Tien Chiu

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You are here: Home / Archives for All travel posts / Southeast Asia / Laos

February 4, 2003 by Tien Chiu

Hello from Chiang Rai, Thailand!

Just arrived in Chiang Rai, and will probably spend the next day or so writing up the last couple days of rafting trip…which were highly amusing. First, however, I’m taking care of the necessities of life: hot shower, laundry, ATM, hair conditioner, foot massage, gay bar, and email, not necessarily in that order. (If you must know, I actually found the gay bar first: on the way to finding the hot shower, aka hotel room. It doesn’t hurt to know where the good scenery in town is 😉 , though I suspect I’ll go check out the night bazaar instead–me being female, shopping comes before sex (sorry, guys 😉 ).)

Chiang Rai: Thailand is just like being back home! Why, the streets are paved, there are cars in the streets, there aren’t *any* random water buffalo wandering through town, and there are 7-11s and ATMs everywhere. They even have street signs! It’s all very exciting.

Even more amazing, they have electricity 24 hours a day…in Luang Namtha (electricity 6-10pm), the lone internet cafe in town operated on solar power during the day, so if the day was cloudy, you could forget your email. (But hey, they *had* email…which considering the conditions, was sort of amazing.)

anyway, I’m off again to take care of the other important bits…like contacting this very interesting guesthouse that was handing out fliers at the bus station: the Akha guesthouse, whichis run by the Akha hilltribe and features treks to (surprise surprise) Akha villages and also lessons on cooking/eating bamboo, making huts out of banana leaves, and other extremely useful skills to have, should you get lost in the trackless jungles of Palo Alto. 🙂

More to the point, the Akha have a very interesting weaving culture–Spin-Off (the handspinners’ magazine) did an article on the Akha spindles awhile back–they’re interesting because they’re mid-whorl, not top or bottom-whorl. I have no idea if this tribe still spins/weaves (probably not, if they’re runing a guesthouse) but I bet they know tribes taht still do…so I am off in search.

Btw, I’m glad I did the Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos/Thailand loop in that order. Cambodian-Thai relations exploded whilst I was in Laos: apparently some prominent Thai woman insulted Cambodians, the Cambodians rioted and burned the Thai embassy (and three Thai-owned hotels, too), Thailand expelled the Cambodian embassy in retaliation, and (more to the point) all the border crossings between Thailand and Cambodia–including the one I used–have been completely shut down. So if I’d done the trip in the other direction, (a) I would have been around for the fireworks, and (b) I’d be stuck in Cambodia right now. Isn’t Asia delightfully stable?

I don’t have details yet on exactly what happened, but plan to go look at Yahoo! news once I’ve had a chance to read through the rest of my email. It all sounds thrilling, though. (I found out about it in Luang Namtha, about half an hour before leaving on the rafting trip–the guesthouse proprietor had been watching Thai TV on her battery-powered TV that morning, and told us.)

Btw, this morning, in Hoi Sai (the Lao side of the border), a random Westerner wandered up to us (me and the guy I was breakfasting with, a Brit bicycling across Laos) and asked us where the nearest ATM was. We said, “There are no ATMs in Laos.” Shock. Stunned. Culture shock on the hoof. Very funny.

Mind you, it was a delightful experience, and if you plan to travel anywhere in Southeast Asia, I recommend Laos as the best destination, by far. I plan to come back and see the south, if I have time after India. (Heck, maybe I’ll get a mountain bike in Vientiane, and do the first part of my AIDS Ride training in Laos…)

enough! off to write up the rest of the rafting trip. don’t expect it for a few days, though…I’m goign to write it up on the laptop tonight, so won’t be able to send it until I can dial in again.

In chiang Rai tonight, tomorrow going off to find the akha hilltribes, then 2/7 to DEPDC (the org trying to save hilltribe daughters from the sex trade) in Mai Sai, then to Bangkok to work out my indian visa/ticket issues. I expect to leave for India between 2/15 and 2/22, but India being India, only the gods know what will *really* happen.

