Luang Prabang to Phonsavan

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Hi all - I'm still alive and kicking, thanks for all the emails checking! Internet access was not fantastic in Laos, and where it has been available it has been painfully slow, with poor computers. We have also been extremelly busy doing stuff, so haven't had so much time to spend telling everyone else about it...I hope I can remember everything!

OK, so where do I start...Luang Prabang is where I last finished off. We spent the last 3 days of our time in Luang Prabang at a silk weaving course. It was excellent. We learnt all about the whole silk extraction process, chose some colours, and got dying. All the dyes we used were natural, I had green, pink and yellow. The green was from an indigo bush. I had to pound a whole lot of green leaves in a morter and pestle...then whole tumeric roots nfor yellow. The pink came from boiling some wood...lots of fun. It is amazing going through the process of making fabric on a loom. I feel we really take fabric for granted in these days of electric looms. The best part of the course was that there were only two of us falang (long nosed people) working in a factory (well, a covered platform with about 15 looms, surrounded by lush tropical garden) with laos women (and man). We had an interpreter with us all the time, but got to apreciate Lao life. We shared meals with them and got to eat a whole variety of Lao food (vegetarian for my benifit). Everything is placed on the table, and everyone shares. You use your hands to eat, and even the soup is shared with one bowl and many spoons. The food was fantastic, so rich in flavour, and so much variety. Lou even tried some insects from a tree in the garden which had been fried up in chillie. Our remaining evenings in Luang Prabang were filled with wining and dining (if you count Lao Lao as wine?), with people Fiona had made friends with during the day.

After a whole week in Luang Prabang we realised we had to get moving, and decided Phonsavan (The plain of jars) was the place to head. We jumped on the VIP bus - it came with it's own AK47 wielding pimple faced 18 year old guard. I can't think of any other reason this bus would be called VIP, as many of the local buses we subsiquently rode on were nicer. Unlike the VIP bus to Vietiene, this one didn't have a toilet. As we discovered with our numerous bus rides in Laos the driver pulls up at random remote locations. Nothing is said, but everyone jumps out, women at one end, men at the other, to use "Natures facilities"...a very quick efficient process - no ques. You can't wonder too far off the road into the bushes as northern Laos is full of unexploded ordance (land mines, and unexploded bombs) remaining from America's bombing rampage in the 70's. As strange as it may seem you kind of get used to weeing while people and animals wonder past. The scenery was fantastic, with towering mountains, bush, and grass hut style villages. I can't imagine it would be too fantastic if you got motion sick as the roads didn't stop winding for 6 hours. Things got pretty exciting at one stage. We passed a guy standing on the side of the road holding his gigantic automatic machine gun in the air. The bus driver slammed on the breaks, and the bloke came running up to the bus waving his gun around. I was positive we were being hijacked or something, but he just jumped on the bus, rode along next to our other "security guard" for 10km or so, then jumped off in another village.

Phonsavan was a pretty standard town, but the tour we did during our one day there was pretty awesome stuff. Six of us falang were pilled into a pajero, and showen around the place, first to a site showing some of the devastation caused by the american bombing. We were meant to be looking at bomb craters immediately surrounding us (there were plenty), but your eyes couldn't help being drawn to the bomb scared landscape which stretched as far as your eyes could see. To this day Laos remains the most intensively bombed country in the world. While the vietnam war was on, america secretly bombed Laos - seen as strategically important in stopping comunisim spreading throughout the world. It has left a pretty long legacy of death and destruction, as there are still hundred of people who die in the region from unexploded bombs and bomb clusters/bombies (little bombs inside the big bombs) going off as they dig in their rice paddies, or as they are building houses etc. (we hoped none would go off as we crept into the bushes on our roadside bus stops, walking nice and gently around).

Next on the tour we stoped and had an "up close and personal" with some rice paddies. A bit of a more positive uplifting experience than looking at evidence of war...especially to us country kids. Our next stop was a Hmong village. The village had been relocated from the mountains to the lowlands by the government in an attempt to stop cash cropping of poppies (opium). All villages are made with local materials, but these ones had utilised the bomb debris which scatered the landscape. Bomb casings were used as house poles (most houses are on stilts), pig troffs, herb gardens, fences, and numerous other applications. Like all the other villages we passed, pigs, chickens, cows, and dogs all ran around the place. Children looked after younger children, and did things like cut fire wood, and tend animals. They all smiled shyly, and sometimes would wave...they did not beg like some of the relatively wealthier kids in Thailand and Vietnam have done (yes I'm a bit behind on the diary updates!). Our guide next took us to a waterfall where we had a picnic lunch. He was new to the job, it was his first time taking other people to the waterfall, but he took us back up the hill by climbing up the waterfall. It was sooooo beautiful climbing up moss covered rocks and trees, and very exciting traversing across algee ridden rocks with massive drops down below. Health and Saftey regulations really have taken the fun out of tours in NZ and Australia!

I'll leave you there and aim at catching to the present time of our tour on the next installment (maybe).

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