phoudindaeng

since i last wrote i've spent 4 days building the mudbrick house, one day intertubing down the namsong river, taken one hike up into the mountaintop regions, one afternoon playing frisbee (a guy on the farm is a pro), and one more bike trip to the western valley to hit that cave again.

the mudbrick house is going up fast. when i arrived they were just finishing the walls of the first floor. it had taken them about 5 months to build the foundation and make the thousands of necessary mudbricks. the house itself was only started 3 weeks ago. today we almost finished the walls of the second story, and i actually spent most of my time working on an artistic bit - empty wine bottles lodged in the mud between the bricks in nice patterns. splotches of green light will shine through.

today i quit early today because ward (who runs the school program) needed an extra teacher. so back to the school, all the kids screaming and grabbing to hold my hand. after lessons we busted out a foot ball and my frisbee and played mob-style catch/chase. hugs and handshakes and see-you-tomorrows, which hopefully will be true. i put my name down on the whiteboard under the afternoon teaching section, holding my spot. there are people showing up every day wanting to teach, and ward turns them away.

a german named peter, who runs the mudbrick project, has been here 4 months, and speaks lao very well. i asked questions about politics, and he had lots to say. in his opinion: this is the best government lao has ever had because it generally has left the people alone, skimming a bit off the top for their own corruption, but that's it. now, however, they are cooperating more with the institutions of neoliberal globalization - the imf, world bank, foreign capital, etc - which is making things worse. standard developement-of-underdevelopement force-countries-into-debt funnel-money-out-to-western-contractors maneuvers. works every time. the labor market is largely unregulated, leaving wages at about $50/month (so says sam franey). no minimum wage, no government guarantees of standard of living. the health system is dysfunctional. number one rule at mudbrick house is no getting hurt, as past trips to the local hospital have revealed incompetence and lack of resources. most resources for education and health come from ngos. most police are indeed in plain clothes, and there are lots of them. people aren't necessarily afraid of them, as they are their neighbors and they've coexisted for decades now. people don't care about national politics (perhaps they've been trained with negative reinforcement to not care), but are very dedicated to local politics, for which they are not supressed.

on saturday most of us volunteers took the day to go tubing down the namsong, on which our farm sits. on the 4 km stretch between the farm (where all tubers are dropped off) and vangvieng, there are probably 15 to 20 bars, and more all the time. one was built just in the last 3 days - a rickety bamboo roof, bar, massive speakers and a couple coolers is all they need. most tubers don't make it past the first few bars. they get too drunk to continue (for the record i made it to town). in fact, i am told that there are several drownings each year. pretty straight-forward there, hard to feel bad for people who bite it that way. there are huge rope swings (too high for me - after the arboretum bridge i've lost all taste for long plunges), volleyball courts, shaded decks, huge sound systems pumping out mostly bob marley and techno. the bars have staff with ropes and bamboo poles literally fishing for customers as they float past. mix in little kids helping tubers through the shallows where they get stuck (then demanding money), herd of buffalo trying to swim across and playing chicken with tube traffic, and the absolute scum of the already inevitably scummy tourist crowd, and you have quite a scene. once is enough.

that night we attended a show at the youth center (also supported by the farm). they played a video of a teen soap opera made by local phoudindaeng actors. then a powerpoint presentation (they had projector, screen and laptop) the local environment. then presentation of kid's newspaper, the first issue, covering local issues. then boys playing acoustic, singing and dancing western acoustic emo pop. then girls singing a few songs. then full troop of about 20 kids, most in full ceremonial costume, singing and dancing to traditional music. most of the performers were young teens, most of the audience was younger. it was embarrassing of course, because teenagers are just so awkward, but the lao culture took the edge off at least for this particular farang.

