Laughter and the Mekong

by Brent Katte | 2009

There wasn't really any plan, no grand idea, I was just going to get out when things felt right, when the surroundings fit. It had been a very long day after a very long night, one devoid of sleep and comfort. I'd left Bangkok 24 hours ago, and the tally so far included three taxis, a train, two buses, a sawngthaew, an international border, and two more sawngthaews. There'd been a lot of waiting; in traffic, at Hua Lamphong, in Ubon Ratchathani, at the border in Vang Tao, in the parking lot down the hill behind it, at the bus station in Pakse. And it was hot, roasting, three weeks into the hot season, at least 35 degrees. Southern Laos was a veritable oven, dry and dusty, the sky a searing sun. So I'd been drinking since the stamp, BeerLao the only way to boil away an endlessly delayed afternoon. After the second I remembered where I was, remembered to enjoy this kind of thing, the waiting and the back and forth, the spontaneous organization. The irony was that it was one of the main reasons I'd returned to Laos, why I'd traded Japan's efficiency and punctuality for the seemingly aimless drifting of riverine Lan Xang. I was in Laos to take it easy for a few weeks; I just wasn't quite ready.

The ride from Pakse to Champasak had only been an hour; it was the two hours in the lot that had done me in. Once moving things were a pleasant blur, my accumulated 24 hours of movement yawning predictably at the last stretch of road. The truck was about half-full, almost everyone Lao, me and a young couple the only people growing sunburns. After twenty almost everyone was gone, most passengers just a small hop out of the city. It was just us but I didn't feel like talking, instead kept to myself through Laos' southernmost province, drifting off towards the end. On the outskirts of town I woke up to the driver, screams of "Champasak, Champasak!" just audible over the engine. A few minutes later we'd made the main road, and a minute afterwards were stopped at a guesthouse.

The couple stood up and grabbed their gear, said it was their stop and asked about me. Aside from BeerLao and Champasak I was playing it as it came, so stood up to have a look and that's when I heard it. We were at the Vong Phaseut guesthouse, right on the river, parked just in front of its empty restaurant. From somewhere inside came an impossible laughter, shrill and sustained for what seemed like a minute, something like childhood escaping into the day. The driver got out and the Laugh started to move, getting closer as the couple stepped down. I was near laughing myself after a minute of hearing it, the sounds contagious and all the more funny removed from the reason. While they were paying, the Laugh came into view, welcomed the couple and picked up their bags. He was a portly man in his mid-fifties, wearing a tattered pair of shorts and a shit-eating grin. He and the driver exchanged a few words and then looked up at me, asked me the obvious and veered into a chuckle. And that was that—I hopped out.

Linguists estimate the number of bona fide world languages somewhere around 6,000, give or take a couple hundred, with the number of dialects well into hundreds of thousands. But laughter, everyone agrees, is universal, sounding more or less the same despite continent or ethnicity. Before babies learn to speak, they can laugh, usually starting around four months, even those born deaf or blind. Laughter, more than anything, appears to be a universal mechanism, a language that everyone shares. I could only speak a few words of Lao, had no hope of communicating anything more than a few basic civilities, but the sounds at the Vong Phaseut guesthouse were familiar, and familiar was comforting, enough reason to stay.

After showing the couple their room the Laugh signed me in. I filled out the guestbook, introduced myself, and he did so in turn. It turned out that he was Vong Phasuet, the guesthouse his eponymous enterprise, going on ten years now. He led me down a path towards the balcony, on a quick tour, pointing out things in clipped but pleasant English. He showed me to my room and asked if I was hungry, but what was needed was sleep. The shower worked, lukewarm but refreshing, then bed yawned and swallowed the rest of the afternoon.

I woke up a few hours later, still sluggish but hungry, and before even leaving my room heard Vong at the front. I stumbled out to the restaurant, still a bit dazed, surprised to see what looked like a large family taking up most of the tables. Vong waved hello, invited me to sit down next to him at the edge of a table. The guests looked like a local family and their assorted friends; everyone seemed to know Vong and looked quite at ease with taking up the bulk of a guesthouse restaurant. The couple was off to one side of the large table, two younger backpackers were into their beers by the TV. I wasn't ready for words yet and there were no empty tables, so I grabbed a menu and left for the balcony.

