Muang Singh

After enjoying the relative luxury and French cuisine of Luang Prabang
we headed north for the mountains to see the real Laos. Travelling is
a joke here; vehicle wise, road wise and as a result time-wise.
Everything here is one beat slower than in Thailand and reaching your
destination on time is something between hope and endurance. Journeys
are defined in days instead of hours. So we booked the public bus to
Udom Xai (190 km away, 6 hours). The bus looked in good shape and had
all the MOT stickers on the front screen up to 1973! Everyone was
shuffled between seats and rice bags and as luck would have it, only
a seat for Sabine! But I could get a spare seat... The driver got me
a plastic stool in the aisle and told me to hold on to the seats left
and right during the trip. Good advice. 5 more passengers were squeezed
in like that and off we went. At least that was the plan but the
engine went dead. Spanners and hammers came out of the back from
underneath 10 rucksacks. The bootlid went up and three guys started
bashing the engine with 4 other guys looking and pointing at it.
Miraculously the thing started running again and off we went. The
driver seemed to be wanting to make up time as he drove at max speed
through villages and **** with chickens, pigs and sometimes the elderly
jumping in the roadside to save their bare lives. Both lanes were used on
the basis that whatever comes from the other direction is likely to be
smaller than the bus! Which is very true. Believe it or not, we reached
Udom Xai.... an hour and a half before schedule.

Udom Xai is no more than a truckstop town so we went to the first guesthouse we could find to
push on to Muang Sing the next day. The bus ride was kind of the same ritual (except the
projectile vomiting from the passengers due to the bumpy and winding road) and we managed to get the final 2 hours travelling to Muang Singh with a connecting tuk-tuk for 13 people; we were passenger 21 and 22. The whole thing is hilarious but we were glad to be there. We went to a lovely guesthouse outside Muang Sing in the mountains overlooking the ricefields, buffalo
grazing under our balcony and with a view on China. Great stuff. We stayed at the guesthouse
for 2 nights and did a one day walk/trek to the surrounding villages with the host of the
guesthouse as a guide to find our way and to keep us safe as we found out later.

The trek was to hilltribe villages of Akha and Tha-Lue people who used to live up high in the hills growing opium but the government has relocated the villages to clamp down on opium trade. The Akha villages can be recognized by the gate in front of every village. However do not walk through the gate or touch it as the gate is for the spirits and you should pay for sacrificing a chicken if you don't obey the rules! The gate looked very welcoming with wooden machineguns nailed to it. I told Sabine I loved her :-). The village looked similar to the ones we saw in Thailand except the faces were less friendly here and the people were dead poor. Kids came over to beg for money and sweets, pulling your backpack, grannie showed a wound of her grandson looking sad and worried, heartbreaking stuff but we knew the clinic was just down the road and free to all! We've been in places like these before but not with this kind of persistent begging and the locals degrading themselves to get a buck. The guidebook already warned that unguided tours may affect local culture and pride and we could see this was the case. Let's push on to the next village. Here was another gate and this time no path next to it. According to the guide we could go through but once we reached the village he saw some kind of 'voodoo' :-) sign on the road which apparently meant that we should not have entered the village. Oops! The villagers came towards us and waved at us in disgust that we should move around the village as they were holding a ceremony to keep the spirits out. As we moved back and moved around the village they kept an eye on us. Coming back to the road we were still too close to the village entrance on the other side so we were sent into the fields again. We could see the elderly of the tribe singing and praying under the Akha gate. We managed to get back to the road and continue our walk. Nice people.

Well, for the purpose of this blog I spiced it up a bit but the Akha villages did not come
across as friendly (nor do they have to by the way). The other villages were more welcoming
with mutual curiosity and kids walking along with us for miles. The day all in all was great and
where we are very sceptical about all the political correct 'eco tourism' that is advertised
everywhere, we really saw that uncontrolled tourist visits to the villages have a negative effect
on the ethnic groups.

The next day we rented a bike and cycled to China (sounds good doesn't it!). 10 KM up-hill with Sabine changing colour every mile :-). Put a foot in China, take a picture, see a chicken being run over by a truck (no more discussion what's for dinner tonight I guess) and race downhill
back to Muang Singh for a (excellent) Beer Lao. Great fun.

Laos is very different from Thailand. Less developed which in a way means more authentic but the years of foreign occupation, being bombed to the stone age by the US during the Vietnam war and 15 years of communism have not sparked the entrepreneurial spirit of the Lao. Opportunities are given, not created and dreams will stay dreams as things will never change anyway. This also means that the Lao are very happy with what they have and the number of smiling people is high. Lao are very friendly, invite you to their table at the village celebrations, thank you for your custom and wish health to you and your family and smile at every opportunity whether it be to say goodmorning or tell you they have no orange juice today. Highly enjoyable. Taking transport with the locals has the same effect. No one understands each other but everyone smiles at each other. Here close to the Chinese border people also have the habit to spit on the floor always preceded by a 30 second introduction that something big is coming up :-). The authenticity of Lao also means that the standard of hygiene is a step below that of Thailand. Grubby hotel rooms (some), tablecloths with 'John Lennon for president' and fleas jumping from dog to dog via my hairy legs. It is all part of the travelling off the beaten track deal but I am glad I still notice!

Tonight we are bunking up in The Boatlanding guesthouse which is a luxurious eco-lodge
(a tourist attracting buzzword; you pay for environmentally friendly solar heated showers while
the Lao throw all their rubbish out the window, ate all the fish in the river, the monkeys in the
trees, and katapulted all birds from the trees. It is weird to walk in the jungle without seeing
or hearing animals except insects (same in Thailand by the way) and I am telling you the exclusive hip restaurants in London that serve fried cockroaches and poached tarantulas to connect you back to nature as they still do in the Africa and the Far-East, they don't eat it by choice here but there is nothing else left!

So far my continuously subjective and skewed view on life I guess. And enjoying it to the full.... :-)

Take care and speak later.