Work Live Laos

I've been following a new web site from Vientiane on Facebook. It seems to keep tabs on current events in the capital maybe from an expat point of view.


Work-Live-Laos

When I stopped by today they had this kind of fun you tube video.

A land with no trees

Crossroads from EIA on Vimeo.

Walking out to the road

The road means different things to different people. For me it meant a return to the power grid, cell phone coverage, showers, beds, restaurants. For Lorphaew’s son who was along for the walk and had never seen a road, it meant a lot more.

We get up early, I fill my water bottles from the cold water in the kettle and we leave. Tui, Lorphaew carrying my pack, Lorphaew’s son, and myself bringing up the rear. I don’t think we even had a hot breakfast, cold rice and water. Tui remarked this was a record early start for him, maybe seven o’clock.

The day before I’d cut a three inch hole in my boot to match the inch and a half hole in my foot, covered them both tightly with athletic tape, hoped that the pressure would be relieved, and crossed my fingers for luck.

The first part of the walk followed the path from Jakune Mai to Jakune Gow, I’d been on the trail four times before, that didn’t make it any easier. We stopped to wash at a stream crossing, from there the trail goes up and up and up, maybe 1800 feet or more. The first time I was already tired after two long days and I was lying down at the rests, took the starch out of me. This time at least I stayed standing to catch my breath. 

Jakune Gao 2006

Lorphaew brought up the rear carrying my pack and his presence made the effort easier. I speak no Akha and he speaks no Lao, and so we can’t talk, but when you are the slowest it’s nice to have someone behind for company who doesn’t push.

Much sooner than I’d of thought we are at Old Jakune, in the two years since I’d been there it had melted further into the forest. I had to wonder how long it would be before only the discerning eye would know that here for decades uncounted, maybe centuries,  was a village where people were born, lived to bear children themselves, and passed on. How quickly the trees grow. The time comes for everyone and we all fade from memory.

Just above the old townsite is the trail junction to Nambo, more faint than the trail to town. Probably not many make the long hike to the Lahu village. Young men going “visiting” more likely than not. Our route took us still higher, almost to the top of the highest mountain in the vicinity, Phou Mon Lem, a name that has something to do with the long grass that grows around the top.

When we cross the ridge we stop and I take a photo. A poor and uninteresting photo at that. Some tree covered hills, some fog, barely imagined further hills. I breath deep wondering if this is my last view of this area. Close by are the hills on both sides of the Nam Fa, the river valley without roads or cell phone coverage, trees never cut, river never damned. Beyond is the Nam Mekong the riverine historic waterway of south east asia still in fog and wide, and on the other side of that, Shan State, the part of Burma ruled by an independent army.

I like these hills.

After the top we began to see survey markers. A Korean mining company is intent on developing a copper mine and making a road. It will certainly change things. Tui says he understands us Falangs don’t like to see roads. I don’t mind roads, but I do like the untracked forests and miss them when they are gone. It would be great if Lorphaew and all from his village didn’t have to walk so far to go to the market, or the doctor. More worrisome is the potential for pollution from the mining, I doubt there would be any environmental restrictions at all. A lot of villages downstream.

The walk downhill is at a much more moderate gradient. Once in awhile more survey flags from the intended road. The path cuts side hill amongst very old large trees, the walking is easy, cool in the deep shadows. The trees and the path might well have both been there when America was fighting it’s war for independence. A land without roads doesn’t mean a place without history or people

Drinking from the spring, Lorphaew, his son, Tui.

All too soon we are wading the river for the seven crossings that mark the approach to the Lanten village that is where the trail meets the road. A  young guy has driven his motorcycle into the ford to wash the dust off, it is colorful new and fast looking even sitting still. Lorphaew’s son stares at the bike with intensity, he has heard of them. Later Tui’s friend arrives in a decrepit minivan without seats to give us a ride to town. Lorphaew’s son watches carefully from where we sit on the floor in the back as we bump along, when the road suddenly becomes paved and the minivan twists through the S turns his jaw drops in wonder. On the road again.

Wildside Trip on the Nam Fa (from quite a while ago)

Tiger Tracking on the Nam Pha from Frank Wolf on Vimeo.

This video is of a white water rafting trip down the Nam Fa in the late nineties or the early part of the last decade.

It looks like the video was made by someone who makes adventure videos with no connection to the actual trip. The trip was organised by Wildside adventures run by Michael O'Shea also known as the guy that kayaked the entire length of the Mekong with lots of good stories from half drowning in Tibet of Yunnan province, I read his account of the trip online a long time ago.

