A portion of an E-mail written by Patrick Martino…

Subject: Update #7 Laos - HUAY XAI, MUANG SING, MUANG KHUA. THE NAM OU RIVER, PHONGSALI, LUANG PRABANG, PHONSAVAN, VIENTIANE, PLAIN OF JARS

I am out of Laos after 30 days. I am back in Bangkok which has becoming my defacto base of operations.

I had planned on staying in Laos longer and extending my visa but I ran into a weekend and the immigration office was closed.

My original plan had been to travel from Laos to Cambodia and then to Vietnam. After nearly 6 months of traveling however I have decided I need a break from Asia.

I am flying out of Bangkok March 4th to fly to Auckland New Zealand. I plan to buy a bicycle there and spend three months exploring the country. I will then return to Bangkok to finish up Cambodia and Vietnam before heading to the Big Daddy: China.

My Health is good. I didn’t get sick once in Laos. At first I didn’t like Laos but after having gotten off of the tourist path and into the countryside I really came to enjoy it. Its mountains are magical and its beer the best I’ve had in Asia.

For those interested in reading more about Laos and my adventures this past month please find more below. As usual I have tried to break this email up into sections.

Sincerely,

Patrick Martino

HUAY XAI

The first thing which struck me as I crossed the border into Laos was how primitive it seemed. I crossed into Laos by taking a 50 cent ferry across the Mekong river. It is strange to cross a river not 40 yards wide and go from 711’s, refrigerated beverages, and paved streets lined with Toyota Hilluxs and Honda wave motorscoters to dusty roads with virtually no cars, no 711’s and towns where if they do have power only have it from 6:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M.

Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and its infrastructure is basic. Shops are all filled with the same assemblage of Chinese goods and there are few if any restaurants. Gas stations consist of two barrels of oil, one diesel and one regular, pumped into trucks with hand cranks.

Huay Xai was nothing of note, just a few guesthouse with inflated prices, quoted in Baht instead of kip because of its proximity to the border.

I thought I had had a thick wad of cash when I went to Burma. In Laos however I found I had to carry around even more cash. One dollar in Laos equals 10,610 kip. When I changed a crisp one hundred dollar bill I became a millionaire and received 1,061,000 kip. The largest denomination of note I was given was 2,000. I was forced to carry over 500 bank notes. It was a stack of money 6 inches thick. I was carrying so much money it didn’t seem real when I spent it, as if I was spending play money.

MUANG SING

My first real stop of any interest was Muang Sing, just a few short miles from the Chinese border.

The town is located in a flat valley filled with dry dusty rice paddies. Surrounding it are the mountains.

Northern Laos is a magical place because of its mountains. they are not solid solidified pinnacles of piercing snow capped rock but rather crenelated green mounds. Jungle surrounds and envelopes them. They can rise to heights of 9,000 feet.They are mighty green giants mustered together not in a long line or range but in one clustered throng.

Because of the mountainous terrain of Northern Laos, getting anywhere is time consuming and difficult. The few roads are generally unpaved and extremely bumpy and dusty. Riding along, however, one is awed by the scenery made even more spectacular by the fact roads do not go through passes or wind their way through valleys but instead climb up over and then down again, the stunning peaks.

It took a bumpy 9 hour ride in the back of a pick up truck to reach Luang Nam Tha a distance of just 72 miles and then another 2 hours the next day to reach Muang Sing a distance of perhaps 20 miles.

THE PEOPLE

Tourists are attracted to Northern Laos not just for its magical scenery but to see the hill tribe minorities.

Laos is not a united nation of people from the same ethnic lines, rather as my guide book describes, Laos is less a nation state than a conglomeration of tribes and languages.

About half of the estimated five and a half million population of Laos are ethnic Laos.Of the rest 10 to 20% are tribal Thai 20 % to 30% are Lao Theung (Lowere mountain dwellers) and 10% to 20 % are Lao Sung ( Hmong, Akha, Yao, and Mien tribes which live higher up in the mountains).

Muang Sing has one of the highest concentrations of Lao Sung tribes in the country. They live high up in the mountains, at the very tops sometimes. There are no roads to the villages. You have to hike through the jungle to get there, sometimes three or four hours.

The mountains provide a cooler climate for the villagers crops. They perform largely a slash and burn type of agriculture, cutting down large swathes of jungle and then burning the slopes to provide angled ground for them to grow dry rice, corn, and the cash crop of the region opium. Laos is the number three producer of opium in the world after Afghanistan and Burma.

I have seen the purple poppy growing in a vast field in one large village. It is sad that such a beautiful flower, when misused, can cause such harm.

Sadly I did not have a good impression of my visit to Muang Sing. Tourism can be both good and bad for a country. IT can bring needed funds to a poor populous but it can also destroy a peoples way of life, hurt their integrity, and eliminate the magic charm of a locale. Every tourist, including myself, wants to discover the untouched village. Unfortunately it is rarely had.

