Là-haut (Yonder) - Outside the tourist bubble in Northern Laos

Yonder

Above the blogger Marine Richard, a French woman who travels through Laos alone. The  name of her blog la-haut translates into Yonder when I enter it into Google translater,  who knows if this is correct. I'd urge you to go to either language and take a look, read for a while. Better to just go and  read for yourself than to read what I think of it.

I found this blog by happenstance as I do many things on the net, I followed an incoming hit to my blog to see where it came from. I scrolled through the blog looking for a link, on the way I saw many intriguing photos. Intriguing in that they showed a keen eye for what is Lao, especially rural upland northern Lao. The blog was also in french. I have my eye out now for blogs in French showing very off the track type things.

A while ago I read an interesting account of a couple of French guys heading down by boat from Muang Khua to Luang Prabang, complete with capsizing, near drownings, and all kinds of other adventures.

And then there was that google translation I posted about xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-trek-in-phongsali where the guy walks the length and breadth of Phongsali off road.

I was beginning to think maybe the French have some sort of monopoly on remote travel in northern Laos. Imagine my consternation when I plugged the whole thing into Google Translator and found out this blog was by a woman. Not only a woman but a youngish woman, in Lao they'd say sao.

Ms. Richard carries with her the basic tools with which to take an in depth sojourn through the north.

1. A very basic familiarity with the language, not fluency, but a definite ability to speak some Lao.

2. A familiarity with the peoples and cultures. Enough to know the ethicities of those she sees and to eat sticky rice. Enough familiarity, to inform her observations which brings us to number three.

3. The ability to observe. So often we are caught up in our own desire to say or be seen that we fail to listen and watch. Ms. Richard can do both and she also thinks about what she has seen.

4. Lastly Ms Richard is not naive.

I'm almost done with my second reading. The blog isn't really a blog in the sense that it's not an updated entity, the story starts at the beginning and goes to the end. I'd urge anyone who can read French to go to the original web site and read. I suspect that it is much better that way. The address is http://www.la-haut.blogspot.com/

Below is another photo from Ms. Richard's blog. The photos she has posted on the left side somehow don't fit in the space provided, and so when I looked at the picture I could only see the left half of the picture. But it seemed familiar. In my mind I started ticking off the possibilities and eliminating them as soon as they crossed my mind. It came to me later while I was reading. Do you know where the photo is from? You should.

Nong Khiaw / Tiger Trails / Fair Trek

The bridge at Nong Khiaw Riverside Lodge seemingly resting on bridge.

Last winter while wandering through northern Laos I spent the night at Nong Khiaw (Kiao, Keeow, etc) a river crossing town on the Nam Ou above Luang Prabang. I wasn't walking well so my big excursion was a stroll over the bridge and looking at town from the other side of the river. Nong Khiaw seems to be split by more than the river, the west side seems older and where the major portion of the houses are as well as the bus stop. The east side has all the newer river bungalows and I think a different name, Ban Sop Houn.


Pill box on west side of bridge

There was a trekking company in town with it's doors open and no one home, there was even a side entrance from my guest house. I usually stop in at any trekking company while I'm in a town to say hello to the guides. They're a great source of info about the local area and usually speak good English. I made a mental note to myself to stop by later and see what was up.

I'd read a warning online from the owner of the Riverside Guest House that Muang Ngoi Nuah, the tourist destination upriver and the small Hmong villages close by do not have ATMs. I guess some of the people headed to this idylic roadless Shangrila are caught unaware by the lack of machines spitting cash. When I hobbled over to the restaurant lobby the owner seemed pre occupied with the internet connection which had been out for 3 days.He probably makes a lot of his income via prebooked tour groups and desperately needs the internet. In any case I put on my best lost tourist look of despair and asked if any of the Hmong villages had ATM machines. After a couple more minutes of small talk he asked me if I were really serious. I really do sound as dumb as I look.


Veiw of Nong Khiaw from Riverside Lodge

If anyone stops by the Riverside please perpetuate the stereotype by asking if there are ATMs upriver. Check the price before ordering much in the restaurant. Flashpacker territory.

That evening I met the young manager of the local Tiger Trails office, and also a guide who had come down from Luang Prabang to check things out. I talked to both of them for a couple of hours. The young manager appeared to be in his young 30s. Good English, self assured, business like. He was 21, a very mature young fellow, one of those people whom you meet and think to yourself, "this guy is going to go far in this world".


Tiger Trails / Fair Trek / Nong Khiaw

His story as best I remember is that he had been taking people out on walks on his own initiative when a couple of satisfied customers mentioned him to the owner of a Trekking company in Luang Prabang. The owner went up to Nong Khiaw, they went on a couple of excursions together and worked out a few basic itineraries. What most interested me was the walk they took for a few days in the Hmong villages in the hills east of town. When I was there no one other than the owner of Tiger Trails and his now local manager had done this walk. I am still very interested.

I read on their web site that they now have a lodge in one of the villages and are working on a store to sell local handicrafts.

Craig Schuler's Photos

Self Portrait by Craig Schuler at the Chinese border Phongsali Province Laos. Abandoned Casino in background

Craig studied Thai language formally, and then taught himself Lao language. He gets on well with people and that's obvious from his photographs. People enjoy having him take their picture.

Craig's latest series called sitting on top of a million elephants is kind of a play on words. Laos is called the land of a million elephants and the province where Craig took his most recent series of pictures is the northernmost province in Laos extending by itself way up into the space between Vietnam and China. Not only are the photos from this northernmost province, they are also from the most northern district within that province. Truly Sitting On Top Of A Million Elephants

The name of the district is Nyat Ou, and the Province is Phongsali. I visited that district briefly while in Phongsali at Craig's recommendation. It was everything he had described and more. Ou Tai was remote and seemingly influenced very little yet by the rest of the world.

