Normally I don’t like to write about the little health hiccups of travel but since my current situation led to a “cultural learning experience” I thought I’d give you a high-level report. I’ve suffered for the past week with a cold, hacking cough, a rash over most of my body and for the past two days an episode of atrial fibrillation. Upon reaching Vientiane our guide Jack and the local guide Toui decided I needed to be seen. We agreed, mostly to figure out where the rash came from. Could it be a rare Asian insect bite? An infection I picked up while wading around in mud and salt water while planting mangrove trees? Or was it a side effect from taking Robitussin DM?

I went to a French clinic not far from our hotel (“Very clean,” Toui said.) where a young doctor from Japan examined me. Go figure. Bottom line: it’s a reaction to medication so she told me to stop taking the malarial drug and the antibiotic I’ve been taking for my cold, just like Rebecca guessed over the phone half a world away. The afib should go away in a day or two and the rash should subside on its own. The cold is gone. Now if I can just get rid of the cough.

Here’s the total bill for the visit
Office exam (1 hour) $37.00
Salve 1.50
Probiotic 1.50
Hotel Van 14.00

Total $54.00

Earlier, before we left Luang Prabang they took us to the Royal Palace Museum. I may not have the chronology quite right but the outline is as follows:

– The French showed up in the late 1880s, late by Indochina standards. They offered to help defend Laos from its enemies. The quid-pro-quo turned out to be total control of the country, slave labor for French construction projects and even forced export of Laotians to France
– Sisavang Phoulivong took over from his father as King of Luang Prabang and in 1946 united the three kingdoms into a single Laos. He was a loyal supporter of the French who reciprocated.

– His son Savang Vatthana took over in 1958 and ruled as King until 1975 happened and the Communists took over. He, his wife and two eldest sons were sent to reeducation camps and were never heard from again.

– Savang Vatthana’s brother got close to the Communists and was named the Red President. As President he was able to save many of his remaining kinfolk from disappearance.
–
Toui told us that most Laotians revere Sisavang Phoulivong , the next-to-the-last king but know nothing of his son the last king. The items in the Royal Palace Museum have no mention of him. Toui said he couldn’t talk to us about this subject because listeners would be taking note of what he said.

The flight to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, was short and pleasant. But we’re out of the mountains and the temperature and humidity are back up. Luang Prabang was a nice respite from the heat.

This evening we went for a home hosted dinner with a 47-year-old man and members of his family. The relationships were not clear; one was identified as “grandmother” and two young kids (5 and 11) were not sisters but related somehow to the grandmother. Most of the cooking was done by our host’s sister. But whatever, the food was traditional Laotian food including sticky rice, several vegetable dishes and a chicken dish. The deal was to place the food on our plate, roll up a small ball of sticky rice and use it to pick up some food. Actually, transferring the food to your plate was a Western adaptation; our hosts dipped their sticky rice into the communal plates.

Our host was, at age 18, drafted into the Lao Army and sent to the frontier to fight in the shooting war with Thailand. He and four buddies didn’t like being shot at so one night they disserted and found their way to Vientiane. He dares not return to his village home across the Mekong from Luang Prabang because he would be thrown in jail.

From that beginning he worked his way from manual labor jobs to washing dishes in a restaurant. He spent three years in Germany, a year in France and a year in Italy working in Laotian restaurants in those countries. He returned to Vientiane, went to cooking school for four years and for the past 18 months owns his own restaurant.

A full day of touring tomorrow but I’m going to do only the easy parts. I’ll count on Judy to take good notes.

This is the day Overseas Adventure Travel shows us a glimpse of what life in Luang Prabang province is like. OAT’s parent established the Grand Circle Foundation to funnel money to towns and villages throughout the world. Every OAT trip includes a Day in the Life opportunity to see what goes on in a village and while highly instructive and illuminating it is hard to say that the village is “typical” because most Laotian villages haven’t received the aide this one has.

But first, life in the day of a Buddhist monk. The wake-up call came at 5 AM and the Jumbos left for the temple at 5:30. Dawn came sometime after six.

