model girlfriends, were at anchor of Phuket in serious seagoing kit. Tales of gun battles at sea, simply sailing the Malacca straights were not uncommon, and everyone was well armed, me included, and the arms didn’t just sit in their pouches rusting, they had, regrettably to be drawn and aimed, on  a couple of occasions, in my experience at least. Thank goodness the trigger never needed to be pulled, as a smiling Thai waving an empty engine oil container, as his fishing boat approached, sure could be quick to swap a grin for an AK47 . My pump action, sawn off, pistol grip Mossberg, sure had a way of getting the message across when displayed. In the late eighties, it was not unheard off, for a Thai fishing crew to do a quick night time beach landing, fully armed, and hold up the entire guest list of the Patong bungalows.

It was even wilder in the mid seventies, when I first hit the Malay Hotel in Bangkok at 20 years old, the hotel being the origin of several movies on the subject that followed. The Malay was where everyone went, on a budget. 6 or 7 floors of farungs ( thats me), stoned hippies ( that wasn’t me, then at least), mixed in with Thai girls, GI’s , con men and cops, all of whom blended together in some kind of Hunter S blur of daily madness. I had to slip nervously out of the hotel to the airport, when I got caught in conman pincher movement, catching onto what was happening earlier than my conmen had hoped, and in usual Rod fashion, blew the lid on the whole deal, the corrupt receptionist with the key for the room thief, the, “I just want to practise English’ new best friend, and their copper cover, leaving me with no option but to get the fuck outta there fast, or be just another murder statistic at a time in the days of De Niro’s Taxi Driver saw NYC as the world murder capital, but where infact the murders in Bangkok outnumbered the daily NYC body count , 4 to 1.

So 34 years on, Thailand sure is a different place, for the farung at least. Gays happily live in harmony with the femine ways of the all tolerant, Buddhist Thai’s. Single girls safely travel anywhere. The food is still the best on earth, both in flavour and value. The Thais are still gentle, cheery, and busy. Everything is just so easy, cheap and no fuss in Thailand.

Especially after coming here from the rip-off Europe. As a simple example, in Europe, getting into new SIM card is a dreadful exercise, with a Euro per meg,  or a pound per minute, with guys like Vodaphone so anal, that you can’t  even top up with anything other than a local credit card. In Bangkok, you just hand $10 to the smiling girls at the telco desk, and in 60 seconds  you get ya phone working with 200 minutes of call time, or 200 minutes of internet, regardless of the download amount, and without, as in England’s case, 4 or 5 trips to the Vodaphone outlet, to simply get an email.

A taxi taken miles into Bangkok  from the airport costs $12. Hotel rooms are possible at $10, some bland, some fantastic. The freshest food is always from street vendors, where a dollar a meal will do. You can off course swallow the tourist, I need luxury pill, and pay through the nose, for which Thailand is quite grateful, and the tourist is quite stupid. There is a big difference between a traveller, and a tourist, albeit we often end up face to face. And face to off-yaface. ( Or, as they say in Newport Rhode Island…’shipfaced‘).

Have you ever felt ripped off and burnt by a dentist? There is no need to feel the $pain anymore. My dentist in Port Douglas, went white, when I had the audacity to suggest, he, the consummate professional, ‘was a bit expensive’.

He only made me wait a month for an appointment, then wait an hour reading his Reader Digests, then he got me for about $400 for 35 minutes work and couple of fillings.  Need new crowns? Kiss bye bye to a grand or two per tooth in Australia, as the mainly male dentists stick their fat hairy hands down ya throat, in deep contemplation of the next holiday unit they are about to buy, and compare this, to the delicate, skilled hands, of all female dentists working next to the Bangkok Phuket Hospital, who explain exactly what they are doing, who are cheery, well or better equipped than their Australian counterparts, and who are cheaper by miles> for example $30/filling, or $450 for crown and root.