It was just before dusk and the sky was heavy with light, getting thicker as the sun pulled everything down. I stood on the balcony, looked down at the river, the mighty Mekong running a dirty blue past the banks below. Insects were waking up, swarming the flickering lights, but other than that the verandah was deserted. I took a seat overlooking the river and gave a look at the menu, found the papaya salad I'd woken up tasting and walked back to order. The party was much the same and looked convivial, with Vong beckoning again to an open chair beside him. I was glad for the invite but not up for sociability, and instead pointed to to the menu and a beer in the fridge. Vong got up and grabbed me a bottle, popping the cap with a conspiritorial giggle. Ten minutes later I was tucked into dinner, silent between a river and a laugh track, bookends that worked.

The Mekong, taking its English name from the Tai "Mae Nam Khong," begins life in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai province, western China. The "Mother of All Rivers" has its headwaters at the foot of a glacier on Lasagongma mountain, located at just over 17,000 feet in the inner heartland of the highest and most inhospitable region of the central Asian highlands. From its source north of the Himalayas, the 11th longest river in the world runs for approximately 3030 miles on a southeasterly course through six countries and geographic regions. The first half of the river runs through China, churning through gorges and ravines in its race down the mountains, this stretch known colloquially as "Lancang", the turbulent river. After leaving China, it flows southwest for roughly 120 miles, forming part of the border between northeastern Myanmar and northwestern Laos, where it's joined by the Ruak tributary in the Golden Triangle. This point marks the beginning of the Lower Mekong, an incredibly fertile floodplain and one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world, home to over 100 ethnic groups and 60 million people. Most of Laos' six million people live near this river, and all major cities are close to its banks. Champasak, former seat of the Kingdom of Champasak, now defunct, lies on its western edge. The Vong Phasuet guesthouse sits at the northern end of town, the "Mother" flowing right through its backyard.

The papaya salad was exactly what had been called for and BeerLao stood in for dessert. I stretched out in a hammock and alternated from a book to geckoes, cheering them on as they raced over ceilings and walls, hunting. Night had fallen and a plethora of insects was out, unbelievable clouds gathering under most lights. Ignoring them wasn't an option; they were landing on me and every page I turned. I was debating my options, realizing why no one else was on the balcony, when the couple came out for a look at the river. They stood at the railing peering down, a crescent moon hanging limp in the sky. I introduced myself with props for their choice, and they asked me why I'd to stayed. I told them Vong's laugh was compelling, they immediately agreed. We spent a few minutes on theories but then had to abandon the deck, the clouds becoming walls, goodnights said on the dash to our rooms.

I slept like the dead and awoke not to the anticipated roosters, but to the Laugh a mere hour past daybreak. I wandered into the restaurant to find Vong and an older woman in the kitchen. They were cooking together, but she was in charge; Vong's job seemed to be sampling the progress and getting slapped for his troubles. So of course he was laughing.

I ordered a thick cup of coffee, some toast, tried to work up an appetite, managed to finish everything off. Vong sat down for a minute and asked how I was, cradling a steaming bowl of soup. He was a thickset man in his late forties, with a moderate tan and a full head of unkempt black hair. His face was big and round, painted with deep, comforting lines. Like yesterday he wore only a pair of shorts, belly spilling nonchalantly over his waistband. Vong was the biggest Lao man I'd ever met, yet my eyes rarely strayed from his. His smile was large and magnetic, he seemed a man most at home in his face. He took a sip and burned his mouth, sort of like I thought he would, the slip-up followed with the anticipated response. I looked at him admirably, a man impossible to dislike, wishing I was a mere fraction of his good humor in the mornings. I asked him about renting a bike, the day's plan a trip to Wat Phu, and he led me over to an assortment of predictable Chinese monsters with varying patches of rust. I picked out a blue one and pumped up the tires, adjusted the brakes. Vong seemed pleased with my choice, and he led me out into the street, pointing the way to the temples. Straight down the road. I hopped on and started pedaling. He was laughing. The bike squeaked.

Laughing involves key parts of the brain's limbic system, the area concerned with emotions. Scientists have found that deep, sustained laughter decreases the amount of cortisol produced in the adrenal cortex, the hormone secreted when the body feels stressed. Researchers have also found that laughing lowers blood sugar after eating, and is suggested as a sort of therapy to those with diabetes. Fifteen facial muscles are used when we laugh, from snigger to chortle to cackle. I hadn't seen Vong wearing anything less than a smile since checking into the guesthouse, but assumed his face had the tone his belly lacked. He was fit in ways I wasn't and fear I never will be, the me I know beholden more to rumination and furrowed brow.

