The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  On the wall of a village house were posters that showed the candidates in the forthcoming elections. There were ten and each was represented by a domino. Since few people could count above five, any candidate numbered above six had little chance. At the end of the village and enclosed by a stout fence were the poppy fields. Xiao, my guide, explained that these were ‘medicinal’. I was told that the sale of opium was illegal but no one would bother about a small field or two and besides, it was too far up the mountain. Since a stout Englishman had got there in three hours, I believed none of this. As we climbed, strands of bamboo, with stems as thick as a thigh, grew 50 ft (15m) up in the sky before their tips arched back towards earth. Sometimes high winds, or perhaps overenthusiasm to outgrow their neighbour, caused stems to crack and twist and then the whole great clump fell in confused agony.

  I abandoned my two day boat trip up the Mekong. I was to have travelled on the M.V. Pak Ou, sailing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I had imagined a river steamer of two or three decks with an awning stretched aft, commanded by a cheroot-chewing, stubble-chinned captain twirling a mahogany wheel and possibly a boy in the bows probing the depths with a pole or swinging a lead. A sharp whistle before a bend would have announced the arrival to a waiting crowd who would swarm up a narrow plank with vegetables in wicker hampers, chickens in coops and babies swaddled in braided shawls. Hammocks would be slung and charcoal braziers lit and there might be dancing when the rice wine flowed and perhaps a fight would break out on a lower deck. But never have the dreams of a romancer been so thoroughly crushed. The boats that catered for passenger traffic were no more than 40 ft (12m) long, five feet (1.5m) wide and sat only 18 inches (50 cm) above the water. There were ten rows of rattan doll’s chairs, set two by two and tight for a Lao bottom let alone mine. Under its metal roof, being slow roasted in the heat, there would have been no food, no fizz and no fun. The alternative was to take a speed boat.

  And what a boat it was: bright yellow with a red stripe, flat bottomed, with a snub prow and square stern and lying on the damp sand of the shore. The naked engine was being fuelled for the seven hour journey out of a plastic can marked ‘Best Cooking Oil’ and its exhaust was gathered into a single cannon that sloped backwards and upwards. Settled on to the floor with a rough board at my back, I pushed in my BA earplugs, donned a motor cycle helmet of kaleidoscopic colours, pulled down the visor and we shot off with rocket speed and thunderous noise for Thailand. Had we hit a log in this timber-planked bomb, the Bisto-brown, languid and viscous waters of the Mekong would have swallowed me up in moments.

  For the most part the river was benign, broad, with sand banks at the low water level of the dry season and bounded by hills, part slashed and part forested. Solitary giants, up to now spared the chainsaw’s execution, having established their sovereignty by the denial of light to others, stood guardian of their territory. Occasionally the flow quickened through rocky narrows and here drift nets were cantilevered out on bamboo poles, often using mosquito nets donated by an aid agency. Other speed boats coming downriver passed like angry wasps and we hit their wake with bottom numbing thumps. At other times, the water rippled over stony shallows and for miles the boat shuddered like a Citroën ‘deux cheveaux’ over pavé until it seemed that every joint would have loosened and one’s body would collapse like a marionette at the close of its show.

  At about the time store holders were opening up for the afternoon’s business, we slid onto the sandy shore of Huey Say. Transferring to a leaky dugout, I crossed over to Chiang Khong on the Thai side and at a spot where Burma, Laos, Thailand and China joined, the strings of my limp skeleton were once again tautened as I stepped onto land and drove to join M who had manage to endure the lavish luxuries of the Regent Hotel in Chiang Mai.

  ¤¤¤

  The Andaman Sea brushes the west coasts of Burma and Thailand and near the peninsula of Phuket, Phangnga Bay shelters some of the most dramatic scenery in South East Asia. At its southern end lie Phra Nang, Rai Leh, Koh Phi Phi and a number of other spots whose geological drama belies their little names. Islands of limestone dot the sea like crumbs scattered on a bowl of Crème de Menthe. Some habitable, others no more than rocks but all covered with a fuzzy topping of vegetation and many with sheer cliffs up to 200 ft (60m). These karsts have been made by a slice of the island cracking away and often at the base, there is a great pile of bus sized boulders which themselves have developed a leafy tonsure. Magic inland harbours have been formed, approached through narrows slits in the sheer cliffs and a strip of talcum white sand separates an azure sea from the flourishing vegetation. Sometimes, as though such absurd picturesqueness was insufficient, a thatched hut and a fishing family with hammocks swinging in the shade of a scattering of palm trees has been added at one end of the beach. If Jason had come this way, the Argonaut would have been beached in a trice: the Aegean is tame stuff compared to these idyllic seas.

  In a great cave, scooped out of one of these cliffs, stalactites hung from an invisible roof and the air was full of the flutterings of brown rumped swifts that build their nests in tens of thousands. Clutching our nose against the ammonia arising out of droppings that lay thick and crawling with cockroaches, we were led to the back of the cave where a rickety series of bamboos lashed with creeper disappeared into the damp darkness and muscular men with calves like steel hawsers, shinned up with a torch in their teeth and a pronged fork in their belt, to prize off the saliva secreted nests. The gourmets of Taiwan and Singapore would pay £25 for a bowl of boiled swallow spittle.

