Laughter in Laos
Nom Kiaw & Muang Ngoi
Laos’ Rural Muang Ngoi – Up in the Hills of Laos
January 14, 2002
In northern Laos, there’s a small town called Nom Kiaw. It’s on Route 13, the best road in the country, so it’s easy to get to. We got there via song-thaew (literal translation: “two benches,” for the two benches that passengers sit on in the back of the covered, converted pickup truck). It’s a beautiful spot, and we snapped a few pics that inevitably won’t do it justice, before boarding a river boat. We took the boat about an hour up the Nam Ou to the tiny village of Muang Ngoi that has become a stop on many backpackers’ itineraries for its natural beauty and remoteness. A generator runs in the evening until 9pm there to provide some light for bedtime preparations, but otherwise, there’s no electricity here – and forget about phone lines or cell phones.
Wandering through the tiny town on our second day there, we met a high school teacher named Kong Keo, who was roasting some fish with his family outside his home. He works as a trekking guide in addition to teaching, and we arranged with him to do an overnight trip into the mountains near Muang Ngoi to see a few hilltribe villages there. (As we arranged the details, a 4-year-old bounced down the street hugging in his arms a surprisingly docile chicken!)
The hill tribes are identified as a separate ethnic group in Laos, because they live in different types of houses and tend to be animists as opposed to Buddhists. Animism remains part of many Buddhist Laotian’s lives, actually. Kong Keo told us that when one of his children is sick, his wife wants to kill a chicken to cure the sickness. He counsels against it, suggesting instead that they sell the chicken and use the money to take the kid to the hospital.
Anyway, the next morning we hiked out through rice paddies and crossed streams in our sandals and stopped for lunch at the first village after about three hours. I drank a bit of lao-lao (homemade rice whiskey) with the men of the village and then Elbert, the Canadian couple we invited along, and I entertained the local kids with a combination of origami, language, mime and paper airplanes. The kids were wonderful in all of Laos, but especially in these villages. They were universally tickled by seeing themselves and their friends on the LCD of my digital camera, and many hung around and watched as we ate our lunch of fried fish, sour mixed vegetables, omelette, a spicy chili sauce for dipping, and sticky rice.
After lunch, we crossed two more streams and then swapped our sandals for boots and started to climb. After about three hours of hiking, some tough, we reached the second village, where we spent the night.
In keeping with our practice of sampling of the local drink, we took Kong Keo’s suggestion and asked for a jar of lao hai It’s an alcoholic drink made of sticky rice and something else that we weren’t able to identify, served in a large earthenware jar and sipped through a long bamboo straw. Lao hai has a distinct fermented taste and a bit of sweetness.
After a bit of that, I walked through the village, amidst the chickens, pigs, and dogs. The roosters chased hens, the pigs hung out in the shade and the dogs slept in the embers of last night’s cooking fires. I watched a woman pound rice with a large lever contraption, and then I came across the kids. Initially scared of me but curious, the digital camera technique won them over and soon they were eagerly teaching me their language. I would mime something, and they told me the word and cracked up when I put together a short story of mime and words based on running, walking, eating, drinking, and crying.
Over dinner, we asked Kong Keo questions about the village’s operations and customs. Women eat after men. The village is led by a chief. The chief’s approval is required for someone to move into the village. Crime is uncommon, but if someone is caught stealing, first offense is a warning, second is a fine and/or community service, and third is exile from the village. There was a conversation about the village wanting to save up and buy a generator and music system. They wanted to know from Kong Keo if a guesthouse could fund the expense. Doubtful, we decided after running the numbers, and if it could, Elbert pointed out, it would ironically lessen the village’s tourist appeal.
We slept early that night, in the home of a village family and under a big mosquito net. The house, like all in this village, was made of about 90% bamboo/10% wood. New York City morning street noise has nothing on the sounds of a hilltribe village at dawn: rooster’s cock-a-doodling, pigs oinking, dogs barking, kids shouting and the rhythmic pounding of rice.
In the morning, I went to woods outside the village to go to the bathroom and heard the sounds of someone following me. Some kids? Elbert? I turned and saw a big ol’ pig. I ignored him, and he watched curiously, but thankfully left well enough alone.
There’s more to tell, but my fingers tire. Stories of Jing, the Hmong kid with the slingshot, and the founder of the third village, who smoked a bit of opium before offering us a mediocre (probably sounded good to him) musical performance on a bamboo-based wind instrument. But these and others will have to wait until another time. Phuket’s beaches call.
One more thing on my mind, though…
Asian Imagery
The imagery of Asia has always occupied a special place in my mind. Workers in the fields with pointed hats. Bamboo huts. Misty mountains. Gnarled bare trees peeking out above a mountain landscape.
In my life, they’ve been implanted in my head in a variety of ways. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Designs on tea cups. Photographs from the Vietnam War and movies depicting that period.
To see the reality of it as I traveled through rural Laos was somehow a completion of feelings and thoughts I didn’t know were unresolved. A bit esoteric, I know, but I figured I’d mention it in case you can relate. A big piece of the beauty of the area comes from the way man-made phenomena and the natural landscape interact. Rice paddies grow bright green in a terraced landscape, against a dark green mountain behind it that rises into a white mist in the morning. Open-sided bamboo huts, built for naps and lunches in the shade on hot afternoons, dot the paddies. Rice farmers work, as other folks walk the tiny raised path separating field from field, balancing today’s wares across their shoulders on their way to market
It really is beautiful to look at. And to become a part of the scene rather than a passive viewer through a media or artistic interpretation… that’s sublime.
Sawat dee khap.
That’s hello and goodbye in Thai, and appropriate, because this is probably the last installment of this travelogue for this trip. I return to New York in 5 days, and to work the day after. Until I return, may the road rise to meet you and the wind be always at your back!
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