NONG KIAW, Laos - Glenn was grumpy when he boarded the rickety longtail boat. It was 8:30 a.m. and there was no beer.
"Man, y'all gawt any beer?" he drawled in his slow, high-pitched Alabama twang. "Ah should have bought some for the ride."
He looked around the boat hopefully for a cooler, but the Lao boatmen did not have Glenn's penchant for a.m. drinks. We had seven hours of leisurely, potentially sober jungle river cruising ahead and Glenn looked worried. He was stocked with a good supply of weed, but this evidently was not going to get him through.
In addition to the two boatmen, there were just four solo-traveling vagabonds on the boat, a scruffy international contingent of wanderers. Aside from me, there was Fritz, a 56-year-old bespectacled Swiss-German conspiracy theorist, whose drooping gray goatee, shaved head, and earring looked more Berkeley than Switzerland. Only the sandals with socks indicated his Germanic roots. There was John, the Thai-American sometimes English teacher whose hobbies included smoking grass and saying very little.
And, of course, there was Glenn, the mysterious Southerner whose only allowances about his past were that he once worked in a factory and had rented his house in Alabama to travel. Tall, with a loping gate, fair, mottled skin that had seen far too much sun, and wispy gray hair the same color as his teeth, Glenn looked older than his 56 years and was offended when others pointed this out.
As we puttered up the Nam Ou River, the sputtering engine belched black smoke. One of the boatmen spent the first hour tinkering with the engine until he seemed satisfied it was good enough not to crap out heading upstream over rapids, as we were about to do. It did not inspire confidence.
But Glenn was much more worried about the booze situation and getting a bit twitchy. Finally, I recommended he ask the boatmen if we could make a beer stop. For the small price of buying each a drink, they agreed and we pulled up to what looked like nothing more than a sandy bank in the middle of a jungle. We headed up a small footpath through the undergrowth and eventually came upon a small village of thatch-roofed huts hidden from view by the thick green canopy on the riverbank. There wasn't much in the village, save a few chickens and pigs, but they did have cold beer and we left with a cooler's worth and a smiling Glenn.
"Y'all find any good food in Laos?" he asked. Lao food is in my top 10 in the world. It is nearly impossible to string two bad meals together.
"Glenn, I'm not sure how you couldn't find good food here," I said.
Over the next few days hanging out with Glenn he managed to completely avoid anything Lao. He reveled in ordering spaghetti and meatballs, with burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches as his back-ups. Glenn hated ethnic food almost as much he liked drugs. He ate like a boy 50 years his junior.
After traveling non-stop for nearly a year, Glenn had little good to say about the places he had been. He chased cheap drugs around the world, from the subcontinent through Asia and found little else of interest. After spending four months in India, he came way hating the food and the filth, didn't get along with people, and was beaten down by the heat. After a 10-minute diatribe about the horrors of one of the most fascinating and delicious countries in the world I cut in.
"Well, Glenn, I'm a little confused. Why did you spend four months in a country you seem to despise?"
"Well ... they've got cheap dope."
I waited for other reasons, but quickly realized there was a definitive period after dope.
Then, he added: "Man, ah need to get back to India. Ah really miss hatin' that place."
"Man, y'all gawt any beer?" he drawled in his slow, high-pitched Alabama twang. "Ah should have bought some for the ride."
He looked around the boat hopefully for a cooler, but the Lao boatmen did not have Glenn's penchant for a.m. drinks. We had seven hours of leisurely, potentially sober jungle river cruising ahead and Glenn looked worried. He was stocked with a good supply of weed, but this evidently was not going to get him through.
In addition to the two boatmen, there were just four solo-traveling vagabonds on the boat, a scruffy international contingent of wanderers. Aside from me, there was Fritz, a 56-year-old bespectacled Swiss-German conspiracy theorist, whose drooping gray goatee, shaved head, and earring looked more Berkeley than Switzerland. Only the sandals with socks indicated his Germanic roots. There was John, the Thai-American sometimes English teacher whose hobbies included smoking grass and saying very little.
And, of course, there was Glenn, the mysterious Southerner whose only allowances about his past were that he once worked in a factory and had rented his house in Alabama to travel. Tall, with a loping gate, fair, mottled skin that had seen far too much sun, and wispy gray hair the same color as his teeth, Glenn looked older than his 56 years and was offended when others pointed this out.
As we puttered up the Nam Ou River, the sputtering engine belched black smoke. One of the boatmen spent the first hour tinkering with the engine until he seemed satisfied it was good enough not to crap out heading upstream over rapids, as we were about to do. It did not inspire confidence.
But Glenn was much more worried about the booze situation and getting a bit twitchy. Finally, I recommended he ask the boatmen if we could make a beer stop. For the small price of buying each a drink, they agreed and we pulled up to what looked like nothing more than a sandy bank in the middle of a jungle. We headed up a small footpath through the undergrowth and eventually came upon a small village of thatch-roofed huts hidden from view by the thick green canopy on the riverbank. There wasn't much in the village, save a few chickens and pigs, but they did have cold beer and we left with a cooler's worth and a smiling Glenn.
"Y'all find any good food in Laos?" he asked. Lao food is in my top 10 in the world. It is nearly impossible to string two bad meals together.
"Glenn, I'm not sure how you couldn't find good food here," I said.
Over the next few days hanging out with Glenn he managed to completely avoid anything Lao. He reveled in ordering spaghetti and meatballs, with burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches as his back-ups. Glenn hated ethnic food almost as much he liked drugs. He ate like a boy 50 years his junior.
After traveling non-stop for nearly a year, Glenn had little good to say about the places he had been. He chased cheap drugs around the world, from the subcontinent through Asia and found little else of interest. After spending four months in India, he came way hating the food and the filth, didn't get along with people, and was beaten down by the heat. After a 10-minute diatribe about the horrors of one of the most fascinating and delicious countries in the world I cut in.
"Well, Glenn, I'm a little confused. Why did you spend four months in a country you seem to despise?"
"Well ... they've got cheap dope."
I waited for other reasons, but quickly realized there was a definitive period after dope.
Then, he added: "Man, ah need to get back to India. Ah really miss hatin' that place."
