I watched his feet kicking and twisting like a hooked trout as he fought his way through an impossibly small tunnel. Just as the first wave of panic overtook me, I laid out flat like Superman in flight, arms straight out, and slid downward as though I were on a waterslide and not in a subterranean hole. With the eight of us now in the bowels of the cave, our headlamps produced eerie shadows that danced around us like evil spirits wishing to drag us to hell. Our voices were magnified in the narrow caverns and echoed down passageways that had never known the tread of a human. For the next hour we continued our descent as I fought the urge to flee; slipping, sliding, and squeezing through ever smaller openings that threatened each time to trap me in place forever.
I was holding onto the top edge of a large boulder and sliding my hands along as though hanging from a ledge while trying to position my feet for a good hold when I heard a loud pop and lost my grip, falling in a heap that raised a choking dust cloud of what was probably bat guano. When I looked down my right ring finger was pointing in a different direction than the rest of my body. Now I have never had a broken bone in my life, and seeing my digit poised at such an odd angle, my first thought was that I had a compound fracture, an added bonus to having a panic attack while trapped deep underground with strange people I could not communicate with.
The Rat was quickly at my side viewing my deformed hand with amused detachment, when without warning he grabbed the finger and gave it a hard jerk straight out. I swallowed a scream of pain and pulled my hand away, but the Rats’ maneuver accomplished nothing as my finger still pointed north while the rest of me was going south. Apparently he had seen too many medical shows on television and when he realized his impromptu treatment had failed he shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “What can you do?” Up to that point I barely felt the finger thanks to rushing adrenalin, but after Rat almost pulled it off, it hurt like hell.
Next I was blinded by a flash, as one by one my fellow spelunkers began kneeling next to my hand and taking selfies as though it were something totally cool. At least they were not naked photos. The finger was now throbbing terribly and if it was not broken before, I was sure it was after Rat’s impromptu treatment. Rat gave me a thumbs up and pointed the rest of the group toward a yawning hole in the wall. It was then that I knew he was not giving me a sign of encouragement, but telling me I was on my own as he led the other cavers away to continue their descent. Apparently the needs of the many surpass that of the one and I was being abandoned to my fate. I suppose that was one of those pivotal moments when your life is supposed to flash before your eyes, but all I could think of was that maybe I was bleeding to death internally deep inside a cave while my wife sat at the hotel bar nursing a Hennessey and nodding her head politely at the bartenders’ story about a pervert who tried to photograph naked men in the baths that morning.
There was only one way out so I was not worried about getting lost, but, climbing up rocks that I had previously slid down was no easy task with only one good hand. I kept banging my head and knocking my helmet off, cut my hands repeatedly on sharp edges, and jammed my mangled finger countless times. Slowly but surely I made my way back to the rope by the entrance. The jumar ascenders allowed me to negotiate the rope without much trouble and when I pushed the creaking steel door open, the blast of sunlight and fresh air almost knocked me over. A check of my watch revealed that it had taken me just over four hours to ascend from the cave but I felt a wave of accomplishment at having done so alone. By this time I was pretty sure that my finger was merely dislocated and not fractured as there was no discoloration that would indicate internal bleeding.
walked back to the locker/assembly room on the forest path. I flung open the door and as I did so everyone inside froze in place with looks of horror on their faces. Then I saw myself in a wall mirror, my face a mass of tiny cuts and bruises, hair matted with sweat, dirt, and grime, my overalls smeared with grit and torn in several places. I was a demon from the depths and looked far worse than I felt, but my extreme appearance and solo arrival must have announced that a catastrophe had befallen our intrepid group of spelunkers.
I raised my hand to explain my early return from the cave and a collective gasp of shock filled the room as I watched my errant finger waving about of its own volition, making its’ own separate point from what I wanted to say. Four attendants rushed to my side, forcing me to lie down, and began stripping off my gear, apparently thinking me to be terribly injured.
Everyone was speaking at once, giving orders, asking me questions and yelling, but I understood nothing, and when I tried to say anything, a burly fellow put his finger to my lips to quiet me. Another girl was on the telephone yelling loudly while two men began to suit up and grab ropes in what I then realized was the start of a search-and-rescue operation for the rest of the cavers that were now believed to be in serious peril if still alive at all. I heard myself yelling that everyone was just fine but no one was listening or understood me in the general panic of Hungarian spoken triage.
One young man had been winding my mangled hand with a gauze bandage during all of this and when he stopped it looked as though my arm ended in a large white bowling ball. I made one final protest that I was all right just as I was being picked up and carried outside to a waiting taxi and thrust into the back seat. People yelled instructions at the driver as we pulled away.
The driver kept checking on me in the rear view mirror as we picked up speed and I tried to motion for him to slow down, but all he saw was the large white orb on the end of my arm and drove even faster, convinced now that this was a race of life or death. I unwound the ungainly bandages and when the driver saw my finger he let out a cry and hunched over the wheel, driving now with renewed determination. He was taking hair turns at dangerous speeds and the tires were screaming in protest as we entered the afternoon rush of Budapest. We zipped in and out of traffic with the abandon of those about to die, changing lanes in the blink of an eye, horn continuously honking, and the driver hanging halfway out the window to wave people out of our way. In the rearview mirror I could see the whites of his panicked eyes and prayed the police would stop, us but none appeared.