JOURNAL ENTRY FORM VISITING AN AKHA VILLAGE NEAR MAUNG SING

An Akha village can be distinguished from other villages by the spirit gate at the entrance to the village. It is a wooden gate with a collection of wooden spears and woven amulets erected to protect the village from evil spirits. While most of the ethnic Lao in Laos are Buddhist the hill tribe minorities are largely animists. Outsiders are not allowed to touch the spirit gate or spirit objects for fear they might disturb the spirits.

Most men in the hill tribe villages do not wear traditional clothing. They wear western clothes, but the women still wear their traditional dress.

The Akha women wear bright blouses. In this particular village they were pink. On their head they don an intricate black turban decorated with white shells, stones, and the shiny silver coins from the French colonial days. They are ornate headdresses of weight and shining beauty. The women wear them proudly.

The village was nondescript except for the spirit gate and the women’s costumes. The road or rather path through the village was of hard packed clay. Scraps and strips of bamboo wood and plastic bags lay on the dusty ground. There was no grass, just an occasional weed, but plenty of dirt with which the children relished to play in. The youngest children ran about bare foot in the reddish dust with bare bottoms and only t-shirts to cloth them. The small children hobbled about following their slightly older brothers who tested each others’ marksmanship by trying to hit targets on the ground with well aimed flip flops. Others played with wooden tops, while still others made a rubber tire turn by chasing it with a stick.

There seemed to be no men in the village just women and children.

The homes were simple, built of bamboo and wood and raised off the ground a half story on stilts. Firewood and animals were designated to the space beneath the house.

Large cow pies infested with tiny flees, which would scatter as you approached, littered the grounds around the homes. Black pigs, hairy and muddy roamed the village snorting for food or resting ideally in the shade. Ducks , turkeys, and chickens were present too. You could hear babies crying, children playing, the chopping of wood, and roosters calling. The village was a barn yard full of sounds, sights, and smells.

On entering the village I was greeted with the Lao words for hello “Sab a Dee” from a gaggle of children who repeated it eagerly over and over again. It became very apparent I had not been the first foreigner to visit the village. The tiny children began a litany. “Hello Money. Hello Money. Hello Money,” in their cute high pitched voices. Looking at their dower sad eyes and smiling faces I desperately wanted to give them money as they stretched out their tiny perfect hands. “ Hello money? Money? Bobo?Bobo?” they would say as they asked for bobo, candy, motioning to their miniature mouths. I was a Bill Gates to them, with a high tech camera and a money belt bursting with cash. I was their salvation, a white knight to a poor land. In their tiny hearts their tiny minds they must have wondered why one so rich does not share. But giving kids candy and money is the wrong thing to do. They become dependent on it and soon identify every white Westerner as a bearer of treats. Perhaps it was already too late and the damage was done.

More sad then the desperate begging of the children were the women who offered humble crafts for sale but also drugs. “Ganja, Ganja, Ganja.” they would say in a quick succession of chatery words and then mimic as if they were smoking. “Opium?” they asked. I am revolted by tourists who actually take the villagers up on their offer to buy drugs. It places the villagers in a never ending cycle of dependence on growing the destructive poppies.

I did not take any pictures in the village. I did not feel it was appropriate when they were begging for candy or asking me to buy drugs. What magic, what appeal the village may have once had is gone now. It had already been touched by greed and the taint of tourists.

MUANG KHUA

My impression of Laos as a tainted by tourists did not improve until I traveled further inland and reached Maung Khua. In Maung Khau I was a bit off of the tourist track. Trekking here was a delight and I found similar villages as above but untouched, where the children did not beg and the women did not offer drugs. It was captivating and astonishing to see children enthralled by the Velcro on my sandals and balled over by my camera and how looking through my zoom lens at an object could at first appear close and then so far away. I had a guide and went hiking with two girls, one from Sweden and a Canadian. The scenery was superb but the highlight I thought for the trip was drinking with the headman of a village, from a brown vase of fermented rice wine.

DRINKING RICE WINE- FROM MY JOURNAL

It came in a brown earthen ware vase about a foot and a half feet tall. The vase was full of fermenting rice husks and rice. A clear liquid seeped between the mash to fill the vase. Two bamboo straws had been inserted into the vase to penetrate the mash and to reach the bottom of the vase. The liquid tasted like sweet saki almost too sweet, like a cordial. It was not too strong however and was pleasant. the liquid filled the vase to near the rim and as we drank the level of the liquid slowly descended. As it did the head man, with whom I was drinking and who observed the second straw, would replace the draining liquid with water so the vase would then again be filled. The added water helped to push the rice wine to the bottom of the vase where the intake for the straw was. I was required to drink, the headman told me, until two glasses of water were required to refill the vase.

