Thank you, Laos

August 19

I’m nervous about going home.  I don’t know where else to go, but being in Laos gave me some clear vision, or the beginnings of a clear vision - I actually get to make that decision on my own now. As long as I don’t end up doing the things I know I don’t want to do, I’ll be ok.  I just don’t know what I want to do, but I can figure it out…I know that at least I’ll be guided but what I feel now is a passion for something, a motivation to try things out and shed them if I don’t think they fit.  

Thank You Laos, for giving me that, for allowing me to have profound conversations with people who have done that, for allowing me to sit on a hammock and look at amazing scenery, for allowing me to see and enter into a completely foreign and beautiful place; the most rural and untouched form of life I have ever seen, for reminding me that these people work hard and live hard lives and for making me realize that inevitably, I will have to do something-it depends on my motivation to have that something be the thing I want it to be.  I will never forget the rurality, the duality of tourism and traditional living, the naked children running down the river banks and jumping into the Nam Ou River, the way people go about their daily, casual, tough lives and making a living in incredibly difficult circumstances.  

The boat ride from Muang Ngoi Neua to Muang Khua ranks among my favorite connections that I have had, ever.  Sitting on a plank of wood, meandering slowly upriver through the muddy water, with a six year old boy and two young men (one mate and one driver) and five travelers.  Blissful, peaceful, quiet.  We stopped to check shrimp traps, watching naked children make mud towers on the banks.  We stopped at numerous villages along the way and watched as people led their lives in front of us.  We stopped to buy fish, to put banana tree trunks in the boat that the boys’ parents chopped down, to drop off the boy, the bathe in the river, to buy cigarettes for the driver.  It took three hours more than it was supposed to, and I couldn’t have been happier.  Watching mud fights erupt on the banks, watching men check more fish traps, watching women and their babies watch us, it was something I felt few people will ever get to see, a glimpse into a life that is virtually untouched by everything that touches and harasses my life on a regular basis.  

So thank you Laos for giving me peace of mind, for giving me a piece of your mind, for being a country that I had not known about before, that seems forgotten by the world, a country that I will never forget.  

Thank you Tom, for listening to my rants about people in my life who have hurt me, for always making conversation, for buying me beer and knowing when I needed to be alone.  Thank you Mel for letting me know that I can work abroad in an incredibly meaningful way if I want to.  Thank you Akemi, for letting me know that I am not so privileged as to think that I don’t have to work and can just travel forever, and that its ok for me to like going home, that it shouldn’t matter as long as I carry me and my happiness with me.  Thank you Nong Khiaw for making me feel grounded again, and Penny for making me realize that I have a talent for getting people to open up about their most personal life stories.

Thank you Laos.  Now on to Vietnam.  For a whole new type of gratitude.