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…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 9:47 am and is filed under Trip Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.