Lenou’s Library

While in Laos, we spent an afternoon with Lenou Sypasurt, a young man with an extraordinary vision for his country: to increase literacy among children.  With money he saved from working as a dishwasher in Australia, he rented a small house near Luang Prabang and converted it into a library and classroom.  Above is a short pro bono video we produced about Lenou, his library and the kids who visit it to help raise money and attract volunteers.  Enjoy, and visit his site if you’d like to help out!

Overland Travel Stops: 4,000 Islands & Kratie

First sunset in Don Khone

The land border between Laos and Cambodia is just a dusty little town filled with dollar noodles and stalls selling batteries and flip flops.  Yet just beyond in each country are two little gems worth a day or two stop whilst traveling overland.  Southern Laos possesses the 4,000 islands, also known as Siphandon. A riverine archipelago in the Mekong, most of the islands were submerged due to heavy rains. Yet the three largest and only inhabited islands remained, all encircled by cheap waterside bungalows adorned with hammocks.  A good book and a fruit shake were the order of the day, a welcome retreat from weeks of daily activity.  Of historical interest, Siphandon was the French’s last attempt to create a trade route between Southeast Asia and China. Some signs of their efforts remain, including an abandoned railroad and bridge connecting the islands of Don Khone and Don Det, which can be viewed during a bicycle ride around the islands.  Relaxing alongside the racing Mekong was a fitting way to conclude our visit in Laos, a country so firmly connected with the mighty river that runs its length.

Second sunset in Don Khone

The bus ride to Cambodia was excessively long, thanks to a two hour stop at the border and a blown tire.  Cambodia’s landscape differs greatly from Laos and Thailand with flat rice fields extending for miles dotted by coconut and palm trees.  Most striking are the acres of burned tree-stumps, a harsh introduction to destructive logging in Cambodia.  After hours on a bus blasting Cambodian karaoke dvds, we arrived in Kratie, Cambodia (pronounced Krachay) with a pink sunset as our much deserved reward.

Kratie locals watch the sunset over the Mekong river

Boat coming in during sunset in Kratie

Tuk tuk driver enjoying the sunset

The riverside town of Kratie is famous its endangered fresh-water Irrawaddy Dolphins, of which less than 75 remain. In early morning, we ventured by boat to their feeding area, where we turned off the motors to wait and listen for the spray of their blow holes and the flash sightings of their flippers or distinct flat-nosed heads.  The game of waiting for the dolphins to appear in the quiet of the river was enchanting. We were surprised to have seen so many given their dwindling populations yet we only managed a few fleeting pictures of them below.

Searching for the Irrwady dolphins

The Irrwady dolphin. Elusive in photos

A Short Loop Around the Bolaven Plateau

The view on our ride around the Bolaven Plateau

If there’s any one place that can reflect the experience of the Lao people and their land, it’s the Bolaven Plateau — a beautiful place marked by a tragic past and facing a challenging future. The Bolaven Plateau is an elevated region in Southern Laos named after the Laven ethnic group that historically dominated the land. During the French occupation it was deemed fitting land for growing coffee, a crop they still grow today.  In 1901, the ethnic groups that populate the Plateau heavily revolted against the French occupation. But it was the Vietnam War that earned the region most of its scars. As one of the areas passed through by the Ho Chi Minh Trail, it was considered strategically vital to both the Americans and North Vietnamese and was consequently one of the most bombed regions in the war.  A staggering number of UXO still remain.  And while the sweet pungent smell of coffee plants and the sight of smiling children speaks of more peaceful days today, the tree-stumps that litter the region expose the treachery of logging and continuing development by the Chinese.

Tad Seung waterfall

We traveled to the plateau by motorbike, which is now becoming our favorite way to tour Southeast Asia. It was a slow 85km drive thanks to a confusing map and a treacherous rain storm waited out under a tree.  Perpetual wetness seems a condition of travel in Southeast Asia this time of year.  By late afternoon, we stopped at small village at the junction to check our map only to be bombarded by five young boys.  “Hello ambushes,” some expats call it. The boys persistently pointed past the huts to a gushing waterfall in the distance, so massive in scale we were immediately drawn. We followed the boys through the village on the path to the waterfall; a short but slippery and muddy scramble.  It would have been impossible to manage had it not been for the boys offering up roots as grips and bamboo as walking sticks. At times, little hands pressed my tush for momentum on particularly challenging ascents. While we struggled in our hiking boots, they scampered up the hill with ease in flip flops.  At the end of the path was a clearing, just feet from a spectacular waterfall with a rainbow that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

