Ban Nam Hee

I don't know exactly what's up with the gates, one thing I do know is that it's a big deal and one should pay attention and not mess up. Outside the gate is the outside world, inside is the village of the Akha. The double track is from the feet coming and  going, there are no roads for many kilometers.

I asked my guide Tui if I could take a photo, then I asked the local guide too and waited for his reaction. I ask every time, who knows, maybe it's ok at one time but not another. I do know not to touch. There are a couple gates per village and they have a lot to do with keeping bad stuff from entering and good stuff staying. There is a whole rigmarole about when and how to build them. Seems like they build gates just outside of the old gates every once in a while, like two feet further out. I've seen village gates too that you aren't supposed to walk through. I kid you not, the trail abruptly turns and if you look beside it uphill there is that gate without a worn trail through it, why I don't know, but I'm careful to do as others do and walk the correct trail.

Into nature these Akha folks are, there are rules about sticks inside the village, can't throw them or can't break them or something. To be safe I don't break or throw. They leave the trees all around the village too. They only live in close proximity to big trees. The forests are diverse with hundreds of different plant and animal species, every child learns the names and uses and habits of every one of them. The use of and relations with all things is codified in the set of rules known as The Akha Way. If all this sounds like a big pain it's really not.

Many of the symbols on the gate have to do with animals, probably hoping to ensure a good hunt for the food of the forest that feeds them. On one gate Tui pointed out some sticks that actually if you looked close were a symbol of two humans doing the wild thing. It was the trunk of two small saplings with enough branches and roots in the right places to resemble human limbs, someone had carved them to add realism. Probably some sort of fertility symbol. To a people who can recite their lineage by rote memory back through the generations, having progeny is important. 

Often you see little AK-47s carved out of wood attached to the gate. Maybe to scare away evil or to show the power of the village. There is no more powerful symbol than the AK.

I've never made a study of the various rules and traditions of the Akha, I only learn what I pick up here and there over the years. I do try to be watchful of those around me to make sure I'm not missing any disaproving glances. I'd hate to be the one to enter a closed village or unknowingly break some other tradition, not only because there would have to be some sort of effort made to offset the badness but also because I know that bad luck is something that no amount of ritual can wash away. Even though many of their laws and rules might seem superstitious to westerners it's not up to me to pick and choose which rules to believe or follow, by entering an Akha village I'm accepting all of their ways. 


I'm posting a long comment up here so no one will miss it


the gates are all about keeping spirits out. 
there are 2 sets, one each at the front & back of the village.
inside the gates = human world. beyond the gates = spirit world.
Akha believe that spirits do not have reproductive organs, hence the wooden carvings of a pair of male & female humans to drive home the point that the village is not a place for spirits.

'asterisk-like' daa leow on the gate & sometimes on nearby trees too = 'do not touch' sign.
bird carvings = birds are able to warn of danger approaching.
apart fom AK47 some villages have airplane & helicopter carvings too.
new gate is built every Akha New Year (or when someone has touched it, causing it to lose its 'power' to keep spirits out) directly behind the previous year's gate.

during the H1N1 scare my friends' village in Thailand put up an additional, much taller 'gate' at the road access to their village with a dog carcass on top - this they believed would help to keep the disease out.

& just learnt a few bits more last last weekend:

the bamboo ladder leading up to the rice storage shed (& also houses) - apparently the side of the bamboo used for the rungs matters...one side is for humans to walk on, the other is used by spirits, so if you construct it with the 'wrong' (concave) side up you're inviting spirits to climb up.

same for banana leaves when spreading them on the floor/ground as 'table mats' - underside of the leaves facing up for human use...reverse way for spirits' use. all along i thought it was just because the upper side of the leaves gets all the bird poop & dust :P

& that Akha believe that cats are the children of princes/princesses - & so they are allowed into houses & are not to be eaten :)

- straycat"


and now a plug for Ms. Straycat's two blogs, which are my two favorite blogs about Lao/Thai, travel culture etc. they are over on the right called Lao Miao and The Wandering Straycat. Take a look and you'll see what I mean.