The entire tribe was watching. There were close to twenty children gathered in the doorway of the headman’s hut and countless men and women too, all watching to see how the farangs, foreigners, would like their home grown rice wine. Not wanting to offend the village, I drank my prescribed dose and spent the rest of the afternoon gleefully stumbling down the mountain path on our way back to Munag Khua. The rice wine had proved to be stronger than I thought.

THE NAM OU RIVER

Most of the population of Laos lives in the countryside and because the North is so mountainous sometimes the only way to get around is by boat. I was amazed then by the spectacular scenery I saw on a boat ride I took up the Nam Ou river to the town of Hat Sa on my way to the town of Phongsali. You can read more about the river and my trip if your interested in a story I wrote attached.

PHONGSALI

I wanted to get well off the beaten path so I went to Phongsali, where few tourist stray. Located far to the north and on top of a mountain I was unlucky enough to arrive when it was fogged in with clouds and extremely cold. About the only thing going for this town built of concrete was that it had excellent bread.

Lao food is good but difficult to get. There are not many restaurants in towns besides comparatively expensive ones in guesthouses geared toward foreigners. The best food I had was while trekking in the villages. Meals consisted of fresh vegetables fried or boiled, pumpkin soups, spicy chicken soup or chicken curry and sticky rice. Sticky rice is the backbone of Laos cuisine. You don’t eat it beneath a serving like with Chinese food or Thai. Instead the rice has a consistency of almost a paste. It is served in a small bamboo container. You ball up the rice like a snow ball and dip it into the soup or curry which you are eating. Its great. The best thing about Laos however is not the rice but the bread. They actually have real honest to goodness fresh baked French bread, part of the legacy of the French colonizers of Laos. You can’t get it everywhere but in the larger towns it is widely available and cheap. Their is nothing better in the morning then a baguette sandwich with fried eggs. Delicious. Phongsali had two great bakeries and my friends and I ate lots of bread.

The only other thing in Phongsali which I enjoyed besides the bread or at least that i thought was amusing was a sign for a small hill tribe museum. It announced the following among its rules:

• Forbid to take every kind of guns into the museum except the police
• Forbid mad man and any drunkard to come into museum.

It wasn’t much of a museum just a small room with a few models of tribal homes and a few costumes.

I went trekking in Phongsali. It was a good experience. I smile when I look back at it but it wasn’t the best time I have ever had trekking.

Sometimes when you go trekking you luck out and go with some cool people, sometimes you get stuck with some strange characters, and sometimes your guide is good and sometimes he sucks. Trekking near Phongsali was a little bit of a combination of all three. The trek itself wasn’t anything spectacular because we couldn’t see anything. It was foggy and raining the whole time. The people I went with were certainly interesting however.

Ricky was a red headed tall Frenchmen who looked like he was Irish. He must have had Celtic blood for he looked like the very son of Vercingetorix. His friend and traveling companion was named Patrick. Patrick was from the sunny shores of the French Rivera, Marseilles. Patrick was 36 with a receding hairline and a silver dollar bald spot at the back of his head. He had a tough face and a jutting nose. With a tricolor and red stocking cap he could have been the perfect model for the revolution, the austere lean plebeian of the masses storming the Bastille.

Ricky and Patrick had a laid back manner, a reverential whatever man. I knew as soon as they told me they had meant in Goyia India, the drug candy store of Asia, that they were stoners. They had an adequate but dwindling supply of weed and in each village they tried to get our guide to find them some grass.

Boo Boo, our guide, couldn’t understand why the two French men wanted to buy marsh grass which is the only grass the villagers sell and which is used to make brooms.

Robert was an Austrian. He was 31 and worked as a type setter for a calender printing company. He had curly hair and a plain face. He had the enviable position that he had two months of vacation each year which he took all at once between January and February to pursue his love of travel photography.

Martin the German had the most character. He was a 22 year old Boy Scout who had gone to volunteer at the World Jamboree in Thailand just a few weeks before. He was an intellectual looking young man with a boyish face, blond hair, and square danish glasses. He was certainly prepared on our trek because he decided to carry all of his gear. I had brought for the three day trek just a small knapsack with a few extra clothes because our shelter and food would be provided for in the villages. Martin however brought his entire 50 pound pack. He started to have knee problems going up and down the mountains but had an ace bandage to wrap it with when we reached a small river. After Martin wrapped his knee the rest of us just waded across. Martin decided it was too dangerous to cross with his pack and in true German stoic fashion declared “No my pack and things are too expensive. They are too valuable to be lost. I will build a raft.” So as the two Frenchmen took a smoke break, Robert and I watched Martin construct a bamboo raft out of 100 feet of cord he just happened to be carrying. It took him an hour but I have to hand it to him it worked. If Martin had reached a wider river I don’t doubt he would have built a bridge. He was a good kid just a little bit naive and innocent.

