Day 24 - You Can Get Pretty Far with only a Picture and a Kindle

The next morning we set out from Vientiane for Lak 52. In college Ken had been friends with a Laotian guy who still had family living in a village not far from the capitol. Lak means essentially village and while I first wondered what happened to the other 51 villages I learned that the 52 was for the distance to the capitol. Most of the people in the village were ethnic Hmong, a group originally from the highlands in south China who now live in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and the US. A lot of Hmong people actually live in Wisconsin so I had heard of them from school. The Hmong have a unfortunate history springing from the Vietnam War. The US seeking to create a buffer state to stop VC soldiers form coming down from the North, armed a huge secret Laotian army containing mostly Hmong people who fought the Vietnamese and some Communist Laotian forces at very high casualties. When the Communist forces took over in Laos after the war some Hmong waged an on and off again guerrilla war for 15 or 20 years. This coupled with the fact that the Hmong grew opium as a cash crop for many years caused a great deal of distrust between them and the Laotian government, who have a habit of blaming them for various social ills.

We didn't know if anyone in Lak 52 spoke English, and very much doubted it, so Ken got a picture of his friend as well as a picture of the address of his friend's Uncle's address in Lak 52. On top of that Ken's friend had recorded a message for his Uncle which Dave loaded into his Kindle to play for them when we got there. One advantage of having pretty much only one North-South road in the country is that you don't need to have a lot of buses going to each city. Each bus essentially takes people as far up the road as they need to go ending in the northern most city. We told the bus driver where we were going so he could let us off since we would almost certainly miss this town on our own. We road the bus for a little over an hour, which in Laos is pretty fast for 52 km. We eventually got off in Lak 52 which was bigger than I expected it to be. What we could see of the town was a series of shops that stretched at least a km down the main highway. Towns like this were not unusual from what I had seen the previous day, but this one was on the bigger side especially for one that didn't appear on many maps. We stopped in the first store we came to and bought some beer and bananas because we had absolutely no diea what to bring these people.

For some reason this store, and a lot of little stores in Laos, carried a really big selection of Johnnie Walker, and not just the cheaper stuff either. Even though they had all this scotch for sale I also never really saw anyone drink it. We held up the picture of the address to the people in the store who indicated we should go some unspecified distance down the road and then turn left. We walked down the road for a while until we came to an intersection. We asked some people there and eventually were able to find out in which direction to continue. Finally we turned off onto a side road that was not paved and continued walking. We passed quite a few smaller wooden houses, as well as dogs and chickens running everywhere. I still have no idea how they make sure that all these dogs don't eat the chickens. We walked down this side road for a while trying to figure out where to go. We came to what looked like another town nestled further back from the road. The people there seemed to indicated that we had gone too far. Retracing our steps we went up to the people in a house we had skipped before asking where we should go. This time though instead of just vaguely pointing the guy whipped out his cell phone and started making calls.

After a few minutes of this he beckoned us to come to his car and drove us back through town to a little turn off we had missed. We parked near a house that sort of looked like the picture we had of the address. The guy driving us talked to some more people and eventually indicated that we should go up to that house. A man emerged from the house who, we learned later, was Ken's friend's Uncle, and essentially the head of the family. We showed him the picture of Ken's friend and he smiled shook our hands and brought us into the house. His house was a small one story building made of either stone of concrete. It was mostly one large room with three small bedrooms going off at various points. It had a nice tile floor and it appeared that electricity had been added after the house was built with wires more of less taped to the roof. There was a bamboo thatched hut to the side of the house that served as the kitchen and another room for the women, and a outhouse in the front that seemed to be shared between several houses. Dave got out his Kindle with the recorded message and past it around so that in the end maybe six people listened to it. The message was for the Uncle and it told him who we were and asked him if we could stay for the night. It literally asked him to give us some sign if we could stay with him and at the end he just gave us a thumbs up and smiled.