Oh yeah…the bicyclist I was breakfasting with this morning told me that day before yesterday, he got stuck on the road in the dark and had to flag down a truck to take him into town. The guys in the truck turned out to be hunters–they’d been out shooting birds with their AK47s. (Sound familiar? 😉 ) He thought they’d probably been hunting something illegal, because they wouldn’t show him what they’d shot–they apparently weren’t supposed to have the AK47s either, as they weren’t too comfortable with his looking at them, either.

the funniest part was when they got near town the dogs started barking, and they stopped to let the dogs out–apparently, when they go hunting, they just stop somewhere random, round up whatever dogs happen to be around, take them off hunting, and then try to drop them in more or less the same place when they get back.

as I’ve said, Laos is a *great* place to go on vacation. I recommend it highly. 🙂

off to find massage places, gay bars, and food–

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Chiang Rai (Akha), Laos, Luang Namtha, Southeast Asia, Thailand

January 30, 2003 by Tien Chiu

Luang Namtha; Muang Sing; 4-day rafting trip tomorrow

Well, I’m back in Luang Namtha after a 1-day trip to Muang Sing, a town right next to the Chinese border. Luang Namtha is fabulously interesting and scenic, and I really wish I could go exploring, but I am pretty much wiped out after a couple long bus rides, so I have (very reluctantly) decided to rest up for the rest of the day in preparation for rafting tomorrow.

The last few days have been a bit trying. Being friendly with the forces of chaos is usually quite fun, but every so often things get out of whack, resulting in a prolonged series of small disasters. (The trick is to recognize when the stars are misaligned, so you can go with the flow and enjoy the chaos: otherwise you get hung up trying to stay in control.) Anyway, day before yesterday (during the misadventures leading up to the bus ride) I realized that the stars were definitely out of order; the trip to the village confirmed it, so i decided to follow the forces of chaos: I rented a motorcycle.

I didn’t really *intend* to rent a motorcycle. In fact I was filling out paperwork for a nice little 24-speed mountain bike, when an American couple came by and started talking about renting a motorbike. This sounded interesting to me–I’d wanted to learn to ride a motorbike for ages, and it’s supposed to be easy–so I asked for a motorbike, and conned the guy into showing me the basics–gear shift by left foot, starter by right foot, throttle on right handlebar. As he was demonstrating, the rental people started looking very worried–“You ride motorbike before, right?” I said something noncommittal in rapid (incomprehensible) English, started up the bike, and screeched off before they could ask any more potentially difficult questions.

Ever tried to learn motorcycle riding on the fly? Well, it’s not as difficult as it sounds…once I sorted out the gearshift, the throttle, and the brakes (somewhere about a quarter mile down the street, out of sight of the rental place), it was relatively straightforward. The only problem was that the throttle (right handlebar) was quite sensitive–easy to jerk yourself forward or backward, and I wasn’t quite sure what would happen in the case of last-minute stoppage disaster. (I had figured out where the brakes were–on the right handlebar–so that was OK.)

Did I mention that the instrument panel wasn’t working? It wasn’t. Shortly after taking off, I realized that the speedometer was broken–whoops. (So was the rest of the instrument panel, but I didn’t realize that at the time…this turned out to be crucial later, unfortunately…more on that later.)

Lest you think I was *totally* insane, I was also quite intensely aware of having no helmet, and no clue what half the buttons did, so I kept the speed down low, not much faster than I’d go on a bike.

(Not that this necessarily counts for much. Since AIDS Lifecycle is a very safety-conscious organization that takes road safety seriously, I would never *dream* of mentioning that I hit 48 mph on a bike once. And if I did, of course, it would *never* have been on that nice long downhill straightaway on Day 6 (I think). Fortunately that particular (purely theoretical 😉 ) section was nice, flat, straight, and clean–the Pride Parade ride down Market Street was a lot more dangerous, due to the street grates everywhere. Hell, I’ve been down a lot more suicidally windy roads near Palo Alto. But i digress.)

*ahem* Where was I? Oh yes. So I’m on this motorcycle that I’m slowly figuring out how to ride, headed vaguely out of town at about 20 mph. (I could go faster, but wasn’t certain about my ability to survive disaster at faster speeds, so kept the speed down. Besides, the speedometer was broken.) I decided I wanted to go see the silkweaving village, so I turned right at the bridge and started going down the dirt road.

Dirt roads are not easy to negotiate, especially on a motorcycle. Especially if you’ve never ridden a motorcycle before, and have only had the haziest of fast explanations. 🙂 This one featured lots of potholes, small rocks in the road, gravel, etc., which made it even more exciting. I elected the better half of courage, and went down it very slowly, maybe a fast walking pace. (Laos has no medical care to speak of, especially in the provinces…if you get in serious trouble, you’re looking at a helicopter evacuation to Thailand. This costs roughly $1000 and is kind of iffy–there’s only one service in northern Laos, and they have to get an army general to sign a written authorization every time they want to take off. (No kidding: I asked.))

