Slow boat revised
When I wrote the last entry we were just an hr into our journey and although very rural would still see little villages and cars sporatically. As the day progressed and we moved further into the jungle it turned from ”wow this is remote” to ”shockingly remote” to ”unbelievably remote” Tiny toy sized isolated huts perched on tops of mts covered in dense vegetation. Once an hr or so you”d see a few of them clustered together hardly enough to call a village. Women washing in the river, men pulling in fishing poles stuck in rocks. naked babies peeking out of the jungle grass as curious of us as we were of them.
Our rickety puttering barely boyant boat suddently seemed like a crusie ship in comparison to thir less than minimal existance. Completly self contained agraian villages living off what they grow on the steep mt sides or what they can catch in the Mekong, mostly giant catfish. Days away from any real civilation. No cars, no motorbikes, no tv, no phones, no electricity….this is the remotest place I”ve ever been and something similar only to what i imagine the amazon tribes must look like. Perhaps even less exposed. I have more in my rucksac than they do in life. One gude book i read said that the Lao gov. hopes to move out of the ”least developed country” bracket by 2012. That might be a lofty goal.
”half the world doesn”t even know how the other half live.” grandma beeler
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torithames
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