on sunday i forded the river, walked across the farm fields, and up the mountainside. the only established trail served some tiny farm fields nestled into tiny valleys in the saddle of two peaks. some lao were also digging up edible roots on the trail. i tried to push past the trails, but the thickness of the undergrowth bested me. i was covered in sctratches, bruises, bugbites, sweat, dirt, floaty seed puffs, gnats in eyes, hair full of burrs, sharp grass leaves (20 ft high stalks) cutting into my arms and face. i've never been so itchy in my life. also found some decent faces for bouldering, but most of the rocks up there are just far too jagged to play on. extremely sharp, almost no large surfaces, just pitted, spiney, craggy gnarls of blades. all followed by a couple hours of tossing frisbee. these days are very good for me.

circles

its taken me quite a while to figure out exactly what i want. our last day in vangvieng, saturday, i rented a bike just to see how far i could get. i crossed the river and went through the gap in the mountains, into the next valley over, and took the road north until it ended. i passed many villages, each smaller than the last, until the very last, panampe, which was nestled into the crook of the mountains as the west wall met the east wall. it was beautiful. i wanted to stay out there and work with the villagers, but everyone i asked - five people in three villages - said no, they didn't let visitors stay. why? i asked. no, they repeated, either not understanding or just refusing to answer.

so, what is this? government policy? possible, considering that eli and i were turned back on our walk around vangvieng on friday when we came across a sign that said something to the effect of "there are no services for visitors past this point, so visitors are prohibitted from entering east vangvieng". maybe they are trying to keep the tourist industry penned in and quarantined, allowing the locals to enjoy their own culture, left alone. or maybe it was all just cultural? there is some norm against letting random strangers stay in a private residence? whatever it was, i felt like i hit a wall. very frustrating.

so i found instead an organic farm which accepts volunteers. the timing was bad though, as eli was ready to move on and i wanted to go with him to vientiane, the capitol. so on sunday we took a bus to the south for 4 hours. we spent two nights in vientiane so we had time to explore the city and go to the national museum (formerly called the revolutionary museum).

the museum was fantastic. we had been to one in luangphrabang, the old king's palace that had been preserved along with lots of his booty. vientiane's museum was much more interesting. it was huge, and each wing was for a different era of their history. prehistory (dinosaurs, early homonids, cave paintings, early tools, etc), the various kingdoms that controlled the territory, and finally the 20th century.

there were rooms dedicated to the french occupation (1893 to 1954, interrupted briefly during world war 2 when japan took over the region). there were murals of french soldiers killing laos and buring their villages, with captions like "the brutal french occupation slaughtered our people and stole our lands". there were also photos of french citizens back home protesting their government's imperialism. the implication was clearly that the french underclasses were on the same side as the lao people. i love that this communist government uses its museums to spread international class consciousness.

when the french lost the war and pulled out in 1954, the united states stepped in and propped up the old monarchy, instigating another decade and a half of civil war. eventually, in 1964, the US began to intervene directly, the "secret war". there were rifles on the walls next to pictures of smiling villagers and burning wreckages, captioned with things like "comrade so-and-so used this rifle to shoot down an american imperialist helicopter". the US hired mercenary armies from thailand and south vietnam, shipped weapons to monarchists and US puppets in laos, and generally carpet bombed any territory that successfully liberated itself. so of course now laos is the most bombed country in the world, with more bombs dropped here by the US than were dropped in all of world war 2.

the next few rooms were about the communist party (pathet laos) and its early years. the politics, the struggles, the programs, the development, etc. there were rooms filled with pro-government propaganda, showing pictures of hospitals and roads and bridges and factories that the planned economy had successfully created.

so yesterday, tuesday, i parted ways with eli and took the bus back up north to vangvieng. i rented a bike and rode 4 km north to the village of phoudindaeng. i found the farm and met the people running it, and was immediatly enchanted. first of all, no one runs it. its basically a collective, and certain key people help lead the various projects, but no one is in charge. the guy who owns it, a lao guy named "mr. t", had just left for a conference on organic farming in germany. there are probably 10 or 15 locals who work there, along with however many volunteers happen to be there - in this case about 15 people. the farm grows mulberry trees, and they use the berries to make smoothies, tea, wine and jam. they have banana trees, goats, pigs, chickens, geese and silk worms. they have a bar on the river, where they catch tourists intertubing and sell them beerlao and mojitos. they also run school programs.