This is kind of a run on post, I'm hoping that someone who was in the area at the time will post a long and if they want anonymous or not comment about the whole thing and I'll erase this half conjecture collection of run on sentences with some factual information. Hint hint you know who you are.

Looks like most of the time was spent above the junction of the Nam Hee where the river is most turbulent and it probably took them the most time to get down. Assuming the Kahmu village was up close to Vieng Phuka somewhere. Don't know about the Akha village, a just moved Jakune Mai? The camera traps that used film were a give away. Don't know when digital came out but it's an indicator.

Climate and Other Changes in Laos

A big hat tip to I eat Padeckwhere I saw this short and enjoyable clip. I'm not sure How much of this was intentional I'm going to assume everything.

The granny glasses that are THE fashion statement and fake designer bag. Posts for new house stored under the old, The relatively short distance between the old life of the village and the new found insouciance of Vientiane.

Wild West

Are those 5.56 shell casings amongst the gore?

Mum (Fermented Elk Liver Sausage)

Above one very fresh elk heart and liver taking up most of the sink

One of the good parts about cutting up one’s own meat is that you get to make use of what many call “the fifth quarter”.

One hurdle to using the “other” parts to their full potential is getting them in the first place. When confronted with the enormity of hundreds of pounds of steaming warm meat lying on the ground I have a hard time thinking beyond the logistics of getting that huge heavy mass back home and into butcher paper packages in the freezer.

By the time I’ve pulled the whole heart/lung/liver/gut sack/intestine mess out of the body cavity and rolled it onto the snow, I’ve about had enough of getting up close and personal with the big pile of other bits. The heart, lungs, liver portion sits above anything that could be called guts and is a good place to start.

Today I’m writing about liver. Elk livers are packed chock full of vitamins, there are nutrients the elk can’t find all winter while the grass is dead and the snow is deep, the supply of those nutrients is stored in the liver.

above after careful trimming I ground smaller pieces into hamburg

Mum is a traditional way preserving liver without refrigeration.

The recipe is actually pretty straightforward and uses basic ingredients every Lao household already has.

You start with grinding up fresh meat and follow it with a lot less fresh liver. We used 1000 grams of ground meat to 300 grams of liver. In a large bowl we mixed it with a cup of precooked sticky rice which we’d whetted so that it was slippery instead of sticky half a cup of chopped garlic, half a cup of lemon grass, and fifteen kafir lime leaves. The lemon grass was the round part not the flat sharp leaves, sliced thin across the grain then chopped in the food processor, the kafir leaves were simply sliced very thin. Also a couple table spoons of salt.

above lemon grass grown in the pot

above kafir lime

Sticky rice cooking in the pot

The entire concoction was kneaded for ten minutes of so in the bowl then run through the meat grinder one more time with the sausage adapter at the end inserted into casing from a pig. Our first use of the sausage adapter for the grinder, I think the regular sausage maker is better, tighter sausages even if it takes a little more work to push.

The liver besides storing vitamins, filters things out from the blood, I don’t eat liver from raised animals, I’m too worried about antibiotics and growth hormones or gosh knows what all.

My fellow blogger over at Lao Cook http://laocook.com/ calls sticky rice “Lao Rice” in that Laos is the only country in the world where all the inhabitants eat it as their every day rice. There are other rices called sticky from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or wherever but they are an entirely different rice. In Laotian and Thai language the rice is called kao niao, sometimes called glutinous rice it contains no gluten. If you’ve never had kao niao then you’ve been leading a deprived existence and you need to buy a steamer, a basket, the book Food from Northern Laos http://www.foodfromnorthernlaos.com/, and start living the good life.

Lemon grass is sold at many Asian markets these days. You need to buy some that has the bottom of the stalk or root bulb attached, plant it in a large pot, and you’ll never need to buy again.

Kafir lime is more problematic. Most people cultivate a tree. Unless you live in Socal or Florida that means a house plant, hopefully an overgrown houseplant. Leaves are useless dried, sometimes they’re sold fresh or frozen at Lao Markets here in the US.

Finished sausages off the grinder

Back to sausage. After being put out in the sun inside the protection of the screened jerky maker to remove most of the water they are allowed to further ferment and dry inside the house for a couple of weeks. The starch in the rice is some kind of kick starter in the fermentation so that the meat ferments as apposed to rotting. We cook them all then freeze them, so that they can be thawed and eaten on at moment’s notice as hors d'oeuvres, The sausage is sliced into bite sized pieces and served with raw green onions and hot sticky rice on the side.

drying mum

done mum