Travels

My last week in Northern Laos was marked by lots of bumpy bus rides, dusty villages, power outages and copious amounts of beautiful scenery.

I visited Oudomxai, Luang Namtha, and Muang Sing, and had some good bike rides, visiting a variety of villages populated by some of the diverse ethnic groups that live in Northern Laos. I also did a 2-day kayak trip on the Nam Ha river, staying overnight in a Kamu village.

When New Year festivities ended, the incredibly slow pace of Lao life became apparent. The most active time of day seems to be at around 5:30 or 6am when the morning market is bustling and the monks circulate the town gathering food from the faithful. The heat of the day is spent sleeping or moving as little as possible and at 8 or 9pm the electricity may or may not go out.

Still, the Lao people have plenty of energy for a good party. “Family parties” continued after the end of New Year – big meals and marathon karaoke sessions fueled by Beer Lao and “happy water” (homemade rice whiskey). They are very welcoming (it is good luck to have a lot of visitors at a party), but I learned that if you join you should be prepared to “sing song”!

It’s a bit of a shock to be back in Thailand, which is so developed and tourist-centered compared to what I experienced in Laos. Matt is arriving tomorrow and I’m looking forward to exploring Northern Thailand with him over the next 2 weeks.

Lurching down a bumpy road with 40 or so people in the back of a flatbed truck spitting out black exhaust fumes. I feel lucky to have a bench seat (though I am airborne a good percentage of the time) because there is a growing layer of mud on the floor. Groups of villagers wait for us on the roadside and hurl buckets of water at us as we duck down as low as possible hunching over our bags and praying our driver doesn’t slow down. We get completely drenched at intervals that vary between 2 and 10 minutes. The trip lasts 5 hours. Sabaidee Pi Mai Lao! Happy New Year!

But I have to say it was all worth it to arrive in Nong Kiaow, an incredibly scenic town on the Nam Ou river. There are a huge variety of really amazing butterflies here, but they apparently don’t like to have their picture taken. I’m splurging on a sweet bungalow with lots of natural light and a great view (if you ever make it out this way, stay here.)

Luang Prabang has a large number of historic temples and is THE place to celebrate the Lao New Year (Pi Mai). Part of the tradition is that everyone cleans house and makes repairs before the New Year celebrations begin. The first day I was visiting the temples, the monks were all out cleaning and giving things a fresh coat a paint. This is definitely a tradition I think I would like to adopt!

On a whim, I signed up for a silk dyeing and weaving class at the Ock Pop Toc Weaving Center. It was great! We made natural dyes from tumeric root (traditionally used for dyeing the monk’s robes orange), indigo leaves, lemongrass, and teak wood. Then one of the weavers taught me how to weave the silk thread and create patterns using the loom and a few hours later I had completed a placemat! It was like learning to drive – your hands and feet and eyes and brain have to be perfectly coordinated. The weavers at the workshop all live in the same village, and mothers pass down the art to their daughters. They were all extremely nice people, and very patient teachers.

The Plain of Jars is one of the handful things that I knew I definitely wanted to see before coming on this trip. The hundreds of 2,500 year-old stone jars around Phonsovan still baffle – who made them and for what purpose? Only 3 sites out of 64 are safe to visit (unexploded ordnance still plague the area, more on that later); I only got to go to one site, and I think that is usually enough for most people but I definitely could have stayed to see more. On the one hand, it is exactly what it sounds like – a bunch of jars on a plain, but I really loved walking around and soaking up the feeling of an ancient, mysterious past.

Phonsovan is in the second most bombed province in Laos, which is the most heavily bombed country in the world. Bomb craters from the U.S. “Secret War” persist amidst the otherwise idyllic farmland and small villages. You see bomb parts everywhere – even used as furniture or planters or, in the case of the village below, as support columns for houses and pigeon coops.

I also got to hike out to a waterfall and had a first encounter with kids toting waterguns in celebration of Lao New Year / Water Festival (which doesn’t officially begin until the 14th, but the water is already flying.)

A visit to the local MAG office was eye-opening and disturbing. The abundance of bomb fragments (and UXOs) still in the country combined with widespread poverty has led to a scrap metal industry and people (including children) will go out digging for bomb scrap metal to sell. Metal detectors have been banned from the country, but that doesn’t stop people who can use scrap metal earnings to eat. Watch the documentary Bomb Harvest for more.

Laos continues to impress. I spent 3 nights in the small village of Vang Vieng which sits on the banks of the Nam Son River surrounded by limestone hills. Although the town is a bit overrun with tourists who apparently come to tube on the river and to watch the bizarre endless airings of the TV show “Friends” that play in just about every restaurant, the landscape here is just stunning.

I have had the good fortune of meeting Courtney, a like-minded solo traveler from Australia. We spent a day biking for hours through small villages in the surrounding area before coming to stay for a night at an organic farm.

As volunteers at the farm, we got to help pick mulberry leaves for the animals, and then feed and milk the goats and bottle-feed a bunch of adorable baby goats. The toughest part was keeping track of all the baby goats – they had numbers but there were multiple goats with the same number and at feeding time they would all be bleating like mad and climbing all over each other to get to the bottle! Lots of fun!

Wow – what a change to arrive in the capital city of Laos after being in Ho Chi Minh City! It’s so quiet and sane here (no honking horns or hordes of motorbikes). The entire country of Laos has a population of around 6 million, which is only about a half million more than the city of Ho Chi Minh.

I spent yesterday wandering around to see the sights, including Pha That Luang, which is a beloved national symbol of Laos and is supposed to contain either one of the Buddha’s hairs. Either that or part of his collarbone,I’ve seen a couple of different accounts.

If the sign I saw is any indication, the Lao people are a little less enthusiastic about another landmark, their version of the Arc de Triomphe aka the Concrete Monster. The story goes that the U.S. donated money in the 60s to buy concrete to build a new runway at the airport and this is the result, so it has been jokingly referred to as the “vertical runway”.

Vientiane sits on the Mekong River (pretty empty of water at the moment, because this is the tail end of the dry season) across the border from Thailand, and is full of coconut palms, magnolia trees, majestic temples and colonial architecture. Hanging out by the river (especially at sunset) seems to be everyone’s favorite pastime. Life is very good here.