The Garden

It was our first day in Luang Prabang. We had come in on the eleven o’clock flight from Bangkok on the little prop plane from Lao Aviation that bumped and rocked over the green jungle and jagged peaks of the track less forest beneath us, finally settling down at a tiny airport that looked like the rebels where going to come down from the hills at any time and seize control, driving all the foreigners into heaving lines of people trying desperately to get on the last plane out.
Actually, the airport was really nice, just pretty small and run down, no gates or anything, the plane just disgorged its load on to the tarmac and the people were shuttled to two ancient teak booths to have our visas processed.
After collecting our bags, a pretty short wait due to the fact that we were the only plane coming in and there were all of twenty people on board we grabbed a taxi and headed to our hotel. Rushing down the highway, past little huts and with views of golden stapes in the distance, rising up over the ever present teak trees we kept catching glimpses of people through screens of scarlet bougainvillea that lined the road.
Everywhere you looked people were moving to and fro, going about their daily lives. There were motorcycle tuk-tuks going up and down the streets shuttling people and tourists from the markets and temples that littered this valley that had been formed by the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Ou rivers.
We reached our hotel after a fifteen minute ride and got out, staring at the Wat surrounded by a low stone wall that was across from the ninety year old converted French shop that would be our home for the next several days.
Looking around the street I was amazed by the small town feel that was still prevalent here even though it had been on the backpacker circuit of south east Asia for several years now. There were people cooking, eating, and drinking just off the almost deserted street. In the small closed in allies that went down to the Nam Ou river behind the hotel children played with abandon, running, jumping, and yelling like children everywhere. Over the entire town, from the green hills stretching in a line on both the east and west sides to the river snaking its way from north to south hung the scent and have of thick wood smoke as the subsistence farmers around the country used the cold months of December and January to clear new land for the spring planting, sowing seeds of bright purple baby eggplant, deep red scallion, the green stems of shallot, that when they are ready will disappear into a shiny white bulb to flavor soups, stews, and fragrant Lao salads.
After settling in and getting cleaned up it was time to head out and take a look around. Meandering along the chocolate covered fast flowing Mekong, framed with little terraced rice paddies and plots of lettuce and papayas lining the narrow yellow sand banks we couldn’t help but think of the millions of people that this river, the tenth largest in the world fed and watered everyday, from the vast rice terraces of Yunann in southern China, spread along flanks of steep mountain ranges with wispy clouds of white mist rising gently on the currents to the rich black earth of the delta, spreading its fingers across Cambodia and Vietnam.
While walking along the Mekong on the right the rows of old french colonial villas and shops spread along the left side of the street. Some had been lovingly restored, the balconies and interiors cool and inviting with reams of colourful flowers hung up and teak on the floors that had been polished by over seventy years of bare feet pattering to and fro, while outside they buildings are painted the typical French colonial hues of blues and yellows.
Others had fallen into disrepair as years of the tropical heat had taken its toll, leaving hand carved wooden window shutters barley hanging on to the frames, weather beaten and grey and the walls had huge gaping holes showing the mud lattice work that is the inside filler in the walls.
Finally, after strolling through this garden of tropical wonder we made it to the main street, our goal, and found food alley, lined with all manner of cooked food ready to be eaten.
On spits, dripping with roasting fat, were skewers of bamboo that had chicken fat woven in spirals along the shaft, balls of water buffalo intestine, lovingly twisted and tied with lemon grass to slowly cook on the part of the girl away from the roaring flame. On tables were stacked piles of frogs, pig heads, charred river fish straight from the Mekong and huge slabs of beef.
Finally we reached our destination a little spot dominated by three plastic tables and fronted with low benches. The woman behind the tables could have been anyone’s grandma in any country, big and jovial she was lovingly stirring huge vats of rice noodles and preparing the most popular dish in south east Asia, eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, pho.
Pho is cheap, simple, and easy to make and dominates local street food all over Indochina. Basically it is a bowl of rice noodles with some vegetables added in and your choice of pork or chicken slivers on top, pretty bland by itself but that is where the condiments come in.
At any street stall that serves pho the table is covered with plates of limes, lettuce, cabbage, shrimp paste, scallions, shallots, red onion, chili paste, and jars of fish sauce, soy sauce, and red pepper.
When the big bowl of steaming pho is set in front of you make sure you look over at what the locals are doing and just follow. Take a handful of scallions and shallots and add them to the mess of noodles and broth, add some shrimp paste, a little bit of crushed red pepper, and maybe some peanut sauce and mix it all together, watch as the broth changes from a clear base to have tinges of red and brown as the peanut sauce and shrimp paste mix together and wash it all down with a cold glass of Beer Lao

vientenne two

1. The abandoned river front hotel that saw thirty years of spies and insurgency before falling into decay.
2. The Arch de Triumph of the east, Puaxti. Called the vertical runway because it was built with USAID cement that was supposed to lengthen the runway at Wattay International Airport, it is one of the tallest structures in Vientiane, and therefore Lao
3. Wicker baskets and balls for sale on the streets of Vientiane
4. The view from Puaxti
5. The Beer Lao Brewery

vientenne one

Vientiane pictures.
1. Looking out over the skyline of the smallest size national capitol in the world.
2. Wat Phat, one of the holiest places in Lao
3. Sunset along the Mekong, Thailand, a world away is on the far bank of the river, those are fish traps in the lower right
4. The U.S. fought the so called secret war in Lao from 1963 to 1975, trying to stop the so called domino theory of southeast Asian communism. For twelve years the U.S. bombed and flattened Lao, destroying schools, temples, and towns indiscriminately. Today, over thirty years later people all over Lao are still being killed by the unexploded bombs dropped on the country, an amount so staggering that it is greater than all the bombs dropped on Nazi Germany by the allies in world war two.
The brave boys and girls of MAG go out to the villages and farms and try to defuse the unexploded ordance to stop the killing of innocent men, woman, and children, but unfortunantly it is these kids who are so often killed in their work, their average life expectancy after they start working with MAG is under a year.
5. The Lao Kip, worthless in all its glory as a government billboard announces new larger denomination notes.