One child reappeared with a man who spoke some English and explained to us the the Uncle was his "grand-father," though given his limited English I'm guessing that was more of an honorific title and he was the Uncle nephew. This man explained to us that he was actually and English teacher and invited us to his class later. Other people kept coming by, some of whom spoke some English, until we meet a good portion of the family. The most interesting person was the Uncle's father, a man in at least his 80's, who never took off a soccer jersey he wore as an undershirt. Oddly enough the next morning when it was colder he put on a suit, though he still wore the soccer jersey. He had been married four times, though it didn't appear that any of his wives were still alive, and the pictures of his wives adorned the walls, along with pictures of various other family members. Actually in all the houses we visited the walls were covered with pictures of family, international movie stars, singers, soccer teams, and quite a few pictures of David Beckham. The Uncle didn't really seem to know what to do with us since we couldn't talk with him so we spent a lot of time with the English teacher who acted as our interpreter.

After a while we went over to near the English teacher's house to see the head of the village with whom we apparently had to registrar if we wished to stay the night. The head of the village was just an ordinary looking man who was sitting in the middle of a group of children and men. He got up regarded us gravely and then took our passports to copy down some information or something. The English teacher said we had to pay 30,000 kip, the local currency, or a little more than $3. It was never clear if this was a fee or a bribe, or if there is any difference there. The English teacher's house was a simple wooden one, up on stilts to avoid the dirt he told us, and we sat in the shade below it. We meet his mother and father. His father was def and read lips. We tried to ask if he had been in the war, but it didn't seem so. No one ever really mentioned the war even when we brought it up except the Uncle who said he had seen some bombing, Laos was the most bombed country in the world. We meet the English teacher's wife, he mentioned that she was his second wife he had been married before but divorced very quickly. He had a cute baby who I didn't even notice for a while was right in front of us covered in a basket hanging from the underside of the house. He said the baby had some spots on his face but he didn't know why.

After a while we went inside a hut made of thatched bamboo where a small fire was still simmering and had some food with him. I don't really know if we arrived at any actual meal time, but he later explained to us the Hmong people like to feed visitors to their house, and indeed I don't think we went to any house without eating a meal. In a pattern that later became more apparent the men would eat while the women would wait and bring more food. The main dish in any meal was a sort of sticky rice. When I say sticky I don't mean that it sort of stuck together I mean the the only real way to separate it was with your hands, which the English teacher explained, was just what most people did. The sticky rice had a taste that was somehow better than standard rice. The only utensil I had at every meal was a big spoon that seemed to be made out of aluminum or some other very pliable metal. The other foods at every meal were various meat and veritable type soups. People would use the spoons to get some of the meat or just drink the broth, with everyone using their spoons in the same bowls. This wasn't necessarily the most sanitary choice and it wasn't really helped by having everyone wash their hands in the same bowl, which I believe was actually the custom at the time of the Roman Empire.

Even though it would seem logical I never really saw anyone combine the rice with the soups, people would eat first one than the other. There were usually two or three things besides the rice, like a green bean soup or a soup with spinach and chicken. Ken noted that they cooked all the food in a bowl with water over an open flame then simply served it without draining the water. I also never saw anyone with a drink during a meal. The other interesting thing was that the two or three dishes would be partitioned into two or three bowls across the table so that everyone had easy access. The women would hover around and refill one of the bowls when it went down a little. I never saw what they did with it when we left but I bet they stored the leftover for another day. Even though there were chickens and dogs everywhere they seemed to know not to go into the houses or to be underfoot. The food was pretty good. I don't know how filling it was exactly since we were so constantly stuffed with food by everyone we meet. The English teacher had the habit of saying to us, "Eat until full" when we'd only find out later that there was in fact another meal to go.

During the first part of the meal there was some sort of religious ritual going on in another part of the bamboo hut. There was an alter that didn't match anything I'd seen before, made up mostly of paper and things made out of paper. A priest, or shaman, or something was wearing a red hat and saying a mantra over a man who the English teacher said had bad eyes. It was odd to see such an unusual looking ritual treated as so normal. When it was over the person being prayed over left and the priest sat down, took off his hat, and had a cigarette. Given the range of religions in this part of the world, and the number of different ways each are practiced, it could have been anything from Buddhism, to Taoism, to Christianity. The English teacher said it was "ghost religion" which I think meant some sort of ancestor worship or natural religion maybe mixed with another larger religion. When we were leaving I finally got up the nerve to pull out my camera and take a picture of the priest and the alter. The priest jumped up and motioned for me to hold on while he put back on his red hat, pulled out a huge knife from God only knows where, and posed in front of the alter. I think it may be my favorite picture I've ever taken. I expected him to possibly be annoyed not to be thrilled to pose for a picture.