Fuck the theft that is non Medicare covered medicine in the western world. The West is getting so sick, and so ripped off by the drug and medico industry, that is high time, ah, so to speak, that we all said fuck you to western dentists, and took a holiday every time we needed some major repairs.  Australian health care used to be about 7% of GDP, it’s now topping 10 to 11% and headed for 15%, and at that level, as the West goes down and the East rises up,  the CNN’s ‘road to recovery’ may well end up being as long as the seemingly perma-recessed Japan, after its 80’s splurge. As the west eats its poisoned processed foods, applies its SLF carcinogens in shampoo and shaving cream daily, believes the fluoride lie, inhales the gas-outs, fries in deadly oils, smokes and drinks as though it’s a national pastime, and in so doing,  drives up cancer rates to one in 2, filling the old age centres with decrepit, demented basket cases, all who expect the very best in heath care, after a life of not even giving a shit about diet or exercise. And healthy nutters like me, (bar the odd beach bucket)…end up footing the bill for societies’ irresponsible attitude to their meat carcasses.

Phuket is an amazing new centre of the marine industry, with once DYI, international-only sailors, replaced by fly in, charter a plastic-fantastic,  in a new era of happy-daze sailors, in all their cheque book stupidity.

Rob, hi Rob, my host and buddy in Phuket, first told me about Phuket, when by sheer coincidence, I ran into him and his lovely Michelle at the world’s most remote island atoll, in the centre of the Indian Ocean.

Earlier, 26 years ago infact, my then 31 foot yacht was delayed, having fun in the Percy Islands off Mackay, and our incoming guest, Michelle, impatiently awaiting for us in Mackay, met Rob on the docks, hopped aboard, got married to Rob, at another outragoes raft up, this time at Airlie beach, and they both sailed the world for years, raised two cool kids, and ended up in Phuket, where they had originally suggested I go, 22 years ago. Being that I was headed around the world back them, and as I was halfway across the Indian already, the lure of Phuket had to have been strong, to make me effectively abandon the circumnavigation, and back track, up over the equator to Phuket. We all end up in Phuket at some time or another. Rob now skippers  140 foot of white boat, Michelle teaches, Phuket booms, and life goes on.  aND All because we were late getting to Mackay, 26 years ago. If that’s a ‘sliding door’ experience, it’s a sliding hangar door.

I have a design for an adventure canoe, of the trimaran, Polynesian type, in aluminium, that breaks into 3 parts like a rowing 8, that I was interested in pricing in Asia. My current obsession with long-tail engines, saw me chasing down engineers in the back streets of Phuket,  and tripping offthe Jap rebuilt diesel shops, as well as test driving long-tails off Rawai beach.

Blimey, 100hp of 2000cc ,  Toyota turbo diesel sure shoves some energy into the ocean, and one of these engines on my super narrow, Borneo river exploration canoe, would see me deep into the heart of  Apocalypse Brando darkness, in a flash.

I had already spent few days in HK, feeling like I am at the door to China, but curious as to what’s behind the door. I am also interested in pricing my 33m TRYBRID, as well as my small adventure toy, and had stumbled into a connection with a Billy B, who tells me the Chinese Govt could well be interested in doing something like my TRYBRID>the solar hydrogen, diesel-electric , trimaran thingo. So maybe I will find out what is behind that door soon. I love the Chinese energy…the West has no hope competing with the industriousness, and simple productivity of a Chinaman on a mission. HK is a buzz, and every time I go there, I make a B line for the goldfish markets, to indulge in the fantasy underwater world of the tiny apartment living Chinese, who, like me as a boy, find great serenity and peace, simply gazing into the wonder an interesting fish tank. Call it eccentric, yes, but hey, I like fish tanks.  There is no pet shop centre on earth, to match that in Hong Kong.

Asia is rattling and rolling with Tsunami’s, earthquakes and typhoons, as Gaia looses up a bit, presumably before letting the big tectonic one go. If you can believe the prophesies.

I better jump on my scooter, and go find a room. 135cc of latest Yamaha propelled me with great smoothness and little fuss from one side of Thailand to the other, via Khao Lak, where a police patrol boat still sits a few k inland after the last big wave. It poured as I wove my way through towering limestone mountains, crossing the peninsular. I stopped to watch elephant loggers at work in the mud, and was relieved when a local knew the stop button words for an elephant that came rushing out of the jungle towards me, towing tree. At $5/day for the bike, and maybe $4 in fuel, why the hell would you not tour all of Asia this way> no need for 1100cc of zee BMvee for the slower roads of Asia. The modern step-through, with the engine integral with the gearbox and rear suspension, is a fantastic machine, and it’s odd that whilst these bikes are sold in their millions in Asia,  but they are never released to US, Euro, or Australian buyers anymore. They cost about $1300, and I want one, and infact the design for the 40ft adventure canoe, includes a cargo hold for a motorbike. Fuck the stifling cabins, we will live under a sampan canvas roof, and carry only essentials, namely a bike.

