The Man by the River

We left Chiang Mai on Sunday morning, and arrived at Luang Prabang on Tuesday evening. It was a long trip and it was worth it.

The bulk of the travelling took place in a slow boat on the Mekong River. Sounds romantic and scenic (just what Alex and I are looking for), but turned out to be narrow rows of hard benches with white faces all around. We waited on board for two hours before the engine was even on, and we "docked" (pulled over to the beach-rocks-jungle) every five minutes to let off the local Laotians at their villages. Despite the inconveniences of the 16-hour ride, it was one of the best experiences yet.

The Mekong is muddy. It's brown, cloudy, and seemingly unclean. But it works. It's sprawling, vast, and imposing. Green soy bean plants grow on white beaches between rock outcroppings, and water buffalo graze in the knee deep water. Lush jungle forms a solid wall below countless misty mountains.

Every few minutes we would pass a group of huts and several people between them, or the frequent solitary man in a long fishing boat on the river. They would wave or they would ignore us, but either way I felt relatively unobtrusive. At one point we came upon a particularly large group, women beating their laundry against the rocks with bamboo brushes, children swimming and playing, men fishing or farming. I glimpsed one man standing at the shoreline washing a pair of shorts in the river, completely and unabashedly naked, going about his daily routine as I'm sure the rest of the villagers were.

As the boat passed he raised his head to look, and upon seeing the foreigners passing by he casually moved a hand to cover himself. It was a simple gesture, but it obliterated the sort of "cultural experience" one naively hopes for when travelling. It threw up a barrier between the villagers on the beach and the interlopers on the big boat. It said not just that we weren't a part of their lives, but that we did not and could not understand those lives. It said that cultural sensitivity, while certainly worthwhile to endeavor toward, is simply not enough. And it said it all with a gesture.

All the amateur anthropologists out there would have a field day, I'm sure, with my experience, what I've unknowingly presupposed or forgotten or misanalyzed. But regardless, it was a meaningful experience, so I thought I'd tell you about it.