A Heart full of Happiness

The soft crunch of a rattan ball being kicked across the street, gentle chirping crickets, the tinny rev of a motorcycle and the soft voices calling tuk tuk and sabidee (hello), the shy giggles from the young girl in the door way of her house, loud music being pumped from a stack of speakers heralding another chinese new year party and the soft sounds of the latest thai soap opera that spill from almost every house and shop along the street. In one of the temples monks have continued their soft chant punctuated intermittently by the gentle tingle of bells and as always the howl of a littany of barking dogs, the gentle clank of cutlery and soft dinner talk and the sizzle of the street stall vendors tending the sticky rice and other numerous 'delicacies'...this is the soundscape of Vientiane at night.

It is my last night in Laos and it has been a slow and easy day. After making a wide detour of the many massage places and herbal saunas to which I have become (already was) addicted and nursing my bruises from the last very 'relaxing' and perhaps a little over-enthusiastic lao traditional massage, today I relaxed with my book by the shores of the Mekong looking across at Thailand, almost close enough to swim. I feel relaxed and at peace with Asia although it has not been an easy relationship for me...every day I have struggled with bearing witness to so much poverty and hardship while carrying on with the comparably trivial business of being a tourist... I have thought long and hard about the merits of capitalism and how it can increase a standard of living but then also about the impact when money becomes a ruling factor in life at the expense of the artfulness and spiritual exercise of living...I have battled with the slowness and inefficiency of asian service and looked within myself to try and understand why it is that I am almost always in a hurry or feel impatient... i have struggled with the heat and the pervading smell of sewer and garbage only to turn the corner and be meet with the sweet aroma of fresh jasmine garlands and slowly burning incense... and on top of all that I really don't like eating fish...i really dont get the fascination with it or why fish sauce has to go in Everything! solution more chilli...woolah - the cooking is good (maybe. when my mouth cools down and i stop sweating)!! Asia has also taught me that you just cant have it all; the shower must have pressure or be hot - never both. oh well, better than a bucket and at least my money buys me that choice...

There is so much going on here. I often feel so overstimulated that I get bored...I look at the animals (great place to come after writing an honours paper on animal rights) and feel their neglect and often hunger and pain and I hate watching them get caught and killed for dinner but then again they have their freedom and a better life than many many animals get at home in cages. Pigs in asia get to roll in the dust, eat your shit and generally do what pigs do, chickens scratch in the dust and dogs roam the streets in packs being.. well dogs.

Its definitely a difficult relationship but one with more love than hate...there are lots of rules; generally disregarded; and there is a gentle fun-loving happiness within the lao people that is infectious... you would be hard pressed to go for more than ten minutes without hearing the sound of laughter...of course the politics and the history are more complicated and I doubt I'll ever come close to understanding that even if I stayed ten years...but these are the kind of people who make new bells for their temple out of unexploded ordinance..

so after a day relaxing and an hour this evening of vipassana at a temple, after contemplating my navel and all the contradications that asia has to offer, i go home with a heart full of happiness as the monk who practised english with me yesterday morning had hoped for me...

....lets hope it lasts through the two day cheap flight epic journey home....