Ban Nam Hee (backwards it's Hee River Village) is a village that seemed to be doing very well for itself. Quite a few metal roofs to be seen, a sure sign of prosperity. Situated at the confluence of the Nam Hee and the Nam Fa (Hee and Blue or Sky River) the word for blue and the word for sky sound the same to me, you don't need to know what "hee" translates as. (I've been informed the "fa" in nam fa means sky and the hee in Nam Hee means not what I was thinking, my accent was off) The valley bottom widens out large enough for rice paddies and regular rice cultivation. They have water buffalo. I guess it has to be the most well to do upland village I've yet seen. 

Ban Nam Hee on Google Earth. Note the bright reflection of the newer metal roofs. Also notice the different texture and colors indicating different growth. The rough texture surrounding the village is caused by large old growth trees rising above the canopy. The Akha never cut the trees around the village, many of those trees were there before Vietnam was a colony. 

Further behind and uphill the telltale yellow of a recently harvested upland rice field. More subtly north of the village the uniform velvet of regrown swidden agriculture. Fields are rotated on a very long schedule. After growing rice or corn for a couple of years a field might well lay fallow for twelve to twenty years, each year providing habitat for different species of animals and plants until once again it is slashed and burnt. The rotation of crop lands and the circle of life continues much as it has for centuries uncounted.

Good luck with any plans  the Lao Government might have to relocate these folks, they're doing just fine right where they are. I'm sure they'd never trade their lands for some spot beside the road perched on the side of a hill.

Above the terraced wet rice fields. It's as if there were a tiny enclave of lowland agriculture plunked down amidst this land of mountain rice and slash and burn. I think these fields are the key to the prosperity of the village. Wet rice has very high yields per acre or rai which is the local measurement. One rai can support one family with high calorie sticky rice for one year.

On the way out the next morning we walked past the graineries above the rice fields. There was so much rice that the extra was stored outside in old rice sacks where the animals could get at it. There was just no more room to store the rice they had. Above you can see a new storage shed being built past the one with the sacks. Rice is stored away from the village, if there is fire there is still rice to eat.

Ban Nam Hee even had water buffaloes. You see less photos of water buffs in Asia now that the iron buffalo is everywhere, but in an upland village? Five of them! There seemed to be no one there to mind the animals, maybe a youngster heard us coming and hid. There was no second season rice to guard against them eating. Still, there are tigers and leopards in the forest, perhaps no carnivores around, or the buffalo are too big and with horns.

The village was the first one I'd seen with an electric generator. Other places had LED bulbs hooked to batteries, Ban Nam Hee had a satellite TV. In the evenings they'd turn on the generator for a couple of hours and women would have light to cook with. A dim electric bulb is a handy thing to have.

Though it took us two full days to walk to Ban Nam Hee, during the wet season the navigable portion of the Nam Fa is only three hours walk away. (six hours our walking speed). So the village floated a diesel engine and generator down the river and then using many people with slings and poles carried the heavy engine, over many days, over the mountains to their village. 

Compact Fluorescent light bulb and the view from the Naiban's porch.

In the photo above you can see that though the roof is metal, very little other things in the village are manufactured products. You never see empty plastic bags or water bottles on the ground. The fence is of sticks, the baskets of bamboo, water is carried in long tubes made from bamboo, snacks are carried in folded pieces of banana leaf, things are tied with a long splinter from bamboo. Children's and often men's clothes are store bought, but the older men wear at least a coat of the comfortable and beautiful cotton dyed black and woven on looms under the houses. Almost all clothes of the women are home made.

mixing gunpowder

Tui pointed out a guy working with a saht and coke in the photo above. I'm not sure which ingredients he's mixing together to make gunpowder but I'd be willing to bet he isn't mixing all three of them at the same time. Saltpeter is probably readily available from manure, and charcoal is of course easy, I'm not sure where they get the sulfur. 

Usually when arriving at a village I don't do much. It's already late afternoon,  and when the sun goes down it's very night. My guide points me to my place usually furthest from the center of the sleeping platform, and I swallow my daily blood pressure and cholesterol pills, chased with a couple ibuprofen and lots of warm water from the kettle.  The fatigue of walking is cumulative and I know that I'll need all the rest I can get. I mostly eat only the rice offered to me, leaving the meat. I can digest the rice easiest it provides me with the energy to burn the excess fuel I have in the form of fat. I'm positive any meat will be eaten by someone.

my photo

Left of me in the photo is one of the old style muskets with a pistol grip, they hold them far away from their face so as not to get singed from the flash of the powder. 

