Luang Namtha

So happy to be back in Laos, where the hills are green and beautiful and the girls wear long skirts.

It took me a long time to get to the bus station at Houixei this morning, and by the time I arrived the nine o'clock bus for Luang namtha had left. They sold me a ticket anyway and put my bag on the back seat of the bus. Gradually during the course of the morning people drifted in to the bus station and sat watching a TV soap. There were only two buses in the bus station, which was surrounded by a field. On one side of the field a few tables and chairs under some trees indicated a cafe of sorts. A woman was making green papaya salad, so I had some. A group of Lao men were drinking beer. And so the morning passed, reading, wandering about, sitting. Then at midday the bus filled up and left.

A few miles out of Houixei the road surface gave up altogether. For the next two hours the bus rattled and ground up bendy mountain roads in a cloud of dust. The one hundred and eighty kilometre trip took four hours, four hours of green hillsides, thatched roof houses on stilts, slash and burn agriculture, rice fields and the bus driver singing along to the Lao pop music CDs he played at top volume

Back to the Laos Border

Back to the border, watching the sun go down over the Mekong, from Chaing Khong. On the other side of the river Houixei awaits.

Doi Tung Royal Villa

In theory it should be possible to get to Doi Tung by public transport. In practice I got the bus as far as it would take me, then when it deposited me at the side of the road, where it veered off to the left, the only form of transport on offer at this point was a motorbike. I looked at the motorbike and decided that I would rather go back to Chiang Rai than sit on the back of that thing for forty kilometres. Then I had a bright idea. Why not hitch a ride with one of the tourist cars going past every two minutes. Luckily for me one stopped for lunch and the occupants, a surly bunch of Finnish people, grudgingly let me ride in the boot, like a dog, and like a dog they ignored me for the whole ride, up the swirling, curving mountain road, through steep sided hills.

The "villa" at Doi Tung is a giant Swiss chalet, designed by the King's mother when she was eighty eight. But instead of building it  Swiss style out of whole trees, she had them build a concrete shell and cover it with off-cuts from the teak industry. She lined the inside of the building with wood recycled from pine packing cases. Then she designed a garden full of plants from temperate countries, so that Thai people who could not afford to travel could experience these plants.

Photographs of the Princess mother show a lovely smiling woman with white hair. Concerned that the hill tribes were destroying the environment by their slash and burn agriculture, she institued a crop-substitution and reforestation programme for twenty six villages.

The gardens at Doi Tung are full of birdsong, streams and fountains. Armies of gardeners dressed in brilliant purple shirts plant out flowers (is this part of the crop-substitution programme?)

Oub Kham Museum, Chiang Rai

I was the only tourist to visit the museum this morning. Maybe because it costs 300 baht (six pounds!) The museum is dedicated to the Lanna Kingdom, which covered a large swathe of southern China, northern Vietnam, Laos, northern Thailand, northern Burma and northern Assam. It was a federation of tribal states, each with their own king or queen, who wore clothes of gold cloth and sat on thrones covered with gold leaf. The kingdom lasted nearly two thousand years.

The museum was built by a private antique dealer, who spent his whole life travelling the length and breadth of the ancient Lanna kingdom, buying and selling antiques from the region. He managed to accummulate a goodly collection of silver, gold plated, bronze and lacquer objects and several tribal costumes, which are all housed in poorly lit glass-fronted cases, in brick built rooms with corrugated iron roofs, round a couple of courtyards.

The courtyards are decorated with old pieces of wooden sculpture, tree ferns, plastic orchids and hideous modern clay figures. Waterfalls and fountains provide a background sound , together with a tape that sounds like the soundtrack to a bad movie.

All the objects are fussily intricate. There are far too many of them in each room and the overall effect is kitch.

Lanna means a million rice fields. The Lanna kingdom originated in Chiang Saen some time before the seventh century. Chiang Saen is rich in Lanna history, archeology and art. But it was not until King Meng Rai (1239-1317) became king in 1259 that the warring tribes of the area were quelled and the kingdom united. All the kings and queens continued to rule their small principalities, under King Meng Rai. He used Chiang Saen as his northern defensive outpost. By the fourteenth century Chiang Saen had eight watch towers and eleven gates. It was one of the best planned cities in the world and a centre of Buddhist thought.

The Lanna kingdom fell apart in 1568, after an economic crisis caused by building too many temples. Then the Burmese took over.