I'm not sure how many photos are in this set. Many more than any I've ever seen before from Craig. Usually he's very stingy with the photos. Perhaps he had many more "keepers" with this batch.If the links don't show about 100 or more black and whites of rural Laos, email Craig and demand he make the images permanently available for view.

Since I originaly posted this, things have changed. There now seem to be 12 photos all looking kind of like old colour prints, I think this is, as as called on his link to as "treated colour". Interesting to see them first as black and white, and now as faded colours. Some of the images I remember from a year ago as having vibrant but natural seeming colours. I'll have to watch and see what's next.

Update on the update. It seems as if Craig didn't get much response on the original series of black and whites, so he opted for the fall back photos. Craig promises to make the black and whites available again soon. Send an email to Craig by clicking here and going to the portion of his web site that says "contact" tell him to bring back the black and whites

He has had two other sets of color photos on the same web site. I liked both of the other sets, they were tremendous in their own right, but these photos seem to build on his earlier work and go beyond them. The black and white adds to the feeling of timelessness. If you didn't know already when they were taken you might think they are from ten, twenty, fifty or more years ago.

Adrift on the River (or why make clay figurines)

Looking North from Boyee Sang Mai.

After fifty miles or so there is the place where the Nam Ou curves back to the west, then after another long way it goes to the border of China, then after who knows how far there is a road.


Ban Wa Tai

Above is a photo of the Nam Ou in Ban Wa Tai above Hat Sa. The river is quieter up here, it sees a lot less traffic, everyone headed for Phongsali jumps out at Hat Sa. At the time I took this photo I was very happy to be headed downstream, in retrospect I should have been headed up, ever further up the river as Kurtz would have it. I was on the last day of a 5 day walk in the mountains drained by the Nam Ngam, Nam Long, and Nam Ngay, the last of which I had been crossing back and forth the day before. The thought of hot showers and clean sheets filled my mind. I was also looking forward to Chinese food and fresh coffee at the Phongsali Hotel.

How quickly we grow to miss our creature comforts. A few days in some windy hills and I go rushing back to the relative comforts of a remote Lao provincial capital. I had been spending the nights on the ridges, so it was nice and warm to be in a valley.

The Nam Ou I was leaving winds many miles upstream without a guest house, English language menu, or bus schedule in sight. Also no roads or cars or busses. Electricity, what there is of it, is by small generator. The river first heads north through the Phou Den Din NBCA a place I’ve never heard anyone talk about. It’s not as if the Den Din NBCA backs up against any population centres either, just Lai Chau province Vietnam. After the Ou leaves the Conservation Area it curves west and then north again to Ou Tai then straight north another hundred or so kilometres to Bosao and the border with China. China just stretches on and on forever with even bigger mountains and valleys and more mountains that no one has ever heard of. It’s Yunnan province, without the hype.

I should have turned around and headed on upstream. There are boats, it is a river, I can communicate after a fashion. Heck I can even talk more easily to the folks in Ou Tai than in Phongsali. Ou Tai people are Thai Lu. I should say most the townspeople are Thai Lu, I saw plenty of ethnics I didn’t recognise. Phongsali people are Phou Noi. Pasa Thai Lu is plenty close enough to Lao or Thai, Pasa Phou Noi is like no language I’ve ever learned to howdy in.

I started out this posting thinking about Thai Lu, and Thai Lu culture, (more later), my thoughts just kind of drifted on up to Ou Tai. I’m fascinated by the town. I know some other people that have been there, but I don't know anyone who has gone for a walk. A police man and a career army guy (party members?) offered to take me around, but by the time I got there I just wanted to go home and hang out with my wife and kids. It was the end of a trip not the beginning.


Crags across the river Ma, Muang Long

What started me thinking about the Thai Lu was I found some notes I took from my second trip north last winter. The notes were about a kind of religious offering I wandered into while going for a walk outside of Muang Long, another Thai Lu town, on the other side of northern Laos, over by the Mekong.

I had to kill a day while waiting to go for a guided walk, so I walked across the river to the crag. I crossed the Nam Ma and then a narrow, but almost deep enough, tributary. I was happy to keep my flip flops from being washed away. I wanted to get a view of the good sized hill above town I would be walking up the next day, and also I just wanted to get out of town for a while.


The Raft

There was an irrigation ditch close up alongside the crag and I found the little woven mat below with the figurine made of clay. I knew immediately that I was looking at some kind of folk religion type thing. I was unsure how it had gotten there. Surely it couldn’t have floated down the irrigation ditch. The woven matt looked like a small raft and the woven horse with rider and figures made of clay had been carefully crafted. It seemed as if the clay figure even had a bed or blanket to lie on.


Are we too originaly of clay.

I of course touched nothing but saw no harm in taking a photo. I have my eyes open when walking and hadn’t seen anyone. When I got back to town I showed Tdui, the tourism official, my photos. He was very excited to see what I’d found, and explained that when someone is sick or has troubles they make the figures and the raft as I call it, to draw away the bad spirits. A shaman is consulted and he says words and tells them where to leave the raft. The figures are kind of sacrifices to the bad spirits.


Update 6/16/07
laomeow asked some Thai Lu monks she knows. They confirmed that the figurines are used to draw away bad spirits. The name for the figurines is “Sataong”
I believe the “transferring” of bad spirits away from oneself into the body of a third thing is a common theme throughout cultures.