Upriver in a Leaky Boat

Hello again!

One thing about travelling is that it sometimes allows you a glimpse into the future. And sometimes that's a frightening thing.

It used to be possible to travel by boat for long distances along many of the region's rivers. Life for millions of people over thousands of years has revolved around the rivers. Each year, the monsoon would bring floods, along with precious topsoil which was deposited onto flood plains and subsequently used for agriculture. The lifecycle of the river was extremely important.

Then came the hydro-electricity dams. Largely built by the Chinese, these dams have completely altered the life of the rivers. The Ou River, the river that ran through the area we were visiting, has been hugely impacted. It's no longer possible to drive a boat along some stretches. Fish can't migrate past the dams and the seasonal rise and fall of the waters has changed. 

We had planned to do some long-distance river trips but learned that some of them were no longer possible because the routes were blocked by dams. We had no idea how many though until we saw this map. It's incredible - and this information is five years old!

One image that will always stick with me is the sight of a semi-submerged temple, just hundreds of metres upstream from a dam. I wasn't quick enough to get a photo as we whizzed past but it was so sad to see. I found this photo on the net to give you an idea of what it looked like.

Back at Nong Khiaw, where our last blog post finished, we said goodbye to It (we're not sure how to spell it!), the owner of our guest house. She was gorgeous and made us each a bracelet in the colours and design of Laos' national flag. 

We finally began our first boat trip - from Nong Khiaw to Muang Ngoi. There were a lot of people heading there (mostly tourists but also a few locals) so they piled us into slowboats. Somehow, most of us ended up in the boat with no seats. It just had planks about six inches from the floor.

It was an uncomfortable trip but a spectacular one. We motored along past enormous karst mountains and watched the river life slide by. We watched kids swimming, women doing laundry and pigs, water buffalo and cows drink from the river.

The boat was incredible noisy though. We had heard about this from other travellers and tried to sit up the front, away from the motor, but we ended up near the back. The guy at the very back was obviously experienced in these things - he brought earplugs with him! John made do with trying to tie his hat down over his ears. Such a gorgeous look!

We have a noise meter on John's phone so John pulled it out. That's the highest reading we've ever seen!

The river is really shallow and with a full boat we sometimes scraped the bottom. At one stage, just after we had gone through the only rapids on the stretch, we lost our propellor. We started to float backwards and we had visions of getting into trouble going through the rapids backwards but our captain cleverly steered us towards the bank. Branches protruded into the boat and we all had a bit of a laugh but we were soon fixed and on our way.

We arrived at Muang Ngoi. Check out the 'port'. It's just a floating deck.

Muang Ngoi was a smaller version of where we'd just been. It was beautiful and very laid back. There were a lot of tourists during the day but many went back to Nong Khiaw, the larger town, in the afternoon.

We had a gorgeous bungalow in a garden setting. It was great except that it suffered from the Laotian pillow syndrome - high, hard pillows that give you a sore neck in five minutes. We've learnt to sleep on our towels and fleecy jumpers.

Opposite our guest house was the police station. It was made with bamboo matting. I'm guessing they don't hold any prisoners here!

John still had his cold so we just wandered around soaking up the village atmosphere. It was really strange to realise that this village used to be the capital town of the region. It got bombed to pieces during the war. There was so little left that they moved the capital to Nong Khiaw. There was no other signs of the bombings that we could see. The jungly forest was quick to hide the evidence.

Muang Ngoi was lovely. We only saw one car and one motorbike although we heard plenty of roosters during the wee hours of the morning.

The main street was lined with simple restaurants.

There was really only one dusty street with a few paths leading off it. How tempting does this track look? Of course we had to see where it led.

At the end of the path was a small monastery. The main temple was in good condition but the whole place looked empty. There was another monastery at the other end of town that seemed to be more active. We knew it's active because we heard the gong sounding in the morning...... very early in the morning!

This little girl with pigtails was so cute....

..... as were these cheeky boys.

We found a lovely restaurant on the river and had to partake of the Happy Hour 2-for-1 cocktails!

The views of life on the river were wonderful.

To our surprise, we saw porters loading and unloading boats, both here and at Nong Khiaw, using straps on their foreheads. We hadn't seen this anywhere else. Just as surprising was the fact that most of the porters were older women!

The sun set behind one of the larger mountains but the remaining glow was still gorgeous.

