Our last day in the historical Lao town of Luang Prubang we got up early to give alms to the monks on their morning rounds. Our guesthouse manager, a college student who had been a monk for 2 years like many boys here, provided us with the instructions and the sticky rice to contribute. I doled too much to fast and he had to supplement my bamboo basket for the second round of orange clad monks who would come by arranged by age with the youngest last. Our guesthouse matron showed us the way to the Wat and where to offer our rice there. It seemed an example of combined Buddhist and animist practice.
Our 6-hour bus to Luang Namtha took 9 hours on the long and winding road that took us to a higher place and really cool nights. We immediately began checking the trekking boards and came upon a company that had 4 folks signed up and had room for 2 more. We were glad to have a group to go with on the 2-day one night home stay trek. Our co-trekkers were a great group. A Memphis man who had just complete a stint in the peace corps, a Canadian public health care nurse who was well traveled and was out for 10 months this time, a Belgian chemist who was between jobs and countries, and a British woman looking for a career and language move when she retuned and moved to France. Really nice folks who made the steep climbs and barefoot stream walks an enjoyable ordeal. Claudia and I raised the average age significantly. Our guide, Noi, was a recent college graduate and spoke English well, punctuated with lots of laughs and spoke 3 other languages.
We set out at 9 by songthaew (tuk tuk truck), stopped at a bamboo swinging bridge leading to an Akha hill tribe village. After being briefed on the cultural do’s and don’ts for village behavior by Noi, we crossed over and were quickly entertainment for the kids who were predominant and in turn entertained them with immediate digital playback of photos and video. They continuously called sabadee (hello), the one common word we all understood.
We hiked through the village spirit gate and headed out into one of the National Protected Areas of Laos. Somehow growing rubber trees on cleared steep slopes of jungle seem to be part of the protection and was a significant income for many villages. It is actually mandated by the government that these folks grow some amount of the trees and collect the rubber that is an important export product and was decided on after soil testing the area.
The trail had many steep climbs and in the beginning two 30 minute descents that were in small streams where we all went barefoot which was slow with slipping and stubbing. We stopped for a lunch after a few hours that Noi and his aid had hauled in and laid out elegantly on several banana leaves. This was pumpkin, sticky rice and greens and bamboo as well as fish for those who chose it. We reached some great hill top clearings with long-range mountain views and went through some amazing tall bamboo forest that clattered in the strong breeze before descending to the Lenten village where we would spend the night. Our first order of business at 5pm was to “shower” as Noi put it , in the small stream but with very strict rules of modesty. It was a cold and contorting but welcome refreshment. The six of us obvious white westerners explored the 9 home, 60 person village and hung out by a fire that was welcome heat in the cool temps while Noi and his aid, along with the village chief’s wife made dinner. Our two meals happened in the Chief’s house, which, for part of our night gathering was lit by the one CFL light in the village run off a micro turbine in the stream. When it gave out a diesel-fueled lamp replaced it.
After dinner we all hung out with the chief and with Noi as translator asked and answered questions back and forth. We started with introductions including age, marital status, occupation and country of origin. The first revelation was that I was now the oldest person in the village. This fact seems to get Claudia and I the guest beds in the chief’s house. The chief is elected by the village and was 57 with 6 kids and a beautiful wife who he said had been the reason he settled there. He had been educated in Vietnam. They were nearly self-sufficient in food, grew their own cotton for clothing, made their own dyes and forged metal tools and jewelry. Their main cash crops were rice, rubber and pig. The nearest road to get things to market was a 2-hour walk away.
We woke the next morning to a cold beginning and a small fire that the chief started which quickly became the center of activity. Kids slowly accumulated and began playing marbles, carried their youngest members around for fun while others combed each other’s hair and chased each other in the universal kids connection. One of the elder men of the tribe smoked tobacco from a water pipe while teenage girls demonstrated the art of bamboo sculpting.
After breakfast and the requisite group photo and a drawn out chorus of “Sabadeeee” by the kids we headed up and out. A wonderful 57-year-old village woman joined us carrying our day’s lunch in a bamboo basket on her back. Our trip out was easy by comparison to the day before and we were back in Laun Namtha by 3. Noi bid us good-bye and safe travels at the trek center and then we opted for a leisurely afternoon in a great guesthouse.
We went to Mueng Seng near the Chinese border the next day, drawn by descriptions of the morning market and colorful Hill Tribe people selling their wares. We had some nice bike rides out into the country and a nice hotel room with a great balcony for beer and sunset behind distant mountains. The market however was pretty much unexceptional including only a few, very funny, hill tribe women working us hard to buy their bracelet and bags.
We began our trip back to Bangkok the next day with a full day of buses and a border crossing and with me sick laying all the burden on Claude to make arrangements while I sat in the shade whenever possible. We made it to Chaing Rai, Thailand and by 6 I was laid out in a hotel room with aircon and some $2. antibiotics Claude had picked up at a Pharmacy. A twelve-hour night sleep and some antibiotics can really set you up.
