Heart of darkness.... part 2

After carefully avoiding threading through the"Spirit Gate" A "gate"( Made of bamboo and some offerings in the shape of feathers and the hide of an animal - sometimes a weaved bamboo "sign" will tell visitors, they are not welcome either as not to offend a spirit or because of a village meeting taking place) of the Akha village, we heard loud laughter and the tinned noise of music, comming through the "loudspeaker" of a cheap rip-off mobile phone.. The village seemed otherwise desserted.. Only a few women, a lot of smaller kids.. and the household animals were around to greet us... A man yawning and stretching ducked out of his hut, right next to the cookinghut and invited us in....

Inside we found a few guys drunk senseless by LaoLao ( Homemade spirits made all over Lao) and having a grand old time playing cards... A Akha woman was cooking up some chickenfeet and the young boys were listning to this really cheap mobile, they all wore their homemade slingshots around their necks.... and nothing much more... After some good "Gesture and waving about with arms and legs" conversation, we as politely as possible declined the dinner invitation...

I have always rather liked myself, save for my legs, which I have always found rather big/thick/fat
so when the husband of this really nice, traditionally blacktoothed and paperthin wife, made a comment about my fat legs and comparing them to hers and then his own..and still come out a bit short... well, then I thought it was time to go... But was not alowed to do so, before the boys had fetched some lollys and they had taken about 30 photos of US with their mobile, this while we were still negotiating amongst us, if it were too rude and disrespectfull to take a photo of THEM........

Mobiles and telephones where a bit of joke around here, as there was no cover... In in the village of Xian Kok, you'd see this quite surrealistic image of people running around in the street with their wireless phones in their outstreched hands, zigzagging up and down, trying to find the exact spot, where to recieve cover.....
                                                                          
Well, after much negotiating and hasselin', we finally found someone to take us down river to the next "bigger" town, where we could catch a bus on to Huay Xia.... By sheer luck, (Otherwise it would have been impossible to pay the trip) there were the three of us there; The Kiwi girl - A selfprofessed ignorant of the world, The Sweedish girl; A dreamy Spacecadet of 21 yrs, Who constantly forgot the weres and whys and then me: The one with very fat legs! The Speedboat pilot wanted us to leave next morning a 5, which we all opposed to - And after much dicussing with the three other occupants of the boat - They later turned out to be burmese snakesmugglers, we arrived at a depature time around 6-7... Not quite sure which, as it differed, as whom you asked...

Mr.Tim strolled in at 7 pm, and got some of the lucky leftovers from a meal, we'd had to beg for....! He later got drunk with "immegration Officer of Xian Kok" the "once a bustling riverport" on LaoLao and was not altogether there next morning, to see us off.. But he did put in an effort- And feeably lift a hand to wave... Or that what was it looked like to me without glasses!

Next morning the mountain mist was so thick and so low, that you couldn't see the jungle and the lonely stupa on the Burmese side. Only the mighty Mekong with the rapids, whirlpools and logs floating about - all quite vissible, all of a sudden, now that I was gettin into the smallest/narrowest speedboat I've seen! I'm very happy to say that the five sacks full of rolled-up live snakes had all been evacuated from the boat and converted into good money for the Burmese couple and their son... Otherwise there would be no chance in hell, that I would have got on that thing!

The clock now said 6am and the pilot was yelling to make it snappy, The Burmese woman and I, told him to pipe down while we were finishing our coffee and comparing not legs this time, but noses... She pointed mine out as being one of the biggest she ever had seen... So now I was good and ready to get out of the place before my whole big body would come under more scrutiny and start some more complexes then the ones I have already.... (",)

We went down that river like a bat out of hell... And man, did that guy know what he was doing! In and out of rapids, wearing to left and right of the whirlpools and floating debris, using the currents on both sides of the river to make a terrific speed.... After an hour, we docked in Burma and a man in the "uniform" of the Burmese Insurgents came down to greet us and to give a hand with some of the "shopping" the Burmese had with them... After much laughing and waving goodbye we headed off again down to ? ( I'll find the name later)