check out their website: http://www.laofarm.org/

when i arrived they were about to go teach an evening class and needed an extra teacher, so they invited me along. we had groups of kids, aged maybe 3 to 12, rotate between stations where they stidied different things. i was teaching directions (up, down, backward, forward, left, right, etc) but they were also learning colors, numbers and animals from the other teachers. i was teaching them english, but i made them teach me the lao words for everything (down is "nang", up is "lukol" etc).

i spent today working on a mud-brick building (this country is running out of wood, in a few years mud buildings will be essential, so the farm is trying to teach the locals the skills now). i got covered in mud and exhausted from hoisting bricks and climbing scaffolding. doesn't get much better than that. i love the other volunteers. they are from all over the world, all ages, of every conceivable background.

i wish that i'd found the farm before spending four days puttering around the town. its good that it worked out this way, as i needed some time on my own. i will catch up with eli in chiang mai thailand in about a week.

down into vangvieng

we left luangprabang on tuesday, taking a seven-hour bus ride south to vangvieng. the bus took us through steep hilly (almost mountainous) country, winding along hairpin turns and steep drop-offs. we passed through many little towns, every 5 or 10 km, stretched along the road, dusted grey-brown by the traffic on the road, comprised of cinderblock buildings and huts.

we arrived in vangvieng after dark and grabbed a guest house near the bus station (we might have been overly hasty, fearing a repeat of our first night in luangprabang). as we started exploring, we realized that the weird black empty thing seperating us from the rest of the town was a gravel airstrip. people drive all over it, kids in bike/scooter gangs hang out, and busses are parked on it. we have yet to see an airplane.

this town is a bit surreal. it is a popular spot for european tourists, and israelis as well. there are dozens of restaraunts that have raised padded booths for people to lay in, and tvs that play episodes from american tv shows from dvds, from the time they open until they close. they each stick with one tv show. there are probably 2 that play the simpsons, 1 that plays family guy, 3 that play sports and movies, and about 15 that play friends. endless reruns of the same shows. you can't walk a block without hearing the friends themesong. at least it can't be heard from our guest house. then i would lose it.

as it is though, these things can be avoided. oddly enough, we keep noticing that when the lao themselves are watching tv, they usually choose american professional wrestling or low-budget thai soap operas. interesting taste.

on wednesday morning we found sam franey, my friend from alaska with whom i spent two summers cutting salmon. he has been here in vangvieng for weeks, and knows the town well. we just missed his brother, gabe, who just returned to the states to work some more.

sam and i rented mountain bikes ($1.50/day) and took off for the mountains. there is a gorgeous wall of jungle-covered rocks sticking up maybe 3 km to our west, and the road we chose took us through a gap, into the next valley over. it was gorgeous, flat yellow and green farm fields seperated by tiny huts, rows of trees and streams. the next range of mountains was barely visible beyond (its been overcast and hazy every day).

sam helped me find some rock faces to climb, but most were choked up with vines and bushes growing out of cracks. climbers must prune certain cliffs, because everything looked equally inaccessable. we made our way to a cave, one of many that draw tourists here. we climbed bamboo ladders up to the entrance, and used my headlamp to explore the whole length of it. it went back hundreds of meters, and its interior was covered in beautiful formations and surface textures, all carved out by running or dripping water.

i found some old broken pottery on a ledge, along with a handful of broken stone figures of the buddha. they can't be too old, but its exciting to find artifacts of any kind hidden deep in caves.

today we walked to the one sports field we know of, and tossed my frisbee around. some local kids, teenagers, began to join us. it didn't look like they'd ever thrown a disc, but they caught on fast. when we had enough locals and they were good enough, we started a game, and played all afternoon. it was a blast, and the kids seemed to be in a constant thrilled state. i'm sure we'll be back at it tomorrow, although my feet are trashed from playing barefoot on gravelly dirt/grass.

