in-the-making

There By The Sea

Paper Parasols

But For Now, This Is How We'll Talk

Communicating through speech comes to a stop after some time. With basic vocabulary learned over a span of just two months, there's only so much you can say. There's only so much to talk about. There's only so much miming and gesturing you can come up with. So I sit back and feel a little frustrated as my brain tries hard to make sense of what they're saying. I try and slow them down saying "Khoy bo khao jai" (I don't understand). Being honest and trying to find a way to give myself a break at the same time. Yet they persist. So I smile and try to get myself interested. They want to teach me how to dance. They try to remember the steps and begin to sway their hands and move their bodies. Their fingers make delicate movements as their hands sway from left to right, right to left. I've seen the actual dance with the accompanying music. Suffice it to say that the girls' version sans the music is so much better. They beckon me to join them. I get up and try to get my pace right, my fingers begin to move slowly to their delicate rhythm. So we dance for a little while as the girls try to sing a song, the words to which they try to remember. But we dance.

I then sat back and watched them dance; thinking, "Communicating through speech comes to a stop after some time..." But when it does, we find other means through which we still try to communicate... even though it's just our bodies swaying to the humming of a half-remembered song.

Hnff!

No, I didn't go snorkeling. But I went Lao river-fishing. Of course I didn't wear that. This was just for a photo. We hardly caught any fish. But it was quite fun. We had to go on boats down the river to the other side. I screamed like mad when two of the girls took me on a test ride. The boat bobbed around like crazy. I don't know how to swim and I don't know how deep the water was but if I've had a near-drowning experience in the shallow end of a pool, you know what I can be capable of.

One of the girls was a fisherman's daughter. So she knew her stuff. She knew the pretty waterfalls and the way around them. She knew how to steer the boat. She knew what to do. She led me by my hand and took me into the foliage, up to the falls, cautioning me to place my foot on this rock not that. She knew the place. I almost felt like calling her "Pocahontas". She even had her long hair tied up in a side pony tail. Not that Pocahontas ever did, or could have. You never know.

Since there was nothing much happening at the fish-catching front, I ended up collecting some shells on the river bank and chewing burnt buffalo hide tossed in coal over an old woman's fire which we kinda took over.

Humpy

On the way down to Vientiane from Luang Prabang, there's this place, almost half-way down, I think. It offers you a spectacular view. I'm used to seeing hills, but the hills around here are different. More... dramatic, I'd say. So... humpy. I mean like the humps of a camel, of course. There's a picture of me sitting on the bench. But I think this looks much better.

Along the river Nam Khan and the Mekong, Luang Prabang sure can light up pretty