I want a life of longtail motors, super scooters, $1 meals, and a million islands. What I am doing now, is just practising, experimenting. And so far, so good.

Thailand is kinda like Panama, except Thailand has the Pacific for sunset and not sunrise, and it has the Indian, not Atlantic on the other side. It felt kinda’ similar, in concept at least, darting from one side to another. In Panama, you did it in lunatic cabs, in Thailand, I did it as a lunatic on a step-through. Both times I took the transoceanic ride, it poured. So picture the farung on the step-through, at 90k and a million revs, with a $2, see-through wet weather gear a’ flapping, taking GPS directions from his new mobile phone. Kayak’s duffle bag as a back rest. Vietnam rippof North Face day pack in the through part of the step-through. Visibility was as good a mud diving.  The poor Google Earth GPS was suffering,  what being stuffed in my loins, where any self respecting machine would  loose it, with a stream of instructions through the ear plug, whilst driving on straight jungle freeways, that advised me to do a U turn now> turn left in 50m> turn right now> in 500m keep left….all in the space of 10 seconds. A fat drunk wife with an upside down road map would have been more informative.

Nonetheless, I found Koh Samui, and I found my way back to Krabi. All rather wet, I add, but grateful that it was tropical wet, and not European wet, after having fluked 4 months of sunshine in Europe just gone. It takes about a day to get from the northern beaches of Koh Phangan, across the island on rented bike number 2, onto a ferry full of post fullmoon party fuckups, then across Samui on rented bike number 1, to another ferry, this time with locals and trucks at half the price and twice the distance, then from Indian to Pacific oceans… and under a hot shower in a $7 hotel along the muddy river of Krabi. I love Krabi. What a perfect name it has. It’s real. It’s full of transitioning types, but compared to Samui of Phuket, it’s a farung free zone. A farung is a foreigner, and only Thais make the farung word a national icon, being that Thailand, like Turkey recall, is just about the only unconquered country in Asia.

Mind you, when the charming, almost gay king soon dies, it’s a battle between his debauched, belligerent son, his daughter, or his alcoholic, bridge playing, fat ugly wife, the queen. Given the perilous state of Thai politics already, when the king drops off the perch, Thailand’s record as an unconquered nation is up for grabs. But then I recall having the same discussion 22 years ago, and all that has happened since, is more of the same same, namely, some idiot tries to be a smart arse leader, and there is yet another military coup. The military has always run both Indonesia and Thailand, there are only occasional pretenders to the throne here. The US likes it that way.

I kinda like the back beaches of Koh Phangan. It’s the island that is as messy as all the others, but there is a collection of odd Thai freaks and party nutters there, that distinguishes it from the other tourist sell outs. It’s a lot more fun than sexless Sri Lanka. They have made excess into a routine business in Phangan. It reminded me of Bocos Del Toro in the Panamanian Caribbean.

Seeing what has happened to Thailand would make the first banana-boat-from-Bangkok tourists of the 1970s’ weep. I was there back then, but never saw Samui when it was tourist free, in its idyllic, half-Chinese, fishing village state. Mind you, I had a lovely evening eating and dining on powder white sand spit, alongside fishing village kids playing at Ao Chaloklum last night, at the end of the road in Koh Phangan, listening to Bob Marley, but without de herb of de 80’s.

The same death by tourism demise can be seen in Bali. Tourism has just trashed these beautiful spots. It’s a crime. Or, as I asked myself in a more accepting state of mind, was it all worth it, as the great tourism boom of the last 40 years, has also acted and a melting pot, and meeting space for millions upon millions of now more tolerant and understanding human beings. Every cloud, as they say.  And Bali and Thailand played a big part in this creative melting pot.  Still, pity they sold out to the FDA, Visa and Radisson. It happened in my own home town of Port Douglas, once a sleepy fishing town full of nutters, artists and blue singlets. Now it’s home to the Gucci-wanna-bees.  It happened to Byron too… a spot where too many mushies, left handers and kombis, turned into a backpacker blood bath competing with the bid-it-up bourgeois of Whatevergoes Beach. Being a Jan Barham or Mike Berwick mayor of these places is a blood sport.

