Trek Back in Time

Sunday March 7

Though we were weary from our previous night’s antics, we did manage to wake up in time to make it to our boat in the morning.  I had set an alarm, but it was the roosters calling that alerted me to the dawn.  The lovely hoteliers here at the Muong Lao Guesthouse allowed us to leave one very heavy pack with them and with our paired down travel gear we made for the boat ramp.  On the way we bought mangos and sandwiches, plus a few bottles of water to prepare us for the 7 hour slow boat ride we were getting ready to go on.

Down to the boat office, we waited for our merry band of travelers to assemble and once we were mostly there, a young man led us to our boat that was tied up on the shore of the Mekong River.  We chose our seats and settled in.  They were plastic seats like you’d find in a school and had thin cushions on them.  We felt tired but excited for our journey.

Just then our last two passengers came.  I could hear them before I saw them: Americans.  She was grumbling about the boat being full of white people, he was sporting a beard made of three dreadlocks, about a foot long, tied in a knot.  Once they were on board, the captain informed us we had to split into two boats, and gestured to the boat beside us.  It looked a fair amount more rickety, had standing water under the bamboo slats that were the floor and had meager wooden seats; nobody budged.  But at last, after a pregnant moment of hesitation, the four Americans made the sacrifice and moved over to the questionable boat.

Not only was the boat a little shaky, but the captain was grumpy as well.  The Americans turned out to be from California, and Burners, no less.  They were well equipped with liquor, and we were well stocked with food so we shared everything among us.

We were driven up the Mekong River until we came to the famous Pak Ou Cave.  We had to bribe our driver to stop.  It’s a natural cave that has been built up with concrete walls and stairs and inside are housed all the crumbling old Buddha statues that are taken out of commission from the wats.  Devoted people go to visit, bringing flowers and incense.  Our captain told us, “five minutes” so we peeked in, went and had a pee and ran out to board the rickety old boat again.

For the very brave, or very stupid, there is another option of river travel, the speedboat.  I had heard about these boats, they are reported to be very dangerous, especially in the dry season when the water is so low, and at this point I got a chance to see one.  It is a very light canoe with a very big motor, it has no roof to offer shade, and all the passengers were wearing helmets, splash jackets and hopefully earplugs as the crazy thing went roaring past us.  I have no idea where they were going in such an awful hurry but I hope they made it; many of those boats crash and splinter into a million tiny pieces!

The Pac Ou Cave is located at the spot where the Nam (River) Ou flows into the Mekong.  Our boat turned off the Mekong, up this river and this is where our journey really began.

Suddenly the landscape changed and we were headed up a limestone canyon.  Steep white cliffs, covered in tangled vines loomed up beside the river.  Perfect triangle mountains looked misty in the distance.  Though the scenery was enticing, I opted at this point to take a nap.

The boat and captain I had been skeptical of turned out to be the better of the two that day.  I woke up when the boat stopped but we had not arrived; the other boat had broken down! We rescued the other 5 passengers, leaving their driver to work it out.  When they came aboard with us one of the passengers told us their captain had run aground and they all had to get out and push.  The first mate of our boat pulled out all the little wooden chairs and cushions to make room for the passengers and luggage.  Sitting on the floor of the boat, we continued our slow journey up the Ou.

I have to hand it to our captain: he knows the river.  Going upstream he navigated around the rocks, through the shallows and gunned it up the rapids.  At one point, we did get stuck, but not badly and we were off the rock in a moment.

Our slow journey up river gave a glimpse of life there. We passed men in their underwear, sporting dive masks, bending down looking for riverweed.  At another section, we passed ladies panning for gold.  We saw fishermen casting nets and buffalo wading up to their necks, pigs snuffling around in the sand and lots of other little boats passing us by.

At last we came to the bridge that straddles the river between the two sides of the village called Nong Kiau.  It is a small village and though it is still accessible by road, it has a remote feeling about it.  The houses are made of concrete and bamboo; there are chickens and dogs wandering around in the street.

We got out of the boat with our packs and walked up the stairs to the boat office, down the street past the post office and across the bridge to the East side to find a guesthouse for the night.  It took all day to get there, so we just sat on our little porch and while Jeremy played mandolin, we watched the big red sun ball sink behind the smoky limestone peaks.

March 8.

It was chilly when we woke up in the morning.  I wasn’t really prepared for cold weather but I layered up all the shirts I had brought, pulled my socks up to my knees and we ventured out for breakfast and to make a plan for the day.  Nong Kiau is famed for it’s 100 waterfalls jungle hike, but we really didn’t feel like hiring a guide.  So instead, we rented bicycles and headed out on a little dirt road to see what we could see.