The naiban was as Tui had promised charming. His wife gave me a gift of an embroidered pocket which I carry to this day. I have to say I've never met a naiban that didn't seem like a very decent man. The translation of naiban as "village chief" doesn't really do the title justice. The naiban isn't appointed, he's elected by everyone in the village. The naiban is the responsible person of final resort, for every single human being in the village, every one of which he has known his entire life. I'm not sure what other duties a naiban performs. Sometimes the Naiban is the same man for years, other times it changes, lately maybe the government has some influence.

family photo

Above the naiban of Ban Nam Hee. On the left his oldest son and daughter in law, on the right his wife and youngest child, peeking from behind his back either his or his son's child. The naiban carried that kid constantly the whole time I was there. Notice the coat the naiban wears. The  oldest wife has one breast bare as is the custom, it's also convenient for suckling the youngest son. Married women have bared breasts, a tradition which dies away after much contact with staring, photo taking, outsiders. 

Notice the boards forming the walls behind the family, they are cut with a "pah-ee-toe", the long knife that is used for everything, yet they are very flat and fit together tightly. The structural parts of the house are post and beam, the floor split bamboo. There is an open fire on a hearth of dirt and ashes, the smoke filters up and out the high roof. 

Being naiban isn't all heavy responsibilities. From every wild deer or pig killed one front leg goes to the naiban and one leg goes to the house of the oldest man in the village. Also it seems of late the government gives one center fire rifle (SKS)to each head of the village. Maybe it's because the head of the village is also part of the government. 

As I drifted in the minutes before sleep that evening listening to the low murmer of the talk in the household, in my mind I reviewed where we'd come from and where we were headed. The village is on no map, the river that bears the same name isn't either. I figured we were not too far from the hard surface banked road used by trucks headed from Thailand to China, maybe twenty kilometers or less as the crow flies. The next day somehow we'd turn towards the south and somewhere cross the Nam Fa on our way to Ban Jakune Mai.

Early morning fog in the valley burning off with the sun below Ban Nam Hee. The village is still in shadow.

Further Into the Forest

The morning began as most mornings. The eldest wife pushing the coals together and blowing on them to start the morning fire and cook the rice. Everyone else still fast asleep in the dark. I got up but kept my distance, waiting for some water to boil to make instant coffee in my steel cup. I wasn't sure of the etiquette in Hmong houses, I couldn't see a clear demarcation of women's side from men's side as with the Akha. I do know that no woman wants a foreigner underfoot early in the morning, so after getting a nod of approval to get some water from the boiling kettle I returned to the edge of the sleeping platform and re bandaged a blister on my foot.

Morning fire Ban Nambo 20 54 25.70N 100 53 50.10

This post is a continuation of similar posts about a walk in NE Laos in the winter of 07 and 08.

1. http://laobumpkins.blogspot.com/2010/07/trail-to-nambo.html
2. http://laobumpkins.blogspot.com/2010/04/lahu-night-out.html
3. http://laobumpkins.blogspot.com/2010/03/one-day-treks-in-vicinity-of-muang-long.html
4. http://laobumpkins.blogspot.com/2010/02/long-time-traveler-muang-long.html

With way over a thousand kilometers of roadless and mostly mapless area the Nam Fa drainage has plenty of places to go for a walk. None the less Tui had one particular town he wanted to revisit, Ban Nam Hee. I think as much as anything the village headman had been welcoming and Tui wanted to go back and say hi. Also last time he'd been there the villagers had told him that it was only one day's walk futher to Jakune Mai where we both have friends.

Tui'd taken an Italian there during the preceding year. That walk with the Italian had been the only foreigner at all in these woods during the two years since i'd been here in early 2007. One of the soldiers with an AK had accompanied them. Tui made jokes about the gun. I've seen hunters stash thier rifle in the bushes before entering an unfamiliar village. Good to enter a place with an empty hand. I don't think the escort was appreciated.

