Sabai dee pi mai (Live well in the new year)
Well.. where to start, this has been a holiday season like none other. Last time I posted I mentioned that I was heading to the north, and I did, but of course not without something happening that is of course typical of my adventures. Friday, Dec 15 I attended a fantastic Christmas party put on by the French Language Cultural Centre, which played it kinky reggae late into the night. The next day I was quite fatigued and thought it would be a great idea to go down to Stickie's and get some comfort in a steak and kidney pie. Unfortunately for me it turned out to be my friend the cook's birthday and was unable to escape the celebrations after closing time. This then led me home much later than planned to pack my bags, which I didn't and slept passed the morning bus departure. Still no worries at this point as there is always the overnight bus to the northland that would arrive in Luang Prabang just in time for me to shower up and make it to the morning tour of a watershed and water testing project, or so I thought....
This is the scene at probably the highest point in the mountains on the trip north. The bus on the left there is in the same place that it had been for about 8 hours after blowing a head gasket leaving us to sleep in it in about 4 degree weather. Glad I brought a few sweaters I tell ya. The crew around the fire there were great, we had some dried fish, salty chicken out of a bag, and of course the guy that was carrying the Kalashnikov at the back of the bus also supplied a bottle of Lao rice whiskey to keep us warm at 7 a.m.
The aftermath of the fire, alongside a few "new" pistons, a well used replacement head gasket and the mechanic's tooling that appeared once the morning bus to the north appeared to save us and departed only after the whiskey was done... I don't mean to give you the wrong impression here that I or Lao people are alcoholics, it's not true, I just think they have a very different idea of moderation at times. (Ask me about the karaoke that the uncanny resemblance to reggae rapping that I have to try and fall asleep to each night). Also, consider the season, these folks are way more into celebrating anybody's holiday more than the land in which they are celebrated it seems, take away the commercialism, add more booze and laughter over a longer period of time and it is the same same but different I'd say.
A view of the landscape where I slept somewhat as the sun rose, when another truck or bus had to pass there was about an inch on one side to the edge of a cliff, and an inch from scrapping the side of our bus.
Here's my first YouTube, now you can vicariously drive through some Laotian mountain roads... enjoy! Keep your eyes peeled and you might catch the many free-range goats, chickens, turkeys and pigs.
So I eventually did join the rest of the CUSO and New Zealand VSA (Voluntary Service Overseas) folks to take in a tour of rural upland agriculture research and to learn about the issues at large.
The trees in the forefront of this panorama are rubber trees, which are increasingly becoming popular things to grow in the highlands, unfortunately, not by the local villagers. Large chunks of land are deforested for lumber, most of which is sold to China and Vietnam. In turn, Chinese and Vietnamese investors want rubber plantations, and strike a deal with various ministries and factions of the government. There are very good protection laws here, people just don't know about them and I guess money and the guys with guns are the ones that talk l0udest to the layman villager. I don't know all the details and really, and don't think this is the forum for them. I'll just say yes it is beautiful here, and increasingly feel that the more issues I hear about here, the more I am reminded of issues in our own backyard.
A Khmu (one of the various minority ethnicities in the highlands) village. There is a growing trend of relocation of highland peoples into lower lands, the excuse given is access to services and better land use management. Wonder if anyone considers the livelihood of these people over the profits to be gained from what are now, for the time being, abundant natural resources. Yeah whatever Erik, you young idealist. (Refusing to become jaded)
Dad.. could you imagine ripping board and baton like this or what!.. It is for house siding too. Truly incredible how straight of a split I thought.
Some riverbed agriculture (early watermelons in this case), just down the road from the above village. The plastic is placed over each furrow to hold in moisture in the dry season. I've now been here for going on two months and every single day has been blue sky and sunny. It's just getting dustier.
This waterwheel irrigates the below cabbage patch, which I thought was ingenious until I saw the same set-up in a really bad Jackie Chan Disney movie on HBO the other night which took place in the early 19th century which made me think that it's probably been done like that forever, still ingenious, just not as unique as I thought it was. Yes I know, deep thoughts.
We all be chillin' in the cabbage patch, no babies or storks to be found. Or Dana's either Julia. Sorry folks, weenie statement for the sis.
