Liz and Eli on the Move

I accidentally posted the same picture from Angkor Thom twice instead of
attaching this one. This is the REAL “Buddha Figure at Angkor Thom” (with
sweaty eli in foreground). Sorry.

Using a rotational system, land is cleared by burning before planting, used
for one season, and then cleared again few years later. Both parts of the
country that we visited were very smoky, even in the cities, as this is the
time of the year before the wet season starts, when everyone is getting
ready to plant.

These modified tractors are used by the people who live in the hills for
agriculture, logging, getting down to the main road, and everything else
that takes a lot of energy.

It is Khmu village in the hills north of the city of Luong Prabang.
Multi-day treks, biking and kayaking trips are popular in the region and eli
and I signed on for a 2-day trekking and kayaking trip. We were slated to
be in a group of 4 but the two Canadian women who were supposed to come with
us had to bail out at the last minute for health reasons, so the group
consisted of just eli, myself and our guide Lee.
Lao is made up of many different ethnic groups with separate languages and
cultures. The country takes its name from the largest of these. Lee, our
guide, is Hmong, a hill-tribe with populations in Thailand, Laos, Burma and
China. You may know about the Hmong people from the wonderful book “The
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,” by Anne Fadiman, which I HIGHLY
recommend, or more recently, from the Hollywood movie “Dirty Harry Makes
Hmong Friends,” alternatively titled, “Gran Torino,” directed by and
starring Clint Eastwood, which isn’t too bad either.
Anyway, the village we did a home stay in was Khmu, an ethnic group that
migrated north from present-day Cambodia centuries ago. They subsist off of
growing rice, corn and some vegetables in the nearby hills, hunting birds
and squirrels with the help of dogs, and keeping chickens, ducks, turkeys
and pigs in the village- all free ranging. The chickens particularly seemed
to have the run of the village, entering and exiting houses at will.
We slept as guests in the biggest house in the village. The family also had
the only TV in the village (it runs off a generator) and so after dinner
seemingly half the village crowded in to watch Khmu music videos for hours.
I actually slept quite well the first half of the night, but as any of you
who have spent time on a farm know, roosters start crowing at about 3:30 or
4am, well before sunrise. It was WAY noisier in the early hours of the
morning in this village than it ever is in Brooklyn!
There is no running water in the village. People use a nearby spring for
bathing and drinking water.

We seem to be the only language that sticks an “s” on the end of this
country’s name, though I can’t claim to know what the Bulgarians or Turks
refer to it as. Most travelers had told us that Lao was their favorite
country to visit in the region and we instantly saw why. There is a much
more laid-back atmosphere and much less energy spent by the locals competing
for the tourist dollar. Lao is considerably less-developed than its
neighbors. It’s the only country we’re visiting that hasn’t been
google-mapped. Really, go check it out- the whole nation’s just gray. Of
course, being less developed isn’t always good for the natives, as health
care and social services are lacking.
We arrived in the capital city of Vientiane via an 18-hour bus odyssey from
the city of Hue in central Vietnam. We spent a day there enjoying
excellent and extremely cheap spa services as well as really excellent
French pastries filled with good things like pistachios and chocolate.
Though we’re not fans of colonialism, visiting a country that used to be
controlled by the French has its perks.

More photos up soon….

This is a night bus with “sleeper seats”. Because distances between the
cities tourists visit in Vietnam are so great, it is a popular way to get
from one city to another. I really freaked out and felt extremely
claustrophobic and trapped the first night I spent on one of these, but was
quite comfortable by the the third time we did.

After leaving Saigon we spent a few days in the slightly slower-paced beach
side city of Nha Trang. Though the beach was beautiful to look at, we found
it a little too dirty to swim in.