Every morning since the 16th century monks (senior monks and novice monks) parade through the streets of Luang Prabang carrying their alms bowls. City residents (and the occasional tourist) place a pinch of sticky rice in each monks bowl. Later we presented small packets of other foodstuffs. The monks return the gifts with a blessing for the giver and his or her family. In this way the 100 or more monks receive food for their two meals per day. Monks do not eat after noon.

We stopped for a Laotian breakfast, which were a coffee with sweetened condensed milk and a kind of donut. The coffee was strong but Judy found it very tasty with the sweetened condensed milk.

After the group went to a local market to watch local people purchase food for their meals. Group members were assigned the task of finding and purchasing a specific item for our noontime meal. We needed to ask for it in their language and ask for the amount we needed. We had no idea what it was we were looking for until we got hints from the vendors.

After breakfast and an hour’s rest we were back in the bus for a 45-minute ride for our village visit. The terrain here is mountainous and the road twisty and up and down. We passed through suburban Luang Prabang and a continual stream of other small villages before reaching ours.

The village says a lot about current Lao government. Remember, as a Communist country the government feels a responsibility to provide for its citizens. The problem the government faces is this: Many Laotians belong to a variety of ethnic groups, speak different languages, practice different religions and many live in small (10 family or less) communities far from schools and health clinics. None have electricity or running water. Serving residents of Luang Prabang is easy; that’s the low-hanging fruit. Serving the other 20% is a challenge.

The government’s solution was simple: relocate villages to more centralized locations; provide water, electricity, schools and health care. Problem solved!

Except of course those “served” may not like pulling up stakes to move to who-knows-where. The community we visited of 800 or so is made up of people from three different villages and three different ethnic groups: Lao, Kmsou, and Hmong. Yes, the same Hmong who have settled in many U.S. cities. At the end of the Vietnam War those who supported the “secret war of the CIA) were in big trouble. Those rounded up and sent to “reeducation camps” were often “disappeared.” Many, including the Hmong, went to refugee camps and sanctuaries in Thailand and the U.S.

The town’s leader and one of his two assistants, both Laos, greeted us. The “mayor” is elected from a slate of eight candidates, the candidates having been selected by the Central Committee in Luang Prabang. The winner is mayor for five years; the two runners-up are his assistants. The mayor makes major decisions and can act as the justice of the peace. The town was formed in 1995. The same process is being used to settle those communities displaced by the dam projects we learned about yesterday.

The mayor took us through the village on the way to the primary school (grades one and two). On the way we stopped to watch the village blacksmith ply his trade making farming implements and knives for the villagers (and the occasional tourist who might wander through).

At the school we met the teacher – one teacher for both grades, about 30 kids in all. Her biggest challenge is that many students at this level speak no Lao at all. It takes six weeks or more before they become functional in the language. Her strategy is to pair students who speak the same language: second graders with first graders. The older kids who know a little teach those who don’t know anything. She visits the home to encourage parents to use Lao at home.

The main subjects are Lao language, math and social studies plus all the other typical primary subjects: music, art, etc. Bad kids {“Monkeys,” she called them) are punished by being locked in the classroom and not allowed to go home for the noon meal. She has taught for 25 years, two at this school.

Then the kids came in; they know the drill. Usually in pairs they ran to the back of the room, grabbed a book or two and made themselves comfortable sitting between two “white” people. They tried to teach me the Lao words for each animal in our book. The kid next to me gave up and said “Meow” for a cat. He knows a hopeless old man when he sees one.

After 15 minutes or so of bedlam (the class had more than its share of monkeys) we said “Bye” and went to the home of a Hmong family. They came from a village near the Plain of Jars, an area eight hours by bus from Luang Prabang. “Jars” refers to ancient structures left on a plain, exact purpose unknown. The Plain of Jars had the bad misfortune of being near the Ho Chi Minh trail and this received a steady bombardment by U.S. B52s. One reason he was glad to leave his home was that the area is full of unexploded ordinances, which today still maim and kill people on a regular basis.