The next morning, we picked a wonderful spot for breakfast. The view over the misty river was beautiful.

Before we left home, my Aunty Shirley became very ill. I opened up my computer while we sat looking at this spectacular view and learned that Aunty Shirley probably only had a few days left, at best. We sat at the table and made plans. We always knew that if it came to it, we would go home. It's an indication of how small the world has become that, within two hours, we had booked a boat, a van, accommodation and two flights that would get us all the way back to Melbourne in two days.

There was no doubt in our minds that we were making the right decision, but it was really weird to make such radical changes to our plans. We had just been working through all the things there are to do here - trekking, kayaking and visiting indigenous villages. We had been planning the next part of our journey too, a five-hour boat trip further up the Ou River - with a tuk tuk detour around a dam! 

Within a couple of hours, we were on a small boat heading back to Nong Khiaw. The wife of the owner of our bungalows joined us so she could take her sick baby to the doctor. The boat was quite shallow and unstable - much like a kayak. It was better once it got up speed though.

This time we got great views of the scenery around us, instead of having the views obscured by knees and elbows as it was on the trip up to here!

The journey was so beautiful that we didn't want it to end and we pulled into Nong Khiaw all too soon.

Thanks to a phone call made by our very helpful waiter from Muang Ngoi, a van was waiting for us at the port. Our driver was lovely and we had a good drive back to Luang Prabang. As we drove back though all the places we'd been before, I felt like I was living a children's story book where the characters all return back through the places they visited earlier in the story.

It was really weird coming back to these towns that we never expected to visit again. In fact the whole experience was quite surreal - it seemed that one minute we were sitting in a village contemplating treks and adventurous boat journeys, and next minute we were backtracking through bigger and bigger towns, knowing we'd be home in two days. We still had four weeks planned to go of this trip so our heads had trouble catching up with reality.

We checked into a lovely French-run hotel in Luang Prabang (except the room was full of mosquitoes when we arrived!) and spent the aftenoon organising things.

We awoke to the news that Aunty Shirley had died overnight. It was so sad but we knew she couldn't keep going the way she was.

We had a quick stroll around the morning market then caught a van to the airport and flew to Bangkok. I haven't been there for a long time. This building that looked like it was falling down was very cool.

We had a few hours to spare so I checked out a few temples while John had a massage. This Hindu temple was so colourful. I couldn't take photos inside though.

I also found an enormous Thai temple complex. The details and colour on this were amazing.

Paintings with gold lined the walls inside the main temple.

I don't think I've ever seen chandeliers inside a temple before!

The designs on the doors were made with mother-of-pearl. No expense had been spared.

Many statues were covered in small pieces of gold leaf which were gradually peeling off and being blown away.

Temple rooftops.

We overnighted in a modern hotel where we got upgraded because they mucked our booking up (noice!) then were up at 4am for our flight home. I had to get a photo of this ad at the airport. In Laos, we saw quite a few young girls who use skin whitening cream. It looked ridiculous. Like a fake orange tan, a fake white skin just looks weird.

We got to see some incredible sights on this trip and we met some wonderful people. We had a glance into the future of this region, and perhaps the planet too, and there is great reason for concern.

We're now home. It's been a hectic week with the funeral, which was a lovely tribute to a wonderful lady, and catching up with relatives that we haven't seen for a long time. 

Farewell to our beautiful Aunty Shirley, who always had a smile and a slice of cake for everyone.

Hopefully, it won't be too long before we're back on the road again.


Hooroo,
Heather and John.

Nong Khiaw - Paradise!

Welcome back!

After a reasonably comfortable ride in a minivan from Luang Prabang, we arrived in the much smaller town of Nong Khiaw. Our Belgian friends that we travelled with further south had recommended a place to stay so we had booked it in advance. We could only get a few nights though - it was popular.

We walked from the bus station to the accommodation. We wound our way down a staircase to the river then stepped onto our floating guest house. Yes, the six rooms and small eating area were built on a pontoon!

We thought we must have died and gone to heaven. This place was truly stunning. Our rooms were small but who cares when this is the view from outside the room?

The Ou River meandered along in front of our rooms and the karsts towered all around.

I swam in the river every day here. John was more wary about the water quality but it was so wonderful I just didn't care - although I didn't stay in for long.

Our rooms had a small area where we could sit then just dive off the deck into the river. Bliss!

