Hmong House

The Hmong guy Lao Bii, was Tui’s friend, they knew each other from when Tui’d been to Nambo before.

I'm going  to apologise in advance for anything I get wrong. I don't know much about the Hmong. I've met and talked to plenty in Thailand, China, and America, but I really don't know much about the way they live in the more traditional setting of rural Laos.

At first we waited for Lao Bii in the yard, he was out hunting birds like all guys do at the end of the day. With seemingly every guy in the village out looking for birds every afternoon you have to wonder how there are any birds left. But there are, and there always have been.


When Tui's friend returned we went inside. After setting our packs down, slipping off our boots and donning flip flops, we went to off find people I’d taken photos of two years before. I always try to hand out a copy of a photo to anyone I take a picture of.


We also stopped in and said hi to the soldiers stationed in the village, and Tui showed them some sort of documentation authenticating my permission to be gallivanting about.. Since my last visit the government sent fourteen soldiers including two political officers and a teacher to live in the village.

On realizing that I could follow the conversation I remarked to one of the soldiers, “you speak Lao”, he grunted and looked at me as if to say “what were you expecting, Swahili?” The lingua franca of this district is Lu, I usually understand none of it. The soldier was of Kahmu ethnicity, perhaps from an entirely different region of Laos. These soldiers were from the central government, not the provincial authorities.


Luang Namtha province is an opium producing area, and the government is interested in curtailing the production. The opium grown isn’t refined but rather consumed by locals as a recreational drug or as medicine. Opium is also the primary cash crop in the area, used to buy lead shot, LED light bulbs, batteries, antibiotics, clothes, and all other manufactured goods from the outside world.


Things have changed for the better in Nambo in the two years since I’d last seen it. The kids seemed healthier and had better clothes, houses had been enlarged and improved. I stopped in front of the house I’d stayed in before and watched the building of a new house. The village is made of combined Lahu and Hmong ethnic groups, an attempt by the government to form larger villages, why I’m not sure.


Photo from 06 of moonrise and dead tree

 you can see the same dead tree as in the moonrise  photo above, same tree, just a little deader.

The view to the south is mostly of Mount (Phou) Mon Lem. Tui was so used to seeing the mountain from a different side that at first he didn’t believe it to be the same hill. The Hmong guys eavesdropping set him straight. It’s easy to mistake a mountain that has such a large base, the perspective is much different depending on how close you are to which side. Phou Mon Lem and it’s flanks separate the drainage of the Nam (river) Fa and the Nam Long with the ridge extending all the way down to the Mekong.

Phou Mon Lem

With the onset of dark we returned to Lao Bii's house. Tui told me that a couple of years ago our host had been required to turn himself in at the district capital and submit to being placed under arrest and jailed for shooting a nuah pah (wild cow). I don’t know if it was a banteng or a gaur, both animals are against the law to hunt in Laos and probably endangered. His family had to gather up $1,000 to pay the fine to release him. That's a lot of money for a subsistence farmer.

Gaur, one of the largest land animals. Photo is from some travel company in Thailand that does trips to Khao Sok National Park, one of the few photos I could find from the wild, (don't like zoo photos). I lost the link, if anyone reading knows the name of the company please email and I'll include a link, credit where credit is due.

In the area around Muang Long there is no international trade in endangered wildlife. The route to China is long and the authorities are aware of most that happens in their district. The rules regarding which species of big game to hunt are followed. Medium sized deer, bamboo rat, pig, that sort of thing are allowed, large and perhaps endangered animals aren’t.


No one really knows how many of which species exist in Laos. In the state where I live in the US they have done extensive research on cougars over many decades and yet current population estimates rage from five to seven thousand animals. That’s a pretty inaccurate number given all the radio collaring, DNA of scat samples, and computer modeling that is done. In Laos where there are none of these tools and very few scientists doing research all numbers are determined using the WAG method. (Wild Ass Guess)


Looking at things from the perspective of indigenous peoples you can see where there might be some consternation. The same people have been living in the hills of Laos for centuries, using the same methods of hunting and farming. Species endangerment, and habitat loss have nothing to do with the way they hunt or farm, and everything to do with the way we buy patio furniture and the way the Chinese buy cars with tires.

