Lao Mist | Alien Heartbeat

Wash in your Pants, Die in your Boots

My guide failed to mention that to get to our mountain, we have to cross another mountain first. Hours of straight uphill, and each time I think the top is just ahead, another higher top appears. Mountains? What was I thinking? Just when I think I will have to lay down beside the track and die in my boots, we reach the top of the first mountain and start heading down.

After a few hours we reach a Hmong village where we will stay the night. The Hmong have had a bad deal from history, most recently helping the Americans during the Vietnam War (known here as the “American War”) and then being largely abandoned to the victors.

This village is 5 families, about 21 people, plus about 50 assorted cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and turkeys, with 5 shiftless dogs and a few miserable cats. The Hmong prefer top keep their animals close by (unlike the Khmu who let them roam more freely) and with so many animals roaming around there is no grass, just mud and dung.

The village is a day’s walk from the nearest school, but overall their living conditions don’t seem any worse than other mountain tribes. Here a girl going to fetch water:

While the Hmong in the towns end up as day laborers earning $80 to $100 a month, the Hmong in the mountains are also poor, but at least have their rice and corn and cows and pigs, and their dignity:

The shower is in the centre of the village, fed by open bamboo pipes running from the nearest stream:

I take my own shower. Showering with your pants on has the huge advantage of washing your pants and yourself at the same time.

As the light fades the various animals start to bed down. I am sleeping in a bamboo hut with a grass thatched roof and rough earth floor, sharing the one big room with two mangy dogs, one taciturn adult, five gossiping children, and in the doorway, patiently waiting for when all the world’s food will finally become hers, a large pig:

(events Laos 6 Oct 2013)

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Gentle, Laughing, Poor

We pass through stretches of teak, then huge thickets of great bamboo. There is a mighty uproar of cicadas, making it harder to keep a cool head and a steady step. Sheer black walls of mountains to the left ahead.

Early afternoon we arrive at a Khmu village and stop to rest. It is in the mountains, and at the foot of more mountains.

The Khmu are animist, they pass stories down by the fireside at night, and they grow rice and vegetables in the surrounding forests. At first the children hang back:

But they are not shy and once I hit my head on a beam, fall over something, and then take my boots off to inspect my feet, they gather in to laugh and horse around.

Adults gather round for a chat. I suspect they also are expecting me to break something.

From where I sit I can see in the kitchen, a mountain kitchen with a dirt floor and not much in the way of utensils:

As I look at them, I realise how beautiful they are, and how poor.

This girl’s face stays with me as I walk: you can see beauty and malnourishment, intelligence and illness. She is a child, she has little, and she asks for nothing:

We have to leave, otherwise we will be spending the night in the open. We pass by mountain rice and pumpkin growing beside the track. But then it becomes quite dense, and from here it is all uphill.

I am tired, my boots drag, and the girl sits heavy in my heart.

(events 6 Oct 2013)

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Dry, Cheerless, Armed

Laos is mountains. So I find a guide: he is dry and cheerless and carries a machete.

My brief to him is simple:
1. We go to the top of a mountain
2. We don’t talk.
He may like me already.

I take the usual stuff: water, food, knife, sleep bag, mosquito net, medical kit, and enough plaster to cover the human body 11 times. Usually that is enough.

We first cross the Nam Oo river. A boatman in a small narrow boat picks us up. The boat sits low in the water and is unstable. I carefully find the best place for my feet and undo my laces just in case.

We start on a well-worn track, skirting rice-fields and following a stream. Women covered head to foot work the fields in the hot sun.

The track becomes overgrown and the guide’s machete comes out. But it is not much of a machete. Now the Malagasy, they know about machetes – probably why they are so cheerful.

We follow the stream up a narrow damp valley. I slip in the mud and leeches drop around us. Water drips from my hat as though it is raining, but it turns out to be my own sweat. Raising the tension is the deafening howl of some unearthly insect:

We reach the top of the valley. These are mostly Hmong mountains, and the trail is fringed with head-high mountain rice, corn and the occasional pumpkin:

Then in the distance I see the rising of mountains.

(events 6 Oct 2013)

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A Gift of Prophecy

Rising in the mountains of Eastern Tibet
the Mekong flows through the history of China, Burma and Thailand
before bringing its ancient currency to Laos.

With the evening
a mist comes down between the mountains to the river,
like a tide of souls.