paradise

05.31.2008-006-viengXai
Originally uploaded by _chlorophyll hello

It is like taking the back road. It takes me 19 hours to get from luang prabang to sam neua, in northeastern laos, at the border of Vietnam.
the Ipod battery didn’t last that long. Should I be thankful for the blaring laos pop music, occasionally accompanied with clapping and singing, through the night, that forced me to stay awake and “acquire” a taste for it?

when day breaks, I see lush green valleys, paddy fields shrouded in fog, and land irregularly punctuated by bomb craters, remnants of US bombing during the IndoChina war.

The bus chokes on the uphills, it is overloaded with boxes of rice, cement on the top, back seats and the floor- they outnumber the humans on it! The road as wide as the bus leaves little room for anything else. The honks are to scare away the roosters, pigs, cows, sometimes children who run out of the village huts to wave their goodbyes. Buses are a once-a-day occurrence on this route.
Village huts, dish antennae are the signs of civilization, but other than that, this land is pristine.

I forget the sleepless night and look out and look forward to another day in paradise..