After about 20 minutes of pedaling, we started to hear dance music.  Soon we pulled up to a little village where there was a party going on.  We paused at the road looking in, curious but shy.  In a minute or two we were noticed and beckoned in to join the festivities.  Our host, a boy of 18 years named Buon Chanh, spoke a little English and invited us to participate in the Laos holiday celebrating women.  A sound system was set up and blaring music, the village teens were all there dancing as the little ones watched from the sides, and the older ones were sitting around a table that was covered in a banana leaf eating.  They were all drinking lao lao which is moonshine made from rice.  Buon Chanh and his friends were pouring us glass after glass.  If I politely refused, they would pour a smaller shot and hold it to my lips, pulling my head back to make me drink it!  They were also doing this to each other and soon the party really started to loosen up.

More and more villagers came out to meet us.  Everyone was very friendly and they all wanted to dance with us.  Bottles of lao lao were shared and they also fed us a local dish called lap that is made from minced fish and lime, eaten with sticky rice.  It is delicious!

After a few hours, we bought a bottle of lao lao from the village store and also a bottle of  beer, which is expensive to the locals and some candies and snacks to share with everyone.  It had grown hot in the afternoon and everyone was sweating and dancing beside the speakers under the shade of a little blue tarp.

We were there until sundown.  We felt like one of them, they were so loving and generous.  Jeremy and I showed them how to swing dance and a few of them picked it up pretty quick.  Buon Chanh took us back into the village to look around, visit his house and meet his parents.  He explained how the people fish and forage for food, that the kids walk down into Nong Kiau to go to school and how he hoped one day to become a teacher.  He invited us to stay the night in the village.

New or old, it is hard to say goodbye to friends, but we parted ways and made our boozy way back to our guesthouse.

March 9.

We heard about a village further up river that was only accessible by boat.  In the morning, we arranged our passage to get to Muang Ngoy.  It was a short and stunning boat ride past the limestone karsts.  In an hour we reached the boat landing and climbed the stairs up into this beautiful little village.

We couldn’t help but to compare the place to Telluride.  Beautiful and hard to get to, it is a tourist town with a busy Main Street that ends at a mountain peak.  We picked a river view guesthouse and ambled up Main Street to one end and then back the other way to the other end where there is a crumbling old wat.

Laos holds the distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world. During the Indochina War, U.S. forces flew more than 520,000 bomb runs over Laos. The United States dropped more than two million tons of bombs on this tiny country, more tonnage than was dropped on Germany and Japan, combined, in all of World War II.  It was painfully evident here in this village: bomb casings pepper the town, decorating yards and finding a friendlier use as planters.

We had yet to stray from the “Banana Pancake Trail” but in the back of my mind I was thinking about the standards of quality of life outside of Luang Prabang . I was reading about the gross national product, per capita income, levels of literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy in Laos. When you add it all up, it becomes clear that Laos is one of the most impoverished nations of the world.  With this in mind we decided to try and get away from the comfortable tourist destinations.

March 10.

We woke up early and paired down our already paired down belongings.  Through a local outfit called Loas Youth travel, we hired a guide to take us on an overnight trek to visit some outlying villages in the area.  A young man named Laan, about to become a new father at the age of 22, loaded us up with water bottles and led the way out of the village.

Past the school and over the soccer field and through some secondary forest, past the rice paddies, we eventually came to the Tham Kang Cave.  Laan pointed out the craters left by exploded bombs and took us into the mouth of the cave, explaining to us how hundreds of villagers hid for years inside this cave.  A small fresh stream flows out from deep in the earth and he told us we could walk back for 3 days before we came to the end.

Laan had served as a monk for 8 years.  During that time he traveled to other neighboring countries, learned to speak English and also how to sing.  Serving the monastery, he told us, is kind of like attending university.  He also told about an American woman named Lucy, from Chicago, who was his sponsor and benefactor and paid for his higher education in Luang Prabang.  Laan has a computer, access to the internet, a new wife (after 4 months of courtship they were married; 3 months later, expecting a baby) and his family owns rice fields and guesthouses; he is very well off and seems happy.

We followed him passed more rice fields, with buffalo lazily grazing in them, along a little footpath into the mountains.  After another hour or so, we came to a small village, called Huay Xen, where we had lunch.  The villagers were busy sitting around small fires, making baskets, and playing with their children.

I noticed some had roosters tied up to their homes.  Laan told me they were used for hunting.  Jeremy and I wandered around the village, home to about 60 families.  We tried to make friends and be unobtrusive at the same time.  Having eaten a little rice, we loaded up again and right away started walking up hill.

Laan explained we had just been at a Khmu village; they live in the middle.  Now he was taking us to a Hmong village, high in the mountains.   Tomorrow we would see a Khmer village, on the river.  We walked uphill for an hour or so and then along the ridge, up and down.  After about 3 hours we could see in the distance the little village called Ban Biew Kahn, where we would be spending the night.

Our arrival, it seems, was barely noticed.  People were not seeming very curious about us as they busied themselves with rice milling, basket weaving and sitting around their smoky bamboo fires, washing babies.  We walked around and Jeremy asked to take pictures but no one was very keen on the idea.  The village was very tidy and I thought about how difficult it must be to bring supplies out, six hours walk from the river.