A rainbow over the Tad Seung waterfall

Looking out over the Tad Seung waterfall

Exhausted, wet and muddy, we continued on our motorbike to Tad Lo, where we found accommodation for the night.   At sunset, we watched the villagers migrate to the river to bathe wrapped in sarongs and carrying plastic caddies filled with shampoo soap and toothbrushes; a strange reminder of my college dorm days. We stayed that evening with a young family that had just recently opened a guesthouse of simple thatch roofed bungalows overlooking a rice paddy.  We all made dinner together and I finally discovered the secret to making spring rolls with rice paper that don’t stick: cloth towels!

Tad Lo locals bathing in the river

The following day, we woke early to the sound of roosters. After a cup of delicious strong Lao coffee made from Bolaven beans, we set off on a hike to a nearby village.  Here they speak a unique Astralasian dialect and like many tribes in Southeast Asia, are animist, which means they believe everything has a spirit, including the trees. They are obsessed with death so they carve coffins for themselves and their families, which they keep under rice sheds for when the time comes. Unfortunately it comes sooner to them than most, as the life expectancy is 40 and the infant mortality rate is 100 in 1000. Most die of malaria.

Hike to one of the many waterfalls, giant spider enroute

A villager sorts his catch

We brought along a stack of books we purchased in Luang Prabang from a non-profit called Big Brother Mouse, which writes, illustrates and publishes children’s books in Lao.  They depend on travelers to purchase and disperse the books to rural villages where literacy is low and books are in short supply. Eager to share the books, I opened one up to show a villager and his young son.  The little boy’s eyes lit up and his father kept smiling and telling me the books were “good quality”.  But the scenario quickly devolved when a hoard of village children began grabbing the books from my hands.  This is exactly what we were trying to avoid.  The books were meant to be shared amongst the whole village, not go only to the greediest few. We felt defeated.  But when walking around the village, we spotted a group of boys huddled in the spirit house leafing through one of the books, while a younger child gripped another as if it were gold.  It gave us some hope that the books would do a bit of good after all.

A village boy put to hard work

Drying tobacco and chilies on the roof

Piglets ran up to us as we walked through the village

Walking through the village was like traveling back in time. People were living like they lived hundreds of years ago.  No electricity, no running water. Food is caught in the river and prepared over wood fires. The villagers’ primary crops are tobacco and chilies, which they chop and dry in the sun.  Despite a very basic life, smiles abound, particularly among the children who ran up to us eagerly saying, “hello, what is your name?”, the first words they learn in English.

The path to the front of the waterfall, which left us drenched after passing it.

Another dramatic waterfall and rainbow (day 2)

After our hike, we jumped on our motorbike and continued our loop around the Plateau, stopping at an even more extraordinary waterfall and making it back into Pakse before dark. We were wet, muddy and tired yet dazzled.

Vientiane: Moving at the Speed of Laos

Old and new

The world is changing fast, especially in Asia. Yet Laos seems resistant to the pressures of modernization and globalization; its capitol city Vientiane as evidence. There are no high-rises or mega malls, and few if any movie theaters (that I noticed). Entertainment is mostly limited to karaoke bars and bowling lanes and the city has a curfew of 11:00pm. Lao women working or entering government buildings are required to wear a traditional sarong and most ride on the back of motorbikes side-saddle. It’s a quiet city in which you can wander into the courtyard of a nearby Wat and hear little more than the sounds of monks shuffling by. Along the Mekong overlooking Thailand, a new waterfront has been built where teens brood and smoke cigs, children play soccer, and hilarious public exercise classes are held – imagine jazzercise from the ’80s. Most park their motorbikes to look out on the glassy blue waters on their commute home from work. Our guidebook tells us the riverfront once teemed with food vendors but they’ve now set up shop across the street in a small margin of sidewalk. A billboard visualizing dam and condo projects looms as a backdrop; a sign of change to come.

Vientiane isn’t an especially pretty city but it still has it’s charms; wide Parisian-style avenues, a replica arch de triumph, a few stunning wats and most of all a very relaxed atmosphere.