Chiang Rai

Well I haven't changed my opinion of Chiang Rai. It's still a dump.
But it comes alive at night, with a night market that surrounds two stages, one either end of two large seating/eating areas. One end the seats and tables are all wooden and the stage is encased in a cut metal structure, built to look like a temple, that glitters silver in the night. Here customers pay top dollar for their food and drinks and are waited on. At the other end the stage is unnadorned and the tables and chairs yellow painted metal. The customers go and get their own food and drink from the stalls that line the walls of the area.
I spent time at both ends, first the posh end, watching a kitch show of transvestites in long pink dresses (when I arrived there were some young Thai musicians trying to play traditional music. I wasn't expecting this sudden turn of events!) Later in the evening I met my friend Richard and his Thai wife, who invited me to sit at the plebian tables and proceeded to cover the table with shish kebabs, chips, sushi, nuts, flagons of beer and fruit juice.

The market place is far less impressive than the one in Luang Prabang. Only a few tribal women from the Akha tribe, Lua tribe and maybe one other selling a few things. Lots of stalls selling new stuff - knickers, teashirts etc.

Chiang Rai

I needn't have worried about catching local busses in Thailand. The whole country is swarming with tourists and all the busses have their destinations written in English as well as Thai. Bus conductors come and find you and lead you to your bus, just in case you are blind or completely stupid.

The crate I came in from the Laos border was a traditional old bone shaker that rattled along pretty terrible roads , taking the corners very slowly. You pay about a pound and then sit on the thing for three hours, through desolate burnt countryside (they still burn the rice stubble - and often all sorts of other things, like banana trees, by mistake).

Well the one good thing in Chiang Rai is the chemist, which has automatic closing doors, air-conditioning and girls in white coats who look as if they have studied pharmacy and who speak good English. At the moment I really can't think of anything else to recommend it, except maybe that it's relatively quiet and cheap enough.
Thai girls are out in their short shorts and skimpy tops, hunting. An assortment of sleazy men haunt the bars, where the girls crawl all over them. I knew there was a reason why I didn't want to go to Thailand. After the modestly dressed girls of Laos, who pay no attention to tourists at all, this is a bit of a shock.

My first night I was kept awake for what seemed like hours by a discothec playing top volume and tourists shouting at the tops of their voices. Now I have moved to a quieter place.

I still have the cough, despite the antibiotics and cough medicine, but my voice is beginning to come back.

Houi Xei

Stuck in Houixei, border town on the edge of Thailand.
The boat trip up the Mekong just about finished me off.
I left Luang Prabang with a sore throat and arrived in Houixei with no voice at all and a cough like a machine gun that kept me awake all night. Too tired to move on I took everything that the local chemist had to offer, which wasn't much. A few strepsyls that tasted like they had been made locally using the Mekong river weed and left the roof of my mouth raw, some tablets that advertised themselves as cough suppressants and expectorants, but had hardly any effect at all - probably because they had been in the chemist shop for ages in the heat. The 'chemist' in this one-horse town is run by a little school girl most of the time, who dishes out antibiotics and anything else that anyone wants and takes the money. They did warn me that there is no health service in Laos.

So after four days of coughing and having no voice I'd had enough. And I'd finished most of my reading material. There is one book exchange here. I can see why people left the books that they did, but I can't understand why they bought any of them in the first place. Finding nothing that I would remotely consider reading, I decided against leaving my (quite good) books here. I will haul them with me, to Thailand.

So tomorrow morning I set off on foot down to the river, to cross over to Thailand on the other side.
Then I must catch a tuk tuk to the bus station and find a bus to Chang Rai, where I have decided to go, because it has a hospital but it's less polluted than Chang Mai. It might be a bit of a challenge finding the bus to Chang Rai with no voice! I can't read the Thai alphabet.

So all my plans to travel to the north of Lao have come to nothing. I'm leaving the country ten days before my visa expires, but the best made plans . . .and all that.

Upriver to Buddha Cave

Early morning sun 
glitters on fast moving water
the air is still
river banks rocky
feathery fronds of bamboo
sprout like green fountains.
teak plantations,
leafless and bare,
hills covered in thick undergrowth
of secondary forest,
fish traps,
palm trees
and occasional thatched stilt houses.

We went on a little boat with a noisy engine, up river, our captain steering the boat through channels between hidden rocks, one side of the river, then the other, between steep wooded banks, rocky peaks and layers of blue hills beyond. The Mekong is low. It's the dry season. As the river goes down, Lao people plant thin strips of crops on the exposed alluvial soil, right down to the water's edge.

Further upstream, steep rocky outcrops, sugared with fluffy green vegatation, rise, majestically on the edge of the river.

Steep steps lead to a cave with an impressive carved wooden entrance. All the way up the path village children sell painted shells and caged birds (for you to set free). Inside the cave there is a pantheon of miniature Buddha statues, some broken, some half eaten by woodworm, dusty and forlorn, on ledges, built up of bricks, in little natural alcoves. Deep inside the cave is a large lingam, decorated with nylon gold cloth, ribbons and the remains of melted candles.