The ride to Phu Kao was leisurely, 4 miles of rice fields dotted with stilt houses sagging lazy over the earth. Water buffaloes meandered through fields, children pedaled by, laughing hellos and waving, something that never got old. Heat radiated upwards in waves, the line of the horizon an undulating blur. The sun was up and rising, the day promised to be hot. I pulled up to the gate for a ticket, then locked my bike to a tree and started towards the mountain.

Wat Phu, literally "mountain temple," was first built in conjunction with the ancient city of Shrestpura sometime in the 5th century. At that time, the Champasak region was the northern frontier of the kingdom of Chenla, an early forerunner to the Khmer empire. The original temple, of which little remains, was Hindu, built to honor Shiva, one of the Trimurti. At the top of the temple lies a sanctuary and inside a shrine, which at one time housed a large linga, the phallus-shaped idol worshipped by Shiva's devotees. Local inhabitants also revered Phu Kao's curious peak, a marked spire they took to be a natural linga and poignant reminder of the god's omnipresence.

At the upper level of the temple, behind the shrine, limestone cliffs rise vertically for hundreds of feet. At an overhang at the bottom of the cliffs lies a spring. Its water is considered holy and was used to bathe the linga, an important fertility rite still practiced today. At one time, Wat Phu was connected by road with Angkor to the southwest, and like Angkor had its temples converted to Theraveda Buddhism between the 12th and 13th centuries. Now, the only linga that remains is the mountain, admittedly slightly interpretive, but clearly visible and convincing if the haze has burned off.

I walked past the empty barays and ruined palaces, started up the steps leading to the shrine. The stairs were flanked with blooming plumeria, roots growing well over the steps, sweet white petals covering the anthracite bricks. The air was heavy with a sensual honey, currents of scent coursing by. Large butterflies floated past, calling on newly-bloomed flowers. Streams of ants marched in all directions, snaking up and down trees and bricks, following orders and instincts. Cicadas tired temporarily of their songs, lulls creeping into the waning morning as shadows retreated; lizards inching farther out from crevices and holes to bask in the burgeoning sun. Life shifted here and there, letting the visitors slip by, up and down the steps, in and out of history.

The top of Wat Phu provides a striking view, the temple overlooking a valley and the Mekong as it winds its way south, horizons shimmering in the distance, repose unfurled like a sail. would have stayed longer, but my nausea hadn't abated; if anything it was getting worse.

I'd started back on Doxycycline a couple days ago, Laos being a big red dot on the malaria map. Now, sitting in the restaurant behind the ticket kiosk I was remembering the reasons I'd quit it last time round, most of my beer spent hunched over fighting tightening knots of queasiness. I felt horrible, absolutely wretched, and the displeasure quickly moved from body to head, poisoning what had started out as a beautiful day. I felt better after a beer, but only marginally, and lying down felt in order. After a quick look through the Wat Phu museum I was back on the rusty blue cycle, heat pounding down, riding back noxious and heavy.

Twenty yards out from the guesthouse it was clear that something was going on. A multitude of bicycles and scooters were parked out front and sounds of a gathering spilled out into the street. Vong came out to meet me as I pulled up, grabbing the bicycle and angling it into its spot, asking about Wat Phu as we walked to the front. I looked around, the place was packed, a lot of people from yesterday but plenty of new faces. The two large tables were somewhat segregated, women and children near the entrance working on a large assortment of food, most of the men sitting further down, more concerned with drink. More people sat on the floor, straw mats covering most available space. Children ran around freely, chasing one another around the crowded foyer. Tinny music drifted out of a battered old radio. Two dogs made their rounds of the tables, a rooster strutted about near the refrigerator. The Vong Phaseut guesthouse was very much the center of something, but what that was, I wasn't sure.

I pointed at the gala and shrugged my shoulders. Vong's response was "Lao Day! Lao Day!", followed by a further explanation in an indecipherable pidgin. Again, he invited me to join them, his arm around me, pulling me towards the boys. Still nauseous, I excused myself with the excuse of a shower, told him I'd be back soon enough, and made for my room.

I stood in the shower, fighting Doxycycline, resigned to getting malaria. Then bed, the fetal position, listening to the party, the Laugh sneaking in through the bungalow's cracks, sparring with my nausea. After about twenty minutes with nothing to show for it, I got up, not wanting to miss Lao Day, whatever it meant. Vong rushed to his feet and walked me over to his table, sat us down and made introductions, none of which I understood. The boys were drinking LaoLao, the national brandy, a first-grade rocket fuel not unlike an estery ether. The lads smiled at me, grins buoyed by the first bottle, shot glass making the rounds. My neighbor passed me the glass, full to the brim, and they raised their beers in a toast, all eyes on me.

