July 11th: Muang Ngoi
Muang Ngoi is a little village on the Ou River, only reachable by boat, one hour north of Nong Khiow.
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| the river trip north or Nong Khiow |
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| What our little boat looked like |
So I just went through all my pictures and I do not have one photo of Muang Ngoi town. It is one block long, which runs parallel to the river. There are a few more guests houses and restaurants here than there were three years ago. The electricity is better. And they just put in a dirt road from Muang Ngoi towards the villages to the east. I spent most of my time walking out to the villages.
I forgot how lonely traveling alone can be. During my sabbatical year abroad (2009-2010), I had a lot of time to adjust to "travel mode" - just sort of accepting what is. Since this is a 6 week vacation, it has been more difficult dropping expectations. I spent most of the 4 days in Nong Khiow alone and in silence, which gave me the opportunity to write more, reflect more, read more, and observe more.
Afternoon walk top the village of Banna (meaning rice field village: ban - village, na - rice field), about 1.5 hour walk to the east of Moung Ngoi.
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| cool house located right on a pond |
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| man fishing in a little river |
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| beautiful rice fields and village of Banna |
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| in the village of Banna |
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| Banna village laundry |
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| Cheng Yi Mae |
I met Cheng Yi Mae just outside the village of Banna. She is a 24 year old Chinese woman, who prefers to travel alone. This is something I had never experienced before. I few years ago you would never meet Chinese tourists, except maybe as a large group on a tour bus. Then, the first groups of individual travelers emerged from China. And now, a woman who prefers to travel alone. She talked of how restrictive the government is, and how Chinese people need more freedom. She also spoke of how most Chinese do not know, nor do they care what is happening to other people, as long as their standard of living improves. She spoke openly of the oppression in Tibet, even though she was taught in school that Tibet has been part of China since the Ching Dynasty. I remember a few years ago meeting a Chinese woman in Nepal. She knew nothing of the Tienanmen Square massacre, nor do she know of the mistakes made by Chairman Mao and the communist party during the Great Leap Forward, or during the Cultural Revolution. Cheng Yi Mae knew of all of this and was willing to talk about it. Though things may be changing slowly in China, they are changing.
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| a game we watched a group of children play: the line up rubber bands on the road, then through their flip flops like skipping a rock, trying to knock the rubber bands past a line in the dirt road. There were probably 15 kids playing. It is beautiful how kids, with a little creativity, can make incredible fun for themselves with so little resources. |
As quiet as Nong Khiow was for me, Muang Ngoi has been that social: spending the afternoon with Cheng Yi Mae in Banna village, then walking back to Muang Ngoi together. Then that evening I ran into a French Canadian couple, Allison and Olivier, who I had met on the mini van from Luang Prabang to Nong Khiow 5 days earlier, and had dinner and spent the evening with them. On the morning of the 12th I spent 6 hours at a restaurant with Noam, a young Israeli man, talking about just about everything. In the afternoon I ran into Cheng Yi Mae, and we spent the afternoon walking around the village. And then in the evening I met two woman from Belgium, Evalin and Yuri, and a man from Croatia (I can't remember his name) and had dinner and spent the evening with them.
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| evening on the Ou River |
The new dirt road from Muang Ngoi to Banna village was so nice and gentle, I decided to rent a bicycle and explore further. Little did I know that a few minutes ride past Banna Village, then road heading up over a mountain. I kept thinking I was near the top as I pushed my one-speed bike up. About an hour and a half later I finally reached the ridge, and about a half hour after that I reached the village of Ban Poon (hill top village: ban - village, poon - hill top). The advantage of riding (or walking, as the case my be) your bike up a hill is that you get to coast down, but not me. The road was dirt, steep and bendy, and my bike had poor brakes, so I had to walk the bike down the hill as well.
