Return to Lao: The Villages Part One
After the excellent banana pancakes, our guide, Vue Lee arrived with the minibus and driver. As we began the drive, the day was cool and hazy. It looked to be a good day for photos and wandering. We drove for a good bit, maybe an hour before we passed through the first village, Kokran, a Lao village. We walked around briefly. This is one of the busy seasons for growing rice. It is harvest time, so most of the villages we were to see were quiet. Only the children too small to work, the women who were needed to watch them and those too old to work remained for the most part in the villages. The first few villages were along a medium size river and the surrounding areas were covered in dense foliage. Have I asked just what makes a jungle before? According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a jungle is:
1 a : an impenetrable thicket or tangled mass of tropical vegetation b : a tract overgrown with thickets or masses of vegetation
So I guess I can say these villages were more or less in the jungle. No one seemed to mind that we strangers were walking through. Periodically some children would appear, sometimes allowing pictures and other times too shy. The first village was called Kokran, it was a Lao village. By now I was fairly well versed in the architectural styles of these villages. I could tell this was a Lao village because the houses were built on fairly high stilts. The Lao primarily live on the flatter land which floods fairly often during rainy season, thus the need for houses on stilts. Additionally, it is hotter in the lowland areas and if the houses are built above the ground, air can circulate beneath them allowing for cool breezes to do their work better. Besides that, Vue Lee told me the first village was Lao! This village was close to the road and quite accessible. The second village was called Bohe and it is a Hmong village. The Hmong typically live in the high mountain areas where flooding doesn't occur and where it is typically cooler thus removing the need for stilts. Here, too, almost everyone was off working in the rice paddies.
At the next village, Thaon, which was a Khamon village, we had to walk across a very rickety bridge over the river. I felt relatively safe since it was never more than 10 or 15 feet over the water. I'm not sure if I would have tried it had it been 100 feet above the water. Here we found more people in the village. There were more women and children as well as some men. Only two men seemed to be doing anything other than watching children. One was cutting some wood and another old fella who had lost an arm when the Vietnam War carried over into Lao and his village was bombed by Americans, was weaving a basket. When he found out I was American he was polite but clearly put off. I just can't understand why..... or can I?????
More posts to come on the Lao villages very soon. Yep, I'm WAY behind.
As always, I hope you enjoy the pics. Stay in touch!
Andy
andym528@hotmail.com
1 a : an impenetrable thicket or tangled mass of tropical vegetation b : a tract overgrown with thickets or masses of vegetation
So I guess I can say these villages were more or less in the jungle. No one seemed to mind that we strangers were walking through. Periodically some children would appear, sometimes allowing pictures and other times too shy. The first village was called Kokran, it was a Lao village. By now I was fairly well versed in the architectural styles of these villages. I could tell this was a Lao village because the houses were built on fairly high stilts. The Lao primarily live on the flatter land which floods fairly often during rainy season, thus the need for houses on stilts. Additionally, it is hotter in the lowland areas and if the houses are built above the ground, air can circulate beneath them allowing for cool breezes to do their work better. Besides that, Vue Lee told me the first village was Lao! This village was close to the road and quite accessible. The second village was called Bohe and it is a Hmong village. The Hmong typically live in the high mountain areas where flooding doesn't occur and where it is typically cooler thus removing the need for stilts. Here, too, almost everyone was off working in the rice paddies.
At the next village, Thaon, which was a Khamon village, we had to walk across a very rickety bridge over the river. I felt relatively safe since it was never more than 10 or 15 feet over the water. I'm not sure if I would have tried it had it been 100 feet above the water. Here we found more people in the village. There were more women and children as well as some men. Only two men seemed to be doing anything other than watching children. One was cutting some wood and another old fella who had lost an arm when the Vietnam War carried over into Lao and his village was bombed by Americans, was weaving a basket. When he found out I was American he was polite but clearly put off. I just can't understand why..... or can I?????
More posts to come on the Lao villages very soon. Yep, I'm WAY behind.
As always, I hope you enjoy the pics. Stay in touch!
Andy
andym528@hotmail.com