Heat and dust

24 January 2013

Two months into the dry season and the countryside starts to turn brown and dusty with crinkly edges. It has only rained once since we arrived at the beginning of December– just a light shower really – so the cars throw up clouds of dust on the dirt roads and everything gets covered with a brown layer. Although water is not yet in short supply, the rivers are noticeably lower and the water pressure in our shower is not what it was. Khoun tells us that the well supplying the bungalows is much emptier than it was last year but he’s getting a piped supply from the village next week.

The temperature has started to rise again too. It’s quite cool and misty in the mornings still, but by mid afternoon it’s into the thirties until the sun sets at 5.45. Not uncomfortable, but too hot for sitting on the balcony.

It’s worth noting some things that Laos doesn’t have. It doesn’t have Macdonalds or Starbucks or KFC, there’s no snow but no seaside either, there’s no railway and no motorways. In fact the one main road that runs the length of the country, Route 13, would hardly class as an A road!

This is Route 13, the main road through Laos!

No Macdnalds, but Man U is ubiquitous!

There’s also little in the way of planning regulations. Just down the road from the bungalows one family have decided to sell their garden – that is they’ve brought in JCBs and bulldozers and dug away the hillside, taking all the soil and rocks away in trucks as aggregate to fill in some fishponds in the town. They get $20 for a 10-ton truck load. But they’re left with bare rock round their house. We see this scarring along every road.

Carving away the mountainside.

Having been here for over a month we could no longer put off the visit to the waterfalls for which Luang Prabang is famous. Many of the streams and rivers flowing down the mountains drop dramatically over limestone cliffs, forming cascades and pools in beautiful green forest settings.

We hadn’t taken any of the standard trips to the main waterfall, Kuangi Si, which is about 25 km from here but felt we ought to do our waterfall duty before we leave.   So our Monday outing this week was to a lesser known and nearer waterfall called Tad Thong. As the crow flies, Tad Thong is probably only a couple of miles from the bungalows, but there’s a socking great hill in the way so we had to go the long way round by road - about 9km. O took us in the Landrover and dropped us off near the turnoff from route 13.

Tad Thong waterfall.

It’s a beautiful spot. A paved walk has been constructed up the mountainside through the woods, past massive mahogany trees, dripping with ferns, lianas and orchids. The woods are quite different here from the more managed mixed dipterocarp woods at lower altitudes. At various heights viewpoints allow glimpses of the stream as it tumbles over and under rocks forming deep pools.

I bathed my poor sunburnt toes in the ice cold water.

Mahogany in its natural state.

The way through the woods.

Top of the waterfall. It's difficult to convey scale.

Some amazing fern-like foliage.

It takes about an hour to complete the circular walk up to the highest waterfall and down again. At the bottom is a lake-side resturant where we enjoyed a well-earned fruit shake. Unlike Kuangi Si, this waterfall is off the tourist trail so there were only a dozen or so falang to share the place with.

Walking home gave a sense of achievement to the day.

I haven't seen many goats in Laos. This was a healthy-looking one.

This guy lives inside our bungalow wall and pokes his head out on sunny afternoons. He's a lizard of some sort, about 8 inches long.

Hmong and Khmu compared

15 January 2013

Nine months ago, back in Poole, when we were first planning this trip we had a meal with our friend Roy, who had spent some time in Thailand, to pick his brains about life in SE Asia. At the time we arranged to meet up in Luang Prabang if our travel plans coincided. Sure enough, this week, on Saturday, he arrived on the night bus from Vientiane and is staying for a few days here in one of the bungalows.

We knew Roy back in  early 1980s when he owned Earthfoods in Bournemouth while we were running Coaster magazine, and then when we had adjacent flats in Beaulieu Road, Westbourne, but have not seen much of each other since he left to live in Northern Ireland in the mid-eighties. It’s been good to catch up and renew our friendship.

 Roy and Trevann discussing veg in Phosy Market

Sunday was spent walking, exploring the side streets and main sites of Luang Prabang, showing Roy our favourite areas, from Phosy Market and the weaving centre Ock Pop Tok, through to the monument to the Clapping Red Prince, the UXO exhibition (although closed on Sunday), the old bridge over the Nam Khan, and Mount Phousi.