I also pondered the ruination of the Bali’s and Samui’s, in another light. Have we ruined all the gorgeous and romantic islands on planet earth? Is there anywhere cool, still left… un-fucked-up? I pondered it a while, whilst sittingin the saddle  frozen in a rain storm at 95km/h, concentrating on those little white lines of the legal kind. The answer didn’t take long to precipitate, not unlike my visor. My advantage over the average tourist is the yacht. From the yacht, the world is a way different place. The answer to the question about ‘what is left’ is a massive…. HEAPS LEFT! There are more, beautiful, untouched, still pristine islands and their communities out there, than any land lubber could possibly imagine. Just the secret islands of Pacific Panama are some. So too the beautiful San Blas…my current favourites. Then there are the thousands of islands in the Western Pacific….the list goes on and on. But maybe it’s best we have no list at all, as the best places are best kept as yachty secrets anyway. Tourism sure has made a big mess in the main, name brand islands, but in reality, much more remains authentic, and pristine. But you will never know this, unless you are willing to sail far over that horizon in small boat, and gratefully, 99 out of 100 people just won’t take that trip. Unlike Rob and Michelle Hossack, who would have to be just about the most sail travelled friends I know. What they have seen, you couldn’t fit on a 5 week, non-stop, 3D, Imax. There is only one way to see the world, and it’s on yacht, or some kind boat, with a motorbike ( or 2) onboard.

When I pulled out of Krabi, on the other side of the bay shielded by Phuket, i was surprised to find what i though was a 70k trip, was infact over 200k, to get north and up around the short bridge onto Phuket. That is the area dotted with massive, melted limestone towers, all delicately decorated with drippings of salad. Its a bit of an Asian phenomena, these towers and cliff of once reef, bursting out of the  jungles, and after a few million years of erosion, the melted candle look of the exposed cliffs is only rivaled in erosion spectacle by wind eroded sandstone. Its the dripping with jungle bit that gives the Asian stuff more spectacle than the sandstone rivals of say Sydney’s Broken Bay.

So there was no real issue when the trip went from 70 to 200k, when much of it cut through Phangna, in mile after mile of limestone, James Bond, spectacle.

I rolled into Phuket, poor little Yamaha having been red-lined along at 90 to 100kph, for hours. But the bike seemed to love it, it handled well, it braked like a car crash, was smooth as a BMW, but surprisingly, guzzled 3-4 liters per 100k, compared to 1100cc of my beast of burden BMW, which used 5-6l/100k. I was kinda expecting the step through to only need 2l/100k.

Removing the kayaker’s duffle bag to get at the fuel tank at a hand pump servo, the heavy steel ending on an ‘ocky strap let fly into my face, making a hole in both sides of my chin, which bled like an Othello death. The abuse levelled at the strap would embarrass my late mum. So off I rode, holding the blood flow with lashings of tissue paper ( toilet paper actually), on the hunt for super oxygenator, Hydrogen peroxide, as I wondered nervously if I should be heading to get stiches. It occurred to me, as the blood clotted, that after tens of thousands of mile, through Andes, Alps, desert, snow, and maniac Albanian drivers, that the one and only wound in all that recent risk, was the elasto strap hit I just had. For that, I was surprised and grateful, as anyone on a bike at speed every day, is a potential meat bag.

I drove past a poster for the Phuket Vegetarian festival, where locals slice their cheeks, and insert odd hardware, where one of the better displays, is a garden spade, in one cheek, and out the other. As if that would be hard. It occurred to me, that those dudes trance away, don’t bleed, and recover from DIY face wounds with miraculous speed, with no scar. So whilst driving along in the slow lane, holding the wound, I willed my immune system into miracle mode, sloshed it with peroxide, and sure enough, the inside wound the next morning had closed, sealed over, and no longer looked like an abattoir after a chain saw malfunction. The Biology of Belief. Well worth reading. Technically we are all just an energetic hologram, despite the ignored elephant in the scientific sitting room, and I’m finding it more and more useful, and effective, to zone in on any pain, feel its pain, visualise its golden gig cleansing, and visualise its smoking residue blow away, and for me, it works, kinda like sending in the immune army under subconscious command and control. Ya wont know if I’m bullshitting unless you try it yourself. Or maybe I’m just and old shaman without a clue. Maybe we all are.