Luang Prabang from Phousie Mountain at sunrise, a few of us got up at 5 for this, way too early, the sun came up at 6:45 like I said it would but well worth it. Luang Prabang is a UN World Heritage City, and you can tell. Beauty cobble sidewalks, French bistros, I again found myself in “not the real Laos”. It has been elusive finding this so called real Laos living in the big rich city of Vientiane and touring so far only to the other major tourist centres, but really, I don’t speak enough Lao right now to actually be able to immerse myself in Lao culture and all my experiences have been quite visceral and real indeed. Also, I have to say it is amazing how a book such as the Lonely Planet can affect the places to go. You can really tell what places are in the book…
The Luang Prabang Night Market, all sorts of touristy stuff mixed with other really nice stuff. About 300 m of one of the main street is closed every night for merchants to set up and sell their goods. Lanterns, textiles, Hmong, Khmu, and Akha people’s traditional jewelry, big fancy opium pipes, Thai rock VCDs, all sorts of food stuffs. It’s pretty neat but repetitive, every 50 m seems to have the same merchandise.
This is actually insects, they grow on the bark of a tree that grows something that looks like snow peas. The peas are edible but Lao people don’t eat them and they are used for livestock feed. These white insects eventually cocoon and create a resin that is collected and is used in many things that I can’t remember at the moment, but plastics and varnishes, shellacs and whatnot. This was at a highland agricultural research station that was looking into different types of plants that are profitable, therefore desirable to grow around the main growing area during the fallowing period. Having trees around the area also help retain nutrients in the soil as come rainy season, this country gets over 1.5 meters of the wet stuff in 4-6 short months, which is basically the annual precipitation, and is not conducive to keeping nutrients in the soil of the steep slopes.
Bounnie from CUSO and Hmong new year festivities. Bounlahn is the Cooperant Assistant here in Laos and will be unfortunately her contract was not renewed. She has been fantastic in helping learn the dos and don’ts of Lao culture and helping me settle in to life and work. A bunch of us went out in LPB to thank her and had a blast. The people she is standing with are Hmong and playing their new year mate selection game. It involves tossing a ball back and forth, and back and forth in two lines. I asked if the guys drop the ball, are they not the chosen one, but it turns out that it's no problem, they just toss the ball and decide if they like each other.
Stopped for the view on my way back south to Vang Vieng for Christmas.
One of many caves in Vang Vieng, I was about a km back in this one. Vang Vieng is a beautiful place, however, it is now one of those “musts” for every back-packer that comes through Laos. Which has changed it considerably I would imagine. The main drag is just bars and restaurants, serving “happy” food if you want. After a happy meal, many tourists simply lie around and watch Friends or The Simpson's on one of the TV's that are everywhere.
Christmas friends in the cave in Vang Vieng. On the left is Evegny (he let me know it means Eugene) from Russia, next Jen from B.C, studied masters in Guelph and now works in Bangkok, Vanessa from Switzerland, and freaky on the right. I stayed across the river from the madness where I found a great group of people all that where travelling alone and had the same idea to find something away from tourista mayhem. Joe, the Irish owner of the guesthouse was great and even did up a big Christmas dinner for us. No turkey but great BBQ kebabs. Joe has all the topography maps of the area and I hope to get up there again for some orienteering and a trek half way up the mountain with him.
On the way back to Vientiane I took and sung-tao, basically, a pick-up truck with some benches in the back. It was a 4 hour drive but only cost 25,000 KIP or approx. $2.50 USD. Butt gets sore and it gets really packed at times, but it is faster and more reliable than the bus, half the price, and they leave every 20 minutes to wherever you are going.. so I'd do it again.
Papayas in the back yard at home. For new years, I attended the festivities at the National Stadium where I work. It was quite the party, lots of hand dancing, some line dancing, all to a guy on a keyboard and various people taking turns to sing. They love to sing here. A couple of Cuban's got up and did Guantanamara too. Loads of food, tables filled with beer and a couple bottles of Johnny Deang (Red), enough said. Champagne was only for the VIPs though.
My 50cc Hawg, it's a Honda Super Cub and has be be getting on 30. The odometer stopped working but it's stuck at 8000 km. I'm getting way too used to it and am thinking I should buy it. It is for sale and I'm just driving it for now, an old roomie who left to travel wants $350 USD for it but I can get a recent model used Chinese 125 cc bike for less than $200. We'll see what happens, I'd say it's safer on the roads on a motorbike than it is traveling by pedal power.
Emerald Buddha temple in Vientiane. The Emerald no longer resides here. The Siamese (Thai) stole the last time they raided and it now is in Bangkok somewhere.
Vientiane Sunset
Buddha park 30 km out of Vientiane near the Thai-Lao bridge. It was built in the late 50's and is filled whith statues and scenes of all the Hindu gods, of which Buddha is only one.