Then on Monday we arranged a trip with Khoun to visit two traditional hill tribe villages – one Hmong and the other Khmu.

The five of us set off in the jeep, wearing surgical facemasks against the dust and bearing two carrier bags of instant noodles and eggs, which Khoun assured us were suitable gifts to offer in exchange for a view of the hill tribe family homes and life.

We wound our way up into the hills for perhaps an hour, the mountainsides getting steeper and the valleys deeper. Eventually, just past a new looking block-built primary school, the road petered out in a dusty Hmong village and we all piled out.

Typical Hmong house.

The Hmong are traditionally mountain dwellers, but these villagers had been displaced 20 years ago, forced by the government to leave their villages high in the mountain and resettle in lower lands in a US-funded bid to combat opium production. Of course, having had their source of income removed they are very poor and have no access to the money economy. They practise a bit of subsistence agriculture, growing bok choi in the valleys and spring onions on the rocky slopes, sell a few needlework souvenirs and continue to hunt for small animals and birds in the forests.

We wandered round the village, with Khoun guiding us to families he knew would be welcoming and explaining everything to us as we went. We handed out noodles and eggs to women and children. Some families were happy for us to see inside their homes. (If a family didn’t want visitors they hung woven straw symbols around the front door.)

Superficially, the village looked lovely - an idyllic setting.

This girl was wearing school uniform so probably went to the Japanese-funded school at the edge of the village.

Girls still get married at 14 or 15 and start families very young.

Making a mallet.

The Hmong houses are made of bamboo and thatch and have no windows. The cooking is done on an open wood fire on the earth floor inside. Most of them have electricity – and there were a couple of satellite dishes. We were invited in the village shaman’s home to have a look around but because it was dark it was difficult to tell what I was photographing at first. Sacks of rice, squash and gourds were stored in sacks at one end; the telly took centre stage, whereas the altar for the spirits was on a side wall!

Khoun looks doubtfully at the Shaman's lunch - rat and greens. yum.

Khoun told us about the ceremony the shaman performs, dancing on a platform in a trance for up to 8 hours, communicating with the spirit world.

Animism is practised. This was the spirit altar in the Shaman's house.

Inside the Shaman's home. No windows so it was dark.

Food is cooked on an open fire. The ceiling was black and sticky from the smoke. Not good for the lungs.

Food stored in sacks at one end of the room.

Kitchen utensils and bottles of pig fat.

This bed had a mosquito net but Khoun said that was unusual in this village. Malaria is a constant threat.

The other sources of income come from materials the Hmong gather from the forest. All around the village there were strips of bark drying in the sun. These are bought by the Chinese for traditional medicine. One husband and wife were busy making strips of grass thatch as roofing. This is where Khoun buys the thatch for the bungalows. The couple gather the 6-foot-long grass on the mountain slopes and sew it into panels – nowadays using nylon string – arghh!

Strips of bark sold for use in traditional Chinese medicine. 

Grass harvested in the mountains.

It's then sewn together in panels for thatching.

Sewing grass roof panels - 12-14 hours a day.

White threads for good fortune. A bridge to the spirit world.

Rice storage - protected from termites

Roy, Khoun and Trevann with sugar cane.

Having distributed our noodles and eggs and been given sugar cane to chew, we said our goodbyes and drove off, Khoun carrying the cooked rat the shaman had insisted on giving him!

The Shaman insisted on Khoun accepting his kind gift. We took it home in a plastic bag.

We stopped at the next door village – a Khmu community. The Khmu come from mid altitudes, rather than the high mountains of the Hmong, and traditionally use animal husbandry, rather than hunting. The houses are on stilts and the families living upstairs while (traditionally) the animals – cows, buffalos, goats and chickens - live on the open-sided ground floor. Rice is the staple for these people – either dry rice grown on the hillsides or wet rice grown in water in the valley bottom.

A typical Khmu house.

snug.

Khoun demonstrates a rice threshing machine.