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| rice fields near Banna village |
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| pigs under a house in Ban Poon |
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| Ban Poon laundry |
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| I had run out of water while pushing the bike up the hill, so at Ban Poon I found a little shop, sat outside to re-hydrate, and was stared at by this shy boy |
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| There were a bunch of kids inside the shop, and once they saw what was going on, they all came out to be photographed as well. |
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| the view east of Ban Poon, towards Vietnam - nothing but jungle |
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| on the ride back towards Muang Ngoi, just outside of Banna village |
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| early morning: a Lao teenager resting on the railing of one of the restaurants overlooking the Ou River |
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| planting rice |
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| good belly |
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| capturing the blood from a headless duck |
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| Heuy Sane laundry |
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| more laundry |
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| two happy little girls after I showed them my pictures of them (I watched the girl on the left with a huge knife whittling on a stick). |
July 15th:
I went back to my same guest house in Nong Khiow, near the river and the bridge, though I stayed in a different room, with a slightly different view. I only stayed for one night, but it gave me the opportunity to eat two more times at the Chennai Restaurant.
I was only gone from Nong Khiow for 4 days, but the river was so much higher upon my return. The little islands in the river were all gone.
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| papaya tree outside my balcony |
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| view from my balcony |
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| The owner of Chennai Restaurant. He moved to Laos 14 years ago, joining his older brother in a cosmetics business in Vientiane. Later he moved to the sleepy little town of Nong Khiow. He is from Chennai, but has two other Indians working for him who are from the north of India, thus he serves both northern and southern Indian food. He has two boys, age 17 and 14 (the younger one born in Laos). They are both in India now in school, since the school; system is not good in Laos. |
Here is what I ate at Chennai Restaurant:
July 7th dinner: masala dosai
July 8th lunch: palak gobi (spinach cauliflower) and egg paratha
July 8th dinner: beer and masala (spiced) cashews
July 9th lunch: dahl and egg paratha
July 9th dinner: masala dosai
July 10th lunch: egg paratha and dahl
July 10th dinner: channa (chickpeas) masala and garlic naan
July 11th breakfast: masala dosai
July 15th lunch: masala dosai
July 15th dinner: dahl and rice
Though I have a lot of photos and memories of happy Lao people (especially the children), there was a different feel among the villages. I can't say that they were not happy, but I was not received in the same way. About a quarter of the time I would get no response from a villager I passed by after I said "Sa bai dee" to him or her. It would be interesting to know what is going on - a cultural thing, maybe something to do with the tourist wealth going to the towns and not the villages, maybe an invasion of their space. Different treatment by the Lao government of the Lao people and the minority people. I don't know.
July 16th - Traveling in Asia: The bus (or should I say mini van) was scheduled to leave Nong Khiow for Luang Prabang at 9 am, so I left my guest house at 8 am, giving me plenty of time to walk to the bus station outside of town to the south. I arrived at 8:25, just as the mini van was about to pull out. There are 11 seats in the mini van, and they already had 16 people packed into it, so they threw my back pack on the top of the next mini van, where 4 people were already waiting inside of it, telling me that this was the same as the mini van which just left. I asked when it would leave. And the bus man said, "Maybe 10 am, maybe 11 am. It depends when it is full." So I waited for over 2 hours, leaving at 10:45 am.
So, after 9 days in the villages up north, I head back to Luang Prabang. I definitely got a distinct feeling of how old I am, as most of the travelers are in their early 20's. I feels different now then it did during my sabbatical year (but then again, I had a year to adjust, and now, I have only 6 weeks).
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
I read a book by Tim O'Brien called The Things They Carry, about the Vietnam war and the life as a soldier. In chapter one, titled "The Things They Carry," O'Brien lists all the ammunition, protective gear, and equipment that "grunts" (foot soldiers) had to carry. Thrown into the list were other things they carried, weightless and far heavier.
"They carried all that they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried." (p. 7)
"To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps." (p. 4-5)
"They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other . . . " (p. 14)
They carried thoughts of the things they should have done. Regrets. Superstitions. Hopes. Dreams. Shame. Silence. They all carried ghosts.
"By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the mask of composure." (p. 22)
So I think of the things I carry, and how hard it is to lighten the load.
Dreams weigh as much as regrets.
Expectations, just as much as memories.
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