fireflies and rolling blackouts

on thursday we took a six-hour bus ride to chiang khong, a border town on the mekong river, which determines a long stretch of border between laos and thailand. there is no bridge, just dozens of water taxies, ferries and barges that run back and forth between chiang khong and its lao counterpart, houayxui. the views out over the mekong are spectacular, especially in the morning, before the sun burns off the fog that makes the rows of hilly valleys fade to hazy layers of green-grey into the distance. rooftops are just humble silhouettes along with the jungle palms and vine choked trees.

friday, after we spent a couple hours getting our lao visas , we loaded up onto “slow boats”, which seat maybe 70 but can apparently hold well over a hundred. we were packed in tight. then down the river, chugging along dodging jagged (and so tantalizingly climbable) rocks- the river is probably near its lowest point, as we are nearing the end of the dry season. we stopped a couple times at tiny villages (grass huts, chickens, small fields of crops) so that locals could get on and off, and the village residents could come on board and try to sell food and drinks.

the farengs (toubabs, foreigners) on the slow boat were pretty funny. many were drinking hard, starting early in the morning, loud and boisterous, flirting, playing cards and dice, cheering, playing guitar, taking pictures incessantly, both of the interior and exterior – fishermen, villages, other boats, wild river rocks, sandy beaches, jungle hillsides, and craggy mountainous terrain. i was impressed by how pristine the whole region looks. this far upriver, its not contaminated by industry and city waste, and the developments along the banks probably looked almost the same as they have for centuries.

we stopped to spend the night at a town called pak beng, which had the infrastructure to accommodate a flood of hundreds of farengs every night. the residents of pak beng go to sleep early, shutting down all shops and restaurants by 10pm. the entire town’s (and probably the entire rural region’s) power is cut at 10:30, a frugal feature of the central government’s planned economy. eli and i walked around until midnight, up and down the dead silent dark streets and up a bluff to a hilltop garden. fireflies rivaled the raw rural starlight (no moon) to light our exploration. we were finally stopped trying to get down to the river, and escorted back to our room. i don’t think there was a curfew exactly, but they didn’t want us getting hurt on the steep rocky bluffs without any locals awake to help us.

yesterday, saturday, we got up early and back on the slow boat. things were quiet until a fast boat (a tiny speed boat with about 8 helmeted passengers that makes our 2-day journey in just a few hours) capsized as it passed us. other people in our boat saw it happen – apparently one of the passengers bounced out (crossing our wake perhaps?) and the as the driver slowed to turn around, he went to close to the rocks on the bank and sunk the whole back end. just the nose was left sticking out. everyone made it out ok and began to scale the rocks and haul their soaked bags out of the water. we turned around to help, took the soaked farengs on board, and gave them towels, dry clothes, their own seats and beers. lots of drama, especially when the soaked fast boaters were screaming obscenities at slow boaters for taking pictures.

when we arrived here in luang prabang last night (one of laos’ biggest cities, but still population about 20,000), we hustled up the hill to secure a guest house. after passing up one (we didn’t want to pay the extra for a tv and fridge), we were turned down from literally dozens of others. farengs flooded the city, and bizarrely, it was unable to accommodate us all (even though rural village pak beng was able to). after wandering for hours, we were ready to find an internet cafe, a phone, and start calling guest houses outside the city or in other nearby towns. at that point we were working with a belgian guy named pierre, who was in the same boat as us. farengs were still wandering around with massive hiking backpacks, so we were worried. finally, someone found us and led us to a hidden place in an alley off of the bustling night market, where we paid a premium for one of the last rooms in town ($10 each- today we relocated to a better one that’s about $4 each per night). we felt extremely lucky.