Black Powder Rifle from hunters we met at stream crossing

My guide Tui was the son of the military comander of Lao communist forces in the region throughout the war, afterwards his was head of the district capital past the turn of the century. Like many Lao Tui's dad got his military training in Hanoi, where they taught him all kinds of things best forgotten. Tui taught English in the high school, he usually knows former students in every village, and most people have heard of his father. The connections are helpfull when entering a new village.

That said, upland peoples are an independent self assured bunch. Tui's liniage though known, affords him no special status other than his normal station as guide and teacher and my being a falang is nothing more special than any other stranger. Often the people we are talking to are elders and current and former headmen of their often large old villages. I mostly listen quietly trying to understand what's going on, I go easy with the camera.

After an early breakfast of wai wai we left with our local guide. Hiring a local guide accomplishes a few things, most of them good. The local guide is a hunter and knows all of the trails and his way around the hills. It puts the equivalent of skilled labor wages into the pocket of a subsistence farmer. Three people, one of them a local woodsman, is much safer than two strangers. The guide usually has a much greater depth of knowledge of local flora and fauna, more than likely he knows any strangers we are apt to meet, if not personally, then through kinship ties.

Looking back at Ali's house, the Lahu headman whom I'd stayed with back in 06. Notice the Lahu houses are up on stilts. Stopped to take photo of Nambo 20 53 56.41N 100.54 03.22E

The trail was good and after the first long big hill the terrain eased up. We seemed to be headed in a generaly south easterly direction similar to the way we'd walked the day before.

Despite a lack of accurate maps I have a rough idea of where we are all the time. Far to the south east is the new hard surface road from Huay Xai on the Thai border that goes up to Boten on the border of China. West is the Mekong, behind me the dirt road from Sing to Xiengkok. 

They pushed me hard for the first part of the morning. We had a good sized hill to go up. Afterwards the elevation changes were more moderate.

Break at the top of the first large hill. Hunters had been using a white tree for target practice. (six inch goups at 30 meters) Top of Hill on trail to Nambo Gao 20 52 59.50N 100 54 17E

At around noon we passed the site of the old village of Nambo. A guy I talked to the night before said he'd spent his entire life in old Nambo and he figured he was around eighty years old. On the old topo maps from the war there's a red dot in about  the same place as Old Nambo and a label LS125, "Lima Site 125" which is military jargon for landing site. Someone probably landed a helicopter there and made contact with the villagers.

 Besides Lima Site 125 at Old Nambo you can also see Muang Long in the upper left and the present day Mongla labeled Lima Site 358. Click for larger scale.

Old Nambo gone to weeds.  20 50 53.50N 100 54 29.20E

Heading down towards a creek we heard a shot, and at the crossing met a couple of hunters. We stopped there for lunch. While one of the hunters started a fire the other chased some small fish into the shallows and scooped them up on the bank. Combined with the bird they'd shot, the kilo of rice they'd brought, and some of my favorite flavor enhancer, they had a pretty good lunch for themselves. Certainly a lot better than plain rice. The bird was simply plucked then cleaned by splitting it open with a thumb and discarding some of the guts, stuffing others back in the bird. Similarly with the fish. All had bang nua and salt rubbed into them then were quickly barbecued.

Fish and fowl

Prepping Lunch

Kao Neao, Ping gai, Ping Pa, Bang Nuah, Gua, a perfect lunch.

They say the Akha might get half their protein from the wild. I can't think of many other societies today where every single male is a hunter. Their bullets are made in molds of lead and propeled with home made black powder. The newer longer rifled barrels made in Thailand are a big improvement over the older smooth bores. I'd guess the long barrels are to get as much speed out of the slow burning powder as possible.

Notice the powder horn in the forground? Except for the barrel, most of this rifle is homeade, looks really good. What next Monte Carlo combs?

The Akha often hunt with dogs. The dogs sniff out the pig or deer and bark to alert the hunters that they are chasing the animal. No carnivore is too big to fear the dogs of the Akha and there is a feeling of safety in walking the woods where carnivores still fear man.  The only animal people  have problems with surprisingly is the mild mannered black bear. Mostly meek sometimes the bear mauls someone unprovoked. I figure it's a reaction to the fact that  they live in a bad neighborhood. Tigers and leopards prey on black bears, sometimes even after the bear is full grown, the only defence the bear has is it's strength and ferocity.