We made it to Bangkok as Chinese New Year was starting to rev up so we took the water taxi down to China town at sundown, enjoyed a beer and some incredible urban density moving on all modes possible even in the smallest back alleys. Shark fin and broiled bat were big at the food vendors. Bat. What’s with that? They seem like they are all wing and sonar.
On our last day we chose the royal palace and museum for its Jade Buddha. The Wats and palace were as ornate and as glittery and intricately ornate as you can imagine, while the Buddha sits serene.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Hip Hop Lao and the Wat on the Hill
We flew from Siem Reap to Pakse Laos as much to facilitate the visa process as to avoid the 10 hour bus ride. Pakse is at the cross roads of the main North/ South Laos road and the East /West road that connects Vietnam and Thailand. It is mostly business with lots of new buildings going up. We leave the next day for the 4000 island area to the south where the Mekong branches and reforms. It is down here where the French set up a port and small gauge train to move resources and ship them down the river.
Laos has one of the most comprehensive protected biodiversity areas system in the world that now includes 14% of its area with 20 different parks and including a large elephant habitat.
We take a 4 hour bus and a 30 minute motorized canoe to Don Kohn and spend an hour searching for a room and find a duplex bungalow with woven bamboo walls and a family of four next door. It has a small deck that looks our over the Mekong as it slowly flows south and is a favorite playground for the kids, kayakers and water buffalo. We rent bikes and explore the two islands connected by a bridge and browse for a future improved room. Our bikes are big tire one speeds with monkey bars and baskets that seem set up for a suburb in Florida though we are riding over rutted dirt and large gravel roads. Still it is a good way to see what’s what here.
I am reading Sorcerer’s Apprentice which is mostly a gossipy vent about Amy Wallace’s affair with Carlos Castaneda. I don’t like it a lot but can’t let go and it has put Carlos in his petty tyrant place.
We have beerlaos on a restaurant deck cantilevered on the edge of the river as the sun sets over the hills. The next day we find somewhat better bikes where we can raise the seats a little higher and head out along the back roads and trails and find the remains of the French dock that looks out over the river to Cambodia and then to an surprising waterfall. Untill then it was an easy going flow that became a white water crashing gorge. We rode to a small beach where one of the motorized canoes would take us out to the border area with Cambodia where the Irawaddy dolphins are making somewhat of a comeback. Our driver managed the boat through rapids and a maize of outcroppings till we arrived in a large calmn area and floated as the sunset watching for the occasional glimpse of the dolphins.
The next day we headed back to Pakse to catch an overnight sleeper bus to Vientien the Capital of Laos. The VIP bus had double decker double bunks on both sides. Even if they had been twice as wide and 10 inches longer it would have been a bumpy bad sleep. We arrive early and out tuk tuk is packed so I get a seat in front with the driver on the left side out with the side view mirror and beyond the windshield.
Vienteienne is a modern city with lots of travelers in the old section of town and some great coffee with and evening balcony beer sites as well as a great vegetarian restaurant and a wat with over 10,000 Buddha statues. It is the least glitzy wat yet and was a lone survivor of an early 20th century war with Thailand. On our last night we pass a conference center where we happen on the beginning of a hip hop inspired dance performance and chose it over dinner. It was a great show with a melding of classical Laos music with hip hop dance and some straight up hip hop happening as well.
It is a 3 hour bus trip up to Vieng Veng which is mostly famous as a young back packer scene with loud bars, drunken tubing and restaurants that continually play Friends on TV. . The landscape of abrupt limestone peaks contains lots of caves. We rented some great mountain bikes and rode the 6 kilometers through a small village, past several small caves and came to our destination hot and grateful for the swimming hole formed from a stream that came from the cave.
We splurged on a balcony room far from the late night techno pop where we could watch the cows wander back from their day of foraging directed by young kids and as kayakers and motorized canoes moved on the river in front of nearly vertical mountainsides.
One comforting sign in many restaurants and guesthouse in contrast to no shoes no service is “Please remove shoes before entering” .
We catch the morning bus to Lauang Prubang which is an 8 hours steep and winding ride north including an hour roadside stop for bus repairs. We are heading into the area of various ethnic tribes including the Hmong. Kennedy authorized the CIA to recruit 11,000 Hmong to fight the Vietnamese. The US later targeted parts of the northeast , where the Ho Chi Minh trail was, for 4 years of constant bombing, including over 2 million tons of bombs , 1/3 of which did not explode and remain a constant hazard today. 1/3rd of the people became internal refugees. The communist Pathet Lao eventually took control of the country with little opposition. You have to wonder how things would have played out if the US had avoided the whole Vietnam conflict altogether.
Luang Prubang is an amazing small city. It is clearly focused on serving the tourist crowd and does it really well while preserving the historic architecture from its French colonial past. Tourism is 50% of Laos economy and here they have figured out how to attract people from all over the planet and keep them supplied with what they want. It is walk able, clean, historic and within easy access of natural wonders. We are spending 3 days here, easily our longest stay in one place. We hook up with some Cambodian/Swiss and Australian folks and hire a tuk tuk to take us out to a large waterfall. It is a series of small and tall falls and turquoise pools that make for some great swimming. Also a rescue bear sanctuary.
