Strange day

The woman from the local herbal medicine shop invited me in and gave me a drink. It smelled and tasted wonderful, like a rich honeyed mulled wine but with layer upon layer of unfamiliar spices. After one glass I went home and slept for hour upon hour of completely restful sleep which felt so wonderful after such a long time of showering several times in the night just to cool down. I awoke at 9 am - around 4 hours later than usual, and the following night slept even longer. It felt fantastic.

While I had been talking to her, she had invited me to her garden at the weekend. It is a fairly typical situation to have a town house and a garden a few kilometres out of town. She told me that her family go there often at the weekend, there were pools where you could swim, I could bring my puppy, and we'd have a picnic. I had this image of the whole family snipping and pruning, digging and weeding the mystical herbs - maybe they would teach me about the different uses and as my Laos gets better I would become more and more knowledgeable.

I was told to arrive at 7am. Not a minute later! When I arrived they were all sleepy. We ate some breakfast together and we were each given a spoonful of a thick sticky black syrup to drink. I drank mine first - something like malt extract made bitter, very bitter. The children wiggled and squirmed trying to escape their grandmother's clutches as she administered the morning medicine. They were ready for the bitterness.

Eventually we were ready to go. The car was loaded up with provisions - three or four cases of beer, several ice boxes full of food, pepsi, the Lao equivalent of Red Bull. And off we went five of us in the cab and several more strewn across the back, leaning on the crates and boxes.

They didn't look dressed for gardening - the grandson who (shall we say is more in touch with his feminine side) wore a white lace halterneck top and white hotpants, the others a little more soberly dressed but I could see that not much gardening was planned - maybe the old lady and I would do the gardening whilst the kids all played in the garden. She had told me of course of the pools I could swim in. And it was all boys and men who'd joined us - the women had stayed behind.

We stopped at several shops en route. Each one sold fish - small ones in tanks, but it wasn't until the fifth one that they came out with a couple of cut off water bottles, a small black fish in each. And off we set. Around 18 kilometres outside town we turned on to a dirt track at a sign for a fish garden. This sounded wonderful. After driving for a couple more kilometres until the track ended we all piled out.

The animals all greeted us as we carried the food to the building, a weird restaurant with a very basic kitchen to the side. They opened up the kitchen as I sat to one side on one of the benches that looked like those in a sauna, three levels of thin benches. I put the dog in one of the big circular ponds in the middle of the room. It seemed a bit strange to have these concrete ponds in the middle like this but I guessed that they had been there when they bought the place as they were now carpeted so obviously hadn't seen any fish for a long time. I tried to help but I was the honoured guest so wasn't allowed to. I got a bit bored so went off for a wander. The dogs were mangy and thin didn't begin to describe them scrawny puppies sheltered from the sun. The geese looked healthy but the chickens looked really rough - most of them had bearly any feathers. The goats looked good though, as did the ducks.

We wandered down to the pond, right next to the loo. It didn't look inviting. The water was muddy, there was rubbish in the pond and I didn't like to think were the toilet emptied itself! So a swim was most definitely out. We (puppy and I) wandered back to the restaurant. The boys had emptied the two new fish into one bottle and were all sat around staring intently. I think it was at this point I subconsciously realised what today was about but consciously I just mused at how amazingly capable of doing absolutely nothing people are here - I just get stupidly bored.

I got back to the restaurant - no sign of any gardening happening and they wouldn't let me help. There was nothing much to do and they showed me to a bed and suggested I have a sleep before lunch. As I'd had less than four hours sleep the night before, this really appealed. My puppy and I fell asleep quickly and woke to the noise of many many excited men. Hundreds of motorcycles were now in the parking area and the men were all on the benches around the circular pits, yelling and laughing, betting and eating. Suddenly I realised with a sinking feeling what was going on - the pits, the three levels of seating, the cocks with their feathers missing, and the fish - this was a day of cockfights. Even the boys had been watching fighting fish.

I felt like I was in the outer reaches of hell. I really did not want to see cockfighting - even though I could hear it - I just wanted to get out of there, but I was twenty kilometres from home with no transport and no lift back for 9 hours. I decided to walk. Even if no bus or songthaew came along I'd still be home sooner and away from this place immediately. Someone phoned me then and as no one there spoke any English this gave me the opportunity to lie about a problem at home that I had to deal with immediately. The walk to the main road wasn't bad and almost as soon as I got there the bus arrived - just 40 cents for the bus home. I felt very tired.