I watched the city of Budapest zip by in a blur until we hit a curb and bounced into the parking lot of an emergency hospital in a display of skidding tires. I jumped out quickly, grateful to have survived the ride and before I could search for money he waved me off toward the emergency entrance. Inside, I walked down several vacant corridors before finding a living person and if I had been truly injured I would have bled out before making human contact at this “emergency” hospital. Finally, in what appeared to be a lounge, I found two women in scrubs that I thought might be doctors. I simply held up my hand and one of them led me into a small examining room while still munching her sandwich, and then disappeared.
Within minutes four people with surgical masks and wearing stethoscopes entered the room. Each took turns examining my finger while chatting amongst themselves. They retreated as a group into an office next door where I heard the conversation escalate loudly. After several minutes a lady appeared and I heard English spoken for the first time that day. “You are foreigner. We cannot treat you unless you pay first,” she said.
“Fine,” I replied, and pulled out my wallet with a credit card.
No credit, cash!” she said.
“How much is it?’ I asked.
“Nine dollars U.S.,” she replied.
“Let’s hear it for socialized medicine,” I said. I dug through my pockets and found a crumpled ten spot. Keep the change” I laughed as I handed her the money but she did not understand.
With that she grabbed my hand and pulled my finger straight out with a quick jerk. I heard a loud pop, felt a brief flash of pain, and was whole once again. She splinted the finger and wrapped it in gauze that made it about ten inches long and now it looked like an albino banana.
The taxi driver had waited for me, relieved to see I was still alive, and took me bac
k to the hotel, where I retreated into my room to relate the whole story to my wife who had assumed I had spent my day strolling underground among tourists. That evening we had a farewell dinner in the hotel dining room in low candlelight where I was sure no one from the baths would recognize me. The food was wonderful but my extended finger kept poking the mashed potatoes.
We decided to take our dessert in our room when my wife pointed out that a man with a large mustache had been staring at me intensely from across the dining room.
Temple viper and scorpion whiskey
Mekong Moonshine
I was falling off the map in central Laos, going upriver on the down-flowing Mekong, through country that made me feel like Joseph Conrad heading into his heart of darkness.
As one who favors out-of-the-way attractions, my destination was a moonshiner I had heard of who worked deep in the jungles north of Luang Prabang, and after several beers I shook hands with a river man who was willing to buck the currents of the Mekong to take me there.
For two hours there was nothing but searing heat and jungle—lush towering jungle of teak and bamboo—from the waterline straight up two hundred feet. Trembling tree branches betrayed invisible monkeys and occasionally launched an egret skyward. Once a line of water buffalo spooked at our approach while drinking, but mostly there was just impenetrable green. Near shore several dragonflies came to give us a look, floating on the breeze that skated over the river where ladies in wide brimmed hats stood on boulders and dipped umbrella nets over and over to scoop up countless minnows while puffing on massive cigars. My attention was fixed on those boulders that broke the waterline every few yards causing numerous jetties that can instantly become whirlpools. It was extreme country and yet I knew countless people lived in there, invisible to most of the world. I was looking for one.
My river man put me ashore in the middle of nowhere, on a rotting bamboo walkway on stilts that disappeared into a decaying old village, saying he would return for me that evening. That is as good as a traveler can get for an agreed-upon time in the jungle. I walked as though treading on butterflies, expecting at any moment for the thing to collapse under my weight and deposit me in the feces-colored Mekong. At the top of the ramp was everything I had come to see.
It was a full scale moonshine operation from a rice processor to a homemade still and all stops in between, run by a gentleman who called himself Kamdee, or maybe it was Bambee, as it was hard to tell from his drunken slur. He had obviously been testing his brew for quality control. He bid me sit down and immediately handed me a shot glass the size of a thimble of his homemade nectar; a glass that I doubt had ever met soap. Now, had I walked in on such an operation in the American Ozarks, or Appalachia, I might have been met by a shotgun, but being the one and only customer of the moment, in the middle of a beastly wild jungle, I was more than welcome.
His clear nectar slid down my throat like lava to the sea and I am sure my esophagus is scarred forever, but there was an impeccably great aftertaste. It was the right mixture of sour and sweet with enough fire to fuel a jet engine. As moonshine goes, his was superior. I began to sweat and took in my surroundings to buy time for my voice to start working.
Under a shed that leaned dangerously downhill there were numerous terra cotta pots of all sizes filled with fermenting rice, an old 50-gallon oil drum standing on end over a wood fire acted as the still, with various scrap parts of garden hoses connecting everything. Several makeshift shelves held aging glass bottles filled with yellow liquid with what I assumed was formaldehyde and a ghoulish array of deceased snakes and rodents. Against another wall were turtle shells and animal skulls, horns, hooves and teeth. “Museum,” was Mr. Kamdee’s one word explanation. Mr. Kamdee handed me a second shot of his lethal work and began a running discourse in Lao that I assume was an explanation of his process. For those of us who are alcohol-distilling challenged, he had hung a crude drawing nearby that explained the process.