Boo Boo our guide was a disaster. I should have been wary of a guide who had the name for a bear from Kipling’s jungle book. We were half way into our first day of trekking when he declared he would not be providing us lunch. I was not happy. On every other trekking trip I have went on in Laos and in Burma the meals and shelter were always included in the price of the trek. He was trying to screw us after we had each already agreed to pay him $10 a day. It was a three day trek, there were five of us, and Boo Boo would make $150. The average monthly income of a person in Laos is $25. To provide lunch for all 5 of us for the three days would have at most cost him $5. He finally agreed to give us just sticky rice for lunch.

LUANG PRABANG

After trekking in the mountains I made my way back down the spectacular Nam Ou to Luang Prabang.

The city sits on the Mekong river. IT was once the seat of the Lao monarchy. When the French controlled Laos they allowed Luang Prabang to retain its monarchy as did the fledgling governments after the French left. It wasn’t until the Pathet Lao took over in 1975 however that the monarchy was finally dissolved. The last king and queen of Luang Prabang were imprisoned in a cave in north -Eastern Laos where they are thought to have died.

Without a king and queen however the town still retains the magic of the monarchy with splendid temples, and a beautiful palace. The mark of the French remains too with several shops and store fronts retaining facades distinctly French. Luang Prabang feels like an Asian Charleston or Savannah, an archetechally well preserved gem. It was great to sit back at one of the French cafes, have a croissant, and watch orange robed monks stride silently past.

PHONSAVAN

Phonsavan is home to the Plain of Jars. You can read more about the plain of jars in one of my stories attached.

Phonsavan is a sad place to visit because of the sheer number of bombs we dropped here during the Vietnam war. I never new about the destruction we caused. Coming to Laos though makes you open your eyes. Not everything the United States has done is well and good. In America we have apple pie and peace but in Laos you can still see the bomb craters. In the villages, fences, planters, and even the machetes the farmers use are all made from bombs.

UXO, unexploded ordinance is still a threat to locals. It is shocking to see a public service poster with a simple drawing not stressing the importance that one should avoid littering or be wary of forest fires but that you should not pick up unexploded bombs. Even though the Lao went through incredible hardship during the war they did not seem ambivalent toward me when I told them I was an American.

The Laos people I found to be incredibly trustworthy honest and warm people. I found more hatred and animosity toward Americans from my fellow travelers. It was shocking sometimes how Europeans, Canadians, and surprisingly other Americans hate America. I have found myself time and time again having to defend myself, America, and what it stands for from extremely liberal minded backpackers who think the US is a war monger nation the world is better off without. I am proud to be an America, no I am not proud that we bombed the hell out of Laos, we have made mistakes, we are not perfect, but for the most part I think what America does and what it stands for is good.

The good guy of the week award then goes to Jon Sundkvist a fun guy from Sweden who backed me up and got me out of a heated debate with a Canadian girl in Bangkok who thought America was the scourge of the Earth by lifting his glass saying “screw politics” and starting to sing a rowdy verse of Hail Long Gore, a Swedish drinking song I am all to familiar with the words.

VIENTIANE

My last stop in Laos was Vientiane, the capital. It sits on the Mekong river right across from Thailand. Vientiane is laid back and peaceful. I enjoyed the city with its French cafes and the readily available croissants and French bread. There isn’t a whole lot ot see in Vientiane however. There are a few temples and wats but not much more. It is just a nice place to hang out and have a Beer Lao while watching the sun set over the Mekong. Its laid back tone is just like the rest of Laos where everything runs just a little bit slower along the Mekong.

I hope you have enjoyed this latest update. I will write again as I make my way through New Zealand.

please find some of the stories I wrote about Laos below.

STORIES

NAM OU RIVER

Before America had roads and the iron horse, undaunted men explored the vast expanses of the American wilderness by following the course of rivers. In 1673, for example, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet paddled their canoes along the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to explore the Mississippi. Traveling across Wisconsin by boat would be unheard of today, but, traveling through South East Asia, I have found traveling by boat is sometimes still the best way to go.

Laos is a landlocked country in South East Asia bordered by China, Vietnam, Cambodia,and Thailand. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. It doesn’t have a railroad and of the roughly 8,680 miles of road it has only 2,083 miles are paved. If a road is not available, most of the countries, primarily rural, population walks to where they are going. If this fails, they take a boat.

Northern Laos is covered with a throng of mountains, some as high as 9,000 feet tall. They are covered with verdant green jungle and appear to have been covered with an emerald veil. Twisting torturous roads go up, over, and around the mountains but never through. Only the rivers cut a clear course.

The Nam Ou river is 302 miles long and flows from the Laos border with China all the way to the Mekong river, near Luang Prabang. It is the Mekong’s river's longest tributary and riding along it makes one feel like an explorer of old.

I discovered the magic of the Nam Ou when I headed up stream from the small town of Muang Khua to the remote town of Hat Sa. The five hour trip, costing 50,000 kip, roughly $5, left me soar from having to sit on a tiny wooden seat but my mouth ajar at the splendor of the scenery.