After dinner we accompanied the teacher to his school for afternoon lessons. The school was mostly in a long building divided into three rooms. The school had been founded by a guy who doubled as principle and lived nearby. He said he wanted the kids to get a better education in English beyond what they were taught in the regular schools. This school held its classes either early before the normal school or late after them. The classes were very small that day since the students were on break from their normal school. The class was fairly basic with a good deal of call and response from a fairly basic text book but most of the students didn't have much English so the level was probably necessary. If we had been in an English class in a small town in China the students would have gone nuts over us, but here they didn't seem to care much. The quietest students sat somewhat apart from the rest of the class and Dave and Ken later learned that these students were Hmong. He asked if the students didn't get along because of this but the teacher said that they just came from different places. I was a little bored so after a break I stayed outside to have a look around.

I had to go to the bathroom and was surprised and pleased to find an Americas style toilet, though it didn't flush meaning I had to take water out of a nearby bucket and poor it into the bowl to effectively flush it. I talked for a while with the guy who had started the school and he told me which house he lived in and some more about the school. The surrounding area was absolutely beautiful especially with the sun setting. Around besides houses, which in this area were much nicer and muti-story, were a bunch of rice fields, some in use and some not, and some grazing land for cattle. Laotian are famous for a laid back lifestyle the joke being that when a new type of rice production was invented that doubled the yield the Chinese were happy because they could grow more rice while the Laotians were happy since they only had to work half as much. There were cows around also but they seemed mostly to be taking care of themselves. I saw one guy walking behind some cow going back into a yard for the night but he just seemed to be mostly watching them. In fact the only people who I really saw do much were the women who were in charge of all the cooking and taking care of the children.

I wanted a soda so I went up to one building near the school that seemed to be selling snacks and pointed to a Pepsi. The woman took the soda put a bunch of ice in a clear plastic bag then pored the soda into the bag. She was very amused by the stunned look on my face. I gathered that they did this for two reasons. First, all the ice cooled down the soda amazingly fast. Second, the soda in Laos mostly came in glass bottles, which I'm sure had some value, and this way the person selling the soda could keep the bottle. after waiting around for a while enjoying the scenery the classes had ended and the teacher took us back to the Uncle's house. Of course he didn't have a car so we road on two motos with me and the teacher on one and Dave and Ken on the other. They had some trouble getting it to start at a few points but eventually we all got there. Back at the Uncle's house we ate dinner again, I think this time it was actually dinner. Once again all the men ate while all the women pretty much sat off to the side and came and went from the kitchen. I just kept thinking of how much of a problem my mom would have with this place. She had a hard enough time in some parts of Israel with the gender imbalances, but here it was much more extreme. I also wonder what would have happened if one of us had been a woman. Would she still have gotten to eat with the men? I bet that wanting to treat a guest well would have overrode any cultural distinctions, but it would have been interesting.

After dinner everyone sat around and watched TV for a while. I think one of the channels had some English on it and the rest were probably in Thai since Laos doesn't do a lot of TV. Apparently it's not uncommon for Laotian people to speak Thai since it's fairly similar and they do a lot of business with their much bigger neighbor. We saw a music video of some guy who was supposed to be the biggest singer in Laos which looked like it was produced by a high school AV club. After a while people started to go to bed. The bed they had for us would have been literally the exact same size as the tree of us lying shoulder to shoulder. I can't take that sort of clossness and the fact that it wasn't that comfortable anyways made the decision easier. I basically just sat up most of the night reading about two books and watching some TV I didn't really understand. Pretty late I lay down on the couch and got some sleep which was no easy task given that the couches were essentially wrapped in plastic. One of the children came out to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and was pretty surprised to see me there on the couch, but I had no real way to communicate what was going on.

P.S.
This is the last day I have in my hand written journal from the trip so the last four days may be a little different in tone from these.