More than four thousand Buddha sculptures, carved from wood, moulded from tree resin, coated with red and black lacquer or covered in gold leaf,. have been put in these caves by worshippers. A few are carved from animal horn or made of bronze or ceramic. Pious Buddhists have crafted these little Buddha statues to offer them in the cave.

My Mekong travels will be severely curtailed by low water and lack of boats. On sunday I am taking a boat up north, when Catherine leaves to fly back to Australia. But after that it will be busses all the way. There are no boats going south from Luang Prabang, nor indeed from Vientiane.  Ever since good roads were built the river traffic has dwindled. When the giant dams the Chinese are building are finished I fear the Mekong may be drained completely dry in the dry season.

The picture is actually of the Mekong in Thailand after the rainy season. It is much lower now.

River Dragons of the Mekong

The people of Lao believed that river dragons lived in the rivers. They were huge water snakes that gouged out the channels that the rivers flowed through, sometimes coming onto the land to dig holes which later became swamps. They were unpredictable spirits, sometimes benign and sometimes fierce, so the Lao people propitiated them with offerings. When Buddhism came to Lao, the water dragons converted to Buddhism and became nagas, like the nagas that protected the Buddha when he sat under the Bodhi tree seeking enlightenment. The people continued to make offerings to them to keep them sweet, so that they would protect them, as long as they were good Buddhists.

Up and down the Mekong there are Naga towns, the main ones being Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In these towns nagas protect the temples, the steps leading to temples and monasteries and sometimes even the rooftops. In Luang Prabang the temple nagas are gilded and decorated with glittering coloured glass mosaics. This is because Luang Prabang is a UNESCO heritage town. UNESCO and Norway pump money into restoration projects, allowing the monks to regild their temples, carve new Buddha statues, renovate and conserve what is left of their monasteries. (When the French invaded Luang Prabang they destroyed thirty nine temples, leaving only one. They sacked the city and thousands of monks fled). Then the French built some very nice buildings in the spaces where the monasteries had been. These have been preserved by UNESCO, which also provided funds for rebuilding a few of the temples and monasteries.

The naga in the picture is from a different town along the Mekong, a town that cannot afford to gild its nagas.

The first rulers of Luang Prabang were all nagas, who transformed themselves into women. Later rulers were nagas who transformed themselves into men. The nagas are a bit like the Loch Ness Monster. Lots of people claim to have seen them, but usually only a small part of one.

I met someone today who travelled on a slow boat carrying a cargo of teak to China a few years ago. But now they have tightened things up and the tourists are all funnelled where the authorities want them to go. There are a lot of rules and regulations in Laos. To start with there is a midnight curfew. There is also a law against meddling with the locals. No hanky panky or they'll throw you out of their lovely country. No drugs either. No wandering about on your own in the tribal villages. Everyone must be accompanied by a government guide. Admittedly there are still a lot of unexploded bombs, from when the Americans bombed the north of the country and the whole eastern side. These are bombs the size of a cricket ball, covered in ball bearings. They are more lethal than mines. In many parts of the country people are afraid to dig, in case they uncover buried mines. Needless to say the Americans are doing nothing to remove them.

the Waterfall

Today we shared a tuktuk with an Australian couple who had made contact with an educated woman who lives up in the hills. The tuktuk drove along a winding road through steep wooded hillsides, up and down hills until we came to a small village in the middle of the forest. Traditionally the villagers live in houses on stilts. The wooden posts holding up the house stand on stones, to prevent the termites burrowing up through the posts into the rest of the house structure. They use the space under the house to work the cotton, spin and weave. Unfortunately more recent houses have been constructed with concrete and no open space under them. These will not resist termites in the same way as the traditional houses do.

Anyway, we crossed a bridge, over fast flowing pure turquoise water to meet the woman our friends had come to meet. She showed us around her land where she was building houses for dying cotton and silk, houses for teaching local people to weave, planting plants to use as dye and vegetables. Chickens ran around among the builders, tree fellers, earth shovellers and assorted other people.

She accompanied us up river to see a series of waterfalls with clear pools where tourists swung from ropes, flinging themselves into the water. There were tall trees with Latin binomial lables on them to let the tourists know what they were looking at. But all the oldest trees had been felled and sold, to the Vietnamese or to the Chinese, who have been sistematically removing all the old trees from Laos. The whole country is covered in dense vegetation, but most of it is secondary growth. Trees grow incredibly fast, especially teak, which grows in extensive plantations.

Then we were invited to lunch overlooking the river, surrounded by brilliant green leafy plants. We feasted on river fish, sticky rice and a soup of coconut tree kernel.