  Our hotel was a collection of little two storey mushroom lodges dotted around a coconut palm plantation, surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by impassable cliffs. Arrival and departure was to the timetable of the tides and if this coincided with low water, a tractor drove through the surf carburettor high, towing a trailer as a jetty. The mushrooms had sprouted rather too prolifically and many seemed occupied by pairs of lean men who may well have sent post cards saying ‘Having a gay old time’. But paradise can spoil if lingered in too long and after a week blinded by reflections from a turquoise ocean, browned by a tropical sun and brim full of grilled lobster, we dodged falling coconuts and limp handshakes on the way home to the glories of daffodils and March winds.

  Madagascar

  October 1998

  ‘I have found that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them, than to travel with them’ – Mark Twain

  The capital Antananarivo was noisy at night and a hubbub by day. Before dawn people moved in to establish their street patch. My window looked on to weighing machine alley – five in row. A two-toothed grandmother, wrinkled as a prune and with only one shoe, swept the dust from the pavement, set down her bathroom scales, moved them to the right a little then to the left, flicked away the falling frangipani blossoms, edged the scales back an inch, spat on the glass indicator and polished it with her skirt; nudging the scales a final fraction, she waited for business. Presentation is everything. Why the passersby, universally lean and bony, should want her custom I never understood; perhaps they were anxious to put on weight.

  There was a dog on the balcony of the house opposite. It jumped on to the rails and hung there with the elbows of its front legs over the top bar. It seemed as interested in the passing scene as I was. A street market was nearby and a continual stream of goods was carried by on heads of black curly hair. Stacks of old sacks, woven panniers of bruised bananas, dirty plastic jerry cans of oil, a brief case as a shade, a chipped enamel basin full of offal, bundles of firewood, second-hand bottles stickily overflowing with wild honey, a calabash of wine, a crate of rum, trays of eggs, oranges shiny and waxy glowing in the sun like embers, piles of bones, a hundred baguettes brown with crusty anticipation, newspapers, a carpet, brushes, pots, cots, mats and hats.

  The hotel was by the railway station, a grand affair with turrets capped in weathered copper. No passenger trains were running (they were short of spare parts) but fami
lies were gathered with piles of packages, hoping to catch a ride on one of the two goods trains per day. Boulevard Marachel Foch, colonnaded on each side, was the pickpocket pitch and unsavoury youths sat around in groups like black widow spiders. I felt uncomfortable and unsafe even in the middle of the road.

  Leaving the city we climbed up the hills, past road side stalls of locquats and pineapple and woven baskets spread on the red earth that covered the island like a spilt can of terracotta wash. Everywhere there were brick makers; clay was thrown into wooden moulds, dried a day or two and then piled in great ziggurats covered with a layer of mud and straw. The hollow interior was packed with wood and roots which was then lit to burn for a week. The plot, now conveniently dug a couple of feet deep became a paddy field. Barricades of spiny euphorbia, blooded with scarlet flowers, kept out the humped zebu cattle and inquisitive neighbours. It was chilly in the early morning and villagers wrapped to eye level in blankets of grey and brown, squatted by the road selling tomatoes.

  Anstriabe, built by the French to escape the summer heat, sat neat and provincial at 5,000 ft (1,500m) amongst pine trees, myrtle and eucalyptus. The Hotel de Termes – turreted, veranda’d, gabled and balconied – sprawled amongst clipped cedar and polished gum trees and would grace any European spa. I got a key with a large label attached saying Chilteren Jam and a small map showing the route to the west wing. An over-amplified band on the terrace was playing and a chanteuse was belting out, “Let’s make love, get it up!” while I had dinner with my companions – seven widows. As the band went into the next number -“I wanna have sex on the beach, come and move your body,” I caught the suspicion of a raised eyebrow and the glimmer of a smile from the Yorkshire grandmother of seven.

  The third day was a day off. Others seemed content to laze by the pool but I booked a car and a driver.

  “Today is super wonderful,” enthused Racine. “Yes, thank you suh, spiffing.”

  His friendly features and Rastafarian locks were profiled against the pale violet light of early morning that softens the Central Highlands. With a smile that cracked the silhouette wide open, he leant on the bonnet of his car. And what a car! A 1947 Chevrolet, hand painted with many coats so that the present peach barely masked the previous plum. It was when I was handed a watering can that I suspected that its mechanical excellence fell short of its exterior perfection. As we groaned and creaked over rutted tracks, I sat with this two gallon (10ltrs) recycled tin between my feet and at a regular fifth mile the boiling radiator was topped up. The starter was out of action too so when I went to photograph women fishing for frogs or a cart of carrots hauled at snail’s pace by a yoked pair of zebu cattle, Racine had the dilemma of deciding whether to keep the engine running, expensive for a four litre monster, or finding a slope to park on.