Mekong sunset

Frogs being sold for dinner

While in the neighborhood we stopped by the COPE museum, which details the continuing devastation caused by unexploded ordinance (UXOs) remaining in Laos after the United States dropped over 270 million cluster bombs over the country during the Vietnam War. About 30% or 80 million did not explode on impact, and instead, continue to kill and maim Lao people today. The COPE museum was established to bring awareness to this issue and to raise money for the center that treats victims. We left the museum heavy-hearted yet overwhelmed by the resilience of the Lao people, who fill craters with fish ponds and shell casings with flowers.

Prosthetic legs at COPE

In the evening, we wandered to a couple of riverside bars overlooking the Mekong. At one, we met an American ex-pat working on an education project. He invited us to join his NGO friends for dinner, some of whom had been living in Laos for as long as seven years. Nostalgia for home ran deep, with one gal getting up to the mic to sing John Denver’s Country Roads. When open mic night at the expat bar got too grating, we left and continued down the street until other music perked our ears. It was live Lao rock streaming from a riverside bar teeming with buzzed locals drinking Beer Lao. At the front of the bar were two men with angelic voices and masterfully playing the guitar. One looked like karate kid while the other had the kindest face that begged you to hug him. It was a beautiful way to cap off a rainy evening.

Thousands of tiny Buddhas at Wat Sisaket

Dogs wandering around a temple

That Luang, the holiest Buddhist site in Laos

Buddha in Wat Sisaket

Food stalls along the river

Jewelers in the morning market

I did not go tubing in Vang Vieng

Wherever we’ve gone, we’ve seen young European travelers wearing the same t-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Tubing in the Vang Vieng,” an activity travelers through Southeast Asia have deemed a right of passage.  But floating down a  river among drunk backpackers and stopping at riverside bars was not a passage I was interested in taking and so we had planned to skip Vang Vieng altogether.  I’m glad we decided not to.

“Highway” 13 in Laos, the main road connecting North to South, is extremely thin and winds through mountain passes which are prone to landslides. Consequently, buses barely go more than 40 km per hour. So the nearly 400 km journey to Vientiane can be a bit too long and tiring. We decided to break it up by taking a bus 7 hours to Vang Vieng then another 4 hours to Vientiane. The first leg was absolutely stunning. I was occupied for all 7 hours simply staring out the window of our mini-bus as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains and passed through hundreds of roadside villages. In the course of our ride, we witnessed an entire day in the life of a village. Families cooking lunch, men coming home from work in the fields with baskets over their back, and villagers soaping up and showering in the small waterfalls of water that stream down from the mountains.

The view on the journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

We would have liked to have the opportunity to stop and take pictures but I don’t think we could have managed the drive on our own. On several occasions, I was white-knuckled with fear that our minibus driver would hit a small child running in the street or careen over the edge of the mountain due to fog that appeared suddenly and blanketed sight of the road. But he drove carefully and attentively and everyone arrived safely, albeit late, in Vang Vieng.

The view from our sweaty mountain hike

We stayed at a cheap guest house across the river from Vang Vieng town center, which we were desperately trying to avoid because of its reputation for cushion-padded bars screening re-runs of Friends and drunk shirtless dudes stumbling down the street.  Life across the river was completely quiet and untouched by backpacker raunchiness. We woke up early and started to walk down the main dirt road that passes through the human and natural wonders of Vang Vieng: flat green rice paddies nestled below jungle-carpeted limestone cliffs, blue-green lagoons and buddha-filled caves. We hiked up one of the limestone mountains, which turned out to be a slippery steep scramble in unbearable humidity created by the tightly packed greenery.  The view was stunning but we were too exhausted and bothered by giant ants to really enjoy it so we came back down and recouped with bottles of water at a nearby stand. We proceeded to spend the day walking, stopping at roadside stands to have a bottle of water, a beer lao or a bowl of noodles. And we’d just watch life around us: a 5 year old child carrying his 1 year old sibling, a dumb cow being taunted by a pack of dogs, and naked toddlers jumping in the creek.  At the end of the long road was an amazing cave with dripping stalactites and containing a bronze reclining Buddha.  We were tired and daunted by the muddy walk back so we hitched a ride by tractor — really the only feasible way to pass through the slippery road.