Not many items from the outside world are brought in to litter this place with plastic or paper or metal.  I looked into a bamboo hut at some milling equipment and a generator that someone had to have hiked in.  Laan told us if you get sick in this village, someone has to carry you all the way back to Moung Ngoy.    Our guide turned in for a nap while we looked around, but we felt uncomfortable, like outsiders.  I didn’t really know what to do with myself and it was cold outside.  I couldn’t bring myself to invite myself around a fire, so we just curled up under a blanket in the bamboo basket hut we had been told to stay in.

Around dusk, we emerged for supper.  The owner of the hut we were staying in had boiled a whole chicken, feet and all, with some greens which he served in one bowl for both of us.  He also gave us a basket of sticky rice and some chiles.  We huddled up to the cooking fire inside his kitchen hut and listened to Laan speak with him in the native Hmong dialect.  The lady of the house sat near, playing with her gurgly, chatty baby.

We ate in another bamboo house with Laan and our host, whose name I never caught.  After we had eaten, Laan told us to stick around for the movie.  They were firing up the generator, which runs on hydropower from the river, to watch Thai television.

Soon 50 villagers were crammed into the hut, little ones up front, ladies next and men in the back.  A little old lady shared her blanket with me and another one tucked her freezing cold feet underneath me.  The ladies shared beetle bark, a stimulating herb that turns the mouth red, and the men smoked homegrown tobacco in cigarettes rolled in notebook paper.  The man holding the remote control never stayed on one channel for long but nobody lost interest.  In a scene from one Thai sitcom, a character jumped into a car and said in English, ”Let’s go!” which brought laughter out of everyone because of their strange visitors.

I couldn’t understand a word of what anyone was saying, I was tired and uncomfortable, the room was crowded and smoky and the blaring TV was annoying, but I couldn’t leave.  I finally felt accepted by these beautiful people.  After a few hours, we finally left them still watching, and went to bed.

March 11.

In the cold morning air, we ate a hot bowl of noodles and set out for the next part of our trek.  We left the village just like we arrived, amid the pigs and chickens, with few people looking up to notice our departure, although we did get a few smiles and one young man ran out to shake Jeremy’s hand.  Over the fence, past the school we took up the trail that headed down hill.

Down the hill, through the bamboo we came at last to a small river.  I followed suit with Laan by taking off my shoes and we continued barefoot downstream. The water was cold, but the day was heating up, the sun starting to shine through, though we haven’t seen a blue sky since we left the beaches of Thailand.

Thirty minutes later, we left the river, shoed up and started climbing uphill again through a ginger plantation.   We passed the first person we had seen on the trail: a man going the opposite direction.  We climbed higher and higher and came at last to a stunning view of the Nam Ou and the jagged, jungle covered limestone mountains rising dramatically out of the river.

Back at the Nam Ou, we came to another village.  Some people were busy making concrete slabs, others backfilling erosion with shovels while others picked through piles of second-hand clothes.

Superstitions in the area dictate that when passing through a village, you must stay a while and interact a bit so the people living there can know that you are not just a spirit.  Laan bought a hat out of the pile of clothes while Jeremy and I walked around the village, saying “sah bah dee” to the children and smiling at the old ladies.

After a while, we were lead to the river and into a small, motorized canoe.

The driver took us a little way downstream to another village.  This one was a weaving village that backed up to a huge sheer white cliff. 

The bamboo houses that lined the little street all had beautiful hand woven tapestries hanging out front.

We watched an old lady pull silk off the cocoons and watched others spin cotton on their homemade spinning wheels.  I guess it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but what could we do? We purchased a few shawls to support this thread of traditional life.

We got back in the boat and made our way down to Moung Ngoy, which now felt like a rather modern place (even though it has no road access and only has electricity from 6 – 10pm).  We had missed all the boats going downstream so we settled in for one more night there.

March 12.

We caught the morning boat to Nong Kiau and opted for the 3-hour van ride back into the city.  In Luang Prabang, we met back up with Adams, the banjo player, and Jeremy played another gig at the Big Tree Café.   During the set I talked with a German fellow who has spent 30 years in Laos working as an OBGyn.  He asked me why America does not clean up their messes around the world.  Almost every effort to improve the quality of life in Laos is affected by legacies of the secret war. Action is hindered by resentment, distrust, defeatism and fear. Limited resources are sapped by the need to re-build infrastructure destroyed in the war. And before any physical activity can commence, the problem of unexploded bombs that are buried underground must be addressed.  10,000 Laos people have died since the war ended because of the buried bombs.

If you are ever in Luang Prabang, I encourage you to visit the Big Tree Cafe.  It is run by two very intelligent, generous and kind people named Adri and Misha who support live music and Laos culture.  Adri is not only an amazing photographer, but a wealth of knowledge as well.  They greatly enhanced our experience here in L.P.B. and we want to say thanks to them!

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