Round the World Chelle: Into Laos

12 February 2012

I’m once again writing my blog from the deck of a boat—this time I’m cruising down the Mekong River aboard a long boat. Yesterday was a full day of driving as we left Thailand for Laos. (I’m still not clear on whether to pronounce the “s” at the end of the name. I’ve heard it both ways. My guide explained that originally there was no “s” on the country’s name; it was added by the French, who don’t really pronounce the letters at the end of their words anyway, so I should keep it silent, but then the locals here pronounce the s, so I suppose I should as well?)

We drove five hours to the Thailand immigration station (where the immigration officer found the exit card I thought I had lost—stapled inside my passport!). Along the way we stopped to see how cashews are farmed—a very labor-intensive process—and visited a beautiful white temple that looked like it belonged in a fairytale or Disneyland.

Shelled cashew

Opening the cashew nuts

Cashew nut plant. (I actually took a photo of this
thinking it was real. On closer look, it was attached
by a string, but it does give the idea.)

Frosting Temple

Hands outside the frosted temple pulling you down to the underworld.

Bathroom signs. We had to take off our shoes and use
the provided flip-flops to use the toilet. If only all public toilets
(or hotel toilets for that matter) were so clean!

From the immigration station we took a five minute boat ride (along with a washing machine) across the Mekong to enter Laos. Immigration there was quite easy, though one of the group had a scare when an officer started questioning him about his stay in the country. It turns out the officer just wanted to practice his English.

That's Laos over there!

Shuttle across the boarder

We spent the night at Aramin Guesthouse in Huay Xai (a small city which used to be big in opium production) run by Mr. Singh—a sprightly 71-year-old retired French teacher who gave us a demonstration in the reception/restaurant to show us how to turn on the lights and fan in the bamboo rooms. “Hot coffee, hot tea, no hot shower,” he also explained. He was delightful as was the guesthouse. Signs posted around the place told us to leave our valuables here and to envelop sanitary napkins, and there were old 8-year-old calendars with beautiful Laos girls decorating our walls. We took a tour of the small town and tried some new fruits and buffalo sausage at the market before going out to dinner.

The bamboo rooms

Light and power demonstration

Guest House signage.

Continued

Another sunset--I never tire of them.

Mr. Singh

After dinner we sat around reception at the guesthouse while Kom, our Cambodian guide, taught us some about Cambodian history. I’ll write more about the history of the country when I arrive there, and it’s a difficult one. Kom is 32 years old, but his official documents have him at 28. His parents changed his age when he was young because they were worried he would be forced to get involved in jungle warfare when he turned 12 or 13, and they weren’t willing to lose another child. (They had already lost two children—one to starvation and the other to the war.) Fortunately, the fighting was over by the time he was a teenager. Kom also had an uncle that disappeared during the Khmer Rouge era. They assume he has died, but he said that his family also thought they had lost an aunt, but after 30 years, she made contact with them and visited Cambodia about five years ago. She had settled in Philadelphia.

Today is the first of two eight-hour days on the water. The water level is quite low and we seem to be zigzagging from shore to shore to avoid rocks. We stopped for a little tour of the town of Ban Huoy Pha Lam. The 350 inhabitants of this city used to live in the mountains but were asked by the government to move down closer to the river three years ago and become subsistence farmers. The town is basic—bamboo huts with thatched roofs built on stilts. The satellite dishes outside many of them seem quite incongruent. But there has been a water pump and electricity for the past couple of years, and there’s also Chinese TV. Curiously, outside each hut is a little red or blue flag. It turns out the government inspects the huts each year and denotes their findings with these little makers. A red flag means that the hut is okay for the year—there is enough food and there is a toilet. A blue flag denotes work needs to be done.