Luang Prabang

We are in Luang Prabang, in Laos. It was the old capital of Laos four hundred years ago. A gracious town on the banks of the Mekong river, with Buddhist temples, resplendent with gold leaf, intricate carvings and glittering mosaics. Elegant little hotels, bars and restaurants, and a fabulous night market. It is a textile lover's paradise, with every kind of woven silk design, applique work and embroidery in jewelbright colours. There is another, smaller river with riverside cafes and bars under the trees that look out at lush vegetation across the water, terraced vegetable plots and young monks playing in the river. It is lovely and hot with plenty of mosquitoes.

Lao women are elegant in sarongs. The few women who travel on motorbikes balance side saddle, without holding on to the driver in front. But most people in this small town walk.

Sapa Hill Station

A mini bus took us from BaCa to Sapa, one thousand five hundred metres altitude. The sun was setting by the time we reached Sapa and the temperature falling fast. We stayed in a grandiose hotel with Roman columns at the entrance, painted sickly yellows and browns, a huge entrance hall with a plastic flower arrangement in the centre, a wide staircase with piles of dust and cigarette ends in the corners of the stairs. Downstairs was a huge dingy dining room, where they fed up supper at five o'clock.

Then we hit the town, which is full of bars and shops, and rows of stalls selling barbecued meats.

Next day we were taken on a ten kilometre walk downhill, through the rice fields. A group of women from the Black Hmong tribe latched on to us and accompanied us all the way. Each one of them attached herself to one of us, asking us a stock set of questions: "what is your name? how old are you? how many children do you have?" and so on. When we reached a slippery muddy patch, they helped the less able across.

They took us to a place like a concrete bus shelter with three open sides that overlooked the terraced rice fields. Blue plastic chairs and tables were arranged in a row and we were served with bread, omlettes to share, tomatoes, cucumbers and la Vache chi rit to make our sandwiches. As we ate the Black Hmong stood on the path above the restaurant looking down at us, occasionally waving an embroidered blanket, waiting for us to finish. We lingered over our food, reluctant to go out and do business with them. Eventually we had to emerge and were instantly surrounded by them chanting "buy from me, buy from me" like a chorous of blackbirds, as they pressed small objects into our hands, tried to hang bags round our necks and quoted sky-high prices at us, saying "I walked with you all the way". Most of us bought something small for much too much money, then fled.

We were taken to a church, a school and a village. All the houses had asbestos roofs, donated by the government.

BaCa Market

The hill tribes of northern Vietnam all come to BaCa to sell their wares at the Sunday market.
The market is huge and full of tribal people, wearing traditional dress. Flower Hmong wear extravagantly coloured and flared skirts, bodices and highly decorated collars. Black Hmong have a pretty uniform of black tunics with colourful bands of embroidery over knee-length black shorts and black leg warmers held up by embroidered bands. The Red Dao tribe, who shave their foreheads, wear big red head-dresses with lots of red tassels and dangling coins. They also wear black tunics but different embroidery.

Flocks of tribal women wander around the market chewing on sugarcane and spitting out the hard woody parts. Many of them have stalls, selling tribal embroidery and jewellery. They are very hard bargainers, using every trick of body language from emotional blackmail through affection to disgust (at the low price you are offering), to turning away and starting a conversation with someone else, to following you down the street waving the blanket, bag, bangle or whatever in front of your face, while you try to haggle with someone else.

One and a half hours was not nearly enough time in this fabulous market, which included food stalls, fruit and veg, household goods as well as new and old traditional dress, embroidery and every kind of object that might appeal to a tourist.

New Year in Vietnam

We ended up on New Year's day on a boat, sailing through the mysterious peaks of Ha Long Bay, rising up out of the water silently, through shifting patterns of mist. We were part of a flotilla of wooden junks, built to look old, with wood-pannelled interiours, carved wooden ceilings, benches and tables and little wood-pannelled cabins. We sailed past floating villages, where women rowed out to us in floating shops.

Yesterday we visited a cave, high up on one of the three thousand islands. Hundreds of passengers, vomitted up by scores of boats, crawled like ants up the steep path to the entrance of a cave. I looked down into the cavernous depths of the cave where I saw the whole stream of people swallowed up. The visitors snaked through one vast chamber after another, below huge stalactitic growths, illminated by lurid purple, orange, blue and green lights. Our guide told us that we were in the belly of the dragon, the same dragon who spat out pearls, which became these multitudinous islands.

Last night, after a meal of greasy food, they switched on the karaoke. All the young passengers, everyone except us, drank huge quantities of beer, wine and whisky, then attempted to sing along, eventually giving up and plugging in their ipod to play dreadful music, shrieking with laughter and smoking. We fled to our cabin. there was a triangular gap beside the cabin window and the door rattled. A cold sea breeze blew in. I took off my boots, climbed into bed in all my clothes, stuffed earplugs in, pulled the covers over me and slept like a baby.