Jeff Opperman. Fishermen hurling nets along the banks of the Mekong in northern Laos.
Something about this river and its basin have brought it onto our radar twice already recently. Now again:
Seventy-two hours after leaving Cleveland, I slipped away from Christmas Eve dinner with my family, walked down a dimly lighted path and crossed a rickety bamboo bridge to an island. I knelt down and dipped my hand into the Mekong River.
Actually, in the dark I misjudged the distance to the water’s surface and wound up putting my arm in up to the elbow. It felt like … warm water. As if I’d stuck my arm into my son’s aquarium back home, 10,000 miles away.
Party music thumped from the hotel across the river, with a spotlight dancing through the dark tropical sky. It wasn’t quite the Mekong but rather the Kok River, one of its tributaries in northern Thailand.
Dramatic beginnings aside, I was grateful to finally be in the Mekong’s basin.
Organikos 