Ban Ha Sip Song

Tree in front of Wat Song Buay on the way there

To kill time waiting to leave Laos I took my rental bike and drove up to the Hmong town at kilometer 52 on the road to Luang Prabang, named Lak Ha Sip Song, appropriately enough.

I stopped at Lak Ha Sip Song once before when riding up to Vang Vien with my in laws. I'd always wanted to spend a little time again looking the town over. For many Hmong in America the town is their best known destination in Laos. It's a Hmong town, but being so close to Vientiane it's accessible.


Market from the south west corner.

The bike was some old clunker I rented for four dollars a day from the guy who has a sign on a tree across from Kap Jai Duh. Both brakes weren't so great, rear ones sounded like metal on metal and they're the ones I like to use first. My usual technique for a quick stop is to lock up the rear tire then pump the front brakes letting off on them only long enough to keep the thing off the ground. It's worked so far. On this bike I had to use the front breaks a lot more than I like, oh well, just go slow and drive defensively right?

It was Saturday morning and traffic was light. The road is fairly straight and flat. The road passes through mostly rural areas but of course being the main road stores and businesses are frequent.

Alley on north side of market


Shophouses in Ban Ha Sip Song

For quite a while I followed a truck hauling an old D-7 cat on a lowboy. He was moving right along and used his air horn gently but often to clear the road of motorbikes and pedestrians. There's something about the idea of fifty thousand pounds of steel hurtling down the narrow two lane road that clears the way. He was moving faster than all the local traffic and the rich folks in SUVs and pickups were reluctant to get in front of him.

My biggest worries on the motorcycle are people entering traffic from the side blindly and others driving down the shoulder on the wrong side. Following the lowboy all I had to do to be safe was to tuck up right behind his rear tires until the road cleared out again.


Maykue Guest House next to market

Actually being there wasn't so thrilling, I was glad I hadn't wasted time actually getting off a bus and getting a room there. Just another Lao town. Ok, the people have longer faces, they are Hmong. But they wear Lao clothes and listen to Thai pop music. The market is alright but then so are the markets in a lot of towns. It's supposed to have a lot of food from the forests, I didn't see any endangered dolphins strung up to make jerky or anything. Maybe there's more to the place and I was just in a cynical, "been there done that" kind of mood.

There is a guest house, and the owner claimed they had rooms with hot water. Hot water is my new standard for hotel rooms. Place has hot water it's ok with me. If there were internet in town it would probably be a nicer place to hang out than Vientiane. Damning with faint praise.

When the charger broke

My camera uses rechargeable batteries. Mostly I like it, one charge lasts a long time, no batteries to throw away. I keep everything charged up as much as I can. Never know when there might be no electricity for a while.

So I was sitting in my hotel room minding my own business and my camera battery charger starts doing one of those sparking smoking type things that you just know aren't going to end up well. By the time I unplugged it whatever was happening had finished doing it's thing.

I was concerned but not despondent. Three fully charged batteries might well last quite a while. No reviewing and deleting photos, just turn it on, snap, then off it goes. More than likely the geniuses down at the market could fix it.

So down the the big market in Pakse I trotted, or scooted to be more exact. I walked through the phone section until I found a store that not only worked on phones but had a few cameras and video cams lying around in various states of repair. I told him it was sick, figured that was close enough, and he peeled it apart stuck the ohm meter on it. Ten seconds later he speed dialed someone, hung up and said, "Lao no have" then looking at me and using the probe from the ohm meter to point at one of those tiny cylinders with wires coming out the end said emphatically, "this, this, this, no have in Lao"

Yes he was speaking English, doggone kids. Probably Vietnamese or Chinese or something. No doubt hated English in school but aced it anyway to go to the good college. And that third language without even trying he speaks it a lot better than I speak the language of the market. I thanked him heavily, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said, "maybe Thailand". I still had one possibility.

As soon as I got to Vientiane I got myself on down to the morning market. They are tearing it up and it's hard to find your way around now. Huge pieces are construction zones. Shame really it used to be pretty easy, all the stores that sold similar stuff in one place, many ways to enter or leave each section.

The gold repair used to be along the east side back in the day, adjacent to the street across from the bus station but a little further down. Now it's just off the corner on the east side and no parking on the street. The turn in is where they take away all the trash too so it's not always pleasant.






