Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Travel

Wanderlust
The perils of the harem
Beguiled by beauties in negligees, a Peace Corps volunteer stumbles into a romantic misadventure in Marrakech.
By Jeffrey Tayler
[07/09/99]

Vagabonding
In Vientiane, a lull before the storm
Our correspondent enjoys a drowsy detour in the Lao capital before preparing to take over as second mate on the Mik Sip.
By Rolf Potts
[07/09/99]

Vagabonding
A lucky break in Paklay
In which our correspondent gets drunk on rice whiskey one night and finds himself invited onto a boat the morning after.
By Rolf Potts
[07/08/99]

Travel Advisor
I want an exotic marriage!
Our expert offers advice on knockout nuptials, travel in Croatia, the ins and outs of rental car insurance and finding New Year's charm in Portugal.
By Donald D. Groff
[07/08/99]

Book Bag
The grace of danger in our lives
A new anthology presents a heart-pumping array of survivors' tales.
By Don George
[07/07/99]

Complete archives for Travel

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Going into the Khemmarat rapids, the best description of our watery obstacle came from Marte Bassenne's 1909 travelogue -- which vaguely placed the rapids somewhere between Savannakhet and Pakse, and grimly noted that this stretch of the Mekong River "is like a common grave of unlucky victims, because one seldom finds a corpse." Francis Garnier, whose expedition team portaged around the rapids in 1866, wrote of Khemmarat: "Nothing can express the horror of this spot, where the yellow waters twist over and through the long narrow pass, breaking against the rock with a fearful noise."

Chris and I had disregarded the hyperbole of our French predecessors for three reasons. First, we were in the middle of dry season, so the rapids would not be as fierce as Garnier and Bassenne had witnessed. Second, we had purchased a sheaf of detailed topographical maps of the area from the national geographic service in Vientiane. Third, we figured that the ubiquitous Lao fishermen -- who had been quite helpful in pantomiming instruction thus far -- would warn us if we were about to motor into certain death.

After I broke the propeller on the shoal below Savannakhet, we were able to paddle to a broken concrete pylon away from the current and save the boat. During the French colonial era, that pylon might have warned me off the rocks in the first place. Unfortunately for us, the Savannakhet to Pakse portion of the river isn't used for long-haul commerce anymore, and the century-old pylons have been worn down to amorphous lumps of cement and cobbles. For our purposes, the pylon did little more than provide me with something to steady the boat on as Chris plunged under the stern to install a new propeller.

Once the Mik Sip was up and running, we headed downstream for what would become 36 continuous hours of melodramatics. Low water had indeed provided us with a weaker current -- but it had also split the river into a foaming braid of channels splayed out amid a maze of rocks. When we weren't churning through the whitewater, it seemed, we were getting stuck on a shoal.

Chris drawled nervously at us the whole time, and continuously improvised methods of staving off disaster. When the channel narrowed to a boil, Chris put Liz in the bow and had her signal upcoming dangers. When waves from the rapids began to wash over the gunwales, he had me squat over the engine with a plastic mat so we wouldn't stall out in the middle of the whitewater.

Around sundown the first day, we eddied-out near a huge riverside sand dune that made for a perfect campsite. After collecting my share of the night's firewood, I went down to the water's edge to watch the first stars come out. Something about the day's dangers had sharpened my senses; I listened to the languorous murmur of the river with an acute feeling of joy. As I breathed in, I imagined the tiny bits of oxygen attaching to the wet walls of my lungs and sifting off into my bloodstream.

Just after noon the following day, we came upon the most daunting rapid we'd seen yet: a fat tongue of water that spilled out in a fury between two huge black rocks. Intimidated, we stopped for lunch.

Positioning himself high on the bank above the rapid, Chris peeled a hard-boiled egg and stared out at the foaming water with an edgy silence. When he'd finished eating, he came down from his perch. "To hell with it," he said.

Five minutes later, he took us straight down the middle of the tongue, and that was the end of the Khemmarat rapids.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Years ago, Lao myth tells us, men and gods used to meet. As generally happens in such situations, the humans blew that arrangement by being foolish and arrogant.

When mankind insolently refused to seek a livelihood beyond hunting and fishing, the gods flooded the world. Three chieftains managed to escape the flood by building a floating house. When the waters receded, the gods gave the chieftains a buffalo, so they could plow the earth, plant crops and live in a civilized manner. When the buffalo died, three gourds grew from its nose -- and when the chieftains cut open the gourds, humans poured out to populate the world.

Below the rapids of Khemmarat, where the Mekong gradually twists its way down into an isolated, sun-baked canyon, one is tempted to take this myth at face value. The only inhabitants of this limestone gorge -- which is fluted with ledges and fringed at the top with virgin forest -- were gypsy fishermen, who seem to have secretly dodged the mythic flood and held on to their uncivilized ways. Living directly on the canyon cliffs in thatch huts, and climbing from ledge to ledge on an elaborate system of wooden ladders, the river gypsies looked otherworldly -- larger than life -- like they were impassively waiting for Jesus to come back and make them fishers of men.

We camped that night on a narrow dune that hadn't seen footprints in ages. I entertained myself for the good part of an hour just walking the contours of the sand, turning every so often to watch the tiny avalanches set off by my presence. When I awoke in the bow of the Mik Sip the following morning, the sand next to the boat was laced with the tracks of voyeuristic rodents.

South of the canyon, the Mekong swelled to a width of over a mile and doglegged away from Thailand. On this clean blue stretch of river, the waters were once again awash with passenger ferries and huahoua-leim freighters, plying the stretch between Pakse and the Thai border.

By the time we'd arrived in Pakse to order an enormous restaurant dinner and toast our survival, Chris was already overstaying his visa. He departed for Thailand the next day, leaving me the sole owner and most experienced operator of the Mik Sip.

Next page | Sandstone temples, bump-and-grind dances