(right as we get settled in our room, the city’s power failed for a few minutes. stupid communism.)

today we explored town, hiking to the top of the hill where an elaborate wat is perched, shopping in the markets, getting a feel for the content and layout of the city. it really is wonderful, much cleaner than thailand, streets and sidewalks wide and not shattered and treacherous as they were everywhere else we’ve been. far less traffic – mostly tuktuks and scooters, cleaner air, everything cheaper, nights perfectly silent (even this city is totally closed down by 11), beautiful untouched wilderness, locals happy and kind to us. communism rules.

well, actually: the communist party has been in power since 1975 (when the states lost the vietnam war, asian communist parties all helped each other take over – in this case, the lao overturned the US puppet monarchy), but like the rest of communist countries at the time, laos became a deformed workers’ state, following the example of stalin’s degenerated workers’ state. laos has an insulated, stagnant bureaucratic single-party state apparatus (instead of, say, a congress of deputies from workers’ councils – real communism). also, following stalin's example, there's enough political repression that the locals, we are told, are too afraid to talk politics. some of the economy is collectivized, but there’s plenty of free enterprise too, especially in the petite-bourgeois merchant class – vendors, restaurant and hotel owners, etc. also, foreign capital is at work here, along with the imf and world bank. so, an extremely compromised deformed workers’ state. the only redeeming qualities would be highly subsidized food and housing for urban poor and rural villagers, non-classed health care and education, state sponsored infrastructure development, low unemployment, and so on. i don’t know to what extent these endeavors are successful, so i will learn and share soon.

touristyistics

monday morning we got up at 5:30 to see the superbowl. it was playing in a bar owned by an american in an international part of town: lots of international food, nice hotels, and travelers’ hostels and bars. there were probably 40 people, most from the states, up early to see the game. it was worth it of course, what a ridiculously entertaining game. philip grew up in new york, and both he and eli go back there often to visit family. so they are giants fans. most of the bar was also for the giants, probably just because they hated new england, which i imagine is similar to hating the yankees.

after breakfast and jogging, we spent the day running errands (i got the disintegrating zipper on my beloved backpack replaced with a metal one for about 4 dollars) and making travel plans with a booking agent.

tuesday eli and i did a funky little tourist excursion that included elephant riding, touring a kahren village, hiking to a waterfall, lunch in a hmong village, then rafting down a river. we were in a group with a couple from france, a couple from sweden, two chinese women, and a swiss guy.

we rode around on the elephants for about a half hour, through an encampment in the hills full of platforms from which locals would sell us bags of bananas to feed the elephants. the elephants and locals have a good system worked out. the elephants constantly stretch their trunks up behind their heads to nag us for food, while every hundred feet or so there is another platform with someone pushing bananas and sugarcane. it was fun to feed to babies though, which followed us around the trails.

the waterfall was called maewang. i just laid in the sun and soaked up the spray. the water was from high mountains (don’t know where exactly) and was too cold for me to swim in. i do have low tolerance for cold water. hiking through hmong territory, rolling jungle hills with farm fields in the valleys, we came across a cockfight in a little village. its supposedly illegal so i don’t know why the locals didn’t mind us watching and taking pictures. it wasn’t fun to watch, so we moved right along.

i loved the rafting. the rafts were just six 30 ft long bamboo poles lashed together (which made for easy disassembly and transport back upriver) so everyone got soaked. also one of the young men poling the rafts along was very playful (we were warned about “ding dong” guides), and used his pole more for splashing us than navigation. there was lots of screaming and embarrassing flirtatious behavior. he and eli sparred a bit with the poles, and the french woman on my raft wouldn’t stop screaming. not exactly a relaxing ride, but sure a certain type of fun.

today, wednesday, rachael joined eli and i for a thai cooking class. in our group were four people from france, a woman from bulgaria with her two little boys, and another couple from the states, dylan and kari. coincidentally, dylan grew up in evergreen, co, where he was friends with ben hassinger, eli’s roommate in the dorms at cu boulder. he visited ben and remembered seeing eli there. also, kari is from seattle and flew here on the same redeye as eli and i last week. we remember seeing her wandering around the taipei airport. they are students at evergreen in olympia, where they are studying sustainable farming, geology, permaculture and things of that nature. great folks, i feel lucky to have met them.