Anyway, I didn’t find anything very interesting down the dirt road, and was tired of driving slowly, so I turned around and headed up towards the handicrafts cooperative. The motorbike was behaving just fine, and the road in that direction was much better, so i cranked up the speed a bit, to maybe 25-30 mph, and went on that way for a few miles.

(I should add that I had trouble starting the engine after I stopped in the silkweaving village. I attributed this to inexperience–I’d only seen it done once before, after all, and had never done it myself. But it was quite embarrassing. 😉 )

Anyway, after awhile, I decided that it might be nice to learn how to downshift, so gingerly tried downshifting. On my first attempt, the engine died.

Not immediately, like you’d expect if you’d killed the engine (I have a stick-shift truck, so I know *that* much at least), but gradually, like the motor petering out. I couldn’t figure this out–it didn’t seem like it ought to happen that way–but I know squat about motorcycles, right? I figured I’d gotten some trick wrong, so I pulled over and tried restarting the engine.

It wouldn’t start. I tried pumping the starter lever a couple times, but nothing; I smelled gas fumes, so assumed I’d flooded the engine, and sat down to wait for a minute or two before trying again. No dice.

(Around this time it dawned on me that I have probably done smarter things in my life, but I wasn’t too worried: I figured at worst I could flag down a passing motorbike for an impromptu lesson.)

After about three or four repeats of this, and a good bit of sweating, I got the bike started up again, and cruised happily up the highway. I tried downshifting again, and the engine died.

Anyway, this happened two more times, with the requisite (highly embarrassing) long period of trying to start it, and finally I could’t get the bike to start at all. I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong–fuel gauge said full, the motor couldn’t have been overheating, I didn’t think I’d damaged the engine–but finally I admitted defeat, and pushed the thing over to where a Lao guy had just pulled off, and was sitting with his three small children.

I pushed it up to him, called out a cheery “Sabaidee!” (hello), wai’d him (which is a greeting gesture with the palms together, like praying–also a good way of saying “please!”), and pointed at the motorbike. I demo’d that it wouldn’t start, and gestured him to please look at it. He tried starting it, it wouldn’t start for him either. (Ha! At least it’s not me, it really *didn’t* work.) He then poked at it, and asked me some questions in Lao, to which I shrugged sheepishly and helplessly. he poked at it some more, disconnected and reconnected the starter, and finally popped open the gas tank, to find it completely empty. Out of gas.

Oh. It *wasn’t* just the speedometer that was broken. It was the entire instrument panel.

It had of course never occurred to me that they’d send me out with anything less than half a tank (no American car rental place would ever *think* of doing that (of course, they ask for things like driver’s licenses, too 😉 )), and the fuel gauge had read “full”, so this took me totally by surprise. (It also explained–retrospectively–most of the problems I’d been having.) Of course, that left me there on the road about four or five miles out of town, with a motorcycle out of gas. (The guy couldn’t go to town for me, since he had all the kids along.)

Well, okay. I walked back along the road, flagged down a songtao (pickup truck/taxi), and went to the first gas station near town. Have you ever tried to explain, in sign language, “Hi, my motorcycle ran out of gas on the highway, I need a container for gas so I can take some back?” It’s, um, nontrivial. Eventually, through some rather creative expression, the guy got the idea that I needed a canister, but he didn’t have one, so I went on to the next station. No joy.

I stopped in at a couple stores on the way into town, hoping they’d have some gas in glass soda bottles like they do in Cambodia, but nope. (Where’s a Cambodian gas station when you need one??) I did have a brief flicker of hope upon seeing a canister full of synthetic red liquid, looking very much like gasoline, but it turned out to be cherry Fanta. *sigh*

Anyway, I eventually wound up in the Wildside office (the group I’m doing the tour with), where I sheepishly explained the situation, and got a guide to come back and translate at the gas station. We hopped a pickup-taxi over to the motorbike, put a liter of gas into the tank, and headed back into town.