He's the guy behind the counter

I found the gold repair places and sure enough that same guy was there who fixed my telephoto back thirteen years ago. We spoke Lao. I told him I didn't think it could be fixed in Laos. He did the same thing with the call on the cell phone but told me it would be 300,000 kip and the part would come from Udon Thani on the bus. I said great. Then he asked me if I understood and started to write it out so I repeated it slowly and said I understood. Some electronics store in Udon Thani would have to ship it on the bus, it would get left across the street, and he'd go get it and probably pay the money which would then reverse the same route. I thought the charge reasonable.

Lots of love for old TV repair men who have evolved with the times and also young smart Asian techies no matter thier country of orgin.

Dalat

The dalat, or market in English, is where it’s at. If you don’t raise your own food, someone from your household goes to the market every day.


Above the Dalat an Nong Nee-ow, the closest all day market to where we were living. About 5 kilometers off the end of the aproach to the runway in Vientiane, sometimes an incongruous passenger jet would fly through about two feet above the Wat.

Even with refrigeration, many people buy the food only when they need to cook a meal, cook it, eat it, and go to the market all over again. I don’t think most people understand the idea that refrigeration keeps meat from spoiling and it can be kept for days, or that vegetables don’t wilt. I still see lots of cooked food kept under cover on the table until eaten.

Remember also that for 99.9% of the populations food is cooked at home, not bought at restaurants, that’s why we as tourists have such a difficult time finding restaurants in small towns. For people who don’t grow their own rice and raise their own animals a trip to the market is a daily routine. In larger towns the market is open all day.


Fish Dalat Tatluang

Most markets have at least a basic noodle restaurant, it’s for people waiting to take the bus, shoppers who can’t withstand the temptation for a bowl of foe, and the people working at the market. In bigger towns you can get all kinds of to-go food. Baguette sandwiches, laap, barbequed meat, sticky rice, just about anything to eat. If there is a stand selling soft drinks in plastic bags, often they will have coffee too. Sometimes one of the soup restaurants sells coffee. I look for the telltale can with the sock for filtering, the only method that seems to be in use for brewing up coffee.

Often the bus station is at the market or right next to it. People bring their produce in on the bus. “Bus” often means a pickup truck with a couple benches to sit on. It’s a tossup where I go first when I get into a new town, the market to see if there is any food, or the guest house to get a room.


Dalat Muang Long

Depending on the season there can be a distinct lack of fruit at the market. The only fruit I can almost always count on is bananas, if close to China the mandarin and blood oranges are a treat. Every market, even in Vientiane contains fruit, vegetables, and meat from the forest.

For many people the market is the primary people watching venue. Early in the morning is best, between six and seven. Many times people bring their babies with them to show them off. Local farming women come to the market to sell some vegetables, to make some pocket change, then go home an hour or so later when they have sold what they brought. People often wear their early morning clothes, a pair of sweat pants and flip flops, even pyjamas.

There are two kinds of market, or more often two parts of the market, the dry and the wet side. Dry markets usually have concrete floors, and permanent roofs. Items for sale include cloths, soaps, tools, stereos, even the money changer and jewellery. The wet market is all the vegetables and meats. The wet market has some type of drainage plan even if it’s just a ditch to carry away all of the dripping bits from the meat and fish. Wet markets in the rainy season can get pretty soupy if they are set up on dirt. The dirt becomes mud and you walk on planks propped up over the mud.


Pieces of Mai Dtak, it's very resinous and used to start the charcoal that everyone cooks on. Banana leaves in the background

My favourite market in Vientiane is Kua Din, it’s next to the central bus station in the centre of town. Kua Din is sprawling dirty and unregulated. It contains a wet and dry market and the prices are cheaper than Tong Kahn Kaem. They used to have parking out front, now it’s inside and less convenient. It also contains my favourite foe shop which I blogged about here.

The main path running into Kua Din from the front is a dirt track often with water on it and busy with those push carts called lau, coming and going. The push cart guys make ten or twenty cents a trip and are the only method most people use to bring goods to or from the market. I never noticed the lau guys until I started looking at the carts themselves. I saw a beautiful one being made at the wood shop that was making some doors and windows for me.


New Lau stacked

The sides are joined to the top and bottom using blind mortise joints and most of the other joints are through mortise and tenon. A well made cart goes for about $35 without the wheels.


Lau at Dalat Tat Luang

The most famous market in town is Dalat Sao, misnamed the morning market, it doesn’t open up until 8 or 9, hardly a morning market in Laotian terms, and I think most shops close at 4. Dalat Sao is exclusively a dry market. I think it used to be both, therefore it’s name. Many people go to the “morning market” to buy souvenirs, for Laotians it’s also a good place to buy a fridge or a cell phone or a pair of jeans. Upstairs are a very concentrated number of gold stores.