we were picked up and taken to the romshop produce market, where we stocked up and got lectured on the foods. then we drove about a half hour north of the city where farmland begins to be interspersed with the suburban landscape. the class was held at a little organic farm, which supplied some of herbs and spices we used, but it seemed like the main purpose of the farm was to show us what the trees and bushes looked like and let us smell and taste all the raw roots and leaves and peels.

we cooked all day, first making curries, soups and stir-fries (i made red curry, tom yum soup and cashew chicken; but others made green and yellow curry, galangal coconut soup, vegetable soup, and basil chicken). then we ate it all for lunch, or rather, tried to eat it all. i’ve been stretching my stomach out lately with 1 or 2 massive meals a day, but i couldn’t even come close. after lunch we went back to it, cooking egg roles and a pumpkin coconut milk dessert (others made more stir-fries, banana coconut milk and mongo and sticky rice dessert). we brought that stuff home with us. also, they gave us a cookbook at the end. as long as i can find some of these exotic ingredients, i am set up to cook fantastic thai food for the rest of my life. whah.

tomorrow eli and i are headed for laos. we are scheduled to take a bus to chiang khong, a border town, where we’ll spend one night. then on friday we’ll take a boat down the mekong river to luongphrobang, a city in northern laos, which is a two-day trip. so no updates til saturday night or sunday.

walking walking

saturday eli, margie and i took a song tao (just like the car rapides of senegal, a cheap little bus that might or might not go where you ask it to) up to the chiang mai zoo. it was huge and spread out, almost set up more for the bus tours than for walking (one guide map said walking the zoo was only for mountain climbers).

it had an impressive collection of animals, in living conditions fairly comparable to those in the states. besides the standard spread of critters, they had many that i know i’ve never seen (understandable given my limited experience), such as casuarius casuarius – like an emu but with wild colors; fae’s muntjack – a little fanged deer-like animal with long sharp horns; and sun bears. lots of the signage was only in thai, so we often didn’t know the names of things.

we probably spent the most time with the malayan porcupines, the river otters, and the various types of gibbons. maybe its just easy to relate to mammals, but we were too charmed to keep our normal pace.

we ate lunch at ___________, a restaurant overlooking a stream, waterfall and lush forest. it also serves some of the best food we’ve had yet. it costs lots more than the food down in town – entrees for the equivalent of about three dollars instead of about one – but its worth it.

then we caught another song tao up to doi suthep, a huge wat about a half-hour drive up into the steep hills west of chiang mai. doi suthep is the most famous buddhist site in northern thailand, and is full of monks, buddhists travelling from all over, as well as tourists. it’s simply packed with golden buddhas, elaborate shrines, ornately carved buildings and bells, gongs, and offerings, all surrounding a massive golden dome that’s visible from our balcony here in town.

many people were meditating among the narcissistic material wealth and human buddha idols, but i went off to sit on a balcony somewhere in the monks living quarters, overlooking a gorgeous spread of jungle, the city, and the sunset (none of which were visible to the throngs up in the palace-monastery). all i could hear was a slight murmur of voices and the clanking of the bells, and the chorus of birds fluttering around me. and the rumble of the occasional commercial jet taking off from the airport in the valley. oh well.

yesterday, sunday, i woke up early and watched the sunrise, sitting on the balcony reading (jose saramago’s all the names) as the city woke up. eli and i went on a hike, taking the same route as yesterday to the zoo, but then walking up the steep road towards doi suthep, where yesterday i had seen several trails leading off into the wilderness. we found one, and explored it. eventually it took us up to a stream which had exposed a hillside of rock, which i climbed and jumped around on, somewhat satisfying one of my recurring itches. the waterfall was beautiful, and the sun was shining through it as it set into the hills above. eli fell in the stream when he slipped on the mossy rocks. twice actually. i felt bad because i made him follow me to the waterfall, only accessible by walking a ways through the water. sorry eli.