Asian Black Bear from camera trap by WCS. Notice how thin the fur is, you can see the skin through it especially along the belly. Still, built stronger than a brick shite house as they say.

We were reaching a point where it is closer to the new hard surface road to China than it is behind us to the road at Muang Long. Close to the road is a demand for market bush meat. The Chinese built a large hotel casino on the Lao side of the border at Boten and the entire town and market surrounding it runs on Chinese currency and speaks Mandarin. (I'm repeating what I've heard, haven't really been to Boten in about a few million years, certainly long before the casino)

The road also drives a demand for all the nutty animal based medicines. for export to China. I'm sure the customs house has been upgraded since I passed by, but the Boten entrance has to be one of the more obscure entries to China. I wouldn't think the customs has much familiarity with CITES . http://www.cites.org/ 

The Akha claim the Kahmu are poaching on thier land, pushed further inland than normal. Maybe by the demand of the market? The Kahmu are actually the original inhabitors of the land, as far back as legend survives. 


It's not just the Chinese at Boten that drive the market, Lao people still enjoy eating civet, porkupine, pig, deer, snake, bat, and bamboo rat if they can afford it. The many varieties of insects, frogs, tiny birds, and fish are still comonly eaten even among the small amount of the population that reside in towns.

I read in a report once that even citizens of the capital can name 300 local species. When I think of doing the same around here I'm afraid I'd run out somewhere around 100. Very recently almost every person in Laos was familiar with gathering fish, frogs, insects, and all of the wild growing plants. It's hard to tell someone that has been eating wild food all thier lives that it's now bad to buy civet in exchange for the money they earn by working.

The afternoon fades from my memory, more hills, more trees and finally the Nam Hee, a major tributary of the Nam Fa. We stopped and washed ourselves in the creek, the water bone chillingly cold. The first bath in a couple days, I felt downright clean and presentable until our local guide unrolled his jacket. 

Blurry photo of local guide all dressed up --Nam Hee Crsng way to ban Nam Hee 20 49 50.90N 100 55 20.70

Less well known, the upland men also wear distinctive clothes that identify them as belonging to one ethnicity or another. In this case our guide was a Hmong fellow. He reminded me of the young cowboys of Wyoming getting duded up in preparation to go to the barn dance. 

The hilltribes have devised ways of both enlarging their gene pool and guarding against inbreeding. In other instances I'd felt as if Lu woodcutters had been taking advantage of fairly young upland girls. In reading I now realize that more accurately they were taking advantage of the social norms that allowed them to get lucky at the same time as the villagers perhaps diversified their genes. It seems as if every time I jump to make moral judgments, I later find I didn't fully understand the situation.

It helps me to realize that the villagers are basically the same human as am I. True I come from a much more developed society technologicaly, but with human interactions, I'd think we're about the same. 

We wander through life mostly as strangers to each other, behind our steel firesafe doors, at the end of our anonymous suburban culdesac. The Akha can recite their lineage back for scores of generations. They not only know their relationship to every living soul in their own village but the connections via  marriage and lineage to every other village of their people from before the time they imigrated out of the north hundreds of years ago. Imagine living next door to your best friends and all your relatives for your entire life?

Shortly the trail became worn, we smelled wood smoke, and heard chickens.

After passing through the village gate, Ban Nam Hee itself became visible, initialy it was strangely silent, and empty. Nothing moved except chickens, no dogs, no people. Then a wild cheer, and singing or chanting to drums and some unusual musical instrument. Except for the music all was again quiet, then a most horrible anguished cry, silence again, then a shout of triumph, cheers.

I'm used to having packs of dogs nipping at my heels or old grannies giving me the evil eye. I understand that until we are accepted by someone we can be viewed with suspicion. There are also instances of villages being absolutely closed to all outsiders. I'd no idea what the heck was going on. Some kind of human sacrifice was the first thing that came to mind.

Halfway into the village we came upon the game of tops. The entire village was cheering the contestants. The tops are spun off a stick with a rope. I'm not sure of the rules, I believe someone can lose their lead by having their top knocked out of the way. The music was a CD of Akha music imported from China. The village had a generator and batteries to power a sound system.

Ban Nam Hee 20 49 04.00N 100 56 06.80E

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

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