Adventures in Guangzhou!

As we sat around the village waiting for our elephants to arrive, Thong, our twenty-year old guide for the next 48 hours, filled us in on some basics regarding our hike, the elephants, and how he ended up working as a guide. It turns out the elephants are a bit different from African elephants and are used primarily for logging now. They are smaller than their African counterparts and only the males have tusks. They also spend three quarters of their day eating so I was sure we'd get along.

After a little while the mahouts, the elephant trainers/drivers brought the animals over and we began. All I could think was that they were magnificent creatures. I suppose I had seen elephants before in zoos or circuses, but it's totally different when you're right on top of one. My mahout in particular seemed to have an incredible rapport with his elephant. He sat right on top of the head and talked to the animal in between singing some slow melodic folk songs. I'm still kicking myself for accidentally deleting a video of the guy singing these incredible songs, but I'm guessing my digital camera would not have done him justice anyway.

After about an hour and a half, we hopped off the elephants and fed them some sugar cane. It was really cool to watch the elephants grab the pieces with their trunks and chomp down on the cane with one loud crunch. I didn't want to leave them but we had to have a quick lunch and get moving in order to make our destination before the sunset. The hike was really more of a walk at this stage and I enjoyed chatting with Thong about his village and about the village where we were going.

Northern Lao has several hill tribe minority groups with long and varied histories. Thong was a Khamu who grew up outside of Luang Prabang in a similar village to the one we were headed towards. Able to speak their dialect, he was perfectly suited to guide us. After about two hours, we came upon the village. It was relatively small, with only forty families or so, but and dropped our stuff in a small second floor with a few mats on the floor to sleep on. Though not a particularly trying hike, we were all pretty exhausted from the heat so we decided to catch a quick nap.

We woke up to some music and I immediately went off in search of the source. It turns out that sitting at a table across the way was a bunch of younger guys drinking beers and singing along with a guitar. I ventured over to the table and they immediately welcomed me to have a seat. While none of them spoke English, I spoke the international language of "Beer Lao" so all was well. While they seemed somewhat curious about me, they were not shy in the least. I gather that this is somewhat due to the fact that I was not the first foreigner they had seen, but regardless, I was impressed.

Kelly and Tricia joined me and we shared a couple of lukewarm beers with the guys while listening to them play and sing. One of our new friends made quite an impression when he opened up the new bottles with his teeth. Of course he soon staggered home, seemingly too drunk to sit upright anymore. Maybe not the best behavior for the middle of the afternoon, but he was extremely friendly. We sort of took his exit to cue our own though and we went exploring the small village further.

We quickly happened upon the one room school house and the younger residents of the village all running around. They, too, gave us a curious glance, and then came over wanting to play with us. I joined a ball game (that is apparently quite popular around Southeast Asia) in which a hollow rattan ball is kicked or headed over a net with rules somewhat like volleyball. I had a blast and the kids seemed happy that I wasn't totally incompetent on the court. Meanwhile, Kelly and Tricia did a little jump-rope with a crude vine-made rope and took pictures. The little girls, especially, loved seeing the digital images of themselves. All in all, it was very cute.

It was a little strange to see some of the t-shirts that the kids were wearing though. Some had Bruce Lee knockoffs, others had stars and stripes tees, and still others had old "praise jesus" shirts. I was not impressed with that one. All of the women were wearing beautiful skirts and the men were wearing jeans. One other detail of note is that it seemed that the men were mostly in charge of the babies. That is, it wasn't the mothers carrying around newborns or infants--it was the fathers.

After a little while Thong came around and took us away from the children to tell us dinner was served. It seemed a bit early for dinner until I remembered that there is no electricity in this place and it's pretty much bedtime once the sun goes down. We sat down inside and started eating under the light of a single candle. Thong impressed us by the soup and stir-fried veggie concoction he rustled up. I don't usually enjoy meals without any meat but this was actually one occasion where I didn't really mind. After all, I didn't really need him grabbing one of the rusty knives and slaughtering a piece of livestock for our sake. I did, however, very much enjoy a local treat which is made from crushed buffalo skin and chilis. Basically you take your sticky rice, make a little ball, dip it into the soup, wrap it around some of the veggies, and then dip that into the spicy ground buffalo skin. Yum! I was a big fan.

Pretty soon the sun had set and we headed back up to our mats, crawled under our mosquito nets, and went to bed around 8pm. As I drifted off to sleep, I found myself wandering what my life would be like if I followed the cycle of the sun... Up with the roosters yet again, I trudged out to the outside feeling slightly uncomfortable with some stomach issues. Too much buffalo skin? You be the judge. I had an extended, umm, "session" on the squatter and then headed back for breakfast. Though not particularly hungry, I chowed down on the eggs since I knew we'd be hiking all day.

The next seven hours were spent trekking through the Lao countryside--up and down mountains, over streams, into and out of the jungle, and over farmland. It was pretty incredible. Thong was keeping a fast pace and I had to struggle at times to keep up. I enjoyed picking his brain about various topics including the Lao government, international relations, the countryside, his family, his future, etc. While the path we were taking was more or less straightforward, there were definitely times that I wished I had a machete to cut the path a bit more. It was a lot of fun.

Along the way we stopped in two more villages--one hmong minority village and another khamu village. Thong informed me that there is very distinct hierarchy among the different minority tribes and that the hmong were at the top. Apparently they had a history and culture that was somewhat warlike and the US government took advantage of this during the Vietnam war, using them as armed insurgents. Kelly and Tricia also had a special interest in the hmong since Minneapolis happens to have the second largest hmong population in the U.S., outside of California. Sure enough, some of the people we talked with had cousins in the States.

Anyhow, eventually we made it back to Luang Prabang and all of us enjoyed well-needed showers. Actually, I wish we could have done another few days out in the wild, maybe doing some kayaking as well, but that'll have to wait for another time...