I asked him whether he liked living here or would rather be back home. He said that back home there was no running water, electricity, school, health care or Internet (there’s a cell tower not 100 yards from his front door). But he said that he loves nature and the outdoors. Back home he had a large tract of land, raised cattle for sale whereas here he has only a small plot of land to raise crops and chickens for his family.

The thing of it is, if it weren’t for Grand Circle Foundation running water would not be available at individual houses. GCF installed restrooms for the school and the community. They fixed up the school building and put a fence around it to keep the water buffalo out. Cow pies on the playground are thus eliminated. So, as the case with the dam resettlement plans, execution doesn’t match commitments.

It was lunchtime and the mayor’s wife helped us stir fry the ingredients purchased earlier into a Laotian-style appetizer. We moved to the mayor’s ground floor living room (it has a TV but little else for furniture where the wife served a lunch of kale soup, sticky rise, steamed rice and steamed pork. Desert was a banana.

Then back on the bus to the hotel for an afternoon of leisure.

The evening meal was “on us” and we took the chicken way out, returning to the bakery we ate at yesterday noontime. Sandwiches, wraps, pizza. Close your eyes and you’ll think you’re back in North America. Someone told us JoMo is owned by a Canadian. It’s smart marketing: open a western restaurant in the top tourist destination in Laos and give the poor suffering tourists a break from Lao food.

In fact, this whole Unesco World Heritage Site business bothers me. Yes, it encourages retention of original cultural buildings so people can see what things looked like back when. But here and in other sites that means tourists and tourists mean shops, restaurants, etc. that appeal to tourists.

So off to bed. Tomorrow it’s off to the capital of Laos, Vientine.

Today was largely a tourist’s day, seeing sights and visiting local craft businesses as we went.
First, a stop at an operation that makes paper from bamboo fibers and weaves silk from home-raised caterpillar cocoons. The water-borne fiber is spread on a frame roughly one-meter square; leaves and flowers are placed on the fibers in a pleasing pattern and the finished frame is set out to dry. We bought some nice note cards made from the material.

The silk process starts by feeding young caterpillars for about six weeks until they mature, turn yellow and stop eating. They immediately mate, spin their webs, deposit eggs and die. The silk people shake the baby worms out of the cocoon and unravel it to produce a strand of up to 10 meters in length. The strands are spun into threads and the threads woven into cloth. Local berries are used to color the thread. The hatched caterpillars hit the mulberry leaves and the process repeats. We bought a nice table runner.

From the paper/linen shop we walk a short distance and down a steep hill to a waiting boat, long and narrow, naturally, but not really a sampan I’d say. Up the Mekong River we sailed, heading generally north and west toward the Myanmar, Thailand, Laos border – the Golden Triangle, home to some of the world’s most prolific producers of opium. We didn’t go that far but even further on we would have reached the border with China. Sailing the other direction we would have reached Vietnam where the Mekong Delta divides the river into nine main branches before emptying into the South China Sea, excuse me, the East Vietnam Sea. Whatever. In total the Mekong runs some 2,700 miles from start to finish.

Along the way we made two stops. First at a whiskey and wine distillery in Ban Xang Hai village. Now I know you, like me, are thinking, “How come Buddhists are producing booze. I thought one of Buddhism’s five commandments is Thou Shall Drink No Booze?” I asked both Toui and Jack this question. They both laughed. “Buddhism teaches what ought to be done but it’s up to the individual to make the choice.” In fact there is a fairly extensive Buddhist temple complex immediately behind the distillery.

Sticky rice is the base ingredient. We sampled red wine, white wine and rice whiskey, which I guess is a close cousin to Japanese sake. Judy, who hates red wine, preferred the grape juice flavored red wine compared to the white, just to give you a hint as to how they taste.

The other stop was at the PaK Ou cave. Filled with thousands of Buddhist icons, it is thought to date back for hundreds of years. It was officially discovered in the 16th Century by King Setthathirat although it had been in use for some time prior. Followers of the Buddha bring small statues and icons of the Buddha and place them in the caves (there are two), place flowers and light incense. The caves are set in sheer limestone cliff rising from the water. We parked our boat along with a dozen others and climbed maybe 50 feet up steep stairs to reach the caves and spent about one-half hour there.

