Laos. Day 1. Acts: We reached the border at two p.m.. And it's Sunday. Impact: Lao officials have been very angry, and we have informed: "By coming on a Sunday lunchtime, have to pay a dollar more ". I will like these guys. Addition, the dollar that I had saved before, to leave Cambodia. The duty officer told us: "You have to pay a dollar to leave the country". Y mi amiga Ro, who knows it all, replied that no, your travel agent and told him he would ask a rate (lie, the Gorda) but not because the rate we paid was included in the ticket out. And the guy, unaccustomed to that take the opposite, face has go, in the voy a power timar, and has given immediately. The other partners in the rickety van that takes us from one country to another have paid and then we have looked bad. Feels.
First contact with Laos. Heat. Sudamos the jets. A tip for you go to travel here. October and November is the time. Just finished the monsoon, vegetation is still wild and full of water and humidity and the weather is more bearable. Now the sun baked.
Fortunately, our first destination is an island. It's called Don Det, and is part of the calls 4.000 islands. I do not think so, but there are great, washed by the water of the Mekong, isolated in the middle of the river of life.
In terms of landscape, this is the best we've seen. We found a family, outside her home, has a small restaurant, with all the quotes you want to put the word applied to this site restaurant. We come here to see the sunset. While fishermen are busy collecting networks, and water is put turquoise, we look engrossed, liter drink beers and take portions of chips ... Ro painted with little girls who have hair and eyes of Pocahontas, and laugh at all. And I take pictures and write this nonsense on the computer.
Then, when it gets dark, we go to the other side of the island, which faces east, where, after eight, you can see how a full moon is born giant, first orange, yellow after, that moves quickly and quietly, Light as a sheriff tracking a fugitive sun.
Finally, with another beer that helps us go to sleep chopped (then, morning, I'm going to run early beset by bad conscience), we lay on any dark corner to hear the sounds of the night and leave us neck looking stars. Orion, Perseids, the Big Dipper, the Raven, Leo, Virgo ... We are not wrong, truth.
But something happened to me that I want to tell. One of those life lessons. It turns out that the island is so small that only has a narrow path that skirts. And it is easy to find that path, rebauticémoslo tontódromo, guiris that plagued, general, have, or what seems to me, a remarkable painting of idiots misplaced. And I've seen the natives try to timarnos, and it, in fact, poisoned by the smell of our dollars. We draw the eyes connect to the internet, most basic rent the cabin, or bike, why eat something other than rice with vegetables, or even to cross the bridge leading to another island larger than we ask is stuck- 20.000 lays, currency here, equivalent to about two euro-.
And I felt bad about that relationship, that I found so harmful to them. What we do? How many times we think about the impact our presence has on local people? Why shamelessly generally exhibit our economic solvency in places where survival is a luxury? What right have we to occupy, always directed by the ineffable herd Lonely Planet, spaces that have nothing to do with us and act like we were at home? Someone very dear to me once said: And why not interest us teach our culture before what is yours?Why impose our games without asking why they play?
Well, it turns out that after that, I made contact with a member of the family in whose house we dined every day, and chatting about everything and nothing, told me the following: "Tourism has been a blessing. Fifteen years ago we were starving. In fact, most of the family had to emigrate to Russia-remember that Laos is a communist country- to not starve. Today, through tourism, Hemos been able to return home ".
Take that. So we are both salvation and sin, Jekyll y Hide, blanket and cold.
And in those I was, you have to see everything that you think when you have time (my Atleti and two impending end I spend more, 'Eh?), when, by one of those coincidences of life that seem Film, we went to a beach and ... we met with two close friends of my partner Ro Seville!! How many possibilities are there to meet the neighbor on an island lost in Laos? Well, that. So we decided to stay a couple of days with them, now down to Burma. And thank goodness we have already decided to go north, a China, and that if he saw me changing plans again.
And to top, there is an idea that has gotten me in the head: the Siberian. Rollers a Beijing, crossed the Rusia by Vladivostock, and then 9.000 kilometrillos anything to Moscow, and then ... how about returning home by land? Uf, how great is this Globe, ¿Eh? At the moment, I better go to dinner with potatoes and beer Seville. Tomorrow more.