The finished whiskey flowed slowly out of the oil drum, down a used curtain rod, into a filthy rag that acted as a filter on its way into a jar, a most simple operation. The entire place was constructed of the detritus that most people would call junk, but in the jungle becomes most useful. In a nearby tree a young parrot eyed me with curiosity while a monkey of unidentifiable species offered its hind end to me in greeting. I thought it was going to urinate on me but Mr. Kamdee informed me that it was how Mr. Tojo asks for a drink, and with that he poured several small drops of whiskey into the monkey’s thimble-sized bowl.
He lapped it up like a true boozer and pulled back his lips to reveal enormous teeth. I could not tell if he was smiling or gritting his teeth until the burn subsided. I went there fully prepared to drink with the man in order to get his story, but was not prepared for a monkey to make it a threesome. Monkeys are unpredictable at best, let alone drunken ones in the jungle. And what if the monkey could outdrink me? I would never live that down. As I pondered this potential challenge to my ego, Mr. Kamdee brought out the snake box.
Now, visitors to Southeast Asia are no stranger to what is locally called, “Cobra Whiskey.” It is as ubiquitous as phony antique opium pipes and bootlegged CDs of Shakira. It is literally a bottle of whiskey with a cobra, scorpion, or temple viper, artfully stuffed inside and decorated with tree sprigs to soften the look of a venomous predator staring at you. It seems to be sold in every other store throughout Southeast Asia and finding out how it was made was my reason for being there. Locals will tell you it is natural Viagra, the stuff of all-night erections and baby booms. These are the same people that sell shark fins and rhino horns to China as aphrodisiacs. They swear by it to unwary tourists who have made it a best-selling item at several airports. There were dozens of such bottles on display around the camp.
Mr. Kamdee opened the top of a large old Tupperware box that was filled with various dead snakes, scorpions, and several other critters I could not identify. It is best here not to describe the stench of such a container in the heat of the jungle. At the opening, Mr. Tojo, still smiling ear to ear, retreated to a corner where he offered me his rear end once again. I moved up and asked for another shot.
What I was getting from the fractured English of Mr. Kamdee, was that he pays local kids a few cents each to bring him venomous creepy crawlies to help flavor his produce. With that he motioned for me to sit, gave me yet another shooter of whiskey, and began to show me how he placed deceased vipers into people’s drinks. The snake goes in tail first, slowly so that it has that curvy S shape to it, as though it is preparing to lunge out of the bottle. (Presentation is everything.) After that, a few sprigs of local bushes are added for effect, and finally the bottle is filled with homemade whiskey and sealed. It was fascinating to watch, and when I asked him if he ever handled live snakes himself he held up his left hand. It was missing the outer two fingers and part of his palm. With that he handed me another drink while also giving one to the monkey, “Mr. Tojo likes to drink,” he said. The monkey threw the shot back like a gunslinger in a B western.
At that point Mr. Kamdee asked if I would care to put a few snakes into the bottles, and, repulsive as I found the idea, I could not refuse. They were quite slippery and I was careful to avoid the fangs that could still hold deadly toxins as they slid easily into the bottles in that classic S shape. Every other bottle I filled brought another shot, one for myself and one for the monkey. I must admit at this point that I was mesmerized by the simian’s ability to consume and hold his liquor, and while I would never condone giving booze to an animal, it was obviously a way of life for Mr. Tojo long before my arrival. Realizing the monkey was a hardcore alcoholic, I could not help myself. I had to know who the better man was. Game on.
I put down the snake bottles and picked up my shot glass. Tojo grabbed his drinking bowl and looked me in the eye. Together we finished the latest shots simultaneously and Mr. Kamdee, sensing that an epic competition might be in the works, quickly filled both for us again. Eye to eye, face t
o face, Tojo and I downed several more drinks, each of us mimicking the motions of the other like two sides of a mirror. Just as I was thinking of throwing in the towel, Tojo began to lean, slowly, ever so slowly, eyes narrowing and teeth grinning, he fell over, hit the ground, and bounced slightly like those slow-motion shots in a Sam Peckinpah western. I should have been embarrassed by my elation at vanquishing a six-pound monkey, but I was not. It felt great. At least now his butt faced the wall as he began to snore like a power saw. The last thing I remember was raising a toast to him and thinking, “Man, that monkey could drink!”
I awoke in the early darkness, head throbbing, to see a grinning set of teeth inches away from my face. If Mr. Tojo was asking for a rematch I was not answering the bell. At that moment I hated the monkey because he was smiling, and therefore could not possibly hurt as badly as I did. Then, in the distance, the hum of an engine came to me from the water and Kamdee helped me to my feet, quietly laughing at the free entertainment I had provided him all afternoon.
He walked me down the bamboo walkway, holding my arm and telling me that I had been a great help to him and should return sometime. He got me into the boat and put my bag next to me, and as we pushed off into the current I could see the bright white of many oversized teeth smiling at me through the bushes. I dozed on and off as we headed south on the Mekong, and only after an hour did I think of looking in my bag to make sure I had everything.
Baboons for Lunch Page 4