Thank you Lord for our daily bread

Asia » Laos » West » Luang Prabang
February 2nd 2006

Published: February 7th 2006

Okay, so I never was the best at saying grace - but only now do I really, really understand how lucky we are to have food - and water - so readily available - with so little effort.

Unlike Chiang Mai which is incredibly touristy and now almost farcical, with traditional villagers now westernised and ‘play-acting’ their old roles, we had heard that Laos was a lot less developed, less changed, and much more ‘authentic’. We had originally hope to travel to the North, more remote parts of Laos, like Muong Sing, to really get a flavour of how Laotian hill tribes traditionally lived. Unfortunately after the death trap of the ‘speed boats’ ( I neglected to mention that it was published that many deaths occurred on these each year - Brendon has since been told that its equivalent to one person dying each week) we were not keen to hop straight back onto the Mekong for another full day or so river trip. Also as Luang Prabang (LP) was so lovely, we really didn’t want to leave there too soon. So in order to get the most realistic experience of hill tribes, we ignored the ‘travel agents’ in every second shop and went to Action Max Laos, a company with a reputation for good ecotourism. We choose the ‘Emerald Tour’ - a two day tour to visit tribes not visited by any other tour group - and quite rarely by Action Max. As it turned out we chose wisely.

At 8.30am on the 1st of February, we met at the Action Max office, received our water (3 bottles each for the first day) and our sleeping bags (sheets in fact) and fitted them into our day packs as best we could. After a half hour boat ride up the Mekong, we came to a village drying seaweed (ok, actually Mekong river weed) where we disembarked. We wandered through the village, watched how the added garlic, tomato & sesame to the weed (more about this delicacy in a later blog) and laid it out to dry.

Our tour group was very small - even better. With us were a French couple Betrand (actually he was originally from Belgium) and Carine, both who currently lived in Hanoi helping with development there; Cordula, a German Lawyer from Cologne who travels each year to different third world countries - she has some great stories to tell; Doua our Laotion tour guide, it turns out he is actually from the Hmong Hill Tribe Village where we spent the first night; and two porters - one for our food, the other to take Cordula’s bags as she has a bad back.

We walked in the hot sun, Dou estimated that it was about 27 degrees, slightly uphill until lunch time. Lunch was at a Khamu village, in the wooden shed, roofed with a sheet of corrugated iron that stood as the primary school for this tribe. Unfortunately the teacher, who travelled each week from Luang Prabang, walking back home to LP for the weekends, had failed to turn up that week. So there was no school for the children that week. While it sounds fun for Western children, it is no joke in a country with an extreme shortage of teachers - so extreme that many villages only see a teacher one day a week. Doua said that of the 30 odd children of similar age in his village, only 2 had schooling past primary school. There was no secondary schooling for the villages, so to receive this further education, the children had to move to large towns.

After lunch of filled rolls (yum - the owners of Action Max are French - as are the colonists of Luang Prabang - so Baguettes are on the menu more often than you might expect we walked into the village proper. It was full of children playing games, laughing and having a ball. The elder girls (any who could walk) held the babies in slings on their backs. When we approached a group, all sitting on a ‘swing-type’ log under their house (which, being a Khamu village was built on stilts) they smiled shyly to our touristy greetings of ‘Sabadee’. Cordula asked Doua if she could take a photo, he said it was fine, but as she approached the children, their terror of strangers meant that they all fled. Just a toddler of about 2 or 3 was left on the swing - she started to scream when she say the others left her.

Where were the adults? At the end of the village we found, at last a small group of elderly woman & older girls splitting flax with large, sharp knives. There was also an old man sitting with them drinking Lao Lao (Lao rice wine whiskey - it tastes like paint stripper) from a plastic cup. He greeted Doua and then us and passed round the cup for us all to drink the whiskey. It would have been impolite to refuse - so we all tasted it - despite the green slime on the inside of the cup & his rotten teeth. Once again we saw what is typical in Laos, much more so even than Thailand. The men laze around while the women do all the work - from 4am until late at night these women work. What’s more they have anywhere from 6 to11 children per family, and according to Doua, as they can marry at 14, often have 3 or 4 kids by the time they reach 20 and are worn out women with bad backs by the time they reach 30.

So, we’ve found the young & the old, but where are the adults? At the rice fields. Seven days a week these people rise at 4am (not too hard actually - as the roosters are so noisy at this time its nearly impossible to sleep), fetch water from the nearest stream, boil the water (as its not safe to drink in Laos - not even for the locals) cook up some rice or noodles and depart for the fields by 6am. For families of this Khamu tribe we visited, due to the scarcity of land and the need to keep at least 2km of trees around the village in order to keep it cool, their rice paddies were a 2 hour walk away. Each day they made the trek, got to the fields by 8am, worked hard for hours, had lunch, worked a bit more, trekked home & got home in time to do more chores & fetch water & cook dinner over open fires for their families.