At sunset we climb the long and winding stairs up to the Wat on the hill in the center of Luang Prabang to watch the sunset and listen to a Lao woman sing ballads. On the way down we pass a room of chanting monks .
Claudia is reading Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux who has written other travel books as well as fiction- “You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time. Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy-being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders.”
Laos has one of the most comprehensive protected biodiversity areas system in the world that now includes 14% of its area with 20 different parks and including a large elephant habitat.
We take a 4 hour bus and a 30 minute motorized canoe to Don Kohn and spend an hour searching for a room and find a duplex bungalow with woven bamboo walls and a family of four next door. It has a small deck that looks our over the Mekong as it slowly flows south and is a favorite playground for the kids, kayakers and water buffalo. We rent bikes and explore the two islands connected by a bridge and browse for a future improved room. Our bikes are big tire one speeds with monkey bars and baskets that seem set up for a suburb in Florida though we are riding over rutted dirt and large gravel roads. Still it is a good way to see what’s what here.
I am reading Sorcerer’s Apprentice which is mostly a gossipy vent about Amy Wallace’s affair with Carlos Castaneda. I don’t like it a lot but can’t let go and it has put Carlos in his petty tyrant place.
We have beerlaos on a restaurant deck cantilevered on the edge of the river as the sun sets over the hills. The next day we find somewhat better bikes where we can raise the seats a little higher and head out along the back roads and trails and find the remains of the French dock that looks out over the river to Cambodia and then to an surprising waterfall. Untill then it was an easy going flow that became a white water crashing gorge. We rode to a small beach where one of the motorized canoes would take us out to the border area with Cambodia where the Irawaddy dolphins are making somewhat of a comeback. Our driver managed the boat through rapids and a maize of outcroppings till we arrived in a large calmn area and floated as the sunset watching for the occasional glimpse of the dolphins.
The next day we headed back to Pakse to catch an overnight sleeper bus to Vientien the Capital of Laos. The VIP bus had double decker double bunks on both sides. Even if they had been twice as wide and 10 inches longer it would have been a bumpy bad sleep. We arrive early and out tuk tuk is packed so I get a seat in front with the driver on the left side out with the side view mirror and beyond the windshield.
Vienteienne is a modern city with lots of travelers in the old section of town and some great coffee with and evening balcony beer sites as well as a great vegetarian restaurant and a wat with over 10,000 Buddha statues. It is the least glitzy wat yet and was a lone survivor of an early 20th century war with Thailand. On our last night we pass a conference center where we happen on the beginning of a hip hop inspired dance performance and chose it over dinner. It was a great show with a melding of classical Laos music with hip hop dance and some straight up hip hop happening as well.
It is a 3 hour bus trip up to Vieng Veng which is mostly famous as a young back packer scene with loud bars, drunken tubing and restaurants that continually play Friends on TV. . The landscape of abrupt limestone peaks contains lots of caves. We rented some great mountain bikes and rode the 6 kilometers through a small village, past several small caves and came to our destination hot and grateful for the swimming hole formed from a stream that came from the cave.
We splurged on a balcony room far from the late night techno pop where we could watch the cows wander back from their day of foraging directed by young kids and as kayakers and motorized canoes moved on the river in front of nearly vertical mountainsides.
One comforting sign in many restaurants and guesthouse in contrast to no shoes no service is “Please remove shoes before entering” .
We catch the morning bus to Lauang Prubang which is an 8 hours steep and winding ride north including an hour roadside stop for bus repairs. We are heading into the area of various ethnic tribes including the Hmong. Kennedy authorized the CIA to recruit 11,000 Hmong to fight the Vietnamese. The US later targeted parts of the northeast , where the Ho Chi Minh trail was, for 4 years of constant bombing, including over 2 million tons of bombs , 1/3 of which did not explode and remain a constant hazard today. 1/3rd of the people became internal refugees. The communist Pathet Lao eventually took control of the country with little opposition. You have to wonder how things would have played out if the US had avoided the whole Vietnam conflict altogether.
Luang Prubang is an amazing small city. It is clearly focused on serving the tourist crowd and does it really well while preserving the historic architecture from its French colonial past. Tourism is 50% of Laos economy and here they have figured out how to attract people from all over the planet and keep them supplied with what they want. It is walk able, clean, historic and within easy access of natural wonders. We are spending 3 days here, easily our longest stay in one place. We hook up with some Cambodian/Swiss and Australian folks and hire a tuk tuk to take us out to a large waterfall. It is a series of small and tall falls and turquoise pools that make for some great swimming. Also a rescue bear sanctuary.
At sunset we climb the long and winding stairs up to the Wat on the hill in the center of Luang Prabang to watch the sunset and listen to a Lao woman sing ballads. On the way down we pass a room of chanting monks .
Claudia is reading Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux who has written other travel books as well as fiction- “You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time. Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy-being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders.”
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