The water of the Nam Ou is a dark green, almost black. It resembles the color of a green glass bottle. The banks of the river are angled and heaped with red sand and the waste of rounded worn stones.

Where the sand and stone scree end the jungles abruptly begins. The trees and brush rise in a great converging wall of limbs. There are bamboo and broad leaf teak trees, trees with dark leathery leaves, and palms with glaucous yellow-green fronds.

The river is like a snake. At every twist, at every bend, the curved ban saw contours of the mountains, cut by the blade of time and water, continue without end.

My boat was long, perhaps twenty five feet, painted blue and made of wood. It was narrow and curved, with just enough room for the passengers to sit two by two. The boats curved shape made it vaguely appear like a floating speeding watermelon peel.

The whining pulse of the boats sixteen valve Toyota engine killed all sound. It left a dull pulse, a gnawing murmur in the ear.

The speed of the boat made the ride cold, yet the rushing air was refreshing.

The Nam Ou is roughly twenty to twenty five yards wide. At points, however, it narrows and the calm waters of the Nam Ou become a brawling frothing wake of white water. The driver deftly positioned the boat and swerved past jutting rocks and fallen tree limbs.

It was an exciting experience as the pitch of the engine rose each time to urge us safely through the rapids.

The spitting spray jumped at me to attack with its cold wet wrath. I was sprayed and bucked about but was saved from a deluge by a female passenger who carried an umbrella in front of her like a shield. She sat, with her son, in front of me and I was the lucky beneficiary of her protection. A boat ride up the Nam Ou proved to be not just a means of transportation but a white water adventure.

We passed villages of bamboo huts where the woman did laundry in the river and where young boys paddled and played on floating rafts. I saw jungle birds beautiful and exotic wing their way among the trees, fisherman in boats casting nets , and water buffalo along the shores.

Perhaps what is so unique, so special, about the river is I did not see any concrete embankments, pipes spitting sludge, or tires or refrigerators rising from the mud. The Nam Ou is pristine, a magical Laos highway on which to explore.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT

No one has to haggle over the price of a cheeseburger in America. The price is always clearly understood because it is printed on a menu. While traveling through South East Asia, however, I have found menus and printed prices often don’t exist. While visiting Laos, I learned the hard way you should always ask how much something costs before you order.

Northern Laos is a country filled with tall marching green-jungle mountains cut by long narrow valleys. There are few roads or even towns. In the town of Muang Sing, less than ten miles from the Chinese border, the majority of the populous lives high in the hills and mountains, where the higher elevation provides the ideal cool environment for growing corn, dry rice, and the cash crop of the region: opium. The population is an eclectic mix of unique tribes Akha, Hmong, and Thai Dam, some of whom still wear their traditional costumes. It is to see these tribal people and the surrounding scenery that most tourists are attracted to Northern Laos.

The mountains around Muang Sing are laced with unmarked hard packed walking trails, which are the only links between the villages. Under a bright shining sun, one afternoon, I ventured for a brief walk from my guest house onto the mountain paths to explore.

I climbed a modest mountain and then descended into a remote valley of tall marsh grasses and dry rice paddies.

At the end of the trail, an Akha family was seated in a hut enjoying a meal. A teenage girl, with a pink blouse and her black hair wrapped in a black turban decorated with shiny silver coins and cowrie shells, enthusiastically shouted in Lao from a window, “Hello.”

The girl had a round face and a stern almost hostile countenance. She was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age. She motioned to her mouth, shouted in English “Money! Money!”, pointed to her mouth again, and then to me. It seemed she wanted to know if I would join the family for a meal.

Being invited to partake in a meal with a local family is a unique and often rewarding experience. I jumped at the chance but should have been warned by her overly enthusiastic calls for money.

The bamboo hut was raised on stilts half a story. It was tiny, half the size of a one car garage. It floors and walls were made of bamboo and its roof was thatched with palm leaves. A barbed wire fence ran below the hut. The huts posts straddled the fence. I had to dip low and duck to pass between two of the barbed wire strands to reach the bamboo ladder, which led into the tiny hut.

Inside I found the girl, who had so eagerly called to me, her bright eyed yet silent younger sister, a mother nursing her baby daughter, and an aged grandmother with wide white and missing teeth. The other women wore the same ornate traditional Akha headgear as the girl who called me, a black squarish turban covered with silver coins and white shiny shells. A young man with raven black hair and wearing a western white shirt, who I assume was the father of the baby girl, also was waiting for me as I climbed the short ladder.

They motioned for me to sit and to enjoy the food before them. The meal was basic. We feasted on white steamed rice eaten with our hands and slices of a white looking carrot. The carrot tasted like a radish. Using bamboo chopsticks I followed the example of my guest’s. I dipped my slices of white carrot into a green slurry of spicy vegetables, held in a wooden bowl.

I did not eat much. Radishes and rice are not my favorites but I was pleased to have the experience. I was pleased to gain a perspective on just how simply most people in the world eat.

