Laos (Day 166)
We loved Laos, where we found a tranquil slice of Southeast Asia along the upper Mekong River and in Luang Prabang.
We started with 3 days on a small boat on the Mekong river. We crossed the boarder from Thailand and walked down a slippery dirt path to a wooden plank and got on board. It was the most peaceful place in our 2 months in Southeast Asia.
The river was very quiet, with few towns or other boats as we snaked eastward from the Thai border to Luang Prabang. We saw far more water buffalo than people.
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BBQ DINNER
On our first night, we stopped at a deserted sandbar for a BBQ dinner.
The night was completely dark; there were no towns in the area, not even street lights. Electricity is still scarce in this part of Laos, and you could see the stars quite well at night. In the morning, we woke to the sound of the flowing river and a few far away roosters announcing the new day.
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KHMU VILLAGE
We visited a small Khmu village. The Khmu are one of many ethnic minorities in Laos, which is very diverse for a small country. There are over 150 different ethnic groups that make up about half the population (with over 80 different languages!) in a country of about 7 million people – similar size to Massachusetts.
This village felt very different from many of the small towns we saw in other parts of Asia. There was no electric power, and people lived in handmade huts.
We saw fish and a dead rat drying in the sun. We learned that local villagers hunt rats for food. (The rat is on the stick on top.)
The village kids mostly seemed to be wearing donated clothes. Very young children mostly went naked, diapers probably being too expensive. Some older children were taking showers in public water spouts, watched over by an old woman so thin you see her ribs.
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BACI CEREMONY
We also visited a small town that was ethnically Lao and comparatively much richer. The houses had glass windows, a few electric lights, and linoleum floors in as many rooms as possible. Linoleum floors are viewed as a luxury in many of the villages we visited in Asia. Pretty, no splinters, and easy to clean.
Improbably, one of these houses with linoleum floors was the site for one of our most beautiful religious ceremonies. Baci (“Ba-SEE”) is an important tradition in Laos, coming originally from the pre-Buddhist local animist religion. It is performed to celebrate important occasions (like marriage or the birth of a child) or to welcome visitors or guests. To oversimplify, the Baci ceremony involves tying many white bracelets around a person’s wrist for good fortune. It is usually performed by village elders who gather around a display called a Pah Kwan and mystically chant while tying the bracelets.
The patriarch of the family started by offering us homemade rice whiskey stored in an old plastic water bottle. Jamie took him up on it, and he seemed pleased to toast us and have us toast him.
Over time, around 15 elders arrived and gathered around the elaborate Pah Kwan – a silver tray with flowers, banana leaves, bamboo sticks and hundreds of white threads that represent peace, good fortune, and community.
The elders began chanting — sometimes in unison, sometimes each on their own. They took strings from the Pah Kwan and began to tie them around our wrists.
They would take turns tying the symbolic threads around one person’s wrist and then on to the next. Each person had their own way of tying the threads, and each came with a blessing and often a special way of rubbing the bracelet. We all ended up with our arms covered around 15 separate bracelets for each of us. It felt mystical, genuine, and inclusive.
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PAK OU CAVES
One of our last stops along with river was at some caves high up overlooking the river.
Around 250 years ago, when the country was overrun by Chinese invaders, local monks hid thousands of Buddha statues in these caves. They remain here today and have been added to by travelers. Caves continued to be a surprise theme of the trip, with cave visits in at least half of the countries.
At the end of our voyage, we disembarked at Luang Prabang.
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LUANG PRABANG
Luang Prabang is a small town that is unusually rich in history and tradition, with 33 temples and maybe 1000 monks in an area about the size of Edgartown, MA. The former capital of Laos, it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We had a wonderful afternoon learning from an expat architect who was part of the UNESCO preservation team. Most Lao houses are built on stilts to avoid being destroyed by seasonal floods. Many houses have plaster on the outside that is made with boiled buffalo skin! The natural properties of the skin help make the plaster flexible and waterproof. It takes 25 buffalo skins to plaster a house. Today, they are still doing restorations of houses in this traditional way.
Monks are required to do meditative work. You often see them sweeping, which has spiritual significance in Theravada Buddhism.
As in Thailand and Myanmar, Laos has a tradition of giving alms to the monks. 100’s of saffron robed monks come out every morning before sunrise to be given rice and other offerings.
In the 20th century, tiny Laos became the most bombed country in history on a per capita basis. And the bombing was done by us! (Related to the Vietnam war.) Souvenir sellers now offer little heart shaped metal trinkets made from unexploded ordinance with the theme of “love not bombs.”
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WATERFALLS
One day, we took a boat ride down the river to visit some local waterfalls.
Hazel and Ashley swam out to the waterfall and climbed around the rushing water and the rocks.
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LE PETIT PRINCE
We had a fascinating afternoon with Prince Tiao Somsanith Nithakhong, a multitalented artist and intellectual, who is a descendant of the old royal family. He grew up surrounded by Lao culture, but that ended when the Communists came to power and banned the traditional courtly arts. He sought asylum in France, earned his PhD, and later returned to the country when he sensed it was opening to the world and to its own historical artistic traditions. Both a practicing artist and an enthusiastic teacher of the old ways, he has dedicated himself to rebuilding a generation of local artisans who can preserving ancient temple carvings, make traditional instruments, etc.
Here is the Prince’s art studio (also his living room).
We had a wonderful Baci ceremony.
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SILK WEAVING
One of our favorite activities was learning to weave our own silk scarf on a traditional wooden loom. We went to a handicraft center built in a tree house over the river on the outskirts of town. We got to pick our silk colors and spool our own rolls of thread. You operate the loom by pushing the foot pedals while you run the shuttle of thread back and forth.
Here, Ashley shows her silk weaving technique.
Hazel’s finished product!
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RICE PLANTING
Our 3rd chance to learn how to plant rice was our messiest and most informative!
We walked around barefoot up to our knees in mud! This is way more fun — and how traditional farmers really do it.
Hazel drove the buffalo to till the fields. It was hard work!
There are 14 steps in planting and harvesting rice. A long and complex process! Here are just a few of the things we learned;
A family of 5 needs 1 ton of rice for a year. You can grow that on about 2.5 acres.
Here are the steps involved in just picking which grains of rice are best to plant:
Take a bucket of water.
Put a chicken egg in.
Add salt until the chicken egg floats.
Put the rice in. Some grains of rice will float and others will sink to the bottom.
Collect the rice that sinks to the bottom. Those are the ones you want to plant. (A lot of work!)
The farmers try to use every bit of the rice and have no waste. At different points along the way, the parts you don’t eat are used as feed for animals, parts for brooms or mattress stuffing, and even to make rice wine!
You keep 5 percent of your rice to plant for next season.
Husking the rice is traditionally a job only for women. It is so important that if a woman can’t do it, she can never get married!
The kids loved thrashing the rice.
At the end, we enjoyed some tasty rice treats!