After chasing up some more boat building information, and test driving few more long tails in the Krabi, it was time to head north, into what Apocalypse now might see as the heart of darkness, where other see a heart of light.

Enroute to the Thai Laotian border was a night in ChangRai, in an old hotel that had seen better days, and hunkier rack rates.

Everyone sort of walks around in the daze of the colour and lights of the ChangRai night markets. I ran into the French expat drinking team, a sober lot compared to Poms or Aussies, and was given 20 good reasons why French hate France. Having recently shifted my view of France from bad to good, I was harder to convince than some, until the bar bill came, which when compared to Euro prices, was the main reason why I guess, a traveller could hate France.

By some preordained act of God, I drifted out of bed, caught the first rickety bus to some unknown town on the border, hoping to catch the days slow boat down the Mekong. With immaculate conception, I dragged my wheelie bag down to the rivers edge, paid the ferry man, and 150 yards later, was in Laos, where I traded my last $75 Aussie cash for some Kit, or whatever they call it, wandered out of  mudside immigration, and enquired as to when the next boat to Luang Prabang in Laos, leaves. I was then rapidly packed into a 3 wheeler, and asked to walk the plank into 80 starring faces of the back packing rabble, as if I had help up the raising of the said gang plank. Good timing I figured, being 5 minutes later, and It would have been another night on the frontier. And I just fluked it all, from the moment i rolled outta bed, caught the bus, then ferry, all in the nick of unplanned time.

We are way up north here, Mekong west being Thailand, Mekong west being Laos, and China wasn’t too far away. It was here, or just north, that the Air America boys, and the rest of the evil cabal, tried to ‘bomb Laos into the stone age’, and neither the US, or  Australian governments had the dignity to even tell their countrymen, that they were quietly engaged in aerial genocide, the like of which few bombed countries had experienced.

It amazes me, that without declaring war, without raising it in the press or in parliament,  such that western governments could dish out such massive suffering and death to a loose assembly of tribal villages, and then get away with it, is audacious and criminal. To this day, most people in both the US and Australia have no idea what went on in Laos, and how every western man and woman in these countries has blood on their hands,  blood that they had not even noticed.

It wasn’t just a quick incursion…it was year after year of high altitude ( gutless) bombing, using the most evil, and bloody aerial weapon, the cluster bomb. Cluster bomb cases don’t blow up, they open up, and their contents does the destruction, while the casing cops a few dents on landing. Cluster bomb cases are everywhere in Laos. It’s a disgrace. They work like this. Say you are sitting in your bamboo home, with the family. When the casing peels back, the bomblets spray. When the bomb-lets explode, it is as though those in the home are machine gunned with white hot shrapnel, from behind, above, to the left,  and the right..it’s a blood bath….industrial quantities of the stuff. Meanwhile, we all sat at home in the US and Australia, with no idea we were committing such crimes. Not good.

Such is the disgust with which I hold our governments, simply because they can act like this, going to war without even telling, let alone asking us, the nation. All the protestor focus went to Vietnam. Older Lao residents remember the family members lost…the blood, the anger….where the unknown enemy was above the cloud line.

Recall we killed, guess how many Vietnamese? You forget? Try 3 million. And ask yourself, what do you know of those who our mob killed in Laos? No Idea? Join me and the crowd. That in itself, is a disgrace on all of us.

We assure ourselves, that was then, and this is now, and we don’t do war without admitting it anymore. Except, well, except many…like this week, the warfare in Pakistan has hit the streets with more than just suicide bombers, but full blown ‘rebel’ military attacks. We hear more crap about Qaeda this and that, from CNN, but hey, we are secretly bombing the Pakistanis just as we did Laos, and hey, I don’t recall any US or Australian politician either asking us, or admitting giving to their consent to bomb Pakistan….and to bomb it with all the 100 to 1 kill ratios we have come to expect of the US vers the world.

But the Mekong has seen more blood than just cluster bomb remains. Laos has been raided by just about every neighbour for centuries, and the French more recently, for not so good luck. Wherever the French were the colonial rulers, just look at the track record>>>> Just about every one of their colonies fell into war. Nice one France.

The Mekong isn’t like one of those nice Rhineland rivers that slowly navigates its way to sea. The Mekong swirls and rages, with hull ripping rocks ready to wreck its traffic at every turn. So the boats that ply the Mekong, are for a start, super narrow, just to fit, and super shallow draft, just to clear the bottom.

