High Life

The Adima resort was recommended to me by several different travelers that I met in Laos. I had high expectations of this purported 'magical' place, and it certainly came through - though in different ways than I expected.

You see, driving the motorbike all day is tiring. The rain, and some of the rough cut roads, defiantly connecting hardscrabble hamlets against mother nature's wishes, wail on the suspension of the bike, which include my ass and my shoulders. I've learned techniques to lenghten my endurance. Sort of like kegel excercises for the mind. I sing as mentioned earlier. The singing usually gives birth to rhyming exercises. If I'm singing Papa Was a Rolling Stone, then I need something interesting that rhymes with alone, the last word of the chorus and thus the last word of the song that I can remember. Chone. Prone. Hormone. I'm heading north but my songs are slipping southward. Wheelies are big with me too. I'm trying unsucessfully to learn how to perform one. If anyone knows how, please send detailed instructions. I should note that my bike is not quite powerful enough to rear up by its own power alone - so there must be a clutch/accelerator trick. I also have this new thing for the kids. When I pass a big group of them, either heading off for school, or fields, or just rolling around in the dirt in their villages, I take both hands off the wheel and wave for as long as the road remains viable or as long as I can balance. They're stoked on that.

So a long day of riding usually requires a day of rest. Adima was perfect for this sort of thing. I let the last remaining bungalow at the exorbitant price of six dollars per night. It came with a bathroom and a well proportioned rear deck overlooking a small rice field. Rice season is over, so the field was usually occupied by water buffalo attended by a local hill tribe villager. I met this woman briefly upon first arriving. I was standing on the deck surveying and eating some small plums I had picked up along the way. She motioned that I should share my plums and so I threw one down to where she was standing, about ten feet below and twenty feet away. She made no attempt to catch the small fruit, and instead let it fall with a splash into a puddle near her. She submerged her arm to the elbow into the puddle and after a moment happily extracted the plum. Without missing a beat she popped the whole thing into her mouth and with some difficulty, smiled. I later found out that this woman was mentally disabled as are a higher than suspected number of these villagers.

The sky was becoming overcast, so I left my deck, book in hand, for the resort's small restaurant. The chef's singular ability to ruin even the simplest of dishes did not fail to astound me during my whole visit. Sticky rice was the lone dish that was prepared nicely and constituted the bulk of my orders there. The first guests I encountered were a young French woman named Benedicte and a couple of outspoken Americans who wasted no time in breaking down the local prostitution scene after Benedicte's departure. Turns out these two were just visiting for lunch. I wiped my brow in relief.

As the sun's light quietly retreated and dusk came into its own, the local fauna appeared. Insects of such density and boldness began to swarm. Not swarm really, but rise up. The buzzing of numerous flying things ranging from near invisible to halloween-sized mixed with the buzz saw announcements of amorous circadas and the violin concertos of millions of crickets. Frogs and toads began to rip and trumpet and lizards clicked, cooed and geck-ko'd. Out of the corner of my eye I saw what I thought at first were small village fires, seen from quite a distance. But when I turned I realized that this place was infested with fireflies. Hundreds of them would swarm around the trees, their red taillights en masse offering early christmas decorations. Several of these nocturnal fliers would sneak into my room each night and after the generator was turned off and the lights extinguished would perform a lullaby dance for me, switching their lights on and off to an accompanying march to which I was deaf.

On my second day I chatted with Benedicte (call me Bene - rhymes with penne), and learned that she has been traveling in six month stints for the last five years. Everybody out here is like that. One year abroad is more the norm than the exception. One guy was bicycling for three months across Laos. Props, homeboy. Through the course of conversing with Bene about nearby activities I suggested that we ride to the town of Muang Sing and get a massage and a sauna. She agreed and mentioned that she had some business to attend to up the road at the nearby Akha village. As it turns out, Bene was here for the second time because she liked the relaxing atmosphere and the plentiful, accessible and inexpensive supply of opium available at the nearby tribal villages. She invited me to join her, and having nothing else to look forward to before six besides biting off some Tolstoy, I accepted.

Now, tourists are not supposed to be jotting about buying drugs from the local farmers. It encourages drug addiction and makes an unfavorable impression on the village youth. It's also illegal and capitally punishable. But like Tom Cruise said in that touchstone example of culturally important film, Risky Business, sometimes you just have to say, what the fuck.

We walked up the small washed out dirt trail into the village. This village, like many of its kind, is a small ramshackle affair. The huts are built on platforms and are constructed of thatched roof and bamboo timber. The walls are made from a woven bamboo lattice. The floors, like everything besides the roofs, are water, wind and sight permeable. Bene led us to a larger hut near the center of the village where two amiable men greeted us warmly. Inside was dark, with closed windows and no lamps. Three young children sat inside and several others came and went to check out the foreigners and be impressed by our lust for drug.

Bene went first. She layed down on a grass mat, facing one of the men, who lay in a mirrored position about an arms length away. Between their faces were an assortment of jars and metal implements and a small oil burning lamp. Here's how it goes:

The opium pipe is a half-inch diameter bamboo tube with a hard, black chamber affixed to its end. It closely resembles a primitive turkey baster. The chamber has a two millimeter hole at it's top. The man, our dealer and executor, pulled the chamber from the tube and scraped out a hard, black, gunk from its interior. He emptied this into a pestle and then ground it into a fine powder, pouring the result into a sawed off Chinese anchovy can. He then adds to the can what appears to be Chinese aspirin powder from a packet resembling a KFC hand-i-wipe. Next he unfolds a tiny piece of paper to reveal a bit of pure opium. With a short and thin metal awl he scrapes a tiny portion of the light brown stuff, just enough to cover the instrument's tip. Over the lamp's flame he heats the opium and then dips the awl into the aspirin/resin powder, rolling it around for even coverage. He heats and repeats until he has formed a large pea-sized ball.

Immediately, he stuffs the warmed, malleable ball into the hole of the pipe, forming a little volcano and clearing a hole with the tip of the awl. Finally the pipe is ready and he turns it round to face the smoker. I watched Bene and our man repeat this for several pipes. She rolled over, very content looking towards the other man who had prepared another pipe and I took her place.

Lying on my side, my eyes even with the lamp, the man turned a prepared pipe to me. I held my end lightly and began a long fifteen or twenty second draw. The hole is small and closes up regularly as the opium burns. The man must constantly poke and reshape the mound to keep the air passage open and the burning constant. In this hut, the only sound is that of the flickering flame and the slight hissing of the evaporating opium. The smell is subtle, but the taste is an extremely pleasant sweetness that fills the mouth from the tip of the tounge to the front of the throat. It is a sensation between taste and smell and it is by far the most enjoyable aspect of the smoking experience, which is, perhaps by design, quiet and non-taxing overall. After two or three long draws the pipe is finished.

After five or so pipes of the recycled stuff, I tried a pipe of pure opium. The pure stuff comes straight from the paper packet, burns faster and sweeter and is much more effective as a drug.

An half hour of smoking left me feeling light headed, clear minded, and with a subtle but secure sense of well being. This wellness was deep, concerning not just myself, but the world in general. Everything in the world was okay, exactly as it was. Kofi Annan would not aid his career by adopting an opium addiction. The feeling lasted for the rest of the day and was longer lasting but much less intense than the high of a cigarette.

There you have it. I'm a dope fiend. If anyone wants me to stuff ten keys of the stuff in my underwear to foster or feed their addiction, just email me.