Phou Mon Lem on Google Earth without vertical exageration. Ignore the "route 3" cutting over the top, no idea how lines are drawn on google maps. The yellow line in the far distance is the international border of Laos/Burma formed by the Mekong.

A few years ago a wild elephant in musth appeared down by Xiengkok and started trampling houses and killing people. The authorities sent people ahead of the animal and attempted to warn those in it’s path while desperately seeking permission to kill the thing. The head of the district contacted the provincial governor who contacted his superiors in Luang Prabang and eventually permission was granted from the prime minister in Vientiane. No one wanted to take responsibility.


I got this story after spotting a large bone in the restaurant called Joey. I knew the bone was way too big for any animal I’d ever heard of. People figure it swam the Mekong from Burma in that wild testosterone induced craziness that male elephants sometimes go through. There are no wild elephants in Bokeo or Luang Namtha side of things, maybe up by that transnational protected area close to Boten and Sipsongbana, but not down by Long and Xiengkok.

Elephant Bones

With the sun fully down we returned to our host’s house. I took a more leisurely look at the inside.

The Hmong live differently from the lowland Lao and Tai I’m used to. For one thing they live on the ground not up on stilts. Living on the mountain they are never in danger of flood. The roof was a very nice split wooden shake, no need to constantly replace roof straw or put up with the drops of condensation off a metal roof.

Lao Bii and his youngest

The house seemed quieter, no constant squawking of chickens or snorting of pigs from under foot. Warmer too, no breeze blowing through the split bamboo floor. The floor itself though of dirt is not dirty but shiny from the polishing of many feet.


The fire is in a large square block of mud/clay. The wood is fed from the front and a very large wok sits snugly on a hole on top. It is a very basic stove, saving on firewood and heating the house when the fire is out via the large mass of the clay.


I notice they cook rice differently also. First in the wok until the water boils, then transferred to a basket which sits on top of the boiling water and the rice is steamed until done. I like it. The rice is wetter, and I like my rice wet. Below the roof, strung from the rafters so to catch the smoke, a roll of sausage made from the small intestine of a pig and unidentified hunks of fat.

Sausage and probably pig fat

In the days before LED lights (like four years ago) the lamps from fat were the only illumination. The fat still serves as a hedge against lean times, hard to go hungry with fat hanging in the ceiling


I’ve no recollection of the night, only of the eldest wife blowing the coals to start the morning fire before sunup.

Meet the hospitable, smiling and welcoming people of Laos. Hmong and Laotians, young and old, the Lao people are some of the friendliest people in South East Asia.

See it for yourself! Click Here for Exotissimo's Laos Tour Collection

Eating insects in the Lao PDR

The video begins with a guy named Sangtong waving his net back and forth over a wheat field catching grasshoppers (dakadaeng) in a rice field. Santong comes from Ban Tat Luang which is just out past the famous stupa of that name. His wife dips them in boiling water to kill and clean them then fries them in the wok and sells them.

The next shot is of women digging in the earth for maeng jute jill or as I less delicately call them “maeng kii kwai” (buffalo dung beetles). The voice over and the scientists go on to explain that 40% of children in Laos are malnourished, or I think that’s what sahmhua means.

The last series of scenes are an interview with a woman who is growing wingless crickets (maeng jii law) and regular crickets (maeng jii nai) I think the wingless version is just the imature stage of the cricket. The woman in the clip started out with 3 barrels but is now up to 56, quite a little growing operation. Now she’s trying to grow grasshoppers commercially.

There is one shot of a woman cooking up bamboo shoot soup with crickets, a very common use of the insect that can be found in restaurant stands all over the country. Lastly some folks that have had a few beers eating deep fried crickets with beer which is kind of yummy. Guy says they taste like meat, which of course they are.

The Trail to Nambo

Tui makes a last phone call while still within range of phone tower.

The trail to Nambo is a relative superhighway. It is by far the most gradual and fastest trail for hundreds of square miles. Using the cut of the the Nam Long through the mountains the trail steadily gains elevation while never resorting to switchbacks or steep sections. I've walked the trail twice, once back in 06 and more recently in the winter of 09. The trail provides easy access to the upper drainage of the Nam Fa. The trail is also used by all the Lao Sung as a quick access to the market at Muang Long. Bear in mind that tiny market is the biggest one in north western Laos beyond Muang Sing, and Burma across the river is even less traveled, it's a long way upriver to China or down to Thailand.