The boat owner’s wife cooked us up a nice Lao lunch of kale soup, deep-fried fish (what kind? Don’t know. Didn’t ask), a mild curry chicken, sautéed veggies and a banana for desert.

So six hours total, up and back, interesting visits at three locations, not a bad way to spend the morning?

But for me the interesting outcome of this trip was a presentation by Toui, our Lao guide, of Laos’ strategic plan. You see, Laotians have been asking themselves, “Why are we at the bottom of the economic totem pole, lumped with Myanmar and Cambodia? Why can’t we be big and strong like Thailand? Even Vietnam is ahead of us.”

Some background: Laos has five neighbors: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar and China. All have ocean access; Laos is landlocked. Laos is a Communist country but like most other Communist countries it is a CapCom state – Communist rule with a Capitalist economy. A long stretch of the Mekong river flows through Laos, however, and that’s the key to their plan: Become the Battery of Southeast Asia. So far they have built 43 hydroelectric projects on 17 rivers that flow within Laos. A plant on the Mekong will come on line next year. An additional 52 are planned to reach the strategic goal of 100 before too long.

Funding for these projects come from Thailand and China. The deals call for Laos to deliver 95% of power generated to the funding nation for 30 years. Laos retains 15% of revenues; when the 30-year period is up all electricity belongs to Laos. Everyone needs electricity. Laos has rivers to spare. What’s not to like?

There are a few details. These dams have displaced 6,000 citizens to new prefab towns complete with water, sewer, electricity, schools and health clinics. But that doesn’t work well for farm families who find themselves living in areas where land prices make farming infeasible. And centuries-old cultures and ways of life are disrupted. The government is to pay the resettled a stipend. But the cash has yet to flow. When, if ever, will it?

The Mekong is an important resource for fishing. The silt it carries during the rainy season is important for riverside farming. No problem: new free-flow dam technology eliminates the need for a reservoir behind the generators and permits free flow of fish and silt through the dam.

By eliminating the dam they solve the problem of river level management. Dams on the Mekong in China already affect the river level in Laos. China retains water in the dry season and dumps it in the rainy season.

The other Mekong River countries are planning their own hydro projects. A multi-country commission has been established to try and regulate the members’ hydro activities.

Toui’s mother happens to be a life-long Communist Party member and holds a fairly high position in the government. She is aware of the details behind the dam project. Toui (who favors a move to democracy even though it’s not something that will happen soon) challenged her. “The displaced people are not being treated fairly. Despite the Party line, I know that the government is not living up to its promises to these people and that they are suffering from the dam projects.” His mother is deeply committed to the Party and firmly believes that what it is doing is correct. “Toui, you need to concentrate on what you need to know and not on everything that there is to know.” In other words, keep your mouth shut. People have “disappeared” for voicing viewpoint contrary to the Party.

Toui’s mom had hoped her son would have become a policeman. He’s a tourist guide with one kid of his own and a 14-year-old novice monk whom Toui and his wife adopted.

But, hey, they have a plan. They’ve identified a market that needs its product, has identified resources under their control to meet that market demand and have demonstrated their ability to deliver on the plan, albeit with a few bumps, hiccups and hardships here and there. I wonder how this plan would be received on Shark Tank?

We were back at the Sada Hotel by 2:30. Judy and a bunch of the others went for a massage treatment for which Luang Prabang is known. I stayed home to nurse a head cold that’s been bugging me. I’m skipping the dinner too in the interest of rapid recovery.

It’s hard to figure out Thailand and it’s potential. On the one hand Bangkok looks like a prosperous, happening place. But the skyscrapers are intermixed with slums and low-end urban sprawl. Wealth distribution is far from even.

Thailand has universal healthcare and free public education for K-12. The foundation for a prosperous future. Free Enterprise and capitalism seem to be fully-functional here. But it’s who you know (and who you pay) that’s important in Thailand – “lack of transparency” (corruption) is high.