I could not communicate with the family as they chatted with each other. I just smiled to show my satisfaction.

The family seemed to enjoy my visit. They were mystified by the size of my feet and the pictures in the books I carried in my knapsack.

It was only when I began to leave and wanted to pay that their was a commotion of sorts. I had forgotten to ask before I began to eat just how much my meal would cost.

“How much I asked,” as I motioned that I would like to give something for their hospitality and the meal. The girl who had invited me to dine clapped her hands twice and then struck the back of her hands together once. I smiled and mimicked the clapping. She grew upset. I clearly wasn’t understanding.

She repeated the same clapping for a second time and then a third. I did just as she did and smiled thinking it was some type of game of paddy cake. It took me awhile to realize the clapping was a method of counting.

The young man in the white shirt realized I did not understand. He reached for my pen and paper inside of my knapsack. He wrote the number twenty. I was shocked. “Twenty thousand kip?” I asked. “For a little bit of rice and some radishes? No way!”

Twenty thousand kip is roughly two dollars in Laos. It is a lot of money. You could buy a room in a guest house for twenty thousand kip. There was no way I was going to pay twenty thousand kip.

I had made a large mistake, when offering to pay, by opening my money belt. The young man saw I was a millionaire and must have inflated the price.

The Lao kip is extremely weak when compared to the US dollar. When I exchanged a one hundred dollar bill at the border with Thailand, just three days before, I received 1,610,000 kip and a stack of notes roughly six inches thick.

My attempts to negotiate the price down from twenty thousand kip aggravated the girl who had invited me to dinner. “Money, Money!” she shouted as she pointed to her brother and then to his antique musket propped up against the fence outside the hut. Her avarice and unbridled cupidity were shocking. She seemed to have an ambivalent hate for me because I was not generously doling out the funds to her family.

The gun had the bore of a .22 and looked more appropriate for a museum than for hunting. It had the longest black barrel I have ever seen. From its shoulder stock to the end of its bore it must have been five feet in length.

“Money , Money!” the tiny tyrant kept repeating, pointing at my money belt and then the gun. The rest of the family was silent.

I took out six thousand kip. I thought six thousand was more than enough. It was a fair price for a meal with vegetables and rice in any town.

The young man, however, wasn’t pleased with my tender offer. He smiled and wrote again on my paper. Fifteen thousand was the new price. I shook my head. He wrote ten thousand. I shook my head again and gave him eight thousand kip.

To have given the family ten thousand would have been an extra twenty cents, no big deal to most people. I am however traveling until my money runs out. I have long ago stopped calculating my expenditures in dollars and cents. I looked at the two thousand kip difference not as two dimes but as a loaf of bread or a bottle of water I would be without. Eight thousand was more than generous.

Even though the young man and the rest of the family seemed satisfied with eight thousand kip the little Napoleon was not. She still howled for more cash. She grasped the barrel of the gun and shook it back and forth from where it was resting on the fence, not pointing it at me but seeming to want to. She guarded the stairs of the bamboo hut.

I laughed, not out of fear or because of the absurdity of the young girls actions but in an effort to diffuse the situation. The rest of the family seemed to smile and laugh with me, perhaps in acknowledgment of the girls greed. Even as I left, the girl rattled the fence as I ducted beneath it, hoping to ensnare me, and still crying “Money! Money!”

What could have been an all around positive experience ended up disappointedly because I had forgotten before hand to ask for the price of my meal.

I suppose I don’t blame the girl for wanting more money.

What would you charge Bill Gates if he walked into your backward barbecue carrying a brief case full of cash and asked for a cheese burger?

SOUP

Trying new and exotic foods is part of the fun of traveling. Being adventurous with my taste buds, while traveling through South Eat Asia, is how I came to discover the finest soup I have ever had the pleasure to spoon, sip, or slurp.

I found my favorite soup in a small town named Muang Khua in Northern Laos.

Muang Khau is less than a town by American standards than it is a village. It is nestled in the bosom of tall jungle green mountains. The mountains surround the town like a standing crowd of giants mustered along the curving course of the olive green Nam Ou river.

The single road through town is lined with stores, each selling the same collection of nails, cooking oil, cookies, and washing detergent. There are two or three guest houses and a tiny dusty gravel lot, the bus station, near which a handful of food vendors sit outside behind their tables and stalls.

The food stalls in Muang Khau offer the following options: noodles, some type of barbecued meat on a stick, and omelets.

I chose the omelet stand for a late dinner my first evening in town. The omelet stand had a set of plastic patio chairs arranged around its rectangular table. Under the electric-white light of a fluorescent bulb hanging from a shop, the female proprietor, wearing a sesame yellow shirt, fanned the ruddy and fitful embers of her charcoal fire held within a clay brazier.

I ordered an omelet by pointing at the stack of brown eggs on the table. The woman with the yellow shirt placed her blackened steel wok on the brazier to prepare my omelet but did not crack the first egg until she had first served me a bowl of the terrific soup of which I am now so fond.