There are challenging drinks, to be sure, and then there's booze like LaoLao, a solvent-like distillate that takes imbibing to a whole new level. The best thing to do is not hesitate, never smell the stuff. But that was unavoidable. My throat burned something fierce, guts fought me every step of the way. I tried not to wince, chased after the gag running loose in my stomach. Then the burn started to fade, a spreading warmth taking up its slack. I looked up and smiled, sweats already starting. Lao Day had begun.

After a few rounds Vong asked me about food. A nod later and the old woman was at my side, piling a colorful array of dishes on the table. Vong stood and made a boisterous introduction; Khone was his wife. I stood and thanked her in my best Lao, and she smiled a mother's smile, pointing at the spread before rejoining the girls. She'd left me enough for the lot of us.

After some cursory questions and a couple more shots, a slight hunger crept into the afternoon, LaoLao a bit of an aperitif after all. I surveyed the food in front of me, eyes wide, stomach nowhere near the task. Lao Day meant feast. There were two soups, tom tin moo (pig's trotters) and keng som kai (sour chicken); ping sin (grilled water buffalo), beef laab laab (ground meat salad with mint), mok kai (chicken steamed in banana leaf), tam mak hung (papaya salad), sam phak kad (pickled greens), stir-fried noodles, and khao nom maw keng (coconut custard cakes). To my left was a basket of sticky rice to hold everything together. I looked up for help, but the boys were well past eating. BeerLao was dessert. LaoLao orbited the group. The other five mouths weren't rushing to assist. It was just me.

I slid into a bit of a rhythm, jumping from dish to dish in between sips of beer, relishing the panoply of flavors and colors and smells, hands sticky with rice, afternoon messy with life. LaoLao circled the table, the Laugh got bigger, lasted longer, came seemingly without rhyme or reason. Aside from names and hometowns our communication was quite limited, the camaraderie one of booze and banquet. As the afternoon wore on, several children came by, giggling through their names and rudimentary questions. At least three jumped up onto Vong's lap, two of whom he introduced as his daughters. He also had a son, somewhere, probably out teasing the chickens. His girls made him laugh. His laughs made them laugh. Their laughs made me laugh. Laughs were followed by drinks. The cycle continued.

Lao Day, still unexplained, marched on through a sweltering afternoon, me right in the middle, somehow one of the family. I sat in a kind of awe, jaw taxed, taking internal snapshots, wanting to really live what I was living, remember what I had. The morning had evaporated, my ill leanings with it. In front of me was superlative food I just couldn't finish, around me a joie de vivre I couldn't get over. Centerpiece was Vong, the Laugh, a host unlike any I'd seen. I sat and watched, tried not to stare, as one of the happiest people I've met floated through another day, wondering if this was an exception or a rule, knowing I'd never find out. My face hurt from smiling, a different kind of headache snuck in. I felt good, grew comfortable with my own laughter, realized I missed it. Vong never missed a beat.

In terms of body chemistry, laughter functions more or less as a chemical, affecting hormone levels and the circulatory system. Sustained laughter results in a marked increase in blood oxygen levels and the number of certain T-cells, white blood lymphocytes key to a healthy immune system, making you healthier and stronger. Laughter also increases the body's endorphin volume, as well as decreases neuroendocrine and other stress-related hormones, effectively functioning as a type of bidirectional drug. If you feel good laughter makes you feel better; if you're under the weather it picks you up. Whether or not it's the best medicine is wholly personal; what's important is that it is one. Perhaps the LaoLao had gone to bat for my body, but I was sure Vong was what had cleared my head. There was so much of him that he inevitably rubbed off on you, and once he had you weren't in any rush to wipe that sheen off.

But all things have their ends, and after a desultory third attempt, I conceded defeat, putting the lid back on the rice and motioning to my distended belly when Vong looked up. He seemed pleased, padded his own like a proud and expectant father. After a couple more drinks with the boys, the weight around my waist was impossible, all thoughts fixated on horizontal pursuits. I waited for a break in the conversation, then did my best to try yet another dessert Khone brought over. After that it was some coffee. I tried to leave some money but they were having none of it, gave it all back, three times. Standing there with a bunch of unwanted kip in my hand, I started on my thanks but was interrupted by a penultimate shot. After the burn subsided I resumed, just finishing before the last of the LaoLao landed back in front of me. Then it was bows and handshakes and slaps on the back; my adopted family wishing me farewell as I teetered off to the deck, feeling the repose of the hammock and cool of the river, in love with a holiday I knew nothing about.