Limestone cliffs and rice paddies, a stunning combination

Cave at the end of our walk.

A Buddha lies in the cool of the cave.

Luang Prabang: Traveling Back in Time

Monk enters wat for prayer at dusk

Strolling through the sleepy streets of Luang Prabang, Laos is like being transported in time.  For me, I was living in the 1942 classic movie Casablanca, wandering through colonial hotels and bars replete with wooden shuttered windows and courtyards filled with lush green palm trees and exotic plants. Ben felt as if he was in old Havana, Cuba with the dated cars, dilapidated sidewalks and children riding on rusty bicycles.  With a world moving so fast, it is incredibly invigorating to be in place so firmly planted in the best of times.  Luang Prabang has naturally attracted tourists but its UNESCO world heritage status has prevented the crumminess that tourism has brought to other Asian cities. All store signs are carved in wood and the narrow streets make passage by tourist bus impossible.

There are over 60 wats in Luang Prabang

Tuk tuk drivers watch the street parket waiting for customers

On our first night in Luang Prabang we climbed the steps to Phousy Hill to watch the sunset over the city and listen to the monks bang their gongs and pray in their temples; there are over sixty in Luang Prabang.  As we climbed down the winding steps, the light changed and each sight was different from the next, from glowing motorbike dotted streets to the clay colored snaking Mekong. The night market was beginning to buzz below, packed with local vendors selling buddha heads, silk scarves, intricately woven bedspreads and wall hangings with depictions of hmong village life. I wanted to purchase everything in sight but my hunger kept me going past the market to a small alleyway lined with food vendors. We opted for fresh spring rolls and grilled fish stuffed with lemongrass so good we returned for the next night’s meal. Despite eating out every meal for the past two weeks, I haven’t felt the revulsion to prepared food that I’ve felt on other travels simply because everything tastes so home-made. When you sit at a roadside stall, you are eating the same food a village woman is feeding to her family.

Grilled fish stuffed with lemongrass and basted with what tasted like soy sauce. Chopsticks are a perfect tool for picking between the bones!

Spring rolls & Beer Lao

The next day we rented a motorbike to ride to the Kuang Si waterfalls about 20 km away from town. When we started riding, we realized both the speedometer and fuel gauge were broken, meaning that we didn’t know how much fuel we had until the motorbike sputtered to a stop in the middle of a country road. We had to drag the bike up the hills and coast on it down the hills until we found the nearest village that had a liter or two of petrol in old coke bottles. Luckily the detour was short and we continued on our way past rice paddies and villages, stopping only for a herd of water buffalo that passed the street. The waterfalls were gushing from the recent rains yet the pools of water still retained their glassy greenish-blue from the limestone mountains from which they cascaded.  Yet the ride to the falls was every bit as beautiful as the falls themselves, and I’m beginning to realize that the journey is just as good as the destination in Asia; perhaps a truism for life as well.

Terraced Rice Paddies

Jumping into the lower pools of Kuang Si waterfalls

The next morning we awoke at dawn to join our guesthouse owner in offering alms to 300 or so monks and novices (monks-in-training).  Monks are not permitted to work so they depend on their local village to feed them. Every morning, they collect balls of rice, cookies and money from the villagers who line the street as they walk quietly past. Hot food is brought to each temple following the ceremony. Monks are only permitted to eat until noon, after which they must fast until the next day. Below is a short video that documents the alms offering… in the rain, of course.

Later that day we visited the national palace where the king and queen of Laos resided during the French occupation until they were forced to flee in 1975 when the revolution began.  Their private residences remain almost untouched since they fled. We kept walking through the town stopping to visit temples and chat with the monks and novices studying in the courtyards. They were eager to practice their English and ask us about life in America. It was a perfect way to explore the many temples we had not yet seen while getting a glimpse of monastic life.  Many of the novices (19 and under) have cell phones, watch TV, and one even proclaimed his desire to leave the order once he finished high school.  We spent another day walking, eating and admiring this beautiful city until it was time for the next stop: Vang Vieng.

Buddhas at Wat Xieng Thong

Kom, a novice, wants to leave the monastery to study IT

Novices reading and studying in the quiet courtyard

 

Copies of the prayers novices must memorize stacked atop an old US missile.

 

Riverside view of the Mekong