Some of the boats need to do 6 knots before the prop can actually fully engage,  eventually covered by the subtle stern wave that is sucked up to cover the prop blades.

The Mekong ferries have truck engines complete with gearbox and clutch, and they work.  The engines, that is. They have to. If you had a feeble engine, you would never make it upstream with a few hundred tonnes or rice, through the rock strew rapids of the big river rip. The bigger boats are welded together with all the structural rigidity of a jellified condom.

Our journey was over two long days, so the headroom of the first day’s boat was appreciated. The second day, with height enough for a hobit was not so good for the posture.

Outback of the main cabin, somewhere between 2 and 3 bus lengths back, was the engine room, and beyond that, the porch come kitchen. It was here, I  bunkered down atop the cargo, with ‘the lads’, some of whom had hit the BeerLao for morning tea, and others who had lit up, rejoicing the difference between the Lao cops on the east side of the river, and the shoot to kill, Thaksin mob on the west.

It was a dreamy trip, with an overnight midway stopover between Huay Xai  ( Laos)/Chang Kong (Thai) and Luang Prabang  two days down the Mekong.

The overnight stopover in midway point Pak Beng, is a bit of a wild west experience, where I found myself again with one of ‘the lads’, a lad, (a frog) with some Thai language skills, who had worked us right into the main table of Lao whiskey drinking river men, with their fine hospitality and cheeky humour, until several bottles of the shit had hit the bin, there followed by me.

It reminded me of Kuta beach 1974, when I first arrived to be assuaged by offers of kit that would keep Hunter S confused for a week… yabba, whiskey, pot, opiates, and god knows what other local stuff was on offer from anyone capable of standing in the shadows and saying ‘pssst’.  As there was no power other than the odd generator, so too were there lots of shadows. The next day, the recently imported farungs were all headed on their happy hippy, ways into northern Laos, well stocked.

As the river approached Luang Prabang, the limestone karsts and their family of mountains started to get height.  The logging had taken its toll, but still, most of the countryside was unmanaged jungle, and in form typical of planet earth:  where it was too steep to farm, most forest was original and diverse,( albeit missing the odd monster log).

It amazed me how the local boatmen got these stretch long tails up and down the rapid sections, as the chocolate milk turbidity gave no clue as to what sharp rock lurked where, and navigation was all about reading the  water movement. Reef sailors could take a lesson or two from these magicians. Either these river boatmen are amazing experts, or dead lucky.  As the bona fide boatie, I spent the day in constant amazement at matters Mekong.

You could spend weeks plying the length and breadth of Laos in these river boats….and one day, I intend to do just that. My trip to Laos is primarily about reconnaissance, as remissfully, this is my first visit. I’ll be back.

By the time the sun was setting on the fast approaching Luang Prabang, I had already declared cocktail hour.  Accordingly on arrival, I spilled out over the gunwales into the adjoining shore bound boats, with overweight pack in tow and BeerLao in hand, hitting the river bank with a whatever-comes-next, beer buzz. What came next was marvellous. Thank Christ the Unesco Heritage listed Prabang was not bombed into a Neolithic pit.  Luang Prabang kinda like an Ubud-by-the-Mekong, 1970. Resplendent with architecture in the old French colonial style, spiced with 50’s kitsch, and all in an ancient Laotian core, the small riverside town is a welcome relief from the fuck-girl crowd, the mall rats, and the fat and ugly tourist scene that goes into apoplexy if left without air con for 10 minutes. Thank goodness somewhere is not so easy to get to. But getting deeper into the real-deal old Asia is still further upstream. So I hired 100cc and 100k/h of Honda, and headed north, adopting my usual pack-strapping methods, to Honda the mule.

3 hours north of Luang Prabang, there is a bridge over a river at Kwai….no….Khiaw….Nong Khiaw infact. Dark mountains flank all sides of this little wild west port, and with it, a few cheap riverside bungalows, with very happy hippy aromas emanating from their evening hammocks. 20 or 30 stretch river boats hug the shore, and some pretty fit types, lug sacks of this and that up and down the alluvial river banks, the red mud river banks that are the clotted blood of this the Mekong tributary,  the Nam Ou River.Headin north, was a beautiful bike ride, free of retail signage, free of traffic, free of modern housing, free of everything that modern Asia thinks is freedom.