I stepped up to the railing, looking down at the Mekong sliding past below, head light on my shoulders, content just to gaze. The sounds of Lao Day drifted occasionally by, spilling over the deck, running down to the water. It was hot. Dragonflies flitted above the blue-green surface, the only visible signs of life. The heat was a blanket, soundlessly smothering intentions and inspiration. I surrendered any pretense of momentum to the hammock, climbing in, accepting my paramount lassitude. It was Lao Day, after all.

I woke up a bit later, hammock lines firmly established, sweating out LaoLao like a local. The deck was still empty, Lao Day pressed on in the background. I got up slowly, cat-like, drawn to the railing. Down below the scene remained the same, water beckoning. It didn't seem that deep but swimming still looked possible; if not, wading would suffice.

From the Golden Triangle, the Mekong runs south through northern Laos, then veers southeast, forming more than half of the border with Thailand before becoming solely Lao just north of Champasak and Pakse. The river then heads due south through the southwestern corner of the country, reaching its widest point, a width of over 7 miles, during the rainy season in Si Phan Don, a 30-mile stretch of river just north of the Cambodian border. Si Phan Don, Lao for "4,000 Islands," gets its name from the dry season, when the waters slowly recede, leaving behind hundreds, perhaps thousands, of islands and islets. Below Si Phan Don lie the Khone falls, a set of rapids extending roughly six miles into Cambodia, the only obstacle preventing total navigation of the river. Once in Cambodia, the Mekong flows south to Kratie, where it then veers southwest, merging with the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh before shifting back to a southeastern course just above Vietnam. Just across the border, the river fans out into numerous distributaries south of Saigon, forming the famed Mekong Delta, a rich ricebasket of roughly 25,000 square miles, depending on the season. Here, 3,000 miles from Tibet, the river discharges, flowing at a rate of roughly 50,000 cubic feet per second, muddy and swollen with flotsam and jetsam from six countries and millions of people into the South China Sea.

Down on the riverbank it didn't seem like 50,000 feet every second; seconds never really sprang to mind, nor minutes, hours, other guages of time. What it felt like was just a moment, the Mekong drifting by, overlapping frames of flow and course, me just a bit of life on the edge of something bigger. I waded in, the speed manageable, out to the middle and the deep, kicking intermittently to stay even with the guesthouse. The water was cool, fantastically refreshing, the act of swimming upstream somehow soothing as well. I played at being a fish until the inevitable sideache, then hauled myself out on the bank, sun toweling me off. I lay by the Mekong, in Vong's backyard, basking, fielding thoughts creeping in through the haze.

Vong had turned my day around, saved it, so my thoughts meandered through probable alternatives, what might have happened without Lao Day or the laughter. Then I walked back to other lost days, previous occasions sunk under seemingly inescapable weights, thought about how many times it had likely been all in my head and easily salvageable, given some humor and a few tacks of perception. I wanted to ask him if it was a rule or an exception, his joviality; wanted to know the source of what I'd come to envy, the place he started from so I could start moving, maybe stumble upon the road he seemed to know so well. I had things I wanted to ask him, questions I thought might reveal some of the mystery, but knew their roots, how they might as well be another language, and remembered that that gulf already existed.

On the edge of the Mekong, below the Vong Phaseut guesthouse, I realized this was likely part of the answer, this radically different foundation, and a twinge of melancholy stole into the afternoon, coloring darker the Western man living an Eastern day, cognizant of foundations firmer than he would have them, back at Nature vs. Nurture and at a loss for the math. In front of me, a whole of so many parts, the river coursed on, flowing south to be reborn. I sat on the edge of a cycle, thinking about my own, the ups and downs, my innate temperamentality. A lot of days had been like rivers, stemming from somewhere of their own accord, heading places I couldn't see but assumed existed, a logic I chose to believe in. And quite a few days had been like today, seemingly determined but in the end changed, channeled elsewhere or duly arrested by will or chance or circumstance. Things seemed random, unknowable, at times edging towards the absurd. Looking back at the guesthouse I uttered a laugh, thinking of Von and his mirth, his gleeful musings. Then I laughed again, at my own laughter, understanding where it leads, why it was always a good place to start.

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