I’d like to say that I learned something from this about caution and not doing stupid things, but mostly what I’ve learned is to check the fuel *manually*, the next time I try experimenting on a motorbike. (Hey, I even know where the gas tank is, now!) motorbikes are fun–I want to take some time and practice some more, and maybe work out the fine points, like what the six or seven buttons on the instrument panel do, and where the turn signals are. 🙂

Anyway, after that I decided that the forces of chaos were in full swing, so sprinted off to catch the last bus to Muang Sing, to see the morning market there. This started another long series of misadventures, as the forces of chaos were still going strong…

But that, as they say, is another story. 🙂

I am headed off on a four-day rafting trip to Thailand now–so see you all in four or five days, presumably on the other side of the border.

off to have a massage and an (excellent!) wood-fired herbal steam-sauna…

Tien

P.S. before I forget: I saw a water buffalo head in Muang Sing. The rest of it (hooves included) was hanging in quarters, from four hooks in the butcher-shop ceiling. pretty impressive…I took photos, of course. 🙂

Filed Under: All travel posts, Laos, Luang Namtha, Southeast Asia

January 28, 2003 by Tien Chiu

Hello from Luang Namtha!

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve arrived in Luang Namtha, where Internet connectivity is both insanely slow and extremely expensive. Also, I suspect this keyboard of being a leftover Soviet secret plot to sabotage American productivity–it misses about half the keys, and occasionally does totally random things. (It does not, however, spontaneously switch to Swedish, or Chinese, which is a good thing. I have decided that most Lao keyboards are possessed, it’s just a question of which demon. 😉 )

So I’m now in the rural outback of Laos, which is to say anywhere outside the two major cities (Vietiane, pop. 300,000 and Luang Prabang, pop 30,000). I arrived at 6am, after a long and tedious set of misadventures involving a bus. (the best I can say for it is that it was better than my seatmate’s bus experiences in Vietnam; he went seven hours with a pig’s nose stuck in his left ear–the pig was in a pig-transport basket (a roughly bullet-shaped open wicker basket barely larger than a pig) which had been stuck between the seats. After several hours up close and personal with the (live) pig he sacrificed his towel to drape over the basket, figuring washing his towel was better than a pig in the ear. But he said the worst part was in Indonesia where the woman in the seat in front of him threw up out of the window; the breeze blew it straight back into his window and onto him (he was asleep at the time), and they still had several hours on the bus. I have decided to stick with tourist buses. 😉 )

Anyway, I’ll tell the full bus story some other day but let’s just say the bus was (a) packed with people (they put kiddie stool all the way down the aisle, jammed together, and had twenty odd people sitting on those; people in seats were climbing in and out the windows to get to/from their seats) and (b) amazingly dusty. I emerged after nine hours (including one spectacularly blown-out tire) *covered* in dust. Fortunately, my guesthouse *did* have a hot shower. 🙂

I have also now had the Authentic Outback Experience. Went out this morning to try to find my guide’s friend; I had his name and village written in Lao on a slip of paper, so I hired a tuktuk (pickup-taxi) to take me to the village, where the driver showed the paper to a couple of locals, they conferred with a bunch of passing people, and agreed that they didn’t hav the slightest idea who he was or where he lived, but pointed me up a dirt path into the village. I thanked them and walked off, where I stopped in at a house which (very tantalizingly) looked like they were scouring silk and dyeing some silk pink (with lac?), and showed someone my piece of paper. I’m immediately surrounded by a bunch of curious villagers, who don’t speak a word of English (and I don’t speak more than two words of Lao–“Hello” and “Thank you”), and wind up communicating with gestures and the patented “I’m a clueless foreigner and hopelessly lost, but I’m harmless and look kind of cute so will you please take me in and feed me, or at least get me where I’m going?” sheepish grin.

Anyway, the net of it is that they’ve never heard of this guy either–they ask a bunch of questions in Lao (I think about my nationality) and I try to explain that I’m American, but my parents are Chinese (this always confuses people, because Americans are supposed to be Pasty White People).

At this point it dawns on me that I am (a) in the middle of nowhere, a village four miles out from Luang Namtha, and furthermore have no real idea where I am; (b) that I can’t communicate with anyone, and (c) I’m just not going to find this guy. In short, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on; I’m on a dirt road surrounded by bamboo thatched wooden houses, I can’t comunicate with anyone and I have no idea how to get back to town.

I start grinning. It’s just so gloriously absurd.

