Laos

Having spent 4 days in the P.D.R. Laos (Peoples Democratic Republic) we really like the country and feel comfortable to be here. Time seems to have stopped over here. Of course there are some cars/buses and motorboats which run along the streets and the Mekong river quite loudly. Nevertheless life seems to stick to old traditions a lot. Many people use bicycles to get around and to move big items they use two-wheeled wagons that they push. Sometimes even children or older folks get a ride while seated on this comfortable carriage. Just shortly after we arrived at our first Lao village - Champasak - we saw a young man pushing such a wagon with a load of big jars. Out of one jar there were two little kids looking with very happy faces. Apparently they were coming from a bath at the river. In Champasak very many people were greating us on our way to the guest house when we first got there. The kids were the best - they were all the time calling "SABAYDIE" (Hello) with big smiles on their faces, jumping around happily, waving towards us. Many children here play together on the very dusty ways inbetween ducks, chicken, turkeys, and sometimes even pigs and waterbuffalos. But still this looks like it all belongs together and always should be so.
The landscape formed by the Mekong river is very beautiful. The shore is lined with lots of bamboo and palm trees and there are small fields of cabbage, salad, and other kind of vegetable growing right next to the river. The housing in the rural areas is very simple. People live in very basic wood-, bamboo-, or palmleave made huts. Normally they are constructed on wood piles about one to two meters above the ground. So there is enough space underneath the houses for the life of the inhabitants. There are women swinging their children in little baskets, men waiting that the hottest hours of the day will pass while resting in a hammock, playing kids and lots of animals. But this is only the way of life in the villages like Champasak and Don Det.
The towns here still have quite a lot colonial buildings. There are a few nice French houses, but nobody seems to care about them. Instead of keeping the old houses with the flair about them people put very modern ones inbetween that we did not really like. In Savannakhet you do not realize it that much, probably because the town always used to be big. But in Thakhek where the old town (wich is now the center) was really small there are colonial French buildings only at around three or four blocks. The rest of the town just grew later.
The majority of Lao people seems to inhabit only the valleys along the Mekong river and the areas along the main highway. These are also the main tourist tracks. Local buses as well as local boats are transporting anything that they can get onto their roof, squeeze into their doors, or pass over onto the boat without drowning it... ! And of course seated inbetween all this luggage there are customers, and actually quite a lot as well. Normally the bus conductor put some plastic stools in the alley of the bus to get some more people seated. But some of them remain standing... Considering all of that the bus or boat rides in Laos are a quite squeezed adventure. Nice women and girls on the roadside take care of the passengers while the buses are having breaks. They bring all sorts of food and jump around and in the crowded bus. They have fruits, chicken on sticks, boiled egg on sticks, sticky rice, cookies - actually anything you can think of they sell through the open bus window. Even the necessity of going to toilet once in a while the bus drivers do not forget in Laos. For this the bus stops in the middle of nowhere and all the customers disappear behind the bushes - they do take care that there are enough of them when they stop.
Unfortunatly with those buses you only get to stop at bigger places. Once in Thakhek we actually rented a motorcycle and had a wonderful day cruizing around beautiful limestone formations, absolutely basic villages, caves,dustroads/Highways, and amazing jungle forests! Renting a motorcycle is no problem at all - you do not even need to show a drivers licence... There are even quite small kids (maybe 10 years old) cruizing around on them. On our way through those villages we got hungry at some stage. But there were no restaurants of course. In one village we saw a little stall where we could buy instant noodle soup. We soon found a nice woman who prepared them for us and gave us some of their sticky rice as well. The information about two "falangs" (foreigners) beeing in the village must have spread quite fast, so we had lots of company while we were eating... It was the day that the waterbuffalo was honoured in the way of drinking Lao Lao (that is the local rice liquor) and dancing to the music which they played from tapes. But the children were not at all interested in this celebration anymore since we were present. For them it was much more interesting to watch every little movement we made and it was impossible to say how many eyes were kept on us. Talking to these people was rather difficult... One of the already drunk guys tried to ask us questions in Lao which we of course had no chance to understand. So we try to make clear what was actually obvious - "We do not speak Lao!!!". But the guy who kept asking us just "translated" from time to time for everybody else what we apparently had said - and all the villagers seemed to be really amused... We still wonder what he had told them?! But it seemed like the people enjoyed having us in their village and so did we. It was a great experience being far away from the tourist crowds in the north of the country.

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