Visit to a village

Emily and Luke in Ban Houaxfay village near Luang Prabang, with limestone mountains in background

On Friday, we set out on a 2 day trek to 3 hillside villages and returning by bicycle to Luang Prabang. This was a good way to learn about the Lao people. We had a group of 4 and 2 guides, named Gai and Gao, both from small villages and they are currently students and guide to earn money for school. We began at a Hmong and Kmu-Lao village called Ban Suanda La. We hiked from there down a small trail through the jungle up to a mountain village of Hmong people called Ban Tinpha. The Hmong supposedly came down to Burma/Thailand/Laos from Mongolia several hundreds of years ago. This village was relocated from a mountaintop by the Lao government in order to stop them from growing opium. Now they just farm food for themselves and sell in a market. It was clear how poor the people are in these villages. They were all wearing basically what we would consider rags, but some of the girls did have their traditional skirts on. A couple kids begged for food when we stopped for lunch, but our guides would not allow us to give them our leftovers because it would encourage the villagers to be beggars. It is a very bad feeling throwing the food in the garbage and feeding it to some hungry puppies. The guide said if we wanted to give them something we need to give them books or pencils or buy their trinkets, or we could make a donation to the village chief. We learned from our guides that each family rents land from the government to farm on. They use several acres to feed their family rice and other vegetables. The villages have pigs, chickens, goats, cows, buffalo, and ducks. They eat some of the meat but they get alot of meat from the jungle (birds, frogs, rodents, stream crabs, etc.). Little boys would walk past us with their jungle rat traps and we saw many old bird traps lying around.

We then made our way to the village we would overnight in, Ban Houaxfay. Upon entering the village, we saw our first "jungle rat", a few kids were playing with it, still alive, they must have just trapped it. Luckily we don't think we ate rat for dinner...... Our guides cooked us dinner on woks over a wood fire, inside the hut. The smoke just rises out the grass roof, with no chimney. They didn't think it was too big of a deal, breathing in all the smoky air while cooking. Despite that these people are very poor (average monthly income is $30) , they apparently are happy. They say they have an easy life in the village, where they grow their own food and can take a nap whenever they feel like it....... Our guide Gao, said he would prefer living back in his village, because it is too hard in the city, where things cost so much money and you have to work harder.

We stayed in the chief's guesthouse, and they have a generator that runs each night between 6-8:30 pm for movies. The kids stop by and pay 500 kip (about 10 cents or less) to watch movies or Lao music videos each night. The generator shut off at about 8:30pm, and we were off to our beds..... It poured rain all night and we dreaded the next days hike and bike ride in the cold rain and mud. We woke up to rain and mud, but luckily the clouds started to lift and it stopped raining by the time we started hiking. Next we hiked to a waterfall and cleaned off our very muddy shoes and pants. After the waterfall visit, we hopped on really crappy Trek mountain bikes, and biked the 20 km back into Luang Prabang. It was really fun biking through the main road with the village kids along the side smiling and yelling "SABADEE" (hello), "I LOVE YOU", "HELLO" and giving us high 5's as we rode past them.

An elephant carrying tourist at Tad Sae Waterfalls, near Luang Prabang

trekking through the mud

Little boy on the trail

The village we stayed overnight, Ban Houaxfay.

Our guide, Gai (means chicken) cooking our dinner inside the hut. It is actually pitch dark with no lights on (my flash lit up the room).

Our bed. Another couple on our trek, Katherin and Alex, were in the bed next to us, separated by a curtain. Most of the rooms in this guesthouse were set up this way.

The trail.