The next house I come to has a woman reeling silk in the yard, and a man brewing moonshine rice whisky. (At least, I assume he’s brewing moonshine; he’s got a 30-gallon drum over a low fire, and there’s some kind of clear liquid pouring out through a bamboo stick stuck in the top part of the drum, into a funnel and into a bottle. What the hell else would that be but a distillery?) I show him my paper (since he’s staring at me anyway), and around then a girl comes running down the road and says “Hi how are you doing?” in English. Eventually we work out that they know everyone in the village, nd he doesn’t live there.

(Everyone finds it very amusing, btw, that this pretty young Asian foreigner is trying to find this guy without having the slightest clue where he lives; I have no idea if they’ll figure out who he is, but if they do, his reputation is probably permanently ruined. Or made, depending on your point of view. 😉 )

anyway, that’s it for now…I’m hiring a guide tomorrow to take me around the weaving villages, and may run up to Muang Sing for the morning market tomorrow, but I’m also tempted to rent a bike and just go out on my own. Being gloriously lost is just so much fun. 🙂

(I may hire a guide today, though, if only to get him to show me how to ride a motorbike. Whee!)

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Laos, Luang Namtha, Southeast Asia

January 27, 2003 by Tien Chiu

Heading to Luang Namtha,craftwork, royal palace, snake soup

Well, today I decided to wander about town, visit the craft shops, and do the mandatory museum/temple tour. I discovered, not to my enormous surprise, that the vast majority of textiles shops are selling tourist schlock, and that very few Lao shopkeepers speak English well enough to authenticate the “real” pieces for me.

However, I did find one gem in the batch: OckPopToc (or whatever the name *really* is), a Lao natural dyed textile cooperative run by a Brit woman. I had a long talk with her on about a million topics, and am commissioning a sampler piece tomorrow. This piece will contain as many weaving techniques/patterns, and as many natural dye colors, as they can fit in esthetically–basically, a summary of Lao weaving. I have no idea how much this is going to cost me, but I think it will be worthwhile…I am also going to try talking her into letting me play on the shop loom.

I’ve also discovered that Lao silverwork is *exquisite*–better than in Thailand, Cambodia, or Vietnam. I’ve seen five or six different techniques so far, including all the Vietnamese/Cambodian/Thai styles, plus some distinctively Lao ones. They also have the most *gorgeous* swords–three foot long numbers with elaborately worked silver scabbards and hilts. The blades are hand-hammered in the knifemaking villages. They’re out of my league at the moment ($200-400 depending on length) but very very beautiful.

(Mind you, they’re not very good swords–blades aren’t sharp and won’t hold an edge, etc.–but they’re impressive feats of silversmithing.)

Opium weights are also popular–small cast animals in silver or plain metal (usually elephants or water buffalo), in varying sizes. Supposedly they’re used to weigh out small quantities of opium, but these days they’re mostly sold for tourists. Opium pipes are also all over–etched bone, carved soapstone, elaborate silver. (You can’t tell that opium is a major cash crop up north, can you? 😉 )

I also went by the Royal Palace. It’s, um, confused. Imagine, if you will, a nice colonial French villa. Now, make about half the rooms simple, understated French colonial, and the other half bright red walls overlaid with glass mosaic people and covered in gold leaf, a la Chinese temples. (Some rooms are mixed, which is every bit as horrifying as you think it is.) Stick a nice crystal chandelier in the middle of the most Asian room (the throne room). That’s the Royal Palace.

(Curiously, they have a series of paintings set along the walls, telling the story of an ancient Lao prince. Apparently, as a young boy, while handing out away alms, he gave the country’s sacred white elephant away to beggars. This incensed the people, who demanded his exile, so he was sent into the jungle with his family to live as a hermit (giving away all his belongings as he did). After many years of this, his wife dreamed that a merchant came by to steal both of her children, so begged the prince to take extra care of them while she went out to the jungle.

Sure enough, as soon as she was gone, an evil merchant who wanted slaves for his household turned up, and asked the prince for his children. Despite his wife’s plea, the prince promptly gave away his children (the kids ran off and hid, but the prince made them go off with the merchant). When the wife came back, and found out the kids were gone, a supernatural being turned up, and asked the prince to give away his wife. The prince promptly offered his wife to the being, who then returned her, and rewarded/blessed them both.

Meanwhile, the merchant lost his way, wound up in the capital city, where the king recognized his grandkids, acknowledged them, and sent out an order to bring the prince back from exile. The king resigned, the prince became king, and they all lived happily ever after.)