I, without knowing what I am talking about, would rank Thailand as a second world country. Why? Immigrants from true third-world countries, especially Myanmar and other bordering countries come to Thailand to do the work Thais don’t want to do: manual labor and agriculture. Thais go to more developed countries to earn wages that can’t be had at home. Jack told of his brother’s experience. Twice he has gone to Israel to work in an orange grove. Once Jack loaned him $US5,000 to make the trip. His wife paid Jack back as his brother sent money home. Upon his return they had enough money to renovate his house. Borrowing money for foreign work travel is risky. Lenders often require a property deed to be surrendered for security. If the worker squanders his money on booze, gambling or prostitutes, or if the worker’s wife runs off with another man, the worker’s house can be forfeited.

In theory, Thailand is a constitutional democracy with a king and popularly-elected parliament. In practice it operates as an oligarchy with the King, the military and the royal conservatives calling the shots. Together they control the vast majority of the country’s wealth.

As I mentioned the other day there have been coup d’etas 18 times in the last 70 years. When the military (and King and the royalist) think the elected Prime Minister and parliament have gone off in the wrong direction they step in, set up a military government and run the country until it is going in the right direction. The “right direction” is what’s right for the oligarchy. I guess it’s sort of like training wheels on a kid’s bike: lean too far to the left or right and the wheels keep Little Jonnie from falling on his keister.

The last time there was a coup the military threw out the PM (who happened to be Thailand’s first female PM) because she raised the price of rice from 25 cents per kilo to 75 cents. The farmers were delighted but not the rice traders who saw their wholesale distribution business disappear and who happen to be members of the royal conservatives.

I was ready to say, “We’ll, this might not work in the U.S. but maybe for Thailand it works OK.“ But yesterday evening Jack brought in a speaker who made me think twice. “Mr. Otto” is a young journalist who works as a reporter who works for a Thai-based NGO whose mission is to provide unfiltered (uncensored ) news about current affairs in Thailand. Recently he attend a rally calling for openness in a way that was seen to be critical of the current military government. He was there as a reporter and didn’t participate but was arrested nonetheless. His trial is set for next year; he could receive a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

I asked Mt. Otto, “What path is there to move from today’s environment of military control and censorship to a place where open expression of opinion is allowed?” He replied that there are many barriers. Since the last coup a new constitution has been ratified that places a number of hurdles in the path to openness and reform. The new constitution makes permanent the rules prohibiting criticism of the government and the royalty through the Article 112 provisions. It also gave the military the right to appoint 250 members to the Senate. So if a new civil government was elected tomorrow its hands would be tied by the new constitution.

I don’t see, based on limited information and perhaps my faulty analysis, where Thailand goes next. It would seem that either there is an Arab Spring kind of uprising or Thailand just keeps trudging along as is and that enough crumbs trickle down to keep the masses happy. Maybe I was right in the first place.

We’re now in Luang Prabang, the capital of Laos until the king was deposed by the French. After the French and WWII the Communists took over in 1975 with support from Ho Chi Minh. Those who had supported South Vietnam and the US had to flee and seek refuge in a Thailand refugee camps and the US. Many Mong people ended up in Minneapolis and other US cities this way. Our Lao guide Toui told us that his grandfather fought for Ho Cho Minh and the Communists, participating in many key battles and had to avoid continual B52 bombings.

I guess I didn’t learn my lesson from Thailand. Tonight I found myself (with Judy) walking the length of a seemingly endless outdoor night market. I may not have been cramped up in a sampan like last time but my hip was complaining about climbing 328 steps to see the view from atop Pheidippides Hill. Just had to do it!

Tomorrow we cruise the. Mekong River.

The Internet is a bit dicey so just a few pictures.

I don’t recall it being enumerated in Dante’s Inferno, although truth be told I kinda spaced out after the third circle. But they’ve come up with the perfect punishment for me. First, they loaded me into a Samoan (paddles, not powered) and being the last passenger I got the seat in the bow – the one with no place to put your feet except right straight out. It accentuated the pain in my arthritic hip to a degree unequaled since Torquemada. Second, scrunched into the torture chamber they paddled us through the Floating Market, a sampan-based shopping mall. The canal is about four sampans wide with seller sampans on either side and four to six tourist sampans vying for space. Vendors with hooked poles grab your sampan by the funnel so you can view the goods and bargain.