monks

1. Lining up for the morning alms giving where monks parade through Luang Prabang with their begging bowls to get their food for the day.
2. Boy monks studying
3. Monks need to play too.
4. At 6:00am getting ready to get the morning offerings.
5. Young monks waiting to get into the free Internet cafe.


Publish Post

luaung prabang six

1. French colonial architecture is everywhere in Lao, from tumble down french villas long abandoned to old colonial stores beautifully restored and turned into 300 dollar a night hotels, in a country where eighty percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day.
2. The royal palace of Lauang Prabang, the home of the king until he was deposed by the communist Pathet Lao in 1975. No one knows what became of the king, queen, or crown prince as the government has never announced their fate, but the local rumor is that they were left to die of starvation in a cave in the far north of Lao.
3. One of the temples on the grounds of the royal palace.
4. A Hmong woman getting ready to spread out her silks to sell at the night market.
5. The inside of a temple

luang prabang five

1. The group from my Lao cooking class
2. Monks robes drying in the back of a Wat (temple)
3. Long boats at a Wat, they are used to take monks up the Mekong to the Park Ou caves once a year for the Lao New Year ceremony.
4. Buddhist figures at the Lao National museum
5. A Buddhist shrine

luang prabang four

Pictures
1. Raw cane sugar
2. Too little kids who couldn't get over the falang, foreigner, sitting at their mothers stand eating a baguette and drinking mango juice. The little boy kept coming over to me with an empty glass and putting it in front of me, it took a minute but I finally realized the little tyke was thirsty after he grabbed my water bottle and poured himself a drink
3. Even boy monks need some time on the Internet
4. The main street of Luang Prabang at night.
5. Every bodies favorite dish, congealed cow blood

lauang prabang three

Pictures
1. At the Park Ou caves, one of the holiest places in Lao. These two caves hold thousands of images of the great Buddha, from simple hand covered lumps of clay five hundred years old to solid gold pieces carefully carved.
2. The Luang Prabang market, beetle nut, tobacco, raw lumps of cane sugar, and medicinal herbs and barks
3. Guess what, a tiger.
4. Pho, rice noodles and pork with a big bottle Beer Lao and a plate of fresh limes, chilies and cilantro to add as you like.

luang prabang two

1. The stupa above the royal palace all light up for the night
2. The great helmsman ready to take his boat up the Mekong.
3. The tenth biggest river in the world, the Mekong above Luang Prabang.
4. A great tutorial of how to make rice whisky
5. A Hmong family at the night market getting ready for the evening.

luang prabang one

Luang Prabang pictures
1. The balcony of my hotel where I got to sit every morning and evening and watch the world go by.
2. Every you look in Luang Prabang is blooming bougainvillea
3. Long tail boats on the Mekong
4. Chicken, salad, and nice water buffalo intestine all wrapped up in a nice little parcel to take home and nosh on
5. Street food

bus ride to Vientenne

The bus ride from Lauang Prabang to Vientiane was, shall we say, long and arduous. It took about ten hours to got nearly two hundred miles on one of the very few paved roads in all of Lao, up and down some of the steepest terrain that I have ever seen, weaving through some of the most stunning karst mountain formations on earth.
As the road wound its way up and down the mountains and along ridge lines, with steep drop offs on the side almost everywhere you are treated to fantastic jungle covered peaks rising up everywhere, and at only ten bucks it is worth the price.
Pictures.
1. In the early part of the trip we are above the cloud line for most of the time.
2. Heading up the long climb.
3. Pretty typical sight on the Lao plateu
4. There were not a lot of these little villages along the route but there were some clusters of little thatched huts scattered up and down the hills, clinging to the sides of the mountains, looking like the first strong breeze would blow them off.
5. Everywhere you go in Lao you can get a fruit shake for about 5000 Kip, or fifty cents, the main ingredients are pineapple, mango, coconut, and banana.

bangkok two

Some more pictures of Bangkok. Bangkok is a big sprawling urban mess, always moving with, it seemed to me, not much of a soul, just a way station to better parts of Thailand and south east Asia.
1. Offerings of joss sticks, incense, at a temple.
2. The one thing that Bangkok has in abundance, other than child prostitution, drugs, and traffic that is, temples. These spires are in one of the main temple complexes.
3. The best picture that I took in Thailand, the roofs of three temples.
4. A long corridor at the royal palace.
5. My first real sit down Thai food, in a real Thai restaurant, boar curry. Eating this, with all the fresh herbs and spices, was like chowing down on a garden, all the flavors and spices exploding in little drops in my mouth.