I suspect some part of this story got lost in translation. 🙂 Either that, or it’s one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever heard. I mean, do you *want* a guy like that running your kingdom? –but, oh well. This *is* Laos…

That’s about it on the royal palace/museum; it’s full of some really bizarre things, like three copies of the keys to Tokyo, the key of Los Angeles, Washington DC, etc.–whichever keys were handed over to whatever visiting prince. It also has two moon rocks presented to the people of Laos, both by Richard Nixon, both in the early ’70s. This seems *really* bizarre considering that the U.S. was carpet-bombing Laos at the time.

Speaking of which, it turns out my guide can’t go to Luang Namtha with me: his mom, as it turns out, was wounded by shrapnel or something during the American bombing, which embedded in her kidney. so now she has kidney problems, bad enough that she’s in the hospital. they want to do surgery on her to remove the embedded object (they saw it on an X-ray), but they can’t afford surgery, so they gave him a list of medicines for her. they can’t afford the medicines either, so he’s going out into the country tomorrow to look for medicine for her (I think medicinal plants–pharmacies are in the city).

So anyway, he can’t go, but he’s giving me contact info for a friend of his (who can act as guide), and a list of weaving villages near Luang Namtha. Sounds pretty cool to me…

Oh yeah: and I tried snake soup today. Apparently they drink it to improve their health: I certainly HOPE it improves their health, because the stuff tastes like, umm….let’s see…ditch water/raw sewage mixed with dishwashing detergent and quinine. I mean *really* vile. Rat and scorpion both taste a lot better.

(I have *no* idea what they put into it…snake is supposed to taste like chicken, so I suspect some bizarre spices are at fault.)

Today in the night market I also saw them selling roasted pig…with the head neatly flattened and set out, next to the legs, which included the curled-up hooves. All roasted to a nice appetizing, crispy-looking brown…I took some photos in the afternoon light, they were beautiful. I did not, however, eat any of the pig’s head, nor did I try the entrails, which were also for sale. Experimentation does have its limits… 😉

And that’s it for today’s report. Tomorrow, I’m poking around Luang Prabang a bit more, then taking the night bus to Luang Namtha, where I’ll poke around some villages, then spend four days rafting to Thailand.

off to bed–

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Laos, Luang Prabang, Southeast Asia

January 26, 2003 by Tien Chiu

weaving, knifemaking

Well. Today has been Official Textile Excess Day. (Which of you wags was it that suggested the “tien” as a unit of excess, with standard behavior measured in millitiens? 😉 ) I’ve bought three gorgeous woven silk tapestries (two 100% naturally dyed!), half a kilo of naturally dyed reeled-silk yarn, half a pound of undyed reeled silk, and (the kicker) a 36″ weaving reed with two sets of tied heddles. This does not sound like such a bad idea, until you ask yourself how on earth one mails a 36″ reed home from Laos? If you haven’t the slightest clue, well, neither do I. I imagine I’ll figure it out eventually. 😉

The tapestries, on the other hand, I am thoroughly unrepentant about. They’re all 2-3 yards long, very well-woven, and gorgeous. They also demonstrate a fairly broad range of textile techniques and patterns–tapestry weaving, supplementary weft, ten or twelve different natural dye colors, and a number of different traditional patterns. I’m still looking for good pieces, but as my guide from today has agreed to take me up north and show me around Luang Namtha (his home province), I may wait and buy them from the actual hilltribe weavers (it will probably be cheaper).

I will, of course, take photos when I can.

Today I went off with the guy from the textiles shop, who turns out to be this 21-year-old weaver who is studying English, or trying to. It costs $20/month to study English at the local university, and the shop he works in only pays him $15/month (plus room/board), so he basically éhas to work for two months, then study for one. In the meanwhile, he tries to study as much as he can on his own.

Running around with me, of course, is an excellent chance to practice his English. That plus I’m paying him a reasonable rate for a Lao guide, about $6/day–40% of his monthly salary. (If you are detecting a major gap in the exchange rate, here, you are entirely correct. What I paid for textiles today would pay his salary for almost an entire year–a sobering thought. (I am still unrepentant–they are *really* nice pieces.))

