17th

Ersan joins me from the Rajawali too and we share room for 2 nights.
We checkout about 11.40 and head into town and after a not so exciting breakfast wonder through the streets. The Euro has fallen and Ersan has to talk to few shops before he manages to change some at a reasonable rate. I take photos of him and watch him being butchered by a barber giving him a shave initially without even using a fresh blade! he is not happy, he has been cut all over. The barbers business consists of a single table set at the front corner of a tailor, who is busy on his sewing machine. It is around 2 pm that we begin to consider leaving town and get a minibus, cramped things, in our case containing two officers in pristine uniforms and decorated with various bits, one school boy and a woman. The minibuses are pretty uncomfortable with facing seats and low ceiling which makes boarding and dismbarking with backpacks quite difficult.  


We have a 20 minute wait for the 3.00 pm, bus to leave, it is an ancient thing. I decide to sit as forward as I can, we are due for 44 bends and I have a beetr chance of not feeling sick if I can see the road. There are open windows and some very good scenery, differnt colours and textures of vegetation covering mountains and valleys. Our one hour trip becomes two and a half hours due to a traffic jam minutes outside the town. I can see the town easily and if you surrender to the gravity you can be there in less than a minute. There are a few shacks nearby and I order couple of coffees and tell Ersan than no sooner than the coffees arrive we would be ready to leave, and I am proven right! I ask for some kind of a take away and they pour our drinks into plastic bags. This is common here, even food take away can be in plastic bags. They have no straws though. I get on the bus which doesnt leave for another 20 minutes and bite the corner off the bag and drop it seconds later because it is so hot but fortunately spill very little. The traffic in the opposit direction seems to be flowing quite well and the motor bikes also have no problems going downhill.

morning, I wash my cotton Lao shirt with some shampoo and hang it on the washing line across the poles holding the roof over the balcony. I imagine the ripples on the lake from a certain angle moving as chevrons. Chris, Sian and some Local guys are by the flat patch of grass by the lake, I wait and they graduallydisperse and I do 3 salutations to the sun under the big tree, ants of different sizes are doing theirs too. the place is idyllic and I sit to meditate under the tree, breeze from the lake and the sound of the stream flowing into the lake are soothing but the ground is uneven and the insects unhelpful. One big ant climbs up my right leg and i gently flick it, its antanea test the air, I gently flick again, it turns around and makes a quick getaway. only moments later I feel a nip on my leg, these are much smaller ants but you do notice the nip. I am sitting amongst various ant nests and routes afterall.

I notice an insect struggling in the water, flapping wings and sending ripples in water like a tiny motorboat. It is doing the only thing it knows, flapping wings, life! we keep doing what we know. I organise a rescue and find long branches (these look more like  strings and normally hang down couple of meters long) and throw them at the insect and get pretty close too, at times it seems to be swimming away. I know that I can save it if I get in the water but I have lots of excuses not too. seconds later it sinks below the surface forever. I had also wandered whether it would attract a fish with its movements.  Surface does break occasionally with fish jumping.

I am considering a food fast today, a cleansing would be good. Looking in the water there are water snails crawling on submerged debris. They are probably edible. Life of an animal, the monotony of it all. Seeing and distinguishing things/animals as edible or otherwise. What a bore, almost all the time seeking and thinking of food, water and hundreds of things that keep us alive or entertained or occupied. It would be so nice not to desire or actually need any of this, a sense of independence and freedom beyond anything imaginable.

various fishermen in their dugout boats float by, profound exchanges take place: "Fish"? , "Fish!".
there seems to be lots of fish farms on the lake, surrounded by vocanic mountains that look 2 dimensional as if cut out of cardboard, I guess they are not very wide and stand at such a contrast against the blue sky that they are almost unreal.