Magic

I believe it was then in my journey that everything became magical.  The temples in Bangkok and the tiny mountain town of Pai and the ruins of Sukothai had been magical enough, but nothing compared to the Blue Lagoon in Vang Vieng, where we spent the following day.  We walked seven kilometers to get there, first crossing the Nam Song by paying 4,000 kip to walk over the bridge.  We followed a dirt road, through small villages and farms, with chickens and chicks, kids on bikes, puppies, goats, cows and calves, and men on tractors all around.  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen as many babies at once as I did in Laos, both human and animal.  It felt like a springtime storybook where everybody was giving birth.

The walk was long, but the limestone mountains behind the gardens and fields were beautiful in the distance, dark blue against the sky.  Before we reached the lagoon, we stopped at an organic farm for lunch.  I had a refreshing mint lemonade, which was much tastier than the vegetable fried noodles I had ordered, which, for some reason, had been covered with ketchup.  A Siamese cat begged under the table, and Malone fed it some of her fried rice.

 

Another couple hundred meters down the road was the Blue Lagoon, which was, as its name would suggest, blue.  I mean, it was BLUE.  I’d never seen anything quite like it, at least not in the natural world.  Fish swarmed by a wooden ladder that led into the water, there were people sitting on a giant swing that hung in the water from a large, epiphyte-covered tree, and Lao men stood on a bridge and observed people swimming, swinging into the water from a rope, and jumping in from the branches of the tree.

Before we went swimming, we decided to walk up to Tham Phu Kham, a cave within the limestone that stood behind the Blue Lagoon.  The climb to the cave entrance was steep and exhilarating, so entering the cool, damp chambers of the cave felt soft and silky against my hot skin.  Having forgotten my headlamp, we remained in the two outermost chambers, where enough sunlight entered the cave to see its beauty.  The sun beams displayed a small temple with a gold reclining Buddha.  In an opening in the cave’s wall, two trees grew, and the daylight fed the bright green moss and ferns that grew on the boulders there.  The ceiling of the cave was impressively high.  Stalagmites hung near the opening to the cave, but deeper inside, there were just huge slabs of rock holding the ceiling up.  It was amazing to think about the weight of the mountain that rested on this stone ceiling; the top of the limestone was still 200 or 300 meters above us.

Back down at the lagoon, we entered the water, which was very cold, clear, and refreshing.  I swam a few laps under the bridge and back, then sat and relaxed in the giant swing.  When the water became too chilly, we got out and shared French fries and a Beer Lao on a picnic table before finding a mat to lie in the sun and read (Magister Ludi, or The Glass Bead Game for me).  We were living the life, right?

We walked back along the dusty path before darkness and enjoyed sandwiches back in town, only to walk back down the same road the very next day, once the morning rain stopped.  On the way, we stopped at several small caves along the road, each of which charged its own admission.  The caves were not nearly as impressive as Tham Phu Kham, and walking through the fields of butterflies and banana trees in the hot sun was enough to make us crave the Blue Lagoon’s cool waters again.  We continued walking the path, but, hot and exhausted, were thankful when a Lao family picked us up in their mini van and drove us the remaining 2 kilometers.  We tried to offer them some money, but they laughed at us and waved the money away.  The refreshing water got my courage up, and I climbed the tall, epiphyte-covered tree to jump into the water—something I had been afraid to do the day before.  Climbing the slippery trunk of the tree was scary enough—it left me trembling—that jumping off the branch was easy.  Jumping was much easier than climbing back down the tiny notches carved into the wood.

Tired from all the walking we had been doing, we paid for a tuk-tuk back into town.  We ate more street pancakes that evening, and decided to spend one more full day in Vang Vieng.  On our last day, we took a tuk-tuk to the river, this time without tubes.  We chose a bar to hang out at for the day.  It was such a relaxing day, just sitting by the river beneath the shade of a large tree.  The bar we chose had a deck, which we had to ourselves, with a swing, hammocks, a trampoline, and a small table where we ate sandwiches and shared a mojito in a plastic bucket.  I spent the day reading and writing and swimming and relaxing.  I laid on my back on the deck, looking up at the tree and its green leaves moving graciously above me.  The sun began its descent behind the limestone karsts on the western bank of the river, but still sent golden light through the branches and onto my skin.  I watched the occasional dry bamboo leaf, from the cluster of bamboo behind my head, flutter to the ground against a blue backdrop of sky.  So peaceful, so simple.  It reminded me simultaneously of maple tree helicopters at home and the butterflies that clotted the path the day before, all of them aflutter.

At the end of the day, we walked back into town.  Because the mountains get shorter as you walk south along the river, we were able to continuously watch the sun set.  A hot air balloon rose above the mountains, and both were silhouetted against the sky.  Do these pictures at all convey the magic that I witnessed in Laos?