Cobras


We took a boat tour on the Mekong River today and visited Laos, where we got our passports stamped.

The water in all the rivers here is a muddy brown and you can see nothing in it. I noticed the lifejackets stuffed into the rafters of the roof on the boat and asked our guide, "Shouldn't we be wearing them?"

"No," she replied. "There are cobras in the water." At left you can see an unlucky cobra that ended up in a jar of whiskey.

Mekong means catfish in Thai. The largest catfish ever caught here was 600 pounds. A group of American servicemen caught the fish and there are photos of the 20 of them lined up, each holding a section of the fish which stretched across the length of all 20 men. However, the fish brought them bad luck. One after the other, they all died.

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