🇱🇦🚄 🚌 Darkness had dropped like a curtain and now smoke and relaxed chatter rose from the outdoor fires across the village of Ban Nalan. I don’t think either of us had previously spent a night in a village with no electricity and no telephone or television signal. The absence of these telltales of modern life underlined the isolation and poverty of the Khmu village we were staying in, but it also transformed how people interacted with each other. With no distractions, children and adolescents spent time playing and talking, adults sat round the fire speaking and laughing, with an imposing starry sky above. We wonder what will happen to village social bonds and traditions when electricity does make it to the end of this road. There will no doubt be many positive changes, hopefully women will no longer spend so many hours each day cooking with wood fires in dark smokey kitchens, often with children strapped to their backs. But will the youth continue to spend their evenings with their elders around the fire, or will all be absorbed by the screens at the tips of their fingers, like everywhere else we’ve been in South-East Asia?
While electricity has not yet made it to these villages located in a « protected area », intensive exploitation of natural resources has. Beyond relatively small patches of primary or secondary forest, rubber tree plantations dominate the landscape. The government initially encouraged rubber tree plantations as a more sustainable alternative to villagers clearing new patches of forest every year to plant dry rice. The poor soils means land is rested for 6 years between each crop, so every year saw more forest being felled. Rubber trees have a lifetime of 40 years and can provide income each year, so it was thought less forest would end up being cleared. Rubber production escaped government control, with inexhaustible Chinese demand driving expansion of plantations into old growth forest, while villagers now suffer the fluctuations of global prices. Rubber is now a deadly curse for the primary forest. Seeing the landslides and erosion caused by deforestation and ploughing on mountain sides, we wonder if the villagers realise to what extent their actions are undermining their future prosperity. What a common global story….
We were hesitant to do this trekking and homestay trip; not wanting to participate in a poverty tourism experience, but at the same time hoping to learn more about the experiences of Laos’ ethnic minorities. We also know that trekking tourism provides significant income to such villages. Thankfully, hours spent interrogating our guide with all sorts of questions, time spent helping prepare dinner in the kitchen with our hosts, and shared laughter during the traditional dance performance, allowed us to have some sort of human connection with the villagers and a much greater understanding of Laos culture.
Nonetheless, our time in Laos was far too limited to feel that we understood the country, and too limited for us to get off the tourist trail and give more meaning to our journey. Despite this, we loved our brief stop in Laos; the adventure of arriving in Bangkok airport at 5:30AM, jumping on a 10 hour train to the Thai / Laos border, and crossing the Mekong to the Laos capital Vientiane. Luang Prabang was a beautiful, leafy and languid town in which to spend a few days, with many side streets and cafes that took us out of the orbit of the masses of tour groups. A couple of days running through the countryside and spending the hot part of the day in a hammock by the Nam On river also did us the world of good.
The roads of Laos were an unexpected source of adventure, and frustration. Heading north, we faced a constant flow of trucks coming south from China, many loaded with industrial equipment and earth moving machinery. The roads were without a doubt the worst we’ve experienced on the trip so far. Potholes the width of the road every few hundred metres required sharp braking, our minivan shuddering with the impacts. On the road to the Chinese border the washouts from recent floods were so bad that trucks and cars were making new tracks through neighbouring fields, and our van eventually broke down after covering 50km in 2.5 hours. We managed to hail a taxi to cover the last 5km to the station just in time. What joy to board the new Chinese built high speed rail line that traverses Laos at 160km/h.
Next stop Kunming, the capital of the Chinese province of Yunnan !! More on our Chinese adventure in the next update !
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