arewethereyet

The day that Shona & Kaia went elephant riding, Kai went for a 7 hour trek with a guide to see some Khamu and Hmong villages near Luang Phrabang…

After a half hour drive by pick-up truck to the elephant village, we crossed by a river in a small boat to start the trek to begin the march up to a mid-mountain Theung village (Khamu). As we crossed the river we saw teak logs waiting to be transported to the other side.

My guide was from a village 1 hour south of Luang Phrabang, his family being farmers. His parents used to grow opium until it was phased out in Laos, according to my guide this happened 10 years ago. Officially Laos declared itself opium free in 2005, there are now over 1,500 hectares of land still under opium cultivation, and Laos’ highest ranking drug official acknowledges that former opium growers have gone back to growing opium because of poverty and lack of alternative way of making a living.

On the way to the first village we saw villagers working the land, including a family (husband, wife, 3 daughters), harvesting the rice. It’s an entirely manual process in these parts, including separating the rice kernel from the hull, unlike some of the more prosperous parts of Laos where villagers have access to machines. I learnt that villagers share the workload, multiple families taking turns helping each other harvesting their respective crops.

The first village consisted of about 25 families, with plenty of young kids running around. Their teeth appeared to be in only slightly better condition then those of the village kids in Cambodia, still with plenty of decay visible here and there. Electricity had only come to the village in recent months, which meant that power tools could now be used in the fabrication of new houses, but most houses remain without power, as it costs US$600 per house to connect to the grid, an absolute fortune for the villagers. Metal roofs are a sign of relative wealth, and are preferred as they are maintenance free, in spite of the fact that it gets much hotter inside. The traditional roofs need to be replaced every 2 to 3 years, which is a very time consuming process.

On the way out of the village, I came across some young kids washing their own clothes in the stream, a stark reminder as to how easy our kids have it when it comes to house hold chores!

We also passed a stone quarry, and again, the process of removing the rock from the quarry was a very manual process.

As we climbed higher and higher, past the first village, at a point where we were a 1 hour trek from the second village, we met a farmer sitting in a make shift hut. He was waiting for his son to return, whilst watching over the rice crop that had been harvested by his family over the previous few days. The crop had to be watched to prevent other villagers from steeling it. The only way to get to the rice to the village was by carrying it down a narrow track on your back, 50 kilos a time, another 30 trips to go! Carrying it by horse back would make the process a lot quicker, but that wasn’t something the farmer could afford.

On the way we passed many new teak saplings, taking around 30-35 years to mature.

The second village was situated near a small lake, with lots of fruit and vegetables growing amongst the huts. Here we sat down for some lunch, and a few kids sat down around us and proceeded to present some tourist merchandise to me – I bought bracelets off all 3 kids…

We visited a family in the village, the cooking was done, as per usual, in a room attached to the main hut. In the most basic of huts the cooking is done in the same space as everything else, health problems due to smoke inhalation are common. The main hut contained sleeping platforms with mosquito nets, the older generation were all having their afternoon nap. Grandma came out to meet the falang (me). Beautiful weathered old face, wearing the traditional clothing, but with private parts not quite hidden I felt too embarrassed to ask for permission to take photos of her.

We then made our way down to the third village, on the way we spotted a cute snail, and some nice mushrooms. I learnt that most banana trees growing in this area were wild bananas, and not suitable for human consumption, they’re green and sour. The flower from the banana tree is edible however, and quite a delicacy. People here get there meat from the local pigs and chicken, as well as hunt for bush rat and bear, deer and – i think – wild boar.

When we got to the third village we stopped for a drink at the local ’shop’, on the
The coke I bought was luke warm, refrigeration is non existent in these parts, but a sugary drink after all that walking tasted good nevertheless. Note to self: Pepsi in a bottle costs half of coke in a can…

In this village too we visited a family, this time a man was cooking sticky rice on the wood fire, a time consuming process that involves steaming the rice in a woven basket on a pot of boiling water.

My guide demonstrates a bellow fabricated – ingeniously – from 2 old american bomb shells.

Highlight of the day was joining the locals in a session of lao rice wine/whiskey, most of them were quite merry by the time we joined them, and there was lots of singing and playing a local instrument as seen in the photo, the name has escaped me for the moment. I’ve read reports of this local brew being ‘disgusting’, I thought it didn’t really taste like anything in particular, but it was certainly strong!