The omelet woman had a round copper face. She smiled as she ladled from a steel pot my soup into a glass bowl. She added to the clear liquid a spoonful of crushed peanuts from an empty Ovaltine jar, a brief dash of soy sauce, and healthy spoonfuls of sugar and MSG.

The soup was sweet yet spicy. The unusual addition of the crunchy peanuts made it superb.

I finished my first bowl before my omelet was done and my second bowl before even eating the omelet served to me. The two bowls of delicious soup had been free, included in the fifty cent price of the omelet.

I enjoyed the soup so much, that on my second night in Muang Khau, I returned again to the omelet stand. The woman with the yellow shirt put her black greasy wok on the fire and just like the night before served me a bowl of soup before she cracked the first egg.

As I drank my soup she couldn’t help surreptitiously staring at me, smiling, and finally laughing.

You see and taste lots of strange foods while you travel. I generally avoid frogs, lizards, fried crickets, or anything which in college I would have eaten on a dare. Lots of times, however, you don’t know what your eating. Someone laughing, then, at what you are eating is not a good thing. It either indicates you are eating something really gross and disgusting or eating something in an unusual manner.

Others began to laugh in chorus with the omelet lady. A woman on a balcony above the stall and two woman who had arrived to make small talk with their omelet making friend giggled as I spooned my bullion. They were making me nervous. They made me wonder what I was really eating.

It was not until I was served my omelet that I realized the joke. My soup wasn’t soup but was supposed to be a sweet spicy sauce for my omelet. I had enthusiastically been downing a condiment, the equivalent of ketchup or salad dressing.

Oh I’ve made far greater culinary mistakes before. When I was two or three years old I proudly declared to my mother, or so I’m told, “Look mommy chocolate!” after having discovered a significant store of hidden MM’s in the tree line near my home. I had coated my face with the chocolate that melts in your mouth and not in your hands before discovering the little brown pellets weren’t chocolate at all but rabbit droppings.

My fraternity brothers in college loved me because I always drank milk. This was before discovering I was lactose intolerant and that milk provided me with a natural gas reserve yet to be matched in the history of Pi Lambda Phi.

If you can imagine the confusion of someone who has never seen ketchup, mayonnaise, or salad dressing before then you can understand my mistake. It is quiet possible such a person might walk into a burger joint and chug back a bottle of Heinz and declare it the best soda he has ever had, eat several spoonfuls of mayonnaise and smack his lips for more of the fine smooth custard, or go to the salad bar of a Ponderosa and fill his plate with nothing but ladles full of ranch dressing because he didn’t know the difference between the ranch and the macaroni salad. He enjoys what he is eating because he doesn’t know what it is.

I don’t care if the soup was really supposed to go on top of my yellow omelet. I still think it was the best soup I have ever tasted.

Ignorance is bliss. So the next time you see a child or a stranger unaware of culinary customs don’t tell them what sauerkraut is really for. They may think its the best salad they’ve ever tasted.

RICE VS POTATO

When you have been traveling through South East Asia for nearly six months, eating rice with every meal, you begin to crave a different side dish.

About, the only time I ate rice back home was when I ate the San Fransisco Treat, Rice-A-Roni. Rice was that strange product that sat in the red Uncle Ben’s box in the cupboard for years until my mother threw it out because it had tiny weevils living in it. It was that white bland stuff, the other starch, which I never consumed in any significant quantities unless I ate a burrito at a Chipotle chain restaurant because the restaurant uses rice as filler in place of meat.

I once thought rice came in only one variety, the five minute kind. I have since learned, though, there is steamed white rice, red Burmese mountain rice, and Laos sticky rice which you can ball up between your fingers like a snowball and throw clear across a room with accuracy. I have even found a thick viscous white oatmeal like porridge, rice soup.

I do not hate rice. It is an ok food, but when it is served under, next to, and in every conceivable combination of meat and vegetables, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, one tires of it. The only equally ubiquitous foodstuff in South East Asia is noodles, and those are usually made from rice. I am sick of eating rice. I want a potato!

I crave a potato, a genuine spud, because its superior taste and texture have been ingrained into my subconscious as if I was some type of Pavlovian dog. How could Americans not crave potatoes when we are raised eating McDonald’s french fries and play with as kids Mr. Potato Head.

I didn’t eat much rice growing up, not because we didn’t grow it in our garden or because a large percentage of my Catholic high school buddies were Irish and would have laughed at me and thought I was a girl if I brought rice cakes in my lunch instead of potato chips, but the true reason why we didn’t eat rice at home is because you have to boil it.

Why boil anything? For example, who wants to eat a boiled hot dog when you can grill it? Why boil a food if you can bake it, fry it, or grill it?

