Addicted

Luang Prabang, 7/15/11 - 7/17/11

I'm completely addicted.

And I crave more and more every day.

Each hour I'm apart, I feel my blood boiling for just one more hit. One more trip into that world of bliss.

It would be an easier habit to break if our whole group wasn't perpetually high, spending the days yearning for one more fix.

We get high in a dark, dirty, cramped alley, filled with Lao locals who speak no English. We're all packed together like sardines under plastic tarps, while rain spatters down.

The supply is cheap, fresh, and completely pure.

I watch as my friends consume each hit with a slow zest, eyes rolling backwards in their heads.

***

Luang Prabang's freshwater black Mekong river fish is so lethally spectacular it should be illegal. After one taste our second night in the city, the Treehouse Seven can't get enough and we spend every night like heroin addicts waiting for the next bite.

By day, we see hundreds of the fresh black fish swimming in small pools in the afternoon market. At night, they're freshly killed and scaled, stuffed with garlic and lemongrass, brushed with soybean oil, soy, salt, and peppers and grilled whole over charcoal. (20,000 - 30,000kip depending on size; $2.50 -$4). Fresh off the grill, the skin is crisp like a cracker with herbal, soft, buttery white flesh. For those on the go, the fish are served on two long wooden skewers, which one eats like a fish lollipop. If one opts to sit in the Hmong Night Market alley, as we do, the fish is simply served on a banana leaf and eaten with chopsticks.

We eat so much of this black Mekong fish that I'm sure the painful side effects of growing gills and having a permanent fish face can't be far away. We eat the fish nightly for three days in a row, rushing back to the night market like road trippers who missed the previous rest stop. Though it doesn't need any accompaniments, we go wild anyways, and get heaping plates from the nearby buffet where 10,000kip ($1.25) buys an all-you-can-pile-on plates of ten kinds of noodles, fried bananas, fresh fruit, and numerous sauteed veggies.

Chicken looked good too but we were focused on the fish

Post-fix, we hit the local bars, but libations are really unnecessary when we're so doped up on pescado that sitting in a mattress-encased mental ward probably would be just fine. The stars come out over the Mekong and, as the silken flesh hits my bloodstream, I stare down at the brown water. With glazed-over eyes, I begin to hallucinate about the next evening's meal, swimming right below.