Teaching is starting and will be the subject of my next post I figure. I now have a class with 2 computers donated from Vietnam (which I had to pretty much completely take apart and rebuild to get to work), an LCD projector, Windows running on my mac and a 1 dollar full version copy of MS Office 2003 intalled on my WindowsXP partition on my Mac with which to demonstrate. After I teach about the whole part about the power button, loging in, the mouse etc. of course. Feel free to drop me a comment! Would love to hear from all you that I can see that are reading. Ciao for now.
This is the scene at probably the highest point in the mountains on the trip north. The bus on the left there is in the same place that it had been for about 8 hours after blowing a head gasket leaving us to sleep in it in about 4 degree weather. Glad I brought a few sweaters I tell ya. The crew around the fire there were great, we had some dried fish, salty chicken out of a bag, and of course the guy that was carrying the Kalashnikov at the back of the bus also supplied a bottle of Lao rice whiskey to keep us warm at 7 a.m.
The aftermath of the fire, alongside a few "new" pistons, a well used replacement head gasket and the mechanic's tooling that appeared once the morning bus to the north appeared to save us and departed only after the whiskey was done... I don't mean to give you the wrong impression here that I or Lao people are alcoholics, it's not true, I just think they have a very different idea of moderation at times. (Ask me about the karaoke that the uncanny resemblance to reggae rapping that I have to try and fall asleep to each night). Also, consider the season, these folks are way more into celebrating anybody's holiday more than the land in which they are celebrated it seems, take away the commercialism, add more booze and laughter over a longer period of time and it is the same same but different I'd say.
A view of the landscape where I slept somewhat as the sun rose, when another truck or bus had to pass there was about an inch on one side to the edge of a cliff, and an inch from scrapping the side of our bus.Here's my first YouTube, now you can vicariously drive through some Laotian mountain roads... enjoy! Keep your eyes peeled and you might catch the many free-range goats, chickens, turkeys and pigs.
So I eventually did join the rest of the CUSO and New Zealand VSA (Voluntary Service Overseas) folks to take in a tour of rural upland agriculture research and to learn about the issues at large.
The trees in the forefront of this panorama are rubber trees, which are increasingly becoming popular things to grow in the highlands, unfortunately, not by the local villagers. Large chunks of land are deforested for lumber, most of which is sold to China and Vietnam. In turn, Chinese and Vietnamese investors want rubber plantations, and strike a deal with various ministries and factions of the government. There are very good protection laws here, people just don't know about them and I guess money and the guys with guns are the ones that talk l0udest to the layman villager. I don't know all the details and really, and don't think this is the forum for them. I'll just say yes it is beautiful here, and increasingly feel that the more issues I hear about here, the more I am reminded of issues in our own backyard.
A Khmu (one of the various minority ethnicities in the highlands) village. There is a growing trend of relocation of highland peoples into lower lands, the excuse given is access to services and better land use management. Wonder if anyone considers the livelihood of these people over the profits to be gained from what are now, for the time being, abundant natural resources. Yeah whatever Erik, you young idealist. (Refusing to become jaded)
Dad.. could you imagine ripping board and baton like this or what!.. It is for house siding too. Truly incredible how straight of a split I thought.
Some riverbed agriculture (early watermelons in this case), just down the road from the above village. The plastic is placed over each furrow to hold in moisture in the dry season. I've now been here for going on two months and every single day has been blue sky and sunny. It's just getting dustier.
This waterwheel irrigates the below cabbage patch, which I thought was ingenious until I saw the same set-up in a really bad Jackie Chan Disney movie on HBO the other night which took place in the early 19th century which made me think that it's probably been done like that forever, still ingenious, just not as unique as I thought it was. Yes I know, deep thoughts.
We all be chillin' in the cabbage patch, no babies or storks to be found. Or Dana's either Julia. Sorry folks, weenie statement for the sis.
Luang Prabang from Phousie Mountain at sunrise, a few of us got up at 5 for this, way too early, the sun came up at 6:45 like I said it would but well worth it. Luang Prabang is a UN World Heritage City, and you can tell. Beauty cobble sidewalks, French bistros, I again found myself in “not the real Laos”. It has been elusive finding this so called real Laos living in the big rich city of Vientiane and touring so far only to the other major tourist centres, but really, I don’t speak enough Lao right now to actually be able to immerse myself in Lao culture and all my experiences have been quite visceral and real indeed. Also, I have to say it is amazing how a book such as the Lonely Planet can affect the places to go. You can really tell what places are in the book…
The Luang Prabang Night Market, all sorts of touristy stuff mixed with other really nice stuff. About 300 m of one of the main street is closed every night for merchants to set up and sell their goods. Lanterns, textiles, Hmong, Khmu, and Akha people’s traditional jewelry, big fancy opium pipes, Thai rock VCDs, all sorts of food stuffs. It’s pretty neat but repetitive, every 50 m seems to have the same merchandise.