Children were playing hoopla with a bike tyre and stick.

The villagers get together to help each other in building a new house.

Rice drying in the sun.

They seemed more prosperous than the Hmong next door. The children were well fed and found it hilarious to present us with little “bouquets” in the form of twigs and wilted leaves.

Views on the way home.

Meanwhile, back in Luang Prabang, we continued our work as unofficial ambassadors for the BeerLao brewery.

Trevann demonstrates all elements of taboo behaviour as depicted by the Lao tourist office posters. Feet, please!

The last pottery village in Luang Prabang

9 January 2013

So, after a few days of drawing, reading and gentle navel contemplation, we set out to find the last pottery village in Luang Prabang region.

We walked down to the shores of the Mekong. The boatmen were busily unloading a cargo of sand, a line of men with sacks tripping deftly along a narrow gangplank, down into the hold and returning with full sacks on their shoulders, back along planks up to the back of a truck.

There was no sign of a ferry or “local boat”, just a few wooden canoes tied up and a man fishing in his canoe a few yards off shore. We asked one of the boatmen and he hailed the fisherman for us. A few gestures established that he would take us over the river for 20,000 kip.

That's our ferry-man, fishing in the distance.

It’s a wobbly journey for us. The boat seems very small and narrow and the water is very near the gunwales. It’s powered by a garden strimmer engine with a propeller stuck on the end. But we made it.

Trevann puts on a brave face.

In retrospect I suppose it would’ve been a good idea to tell the boatman where we wanted to go, rather than just pointing to the other side. He took us at our word and just dropped us off on the muddy bank. It was only then that we realised there were no clues giving us directions to the pottery village – no road signs saying “This way to Ban Chan” – just a sandy track through the woods.

Not to worry. There was only one track so we couldn’t get lost and it was lovely just walking along, through the teak trees, and up the hills in the sunshine. We walked for an hour or so and were passed by just a few people in that time: a couple of boys on a motorbike, a woman carrying firewood, and a group of children. We came across our first buffalos here.

Resting in the teak woods.

Khoun had told us that the village was a five-minute walk from the riverbank, so we knew by this stage we were heading in the wrong direction. We asked a woman the way to Ban Chan. Sure enough she pointed back the way we had come. Turning around and retracing our steps, eventually we came to a village. But there was no sign of pottery.

Village kids think it's hilarious to pose for falang photos!

A fisherman mending his nets confirmed this was Ban Chan and pointed the way to the pottery – along a path blocked by a steep ravine through which flowed a small but deep, fast flowing stream. This didn’t look very tourist-friendly! There were steps cut in the sides of the ravine and a few bamboos laid across the stream, forming a bridge, so it obviously was a path of sorts. We put on our adventuring hats and went across.

Sure enough, a few hundred yards the other side we arrived at the pottery village. A family group were making bricks, lifting clay out of a deep pit, putting it in an extruder machine, and laying the bricks to dry in the sun. There was also a shop of sorts. I bought a bell!

Pottery shop

Brick makers.

Further down the street we came across a pit kiln, there were glimpses of pots through doorways, but no obvious signs of pottery activity. At length we turned a corner and there was a man and his wife sitting in their workshop, just finishing the decorations on a huge upright pot. We watched as they cut the pot from the turntable and carried it carefully to the drying area.

Pit kiln

It was a great privilege then to be able to watch as they worked. They started a new pot. The wife prepared the coils, while the man pinched them into place on the turntable, building the sides of the pot, inch by inch. It didn’t take too long to take shape. Years of practice had gone into these skills.

We bought some bananas from them, and went on our way, back across the river in another wibbly-wobbly canoe. Not only were they hugely skilful pot-makers, but the bananas were the best I’ve ever tasted too!

The village of Ban Chan is crying out for some sympathetic tourist development. A few more boats from Luang Prabang, guides, apprentices, translations and signposts would bring much needed income to the village and would probably prevent it from following the only other pottery village in the province into oblivion. Just like Poole Pottery, the ceramics industry here has suffered from cheap factory-made imports from China and Korea.

Our boatman drives us back over the river.