Bags of Wood

Michelle and I were addicted to public transportation, or well, I was anyway, then I showed her the wonders. Tourist buses are more comfortable and definitely easier, but they are also more expensive and lacked the potential for experiencing culture first hand.

One, you always get strange looks; westerners rarely venture onto the mobile joy. I often wonder what they seem to fear: a sore bum, a smelly neighbour, sharing a seat with a chicken? Well, a sore butt is a real possibility, actually an inevitability, but tourist buses are rarely better and it is a small price to pay for a candid glimse into the strange world of Asia.

From Pakse to Si Phi Don, we took a song-thiew, again loaded with freight and passengers. In this case, it was filled with four mattresses, sadly, crammed against the back wall and not set down across the seats for a mobile slumber party. We had to settle for being cramped on a bench with no real cushioning. The bus kept stopping, piling more people into the song-thiew. The ticket collector had to stand on the bumper and hang outside after a while.

At some ponit, an old woman who didn't smell very nice, nor look very nice, for that matter, came onto the bus. Michelle offered her a rambutan; she took six. When she began eating, I wondered if I should write a horror movie featuring her mouth alone. Her lips opened like eyelids over her teeth, what was left of them, which curved out quite like a pointy eyeball. They reminded me of horse teeth, but at least horses have tricks for keeping their teeth clean. Her teeth had a variety of colors, green, red, brown and black, with some odd touches of blue, oddly enough, white was not one of colors. When finished with her frightening mastication, she opened her bag and it must have glowed like gold to the rest of the passengers, because they started asking her questions and handing her money. I looked and saw the prized possessions, which were an assortment of bagged wood chunks. Everyone bought a bag; I even considered doing so myself.

I just couldn't figure out why everyone wanted the wood. Was it national BBQ smoker day, or were they some sort of incense of pot-pourri? Maybe this wood had special mosquito repelling qualities. I did not however fathom their true purpose. Ms. Horsemouth unrolled her lips and shoved a small handful of wood into her mouth and began chewing. The others followed suit; even the cute young woman across the van, the only pretty local I'd ever seen in Laos, partook. They all just sat around chewing wood. I can accept chewing wood as a something people may do, but I did not have a clue as to why anybody would choose to accept orally anything that the disgusting mouth found worthwhile. It must have been some sort of ineffective cleaning procedure. They were definitely eating the wood as, not a one spit the wood out. This is not something that can be seen on a tourist bus, that is certain.