This is actually insects, they grow on the bark of a tree that grows something that looks like snow peas. The peas are edible but Lao people don’t eat them and they are used for livestock feed. These white insects eventually cocoon and create a resin that is collected and is used in many things that I can’t remember at the moment, but plastics and varnishes, shellacs and whatnot. This was at a highland agricultural research station that was looking into different types of plants that are profitable, therefore desirable to grow around the main growing area during the fallowing period. Having trees around the area also help retain nutrients in the soil as come rainy season, this country gets over 1.5 meters of the wet stuff in 4-6 short months, which is basically the annual precipitation, and is not conducive to keeping nutrients in the soil of the steep slopes.
Bounnie from CUSO and Hmong new year festivities. Bounlahn is the Cooperant Assistant here in Laos and will be unfortunately her contract was not renewed. She has been fantastic in helping learn the dos and don’ts of Lao culture and helping me settle in to life and work. A bunch of us went out in LPB to thank her and had a blast. The people she is standing with are Hmong and playing their new year mate selection game. It involves tossing a ball back and forth, and back and forth in two lines. I asked if the guys drop the ball, are they not the chosen one, but it turns out that it's no problem, they just toss the ball and decide if they like each other.
Stopped for the view on my way back south to Vang Vieng for Christmas.
One of many caves in Vang Vieng, I was about a km back in this one. Vang Vieng is a beautiful place, however, it is now one of those “musts” for every back-packer that comes through Laos. Which has changed it considerably I would imagine. The main drag is just bars and restaurants, serving “happy” food if you want. After a happy meal, many tourists simply lie around and watch Friends or The Simpson's on one of the TV's that are everywhere.
Christmas friends in the cave in Vang Vieng. On the left is Evegny (he let me know it means Eugene) from Russia, next Jen from B.C, studied masters in Guelph and now works in Bangkok, Vanessa from Switzerland, and freaky on the right. I stayed across the river from the madness where I found a great group of people all that where travelling alone and had the same idea to find something away from tourista mayhem. Joe, the Irish owner of the guesthouse was great and even did up a big Christmas dinner for us. No turkey but great BBQ kebabs. Joe has all the topography maps of the area and I hope to get up there again for some orienteering and a trek half way up the mountain with him.On the way back to Vientiane I took and sung-tao, basically, a pick-up truck with some benches in the back. It was a 4 hour drive but only cost 25,000 KIP or approx. $2.50 USD. Butt gets sore and it gets really packed at times, but it is faster and more reliable than the bus, half the price, and they leave every 20 minutes to wherever you are going.. so I'd do it again.
Papayas in the back yard at home. For new years, I attended the festivities at the National Stadium where I work. It was quite the party, lots of hand dancing, some line dancing, all to a guy on a keyboard and various people taking turns to sing. They love to sing here. A couple of Cuban's got up and did Guantanamara too. Loads of food, tables filled with beer and a couple bottles of Johnny Deang (Red), enough said. Champagne was only for the VIPs though.
My 50cc Hawg, it's a Honda Super Cub and has be be getting on 30. The odometer stopped working but it's stuck at 8000 km. I'm getting way too used to it and am thinking I should buy it. It is for sale and I'm just driving it for now, an old roomie who left to travel wants $350 USD for it but I can get a recent model used Chinese 125 cc bike for less than $200. We'll see what happens, I'd say it's safer on the roads on a motorbike than it is traveling by pedal power.
Emerald Buddha temple in Vientiane. The Emerald no longer resides here. The Siamese (Thai) stole the last time they raided and it now is in Bangkok somewhere.
Vientiane Sunset
Buddha park 30 km out of Vientiane near the Thai-Lao bridge. It was built in the late 50's and is filled whith statues and scenes of all the Hindu gods, of which Buddha is only one.Teaching is starting and will be the subject of my next post I figure. I now have a class with 2 computers donated from Vietnam (which I had to pretty much completely take apart and rebuild to get to work), an LCD projector, Windows running on my mac and a 1 dollar full version copy of MS Office 2003 intalled on my WindowsXP partition on my Mac with which to demonstrate. After I teach about the whole part about the power button, loging in, the mouse etc. of course. Feel free to drop me a comment! Would love to hear from all you that I can see that are reading. Ciao for now.
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