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the real laos
Searching for the "real Laos" brought me to a small village 85 km from Vientiane. I went there by myself yesterday as my friend stayed in the city waiting for his Thai visa to be issued. The village of Ban Na, also known as "Elephant Village" is home to just over 100 families. The villagers experienced a mishap a few years ago when their sugar cane crops were demolished by sweet-toothed elephants wandering in the region. They could not control the elephants, but instead came up with a way to subsidize the income they lost in the sugar canes through sustainable tourism. Ban Na is also located at the base of a large conservation area called Phu Khau Khuay, so treks in the region are also usually launched from there. For these reasons, I expected transportation to the area to be frequent and easy. Was I ever wrong. I walked early in the morning to the station where Lonely Planet said buses left from, and realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. This was local territory. No one spoke more than one word of English, and I had considerable difficulty telling many people, mostly in sign language, that I wanted to go to a village with elephants. I pieced together that the bus I wanted was not there, but at another station 9 km away. So I took an hour-long journey on a minibus there, cramped in a seat with Lao old and young alike, teenagers and market vendors toting all their trinkets.Upon arrival at the 'actual' station, I find out, naturally, that there are no buses to my destination. I had to take a 'tuk-tuk', basically a trailer with some seats attached to a smoking motorcycle. These are probably the third surest way to death after land mines and speed boats in South East Asia, and three jaw-clenching hours later, during which I managed to brave headaches and pot-holes to read 400 pages of 'East of Eden', I finally arrived in Ban Na.This is when it started to pour. At the entrance to the village there was a small house with a storefront where I found refuge from the rain. No one spoke English, but I managed to tell the fifty year old owner of the house that I needed to sit under his roof for a while until it stopped raining. I was getting more and more dejected at this point because it was already three in the afternoon and considering the three hour journey home it was already about time I got back.But in a way the rain was a blessing. Although the village was not its lively self in the gloomy weather, I sat in the midst of one villager's bustling family life, enjoying a silent sort of interaction with them all. There were no less than three generations sitting on that porch,underneath a covered tarp, the most prominent the group of children, seven or eight of them, chasing each other through the yard and shrieking with delight at each splattering of raindrops on their cheeks. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of them, and they found the photos on my camera absolutely delicious.When the rain did not let up, I cut my losses and braved the rain and mud into the deserted village. It was such a peaceful walk, past rice fields, durian trees, lush vegetation, a couple of water buffalos, and then a hut on a hill with six little children underneath. They hollered at me from their place of hiding, "What's your name!" Children in Laos speak the best English because their parents instill that it is the surest way to employment. I yelled back and forth with them for a while, answering their questions and asking them questions they did not understand, making them giggle uncontrollably as a result.Then I asked if I could join them, and they nodded, showing me the hidden route to their place of solace. They were weaving bamboo baskets, a specialty craft in this village. These bamboo baskets were sold around the country as containers for the Lao staple sticky rice. I asked their names, they were Bop,Pop,Kop,Jop,... swear to god. Aged between 9 and 13. One showed me how to weave the bamboo pieces interchangeably to create a firm round ring, and another one how to cut the fray bamboo off with a butcher knife and effortless grace. I showed them my camera and gave them a packet of coconut cookies I had in my bag. Lame exchange, I know.As much as I would have loved to escape to this wondrous world of basket weaving with these charming kids, I was brought down to earth by the fact that I was dripping wet, smelled like water buffalo, and was getting closer minute by minute to nightfall. I had to leave them, sitting under the hut, joking and chattering, to go back to the village. As I turned the bend in the mud road, I heard them sing in unison a long "Thank youuuuuu!" and their giggles fading into the rain.