This village had a road going back to the river, where our trek ended. The villagers had made this road themselves, by hand, and it was just wide enough for their tractors. A great day!

Next: The brethouwers fly through the tree tops…

22 October – 3 November 2009

Once we crossed the border into Laos, which was a completely painless affair in-spite of the fact that our visa wasn’t valid for another month, we headed for Don Khong – the main island of the ‘4000 Island’ group on the Mekong, just over the border. A vehicle ferry took us across to a very laid back island – just in time for Laos National Day. Don Khong has much ceremony as the current Prime Minister of Laos was born here. The very loud practice session lasted well into the night and started rehearsing again at 4.30am in the morning. The same 2 songs over and over and over… I can still hear them now.

National Day was spent chugging down to Don Kon (smaller island) checking out the waterfall and local life. It was fun for a couple of nights – but the call of Northern Laos was strong so we headed north for Savannakhet.

We reached Vientiane the following day – tiny capital of Laos. We stayed just out of the centre and explored by foot. We had dinner with Patrick, an expat teaching maths at the International School – loving the lifestyle of Laos and telling us some insider stories you don’t read about in the guide books. Let’s say it’s definitely still a communist country.

An Australian couple with a 10 y.o. son were living at the guest house we were staying at. Their son pointed us in the direction of Joma: Bakery Café, with excellent coffee and western café comfort food, and – most importantly – wifi.

After Joma, Kai went to get the van cleaned down the road, and it was here that he popped the bonnet for the first time since we left Bangkok to give the engine compartment a good clean out, only to discover that the battery was missing. Our theory is that this happened in Phnom Penn, which is well known for it’s street kids that have a habit of removing side mirrors and anything else they can get money for… it was also one of the few places where we couldn’t find off street parking with 24 hr security. (In Bangkok we were parked on the road, but conveniently opposite the 24 hour security of the United Nations building). Kai left to go find a new battery and returned half an hour later with a new battery imported from Thailand, 3500 baht poorer, which is less then what we paid for a similar battery in Melbourne.  The next morning he went to another mechanic to get a securing brace fitted to keep the battery in place, as the exsisting bracket didn’t fit.

Next stop north was the beautiful Vang Vieng. Amazing amazing scenery which inspired a day of caving and kayaking. The caves were beautiful, water clean and the forest incredibly dramatic. Just as we were getting lost in the beauty of it all – we turned a corner in the river to witness over a hundred inebriated backpackers looking very white and stupid in a few of the makeshift river bars. They were all drinking up the courage to jump off a swing 10 metres into the river. We must getting old…

We stopped at one of the quieter cafes along the river to give the people in our group the chance of doing a jump from 10 meters into the river, and for the guides to play some pool. Apart from the usual drink offerings there was also a ’special menu’. If anyone needs the translation for happy shake, let us know!

We offered Vinay and Poonima (fellow travellers from India) a lift to Luang Prabang the next day and enjoyed their company on the 7 hr journey round many many many windy roads. Kaia managed to hold her lunch in and the brake pads did us proud.

Half way through the journey, we stopped at Phou Khoun, where highway 13 intersect with highway 7 to Phonsavan (near the plain of jars). There was a great little market along the main road, with lots of trade in local produce.

We also met a couple of Melburnians on off road bikes, doing the journey from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. They were recovering after an accident on a wet road – there had been some rain early in the morning leaving Luang Prabang, and the wet road had taken it’s toll.

Luang Prabang is an incredibly beautiful town. A slice of revived french colonialism set in gorgeous countryside in Laos. Easy to see why it is a UNESCO world heritage city. The town was much more touristy than I thought – many foreigners now living and setting up businesses there. The above photo shows the gallery of a french photographer selling black & white prints of hill tribe villagers etc to the tourists.

Most of these businesses benefit locals with jobs etc – but with so many foreigners, it is hard to get a taste of what then town must have been like 10 years ago, and you wonder how much of the money tourists spend ends up with the locals.