A potato is superior in my mind to rice because you can fry it in pure lard until its a crisp golden brown french fry, wrap it in aluminum foil and place it on the grill to create the perfect compliment to a 16 ounce sirloin, or pop one in the oven to bake, slice it open when it is still fresh with white steam, and cover it with melted cheddar cheese, bacon bits, and chives to make a full meal.

Rice just can’t compete. Covered in melted cheddar cheese rice would drown.

If you plan on traveling in South East Asia for any length of time, and played with a Mr. or Mrs. Potato Head as a child I recommend you bring a sack of Idaho spuds. You might just get sick of rice too.

PLAIN OF JARS

Egypt has its mysterious pyramids and England its enigmatic Stonehenge but equally as mysterious, as to its origins and purpose, is a scattered collection of hundreds of massive ancient stone jars on the Xieng Khuang plateau in North-Central Laos. The plateau is known as the Plain of Jars.

The Plain of Jars has over fifty jar sites spread over several miles. Sites range from having just one or two jars to having hundreds.

The jars are made of white-gray stone stained with lichen. the jars are weathered and worn and look like they have been sand blasted.

They are hewed from solid stone, but at a distance look like concrete sewer pipes. Some are perfectly round as if turned on a giant’s lathe. Other are nearly square with only their edges rounded.

Perhaps they were drinking goblets for the gods, as their size is impressive. The largest jar weighs nearly six tons, has a diameter of nearly eight feet and a height of eight and a half feet. Other jars, not nearly as large and only two or three feet high, can still weigh as much as half a ton.

Although there are over fifty jar sites visitors are only allowed to visit three.

“You can’t go. Maybe bomb“ said Mr. Kong Tavanh, 22, who works at the Xieng Khuang tourism office, when pressed as to the reason for the limited number of sites accessible to tourists.

The Plain of Jars is one of the most heavily bombed areas in the world. Even though a 1962 Geneva accord recognized the neutrality of Laos, both the Vietnamese and the USA used the country as a battlefield during the Vietnam war. Nearly two million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos. This equals nearly six tons per square mile or close to half a ton for every man, woman, and child living in Laos. An estimated average of one planeload of bombs was dropped every eight minutes for nine years in Laos from 1964 to 1973. The Plain of Jars was the headquarters for the North Vietnamese backed Pathet Lao and thus was a prime target for bombings.

Nearly 85% of the villages in the Plain of Jars area were bombed. Today an estimated 25% of the total land area is still contaminated with UXO, unexploded ordinance.

At the three safe sites tourists are allowed to visit bomb craters are still evident. At the Bang Ang jar site, five miles from Phonsavan, a large jar lays cracked and ruined next to a bomb crater which resembles a whirl-pool sized sand pit. Nothing grows in the crater except a few weeds.

The jar sites are often on top of hills. The hills overlook the bucolic grassy plain which is nearly bare of trees. The wide open blue sky and rolling green hills resembles the scenery of South Dakota. Occasional rice paddies, however, instead of corn fields betray the jars true location.

The jars rest quietly on top of their hill top roosts. Some have settled into the earth and lean. Others have been broken by the strength of growing trees sprouting from their basses. They are all grouped without any apparent order and are silent to the mystery of their creation.

“We don't know the answer.” said Mr.Tavanh, when asked who built the jars and why.

According to a 2001 UNESCO report, on efforts to preserve the jars, archaeological evidence suggests the jars may be large funerary urns or mortuary vessels carved by a Bronze age people between 500 BC to 500 AD. A cave near one of the jar sites is believed to have been a crematorium because of burnt bones and ash found there. The cave, together with bronze and iron artifacts, and beads found in excavations near the jars, gives weight to the theory the jars were mortuary vessels but the archaeologists can’t be certain.

Local legend states the jars were built by Khun Jeuam whose men defeated a cruel chieftain in the sixth century. He made the jars in different sizes, not to serve as funeral urns, but to make rice wine to celebrate his victory. If the legend is true it must have been an incredible party. The largest jar was supposed to hold enough wine for seven months.

Standing among the jars one can not help but be enraptured by their size and the mystery which shrouds them.

Lachlan Dewar, 24, from Port MacQuarje Australia was hesitant as to the funerary urn theory. “Why do you carve and then carry a six ton jar onto the top of a hill. It seems excessive if it was for just one grave.”

Bill Peterson, a Canadian living in Berlin and visiting the Plain of Jars on his annual winter vacation, called the jars and the mystery surrounding them “Spooky.”

Mr. Peterson thought the jars might have some type of religious connotation. “The sites all have panoramic views, like they are some type of religious nexus.”

The jars are nearly empty now. A few of the jar’s large stone lids, twice the diameter of a man hole cover and too heavy to be picked up by a single man, lay resting in the weeds. The jars only contents are spider webs, dead leaves, and rain water. Sadly, the only ones who will ever know the absolute truth behind their creation and use are the men who built them.

“What you think the jars were made for is up to you. You have to come to see for yourself to decide.” said Mr. Tavanh

Index of Patrick’s Stories