There are a number of viewpoints around the town so we decided to explore one that afternoon. See the two peaks in front of the main ridge in the photo below? We had a choice of climbing to either one. We didn't have a lot of time before sunset so we opted for the lower one.

The climb was very steep, scrambly, hard work and fun! Some parts were a bit tricky. We finally made it to the top where a rickety lookout tower was perched precariously.

The views over the town and surrounding mountains was spectacular!

Looking up at the second viewpoint. The shelter looks like a cartoon house perched on top.

The view really blew me away but we only had 5 or 10 minutes to enjoy it becuase we had to get back down before it got dark. The track was far too treacherous to attempt in the dark.

The track was beautiful - check out the enormous tree and the fabulous twisty vine. The vine looks like a giant acacia seed pod.

There was a great bamboo walkway to our accommodation and it looked wonderful lit up at night.

Morning scenes on the Ou River.

The town of Nong Khiaw was lovely. Nestled between huge karst outcrops it's a ramshackle but beautiful place with a laid-back, tropical feel. Having said that, the nights were often quite cold, particularly on the river. 

Some houses had bamboo mat walls (complete with a satellite dish!)

Spread along both sides of the river, which was spanned by a long bridge, the town was scenic from every angle. 

It's quite hard to capture the beauty of this place in a photo. There are bucolic scenes of longtail boats puttering along the lazy river while stunning karst mountains tower overhead. A camera simply can't capture the scale of everything.

The Ou River wound its way through the karsts, and the river was central to the locals' lifestyles.

I soon realised there was a strong weaving tradition here. Women in traditional skirts weaved outside their houses. Even though some of them had items for sale, this didn't seem to be a tourist thing, it was just what they did. If only they had some classes here. I would love to have done some weaving with cotton, which was what they were all using.

Babies see enough tourists here to not be scared of us! Too cute!

We decided to visit some caves nearby. It was a sweaty and dusty walk to the entrance but from that point we walked along a bamboo walkway to get to the caves.

There were three caves and the best one was very cool with lots of narrow, winding passages. They were only short so they weren't claustraphobic. It was fun!

During the Indochina war, the town lived in these caves. One of the caves was used as a bank and another was the police headquarters. Now just peaceful Buddhas guard the entrance.

The karst mountain that contained the caves.

One of the caves had proper steps going up to it. Check out how narrow they are!

Back in town, there was a huge party happening in the main street. The party was to celebrate a baby turning one month old. This must be a traditional thing. Tables were set up and heaps of bottles of beer were piled on them. By mid-morning, music was blaring VERY LOUD and people were hitting the warm beer. By early evening there were some very drunk men staggering around arm in arm and carrying on almost like they were overacting the part. It was a bit weird.

The party only lasted the day but the mess was incredible. The remains of everything they ate and drank was all over the road. The cleaning crew moved in though and all signs of the party soon disappeared.

The small town was quite rural. Someone had cleverly converted plastic bottles to become a garden!

Dried riverweed is a big snack here. They dry it on bamboo trays in the sun.

Shoes are always taken off when entering homes or accommodation. I think Gollum wrote this sign though!

A German couple at our floating guest house were riding bikes. We walked past where they had parked their bikes and had to laugh - the chickens thought the new bikes were great places to roost!

Despite our concerns about the water quality, it was just too tempting to swim in the river after a long, hot, sweaty walk. It was truly fantastic floating and swimming with the huge karst mountains all around us. The water was surprisingly cool, but not freezing.

We met a wonderful French lady here, Corinne. We had some lovely times talking to her.

Misty scenes.

Our last walk was up to another viewpoint. This area was heavily bombed during the war and unexploded bombs still exist. Check out the warnings at the entry to the walk.

I was fascinated with the twisty, gnarly vines that hung over the track. They're so cool!

It was another long, sweaty slog to the top but the track wasn't as steep and was much less scrambly than the one we did previously. As expected, the view from the top was spectacular.

Back at our floating guest house we were delighted to see their version of airconditioning - they were spraying water on the roof of the rooms!

There was an amazing restaurant in town run by a Swiss guy. The food was great - as was the view. We watched the sun set and the full moon rise.

The next morning was market day. It was a typical market. Sometimes local people wear what I think are Vietnamese hats. 

A happy noodle vendor.

All over Laos, women still wear tradtional skirts. They often have beautiul designs. 