Lau loaded up

My main market in Laos this time was called Dalat Sii Kai. It’s out past the northern bus station on the road to Luang Prabang, just where the road makes the turn to the north out of Vientiane. It used to take me about twelve minuets to make the drive if traffic was light. Dalat Sii Kai was busy enough to rate a couple policemen with folding automatic rifles, one just behind the BCEL bank with a view to the gold stores on the West side of the market (bored to tears, view is bad for people watching and no one to talk to, it‘s an alley between the fruit sellers and the front of the market no one uses), and another on the South in front of another gold store. I used to see a lot of people coming in from quite a ways up the Luang Prabang Road going there. I think the next big market to the north is at that Hmong town Lak Ha Sip Sung. Dalat Sii Kai is all concrete, and there are a lot of food stalls in the middle. The bank even changes foreign currency. There are enough vendors to avoid price fixing and there’s even a fruit lady who sells durian out of season for 15K a kilo as I remember.


Creag has a drink at Dalat Sii Kai

Often the market chore was left to me. My youngest kid was a lot to lug around and when my wife didn’t feel like going so she would just send me. Sometimes I’d take my oldest kid Creag. Last time we were in Laos in 03, or maybe the time before that in 01, my wife and sisters in law were positive that I would get ripped off going to the market. When quizzed as to how much I paid for stuff I never remembered anyway. Soon I started remembering and my answers were met with silence and steady looks. I was getting the same price.

By now after a few more years of training I notice how much everything costs and I remember. If someone quotes me a price that’s way too high I don’t negotiate, I just go away. If the price just seems steep I buy it but go elsewhere next time. Nineteen times out of twenty I seem to get the right price first time. The merchants used to treat me very well anyway. Replacing the bruised fruit with the good ones, or showing me how to choose the ripe ones. I was probably pretty noticeable, I’ve never seen another falang in Dalat Sii Kai. Too far out of town for the curious tourist, (other than you know who), also too far out for expats to be commuting.

Dalat Sao Roof

Bear in mind that I’m speaking a mangled pathetic but understandable Laotian. Other than learning how to flirt, learning how to buy stuff is one of the first things one learns in a language. More than likely the market ladies are just taking pity on this poor old guy that has to try to buy stuff.

The only time I do negotiate is up north when buying from Chinese. By Chinese I mean the Chinese from China, like within the last five years from China. Even then the negotiations are brief and friendly. I’ve only seen Chinese selling dry goods which I don’t have much occasion to buy anyway. Once I didn’t know the price of something so I just counter offered half the stated price, the merchant simply replied OK, I guess he was about five steps ahead of me. You have to laugh at the setting, here we both are in a public market in Laos, which might as well be the end of the earth for either of us, talking price in a language very foreign to both of us. I try to at least use the numbers in Chinese and I call everyone comrade or good friend but when I try to speak quickly all that comes out is Laotian.


Dried Game for Sale (civet?)

The closest real market to where I stayed outside Vientiane was Dalat Nong Nee-ow. It was halfway to Dalat Sii Kai so I used to just go all the way for the better selection and lower prices. The exception is if I only wanted a couple things or if it was after 5 in the afternoon. Seemed like after five I’d see one accident per day and I didn’t want to be that accident. Lots of high school kids out then and young guys just off work, and commuters, and people just going to the market like me.

Dalat Nong Nee-ow charges an extra twenty cents a kilo for sticky rice and everything else in proportion. I liked and willingly paid the higher price for the BBQ chickens (Ping Gai) at 27K. I’d buy a large chicken dinner for six with all the trimmings for seven dollars. Besides two chickens I’d get the sour vegetables, and a couple jeaos, with three or four kilos of sticky rice. Usually jeao mac len and jeao pa dek. I’d eat the mac len as long as it didn’t have too much pa dek. The jeao pa dek I’ve learned to take a pass on, not that hungry yet.

Laos doesn’t yet have a supermarket, but it does have a few mini marts where foreigners can buy chocolate and blue cheese, or the newspaper from Thailand. For now, if you want to cook meat, you have to go buy it from the meat lady and bat the flies away. I wonder for how long. Already there is the first attempt at a shopping centre, the new Dalat Sao. From reports it’s a big flop without many stores being rented out. We'll see when the first golden arches and Walmart appear.

Dalat Sao New next to the Old