Cruising down the Mekong. I wanted this day to never end.
Some info from Sene:
- Population of Lao is 7.8m
- There are 49 ethnic groups in Lao
- Hmong (they were in the highlands in Sapa) are from Mongolia
- Khmu (the ancestors of those who made the urns on the Plain of Jars) are a sub-group of the Khmer, originally from China
- Khmu believe that each person has thirty-two spirits; when someone is ill, they kill an animal to redress the spirit balance
- They marry early: girls at 15-17 and boys 16-18
- When they marry, the Khmu dowry (or their equivalent) includes two pigs and a buffalo
- They hunt wild pig, grasshoppers (can you hunt grasshoppers? I guess so), and spiders
- This is king cobra country
- The government forced the villages to combine to make it easier to provide education and healthcare
- Contribution towards the cost of a year at school: $6
- Families can often have up to 10 children; contraception became available in 2010
- Today at the village there were only women and children – the men were harvesting.
And a riddle: what do Lao eat when it’s young and sleep with when it’s older?
Answer: bamboo – they eat the shoots, and use the grown plants to build their houses.
And some other interesting notes from our conversations with Sene:
- The people vote for the “president” of the ruling party (there is, of course, only one party in Communist Lao)
- The president serves a five-year term, with a maximum of three terms
- Maximum age of the president is 60 years (I think I misheard this – he must have meant “minimum” age, I think)
- If the president is no good (as determined by the other members of the party), he is stripped of his power and becomes a figurehead for the rest of his term
- National service lasts two and a half years
- Building of the high-speed rail service linking Kunming (China, where I’m going… unless plans change again!) and Singapore starts this year and is planned to be finished in five years’ time (and seeing the terrain they’ve got to deal with, I think this is incredibly ambitious)
- China’s paying for the rail link with Lao gradually paying it back (once they’re generating income from it, I assume)
- China’s also paying to relocate the locals displaced by the line
Today’s excursion was to an ethnic village. I’ve lost count of the number of ethnic villages I’ve seen, but they’re all different.
It was fascinating to see their way of life, but once again I felt like I was intruding. But Rudy has this way of engaging with people: the cockerel was making its usual racket (I’m still of the opinion that they actually know the true meaning of life and the twist is that when they try to tell us, all they can say is cock-a-doodle-do – this surely explains the intensity of their cry). Its cry was fairly regular; Rudy wanted to film it, so counted it down like a film director and, when he pointed it at, it duly crowed; everyone laughed. He’s magic:
And I couldn’t decide whether this little rascal was playing for the camera – I’m not sure he really registered us:
Back on the boat, we chugged past banana plantations (apparently the blue wrapping round the trunks deters insects):
And staring in wonder at those on speed boats: not withstanding the dubious safety record (note the helmet), why on earth would a tourist (as locals are unlikely to be able to afford it) want to whizz past this beautiful scenery with the constant roar of a motor? Mind you, it reduces the two day journey to about three hours:
Then I spent a wonderful couple of hours dangling my legs over the front of the boat, watching the world and the water go by (including some very impressive currents):
We arrived in Huay Xai all too soon, bundled on a tuk-tuk to the bus station where we arrived just as a bus to Luang Namtha was about to leave. Couldn’t have planned it better.
Then dinner watching the stars – there’s very little light pollution here.
Yet another wonderful day 🙂