Judy, bless her soul, helped by putting her knees up behind me so I could lean back.

So there you have it: physical pain and shopping pain. To make it even worse, one of our number stopped at each seller and tried to bargain over some doo-dad or other, thereby prolonging the agony.

And when I say “bargain” I mean bargain. Our first purchase was a set of big, fat, coconut-wood crayons. The guy asked 650 Bhats. I, jokingly, hit him with a lowball 300 to get things going. He immediately said, “Done” and bagged the crayons before I realized I had just paid $US 9.

I did better when we bought a scarf for Judy. The sales gal opened the bidding at 1,250 Bhat. I reached into my pocket and counted out my last crumpled Bhat notes: 250 (about $7.50). She countered several times but each time I shrugged my shoulders and soon enough the scarf was in the bag and we were broke, Bhat-wise.

“A fool and his money are soon parted,” is a universal truth.

The floating market is in a small province (population 650,000) of Samursongkram located about an hour and a half’s drive from our hotel in Bangkok. It is located on the Bay of Thailand, which connects to the South China Sea. The market has two functions. Early in the morning all the sampans are loaded with fish and vegetables for sale to the locals. Then they quickly convert to tourist trinkets in time for the first bus from Bangkok.

Next up: a visit to a coconut plantation. Coconut tress like brackish water, which this region has in abundance. Coconut trees can be harvested in one of two ways. One is to collect ripe coconuts and use the milk and meat as food. The other is to slash the coconut flower before the coconut starts to form, attach a receptacle to catch the sap and boil the sap to make brown sugar. When the tree gets too tall to harvest conveniently it is cut down and the wood used for furniture and other wood products. Coconut boils down in a ratio of about 3.5:1, sap to sugar. Maple syrup, by contrast, boils down 40:1 and then you only have syrup, not sugar.

Squirrels are the coconut growers’ enemies. They love to gnaw a hole and drink the sap. Fortunately there is a natural predator to control squirrels: the Burmese Python of which there are plenty. Our host, the grove owner, had a 9-year-old 120-pound beauty. I regret missing the chance to get my picture taken with him (the python, not the owner) wrapped around my neck.

Lunch was mostly seafood, as you’d expect in a fishing village, including shrimp and a local white fish. Very good.

The finale was a trip by long tail boat, the long narrow one with a big engine hanging on the rear. It’s a real muscle machine; the pilot doesn’t set the throttle and go, he is continually revving the engine up and down: Vrooooom, Vrooom, Vrooom. Gotta have one for Onawa next year!

Some time back a government of Thailand (not sure if it was military or civilian) set as a goal that Thailand would become second in Asia only to Japan (this was clearly before China made its move to #1). Some bright individuals said, “Hey, we need more farm land. Let’s cut down all the mangrove trees to make room.” The net result of this (mostly illegal) activity was to decimate the shorelines in this part of Thailand. To recover, an ecology movement is replanting mangroves along the canals and backwater areas of the bay. It’s very much like Florida in that people now recognize the ecological value of a healthy mangrove system to spawn fish and protect against flooding.

Naturally enough, I was one of two in our group who volunteered to help out. I put on a pair of knee-high socks with padded soles to protect my tootsies from who knows what. Then we got out into a mud bank; we sank in a good 6 – 9 inches with every step. We used a stick to make a hole, poked a mangrove shoot into the hole and tamped it down with our feet. We managed the job without embarrassment.

So now my grandkids can bring their kids to Thailand someday and show them where Great Grampa planted his mangrove trees.

Tomorrow we’re off to Luang Prabang, Laos. Six AM wake up call and an afternoon of touring so it’ll be another busy day.

This marks our halfway point. We’ve completed 15 out of 30 days, six out of 12 flights, three out of six countries and five out of 10 hotels. Onward!