We met the manager at the LP branch of Joma Bakery Café, and her story was very inspiring. A devout Christian, 10 years ago, back in the US, an image of a child in a cage had come to her in a vision after which she sold up everything and came to Laos. After a couple of months (on the day her money ran out) she met the owners of Joma, who were looking for a manager. Since then she has been rehabilitating, educating and training women in the hospitality industry. She employs them on a fair wage (read: double what most get paid in hospitality), for a maximum of 40 hours a week, again a new concept. These women come from forced labour, prostitution or otherwise challenging backgrounds, and yes, children do spend time in cages when sold by poor villagers in pure desperation.

During our time there, Kaia and I took an elephant ride at the conservation centre – I was pretty disappointed with the tour as we were told nothing about the elephant camp, the elephants themselves or any other part of the journey. Despite this, we swam in a beautiful waterfall pool and met a fantastic Tasmanian (Maz). Kai headed up into the forest to visit the hill tribes for the day. Unlike our tour, Kai got a full 7 hr run down of the tribes, customs, history and sat down with the locals to drink rice whisky.

Time pressure pushed us north to Luang Nam Tha and then onto Houay Xai to catch the vehicle ferry back to Thailand. The drive through the north was again breathtaking – with many hut villages around the main road. Life doesn’t seem to have changed much in modern times for these guys. The Laos govt. has made poppy growing illegal in this area – so many of the villages are reinventing themselves with new crops and the govt. is also supporting the rehabilitation of opium addicts. The money for poppy crops far exceeds rice or corn crops – so the people also have to contend with a major drop in income from their land.

The roads through this part of Laos were unpredictable. The sealed road would suddenly end for no apparent reason and then reappear a few hundred metres later. This pattern repeated itself for much of the journey. The road works that were taking place were all manual – rocks shaped by many hands – concrete mixed in hand mixers with the sand sieved beside the machines. The workers were all living in a number of makeshift camps along side the road – despite the incredibly hard work there were lots of smiles, waves and hellos.

Houay Xai was very typical border town – again the customs and immigration was a very smooth process, if rather time consuming, with immigration situated 2km away from the car ferry (but near the passenger ferry). After paying our 1000 baht and waiting for the crew to finish their afternoon rest we were on the vehicle ferry headed for Chiang Khong, Thailand.

More photos to come, so please check back soon!

We picked up a local character (brother of cafe owner’s girlfriend) in Kompong Cham and made our way north to Kratie. The owner of the cafe (Lazy Mekong Daze) is worth a mention. A frenchman, who true to the name of his business – had  no idea why he decided to lie on the couch all day in a particularly slow paced town. His typical answer to our questions was “I don’t know because I don’t care”. He did show great enthusiasm for computer ping pong though – oh the life!

Our local passenger was able to show us the shortcut to Kratie (which the Frenchman had strongly advised us against: “It’s very muddy and you don’t want to get stuck there”). The short cut veered off the main highway onto a secondary road, then a dirt road for 25 km, at the worst points, the locals had their shovels out trying to make it passable. The passing traffic pay a voluntary fee for this service – an unofficial toll for the back roads. The van had no trouble with the mud, however some 2wd vans did get bogged down a few times and had to get pulled out by an oncoming truck.

We booked into a hotel on the Mekong River in Kratie for the night and then drove a few kms north to try and spot the Irawaddy dolphins. Reports have the dolphins only numbering 100 and decreasing every year. We headed out in one of the official longboats for viewing. The area where the dolphins hang out has been closed off to local boat traffic. We waited a short time before seeing our first dolphin come up for air. It was brief but great to see the wee river dwellers up close. Let’s hope they have a burst of breeding and we see more !

The road to the border with Laos was well signposted and we arrived at some surprisingly small wooden sheds on either side of the barrier poles (weighted down with a few rocks). US$1 secured our passage through to the next hut where the officials were snoozing in hammocks out the back. The right fellow was found to stamp the Carnet and we were through, this in-spite of the fact that the carnet isn’t officially recognised by Laos.

And that ended our journey through Cambodia – where the locals either live in makeshift huts or drive a Lexus. There doesn’t seem to be much in between.

Now we have a better internet connection, some more photos from Battambang and beyond…

Needless to say that bringing tooth brushes and tooth paste to these villages is a great thing to do… Anyone working for Colgate please get in touch!

Kai was allowed to photograph the cleaning pre-fight, but not the clean-up post-fight, there are limits…