  Lake Tritriva, a sheer sided lozengey volcanic crater – the shape of Madagascar itself as each of the five boys who tagged along pointed out – was ringed with casurina pines, mimosa, myrtle and orange flowered buddleja. I blew my whistle to test the echo, refused all the pea sized ‘sapphires’ offered by the boys, offered them two biros and a pack of chewing gum and then we steamed off down an exquisite little valley, bordered on each side with napkin-sized terraces of wheat and barley (all at different stages of growth), which supplied the local brewery.

  The town of Betaso had been recommended as an architectural gem: it was not. But it was market day – crowded, colourful and odorous. From the northern end of this commercial melée came a large and extravagant funeral with flags flying, hands waving, bare feet stomping and with clarinets, drums and dented bugles leading the way. By the time this band of jolly mourners were crowding into the market square, from the southern end came the First Minister on an electioneering tour. He was accompanied by 15 cars, two trucks of gendarmes, an army escort and a helicopter. Each procession met nose to nose roughly where I stood. Hat stalls were on one side, many yards of cloth draped over a line just to the right and nearby were six pigs each with a back leg tethered by raffia rope. Behind, a street restaurant was preparing lunch with blackened cauldrons of boiling rice and teapots of hot coffee that sat in a bain marie of hot water.

  Since the minister’s entourage could go no further, a gendarme jumped out of his truck to move the mourners and in doing so his rifle butt caught one of the pigs on its rump. The rope holding the pig snapped and the five other pigs, frightened by the racket of sirens, klaxons, horns, drums and clarinets got tangled. The loose pig upset the coffee, got scalded and ran off through the army escort with its owner in pursuit. The down draught of the helicopter swept up several lengths of cloth so that an outrider was suddenly dressed in floral cotton and one of the coffin bearers, on a crucial corner of the litter, was blinded by another length of pink nylon picotee. As he stumbled, the coffin slid towards the minister’s car and the lid, together with its accompanying wreaths of plastic roses, slid further. Confusion closely encountered Chaos but in a surrealist few moments the outrider, now free of his unwelcome frock, steadied the coffin, a dusky hand snapped back the lid, the pigs were untangled by two small boys, the helicopter rose in the sky and the buglers, with inspired spontaneity, changed their metre from polka to pomp. The band then took up a cheerful beat again, the cook stirred the rice and refilled the coffee pot, the gendarmes cleared a path and the market swung back into business. The minister, clearly delighted by the unexpected large crowd, stepped out of his car to wave a grateful hand and the vote-seeking entourage moved off to speeches and lunch. I patted a pig to check on reality and went off to find a ’47 Chevy parked on a slope with Racine snoozing at the wheel.

  “Welcome back, suh,” he said. “Sleepy place this I’m thinking.”

  The flight to the south was cancelled; apparently locusts had got into the engines. There were huge swarms around causing the locals dismay but there was an alternative story that the President had demanded the aeroplane to take him to South Africa for a holiday and that the other plane in the ‘fleet’ was still on the way back. At any rate, one could not fault the generosity of Air Madagascar, known locally as ‘Air Mad’, as it put us up in the Hotel Colbert, the best in town, and provided a dinner that proved the equal of any Parisian four star establishment.

  Back in ‘Tana’, I walked up the steep, cobbled and tree shaded streets past the terraced houses of the old part of town. Neat comfortable villas showed their French architectural origins. Often they were protected by hedges of clipped spirea and hung about with wisteria or jasmine. Where else would one see a banana tree alongside a flowering peach, a little pot of violets beside a bristling agave or drasaena in the company of heather? School children giggled at me good-naturedly as they stopped at a corner stall for banana fritters or a sweet beignet on their way home. The top of the hill, cooler and with a view that reached to four grey shades of distant hills, was all convents and churches. Like Club Med, the missionaries always seem to get the best spots. There was no way of telling whether the smaller churches were Catholic or Protestant but all were refreshingly simple and in each one (I tried four) there was jolly revivalist music; a piano and four men, a choir practice with white-smocked school girls, or two guitars and a double bass. As is so often the case in countries shackled with poverty, music and worship provide succour for the spirit and a lift to the heart.

  There are 8,500 Malagasy francs to £1 but in the market most purchases are made in coins, the largest worth 5p and the smallest less than a farthing. I could not find a bag of peanuts with more than 25 nuts in it and they are grown here! Small wonder that the few tourists are pursued by those taxiing, selling, begging, cleaning or just hoping. When two screws in my camera sheared off and I had to contemplate buying another, only cash would have been accepted. The notes are the most worn, torn, soiled and sordid that I have ever encountered and smelt of old bones and rotten cabbage. If my budget had run to the five million Malagasy francs required for the camera (more than twice the UK price), my sack of malodorous notes would have had dogs and pigs
running behind it.

  In the country areas, Fana Fody is practised – a rather toxic mixture of tradition, religion and herbal medicine. Like most traditions it moves with the times and the ceremony of circumcision, known as Le Savatee, has adapted accordingly. After a day of ceremony involving special food, particular presents and the attendance of the poor lad’s senior uncle, the operation is performed by a visiting health worker. The resultant redundant scrap of flesh is then stuffed into a shot gun and blasted to oblivion.