I looked a bit odd, fully kitted on a step-through, but then hey, you should see what a Laotian farmer can strap to step-through.

Further into the original ‘heart of darkness’ was yet ahead, this time aboard and even narrower stretch boat, in with the chooks, and on top of the sacks of fish food. If you really want to step off planet earth for a while, and only have $10/day with which to do it, head to Muang Ngoi Neua. There you can live happily on the river banks, with the local community, not car, bike or tractor in sight. There too, you can stop doing, and start being. How many travellers in 2009, can really say they know or have seen the real Asia? You will find it still in Burma, and here, without the party politics, in northern Laos > a mere ant’s trail away from the Ho Chi Min trail.

The cluster bomb cases are thick on the ground in these parts. But if you trek bit deeper, as did I, you soon find yourself in totally indigenous local villages, where the odd hut will accommodate, so you can write that book, or meditate your way into sphinctorial bliss. I’l be back. Infact, I will be back to get even further north, way up the rivers into the Laos Chinese never-never. The places on earth where you can go into truly original landscapes are few and far between these days, and the Darian pass between Panama and Colombia comes to mind as one, and both there and northern Laos are on my list of, let’s explore destinations. I ain’t dead yet.

There is a sophistication in the rice growing, mud engineering of the Mekong that I truly seek to understand, having spent a few days trying to fathom the irrigation methods, the harvest and storage, and everything in the middle…and it makes modern industrialised farming look truly brutal by comparison. Water everywhere, but few mosquitoes….why?…fish of course. Log dams, seemingly beaver built, but methodical….why?….. to raise water into the irrigation channels. Boys with goggles on, in rice paddocks, off hunting whatever lives in the creeks. Older guys, in army greens, heading off into the forest with rifles across their shoulders.  Maybe to hog tie that US pilot for a few more years? God knows they deserve it.

A couple of nights on these turbid rivers, and the Kundalini in you unwinds like a snake in a prosaic jar. Along with the Andes, Laos is topping my list of charismatic, must re-do, travel spot.

Laos is indeed a photographers dream, and many a photographer were at work there. Many were published here, as well. Laung Prabang is deep in art, books, and matters culture. I could easily live there.

When Laos is maybe one of the world’s poorest countries, it’s sure way wealthier, in well being, than we in the West. You can read in it the faces. The West has no idea how stupefied, tox’d and weakened it has become. The West thinks its money buys wellness and happiness, but the West is deluded to the point of total anaesthesia. The clear expression, the bodies worked as they were designed to, the food clean, unprocessed and alive. The families tight and intact. Communities that still need each other. Housing that costs little, is thermally perfect, and is not used as a wealth barn. Spaces like this make room for laughter, and joy. And if you are wondering why its places like Laos, and San Blas that I so adore, it’s for reasons like these above. Having been part of a nation that participated in the attempted  genocide of this country bears heavily on my heart, as did my time in Vietnam.

From Laos, it was back via the unpronounceable Bangkok airport, for more modern, Brave new World brutalist architecture that is all the fashion in airport design these days. Norman Foster, for his HK airport, should be promoted to chief guards at Guantanamo. Doesn’t anyone stop to actually looks at what these mad men and making? Or is everyone overcome by the sheer, sheerness of the stupid things.  I’m over them.

Then it was time to hit a Hong Kong mattress all night long, and figure out how to get a visa to go to the real China, something I am way late in life doing.

From the rural, quiet old Asia on Friday, to the most berserk consume-a-thon I have ever seen, I had finally hit China. Communism? Yeah right. Its stuff-yaself with shit central. Nothing communist about this. But it’s a fascinating, 30 year phenomena….nothing like it before in the earth’s history. They think Dubai was grand build achievement. But Dubai is a fraction of what happens in China. I have never seen so many 20 something’s. Breed? You fuck me long time.

And from the grand expense ($50) of a flash business hotel here in ShenZen, I got to work preparing power point shit for the TRYBRID curious Chinese.

If the TRYBRID idea takes off in China, my life may well take a fast wild ride. Just like China itself.

see why i love Laos?

any photographer is good in Laos..although its takes an eye, not a camera…

tourism marketing Laos..where the bloody hell are you?

cluster bomb casings..obsenity in metal..shame on us

hit the road on ya Hardly Davisdon.

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