Summer's End

The earmark of summer’s end, Memorial Day (or is it Labor Day? I can never remember. The one at the end, the one just before school… I think it’s Labor Day), came and went over on the other side of the world and here in Laos, I got to sneak squeeze a little more time. No one was watching. No Memorial Day. But, I have to let it end, though. I have to get back to it. Back into the flow, back on track and - ouch - nose to grindstone. Summer must come to an end. I squeeze a little more time because there’s no Memorial Day in Laos. The next weekend, or the one after, is the boat racing festival in Luang Prabang. It seems like an appropriate marker.

September 11 is the day for the Boat Racing Festival in Luang Prabang. It’s also Horkhaopadapdin, the day – the very very early morning part of the day – to honor deceased relatives with offerings to assure their spirits that they did good in this world and their memories are respected, cherished, thanked, safe journey wherever you are. Longer boats. The boats on the river are larger than what we know in Cambridge, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Exeter, the Head of the Charles. They are longer and wider and heavier and 50 not 8 men are geared with short fat paddles not long thin oars. The rhythm is still there. The coxswains use drums and some are not coxswains, they just drum and there’s one in the front as well as the back. There might be some in the middle, too. They row on the Nam Kang and not the Mekong. The Mekong is too mighty; harsh and wide and full with obstructions. The banks are closed and the riverside is lined with Lao people and very few tourists – the children dress in their best clothes and some little girls proudly wear new, clean, yellow patterned dresses holding daddy’s hand overwhelmed at the sights and the uncountable faces and knees and packages and dogs eating bones under street side vendor’s tables.

Country folk come in from all over the province. It’s a big day. It’s easy to spot who is cosmopolitan and who is not. I’m told the children used to wear their school uniforms if that’s all they had, but now some wear dirty t-shirts and ripped pants if that’s what they want. They are becoming more worldly. It’s easy to spot who has made special effort to bring the family to see the festival and visit with cousins and aunts and uncles and maybe an eldest son lucky enough to study at Wat Sop, Wat Sene or Wat Phousi. Little boys proudly walk through the crowds with plastic carbines, with plastic AK-47’s, with plastic Luger’s. The men soak themselves in Beer Lao and the women join in as much as they can without forgetting they have children to watch but it’s not a problem because Lao men are just as likely to pick up their crying child and console them.

The races seem tertiary after the street side vendors and the face watching over big bottles of beer and grilled chicken on sticks and sweet Lao sausage. The crowds are overwhelming to me. To many balloons and umbrellas trying to poke me in the face. We retreat across the peninsula to the Mekong side – to a quiet riverside restaurant for an early afternoon sitting of Lao barbeque; it’s called ‘sindha’ or something like that but I like to call it sim card because it sounds like sim card and saying ‘I want to eat sim card’ makes me chuckle. It’s easier to make such jokes when broken English is the standard and I can’t speak the local language.

We could take a bus back to Vientiane. It’s cheaper. $11.50. But it’s not much fun and no longer interesting to me – I’ve done the trip too many times for it to stimulate anything. I don’t even get upset at the power lines blemishing across a stunning pair of limestone karsts north of Vang Vieng. Even the VIP bus – the good one where they give you little packaged sponge cakes and a bottle of water and they give you moist towelettes near the end of the trip just before the tire blows out and by the time we’re all back on the bus and the tire is changed, our hands are dirty again – it’s just not interesting anymore. The flight is six times more expensive. The flight is eight times quicker. I decide to skip the bus ride.

I’m a little torn about flying. My brother tells me not to fly because around here things are not done the way they are done in the west and it’s not quite as safe as the budget airlines who sprung up out of deregulation in the 80’s (was that the 80’s?). My embassy tells me not to take the bus because the Hmong are still ticked off and the jungles north are filled with resistance and it’s been a while but there have been incidents…

The ticket agent hands me back my passport, credit card and boarding pass. I look at the date: September 11. It’s just another day but I can’t help but make the connection. I wait for boarding to begin. For me, it’s just another dead zone strip of time between the festival and getting home. For others, it’s a different new experience.

It’s fun to watch someone fly for the first time. In the waiting area there is a collected excitement about her. Excited on boarding. Excited on take off. Excited even putting her bag through the x-ray machine and she beeps and the man waves his wand around her and that too is exciting. The second time through she doesn’t beep and they make a joke about it. The sun has set and there is only jungle below so no lights to see; only blackness and the reflection of her face in the window. Eventually she eases back into rapid fire page flipping of the inflight magazine. At the back there is a calendar of events, holidays and festivals for 2007. It says the 26^th is the day for remembering and making offering to deceased relatives. I no longer find factual contradictions an annoyance. The 8 a.m. bus can leave at 1:45 p.m. if that’s when it leaves. That’s just the way it’s done. It’s a contradiction. Fact.

I’m glad she’s older. Too old to discover the child thrill of bringing her seatback tray to it’s full upright and locked position then back down and up and locked and unlocked and down and locked and unlocked and locked and unlocked… click, click, click, clickclick, clickclick, click. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. How long will this go on? Glad she’s too old for that. She leaves it in the full upright and locked position. I felt something let go in me when I showed her how to use the seat belt. An old resentment from being too many times a passenger watching the preflight safety demonstration. We roll our eyes, the seasoned travelers, at the flight attendants who have to, by law, demonstrate how to operate the seat belt. Who doesn’t know? She didn’t know. Why would she? It took her a couple tries to master it. I’m glad for the experience, glad I can let go finally. One less thing to irritate me about flying. One more thing to remind me how much child exists in all of us – wide eyed, not knowing, we don’t know everything and when we do, there is always the plane instead of the bus.