After leaving the village we tramped and tramped and tramped. It turns out that our evening destination was 1700 metres above sea level, 1000 metres above LP and 15km from where the boat dropped us off. It was a hot day - and a wearying journey. Luckily the group on our tour were all fit - Doua said that he had had previous tourists in tears of ‘I can’t do it’. Tears, yes tears. And what else had made other tourist groups cry? What is dear (or rather the opposite of dear) to my heart? Giant Spiders. Everywhere!!! Either side of the bush we were tramping through was covered with opaque half to full metre oval shaped webs. I tried hard not to look at them - as when did I saw spiders as large as my fist, black & very evil looking, lying in wait. For me, as an arachnophobe, the only way I completed the journey was through constant self talk (no I’m not going mad) & by concentrating on the feet of the person in front of me. I couldn’t look up as huge webs hung down from the trees above us, and made sure I was always behind someone taller than myself, just in case. Luckily there were no major ‘incidents’.

We reached our evening’s destination, a Hmong Village of 27 families high up in the mountains, about an hour before sunset. We wandered through the village as our guide was busy cooking our dinner over the open fire inside. They have the fires inside to get rid of mosquitoes - and keep the huts warm at night. What an amazing village. The complete opposite of what we had seen at Chiang Mai, these people were completely unused to Westerners. They didn’t speak English, didn’t thrust items on us and best of all didn’t beg. What they did do was all come out of their homes & stare. The children in particular would stare from a safe distance & then go and hide when you got close. When we (finally) publish some pictures I can’t wait to add the ones to this site. These people have to work for everything! The village, perched high on the mountain on a now bare and eroded patch of red earth, is 6-7 minutes walk to the nearest water source. As we walked up the track to the village we passed a 70 year old women in traditional costumer closing the ‘gate’ (i.e. replacing some bamboo branches in place in a wall) to the green vegetable fields, to ensure that the livestock didn’t get in. She carried a load of banana leaves filled with veges on her back and walked the last few kms back t the village. Doua said that she was in her 70s and was asking him for medicine (knowing he was based in Luang Prabang) as she was extremely tired. I would be too if I had to do manual labour every day at her age. Unfortunately Dou said that it was worse than that as it seemed like she had diabetes. Why bad? Because in Laos, most people don’t have the money, let alone the access to a doctor or medicine.

Despite all of this, our Hmong Village rang with children’s laughter. What’s more it seemed a very fecund village. Every where there were free-range sows surrounded by baby piglets (so cute), dogs with their puppies, hens with their chickens (despite our precautions re bird flu there is no escaping them in Laos - even in the cities we were woken each morning by the roosters roaming around our guesthouses) the odd cat, many goats and some beautiful horses who were the only animals not ‘free range’.

We watched the sun set over the village, and the surrounding mountains, then proceeded to enjoy a delicious meal of noodles, beef, some herbs, veggies & spices, by candlelight inside our hut. Dou took us to view Luang Prabang sparkling far away down below. We then performed our evening ablutions which like the animals were also free range. To me, with childhood memories of being too terrified to go in awful, small, dark long-drops filled with enormous spiders ready to drop on you , this was actually a relief. Never the less I took Brendon with me to clear away any spiders webs - just in case.

IN the dark, with no electricity, there was nothing much left to do but sleep. A welcome idea to us exhausted travellers. Our ‘beds’ were some blankets placed over wood - which was also used as a table. All the tourists slept together, Doua, his family & the porters slept on the other side. Sleep was slow to come however, what with constant rustling (was that mice or spiders - or merely someone moving around in bed), the cold coming down through the thatched rough, and our sore bodies on the hard boards. Sleep stopped for me completely after something very large dropped on my hip in the middle of the night. I whacked it away and was absolutely terrified (a huge spider???), but not knowing what else was out there & with no other options, lay curled up in a ball in absolute terror, not moving and barely breathing for over two hours. After that, with what ever it was not moving back on to me & the reassuring sounds of Cordula on my left & Brendon on my right I slowly relaxed a little and slept fitfully until the 4am chorus of roosters and our hosts rising to start their long days. We stayed in bed until just after dawn, had a nice breakfast of scrambled egg on baguette and went on our way for day 2.
For day 2 watch this space - it is 3.30pm and I need to go to lunch.

Thank you Lord for our daily bread

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