before I forget
The power cut out in my guesthouse last night before I finished my post. I had wanted to describe the utter magnificence of Lao's beauty. The slow boat did not bother me despite the delay in our travel plans because of the unspoilt scenery we saw along the way. There are literally no words to describe the strong beauty of the Mekong river as it slowly winds past the lush topiary of the Lao countryside. Brilliant greens layering on top of each other in the most perfect pastures, tall banana trees, rolling hills, and swaying grass. The Mekong river is not the cleanest I've ever seen. In fact it is downright opaque, picking up bankside mud as it rushes past our boat in a shade akin to orange clay. But I love the intensity of the colours. The sky is blue and the clouds white. Every direction I look is a new postcard ready to be sent home, luring people to this completely underrated and overlooked paradise. If you thought that sounded like a song, don't even get me started on Luang Prabang. I have never seen a more idyllic town. The French colonial architecture fits beautifully onto the backdrop of glistening stupas and temples. The buddhist culture in Laos is as prominent as ever, with hundreds of temples, some dating back to the 1500's scattered on every block in Luang Prabang. Monks can be seen roaming the streets at all times of day, dressed in billowing robes of vibrant orange. By the dormitories inside each temple, orange robes hang on clothes lines drying under the sun. Every morning, the monks form a procession down the main street in an alms giving ceremony where locals give offerings to them of sticky rice and other food items. I will see this take place tomorrow morning if I wake up at 6 am as planned!
shit happens
The perfect slogan for the country of Laos. This is a place where time doesn't exist, everything breaks down- all the time, and the locals just sit back and chill out with a bottle of Beerlao, the national beverage, while they wait. I am now in Luang Prabang, the beautiful former royal capital, a quiet idyllic town along the banks of the Mekong river. I could write a novel about the arduous journey here from Chiang Mai, Thailand, in which any other time I would have ripped my eyeballs out in frustration, but in this country can only shake my head and grin, because shit happens.There are three ways to get to Luang Prabang from Chiang Mai. Lao airlines, which costs a fortune and has a terrible safety record, slow boat, which floats its way down the Mekong in two days, or a speed boat which takes half the time as the slow boat, for almost double its price. Because we are a bit time-strapped, we thought the optimal choice was the speed boat. After purchasing the ticket and arriving at the Laos border, I casually glance over my Lonely Planet and see a boxed warning against taking all speed boat travels in Laos as they are "dangerously fast" and about the most perilous thing you can do in Laos after walking through a field of land mines. This reassurance attained, we embarked our boat, literally a canoe with a greasy motor attached to the rear. Six people to a boat and absolutely no room to budge. Things were looking better and better. Our motor stopped working about ten minutes into the trip and our driver who spoke no english, managed to fix it with a wooden twig and a pocket knife. This ad hoc maintenance lasted us another couple of hours until it started drizzling. It then turned into a pour and then a torrent of waters from the sky, drenching us and all of our baggage on the uncovered boat. I didn't mind the wetness, but the motor had failed us again. And this time we sat on the river, tied to a tree branch, none of us talking as we could not communicate with the driver and found ourselves in that strange state of forlorn defeat in which we could do nor complain about nothing. There we sat for an hour until another speed boat appeared. The driver whizzed off with the other guy back to the last town and returned with jumper cables that managed to fix the boat, but warned us that we may not make it to Luang Prabang by nightfall,and we should just stay overnight in the town. Lo and behold, it was the same town that the slow boats stop off for the night. Can you imagine the embarassment of running into the same people we smugly glanced at this morning? It was such a classic story of the turtoise and the hare. The town was cute albeit completely subsistent on tourist boats, and that is where we woke up this morning. We were then told that plans had changed again! That slow boats were probably more reliable and safe for us because what if the motor breaks down again and we are to return back to this town for yet another night? At that point I was ready to take the risk take it anyways, but I suppose the other people on the speed boat were not down. Lame. So we ended up on a slow boat that was delayed for over an hour because the boat was filled to overcapacity with excess people waiting to board, and communication barriers between boat operators and passengers ensured that we just stalled with no progress for a very very long time. Only at 5 pm did we arrrive in Luang Prabang, but just the evening wandering around town has already sold me on the place. The night market was the most unstressful shopping ordeal I had been through so far in Asia and the street food is amazing and cheap! I had an amazing Laos sandwhich (kind of like the viet subs with all kinds of things on a baguette) for about 60 cents, and they even have oreo/nutella milkshakes on the street!I havn't posted in ages, mostly because I've been travelling around with little internet access. Apparently I hadn't emailed my parents in 6 days and I didn't even realize. Since I last posted from a private island off Phuket, I have been to Ko Phi Phi and Chiang Mai. I cannot wait to share the pictures, but those will have to wait. Bed time now. Until next time!
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