I was trying
to get to the Nam Kham. Rivers have always attracted me.
But the road
conditions were gruelling. It matters not what the angle of the
incline is, when the path is fine dust – not even laterite –
there is no way to climb it, and pushing Charlene is no fun.
And so I
stopped at this village for the night. Beautiful place and kind nay
ban, but with the unfortunate addition of electricity that turned
this place into a graveyard for the kind of beauty you know exists in
deepest darkest Indochina.
I stopped,
chatted with the folks, found the nay ban,
bucket bathed in the communal bath area, found some hot water to make
a coffee and sat down to write. The sun was still high enough to give
me warmth. The nay ban
was going over his communal documents. Peace was in the valley.
But
not for long. Soon, neighbour after neighbour turned on his sound
system and those same eight Thai pop songs were blasting out of every
hut in the village. Makes you reconsider the miracle of
electrification and the wisdom of supplying juice to people who have
not paid for it and so can therefore afford sound systems. Far be it
from me to patronise, but stepping from the bronze age to the 21st
Century in one afternoon seems a bit hazardous a journey.
For
the old people in the village all that noise had absolutely no
effect. They kept on their chores, drawing water, fetching fire wood,
hanging up laundry while I, earplugs firmly in place, went on a
fruitless search for someplace over the rainbow where you could still
hear the forest.
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