In 06 I saw the tracks of a single motorcycle made at the beginning of the dry season. I think it was a rider from that GT Riders club out of Chang Mai Thailand. They would of had to have pushed and drug the bike up and down many of the numerous stream crossings. None of the villages have motorcycles or other transport. I assume it was an off road bike, one of the last to have made the transect to Viengphouka. A few years ago there were temporary bridges strong enough to drive on with one of those one cylinder Chinese tractor things. The bridges were made by felling two large logs across the streams and covering the logs with branches and then mud and dirt. The logs have rotted away and are gone. Now there are small single slippery logs strong enough to support a person. I'd think it would more time and effort now to drag and carry a motorcycle up and down the many stream crossings than to just walk.

Stream Crossing

If you look on maps they show the trail as a full fledged road to Viengphouka, maybe it was in some one's imagination once, and it certainly might be at some future date, but for now it's falling back into forest. The dirt was hacked out of the hillside to make a flat graded path, and it was never wide enough for a two track even when new.

Google Earth-mountains beyond mountains beyond mountain

I don't know where the funding to work on upgrading the original trail came from. I've seen road crews making similar tracks. Fifty people hacking at the hillside with those heavy hoes they use to farm. Was this one of the many plans for crop substitution? A way to bring crops or forest products to market?

Tui from the tourism office asked me if I thought it was 20 kilometers. I guess so, I'm not the best at figuring kilometers, feels like ten miles anyway, maybe twelve or more. The road roughly follows the south side of the Nam Long but high above the river. I'm not sure of the elevation gain but it does go up all the way to Ban Nambo. There's a village somewhere, down by the river I suspect, I've never been there.

Stile

At the near end of the trail there are fences to keep cattle from wandering.. In English we call these fences "stiles". A person can walk up the ladder, an animal can't. The hillside drops off so steeply on both sides that the cattle are restricted to the road. As the kilometers pass under our feet most signs of people also pass. Soon we are beyond the distance that most people will reasonably walk to go hunting or gather stuff to sell at the market.


Bamboo in flower?

I stopped and looked at animal tracks, Tui thought them wild pig and large deer. People sometimes drive a cow or a pig in to town to sell for cash money, and the tracks might well have been from them, yet I hadn't seen any other tracks on the walk. In the forests around my house I recognise differences between the tracks of the deer, elk, moose, and domestic cow, in Laos not so much, even the cows are different. Guang yai (Sambar) are still around even if not as common as the smaller muntjak, and certainly wild pigs are plentiful. A carnivore scat had me guessing. There are two kinds of big cats and two canines, and two species of bear.

gps and carnivore scat

 Pig Droppings

I was sure it wasn't one of the two canines, too small, and not tapered at the end. The larger of the canines is called Ma Nhai as I remember (in Lowland Lao Language). I remembered it because of it's similarity to Ma Hai which is mad dog which of course I'd never use to describe a person, maybe I have it wrong anyway, and the peoples who live where the Ma Nhai lives speak other languages than Vientiane Lao so who knows what it's really called. We call it Dhol, and there is no love lost between the upland peoples and the dhol, not only because of the mutual competition for food.

Dhole from a camera trap by the WCS

The Dhol hunts in packs similar to our wolf, overwhelming it's quarry by sheer numbers and beginning their feasts by ripping out and eating the guts of the often still alive prey. Akha I talked to said they will bite people, no wonder they don't like the dhol. Bear droppings can vary, mostly I've seen bear scat when they are feeding on grubs, ants, and berries, or grass in the spring, this didn't look like either.

Clouded Leopard from the WCS

That leaves cat, which kind of goes with it's not twisted shape and no sign of vegetables. I've no way to tell the cats apart or even hazard a guess except that it had to be one big enough to eat deer. Immature tiger or leopard or clouded leopard?

Concrete Bridge. The most ambitious structur of the trail.

Past half way to Nambo is a landmark. A concrete bridge over the largest tributary to the Nam Long on the trail. We stop for a break and to eat the barbecued dove and sticky rice I bought in the market the night before. We eat the whole thing bones and all, I think Tui spit out the skull.

Well before dusk we begin to hear chickens and the trail once again is worn by the steps of many feet.

I hear children, smell smoke.

Through the trees, Nambo.

First Glimpse