Anyway, today he took me around to the various weaving and natural dye places. They are all tourist traps, but they are tourist traps of varying quality: the “weaving village” is complete schlock (complete with hard-sell tactics), but one of the natural dye centers had some excellent stuff–museum quality, maybe a little below. All had demo sites for weaving and natural dyeing–nothing I haven’t seen before, though there was one indigo dyepot that was really cool. It was almost full of real live indigo paste! and, with that amount of indigo, they must have started with at least a half-ton of indigo leaves (more likely a ton). I wish I could have seen them processing it.

However, I *did* get to try using a Lao loom! which was really cool. I only wove a few throws–it’s trickier than it looks–but my guide talked to his friend, and she offered to teach me to weave! She estimated that it would take about a week for her to teach me, and I haven’t got that much time, but if I make it back to Laos at the end of the India trip, I may come back here. (I suspect my guide would be more than happy to teach me, too–he has a loom at home–but I’m being careful about that. My experience with single guys in Asia is that sooner or later, they start developing a personal interest–a week is probably well into the danger zone.)

It has been interesting looking at Lao textiles. At first glance, they all look wonderful–way, way better than anything that’s made in the U.S.–but after awhile, they start sorting into tourist schlock, better tourist schlock, and nice pieces. Tourist schlock looks not unlike the cheap polyester bits you can buy in Bangkok–some of them *are* cheap polyester. (Tourists buy them anyway.) Better tourist schlock is “real” weaving, but garish colors, synthetic dyes, simplistic patterns, and poor weaving quality.

Nice pieces are more subtle/coordinated, complex, and well-woven. But I’d be hard put to explain any one criteria that distinguishes one from another–sort of like explaining the differences between good art and bad art. As the Supreme Court justice said, I know it when I see it…at least, *now* I do. 🙂

I got my textile pieces documented, by the way–it turned out that one of the women in the natural dye center spoke good English, so she identified the various dyes in my pieces and wrote them down for me, along with the pattern names, ethnic origins, etc. My books on Lao natural dyes/textiles were priceless–she didn’t always know English names, but she could find them using the photos. A pictoral dictionary!

Anyway, after that, we went to a knifemaking village, where they hand-forge everything from small knives to machetes. Really interesting–every house (usually a wood-frame hut with corrugated tin roof) has a crude little forge in back, with sweating Lao men hammering away at red-hot iron blades. The noise is constant. The forges are small charcoal fires maybe a foot across (just big enough to hold one or two blades), heated by a pair of very spiffy bellows. These are basically aluminum stovepipes that vent into the fire; in the stovepipes are large round cloth pads attached to sticks, which are pulled up and down to force air into the fire.

This would look relatively pedestrian, except that the bellows operators are generally adorable little kids–I have a great photo of a three-year-old (four? five?) boy pumping the bellows up and down with a big grin on his face. His equally cute, six-year-old sister was sitting by the fire, helping with something else–she had bits of ash smeared all over her face and was absolutely the cutest thing on earth. (Yes, I have photos. 😉 )

Everywhere I went in the knifemaking village people stared at me–I think they couldn’t figure out if I was Lao or not. (Most tourists arrive in busloads.)

I am, of course, extremely tempted to buy a hand-hammered machete, but even my unreasonableness has limits. I mean, imagine trying to mail a machete home… 🙂

Oh–I have now eaten water buffalo. It’s indistinguishable from beef (but very distinguishable from rat 😉 ). I have also picked up some scorpion brandy, mostly for sentimental (Bangkok) reasons. 🙂

That’s it for today…tomorrow I may go for a bicycle tour, and I may just go around Luang Prabang looking at the textiles museum, and poking around textile places. Day after tomorrow, assuming he can arrange it, I’ll run up to Luang Namtha with my “guide”. He’s from Luang Namtha province, knows all about the minorities and what kinds of stuff they weave, and is going to take me off exploring, in exchange for bus fare there and back, and a chance to see his family. (Bus fare is very expensive for him, irrelevant for me.) I’ll probably also pay him, although strictly speaking I don’t need to–$6/day won’t kill me, it’s a fair price for a guide, and it will pay his tuition for another month in school. Worth it, I think.

Needless to say, the idea of being shown around the Luang Namtha hilltribes by a weaver who grew up there and knows weaving, is just horrifying. I am suffering horribly. 😉

Tien

P.S. He also offered to take me to see cockfighting, if we can find a place where they’re having them…I have to admit, I’m incredibly curious.

Filed Under: All travel posts, Laos, Luang Prabang, Southeast Asia

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