Our old friends, the fried rats, were on sale. Apparently some are rats and some are squirrels. Mmmm, anyone tempted?

A chilli-seller.

We only had a quick visit to the market though because I had an appointment. After seeing all the weavers here and wishing I could do a weaving course here using cotton, I was sitting at a restaurant when I saw a sign at a shop across the road advertising weaving and dying classes! I booked a full-day weaving course and left John, who was coming down with a cold, to move our bags to another hotel as we had only been able to get three nights at the one on the river.

I was picked up in a relatively new car and taken about 40 minutes to another village. I was the only person booked in for that day. Somdeth, the man who ran the classes, spoke good English and it was interesting learning how he had come to set up this business. He had two degrees - one in business and one in law, but didn't like working as a lawyer. His whole village are weavers so he saw the opportunity to set up this business.

His mother-in-law was my teacher for the day and she was such a patient and wonderful person. She spoke no English but Somdeth hung around to translate.

How to Make a Cotton Scarf from Scratch:
STEP 1
I couldn't believe our first step - we picked the cotton! Cotton plants were scattered around the building and it was very easy to pick the fluffy balls.

There are two types of cotton - white and the tan colour. Cotton has to dry for a day so we used this white cotton and left our freshly-picked pieces for the next people.

STEP 2

The cotton balls are full of seeds. To remove them we ran them through small wooden rollers.

STEP 3

I think I'm pretty cabable with most things but I couldn't for the life of me get the hang of this one. After the cotton has been de-seeded, it's still quite lumpy so we put it into these horizontal baskets. Mother-in-law (I've forgotten her name) then got what looked exactly like a bow (as in a bow and arrow) and flicked the bow with a grooved piece of wood. This somehow captured the cotton and worked through it, fluffing it in the process. Whoever thought of doing this was very creative!

STEP 4

We took handfuls of the fluffy cotton and rolled it onto bamboo skewers. We then pulled the rolls off the skewers which left us with workable rolled lengths of cotton.

STEP 5

I'm thinking the same as you at this stage - how many stages are there?

It was time to spin the cotton. Like all the other equipment, the spinning wheel was made entirely from bamboo and wood. Handles didn't quite fit or work properly which just added to the challenge.

Check out the height of the stools. I had a sore back before we even started weaving!

STEP 6

We then wound the spun thread onto a wooden frame to mae a large loop which was then slipped over this contraption.

STEP 7

The final step was to wind the thread onto bobbins.

We had a delicious lunch of mushroom soup, omelettes and an egg and lettuce salad. There was both plain and sticky rice (something we eat a lot of in Laos) to accompany it all. We all ate together so I watched the others carefully to make sure I did everything right. Sticky rice is eaten with the fingers.

At last we could start the weaving! I wanted to make a table-runner using designs that were a bit beyond the scope of a normal one-day class. Both Somdeth and his mother-in-law were very patient though. Here's my work in progress.

All the equipment is handmade. I love that the bobbin was held in the shuttle with a rooster feather!

One of the highlights was when some neighbours dropped in to see what the 'falang' (tourist) was doing. One of them gently reminded me to move my tensioner up. A second lot later dropped in. The lady in the orange striped t-shirt was a bit of a character. She kept stroking my arm and wouldn't take her eyes off me. It was very funny.

Somdeth's son was gorgeous!

I arrived back home happy and proud of what I'd made. John had settled us into our new guest house which was so spacious compared to our tiny room on the river. There was a great verandah with wonderful views over the river so we were very happy with it. The lady who owns it was wonderful too.

We had been looking for quite some time to do a multi-day tour where we would sleep at homestays in small villages. We finally booked one but pulled out at the last minute due to John's cold, which had worsened. It wouldn't be a lot of fun slogging up hills - and up a waterfall! - with a cold. It was disappointing but there are plenty of other places we can do this as we travel north.

The owner of a restaurant that we ate in a few times spoke fluent English. We got talking to him one day and he told us that a large tract of land just across the river from us had been bought up by the Chinese and they were going to build a big resort there. They were also planning to build a cable car to the top of the main viewpoint. Noooooo!!!!!!!! This country is going to change so much and very soon. It's so sad.

We ate our final dinner at our favourite restaurant and met a great Czech couple. We had a fun and informative night with them. We have many ideas for our next trip!

It will be so sad to leave this lovely small town. It's so beautiful and laid back yet there is so much to do.

Bye for now.

Heather and John