Birthday didn't quite work out as planned - every time I looked outside, another torrential downpour began. So drank a lot of coffee and read some cheerful 'tective novels. It coulda been worse. I coulda been trekking, as I was a couple of days later.
So, flew with Marianne east to Phonsavvanh. A bumpy flight, but I got there without throwing up, and thought the many little round lakes I could see from the plane once we got below cloudlevel were very nice until I realised they were all bombcraters. Landed and were met by the guide who sorted out all transport, passport checks etc without incident - apart from a bomb going off nearby. Hmmm. Just a routine UXO (unexploded ordinance) controlled explosion, the guide assured us, but I hadn't thought that there would be bombs left within a mile or so of the provincial capital, 30 years after the end of the non-existent war.
Phonsavvanh, even now at the end of the rainy season, gives the impression of a dusty border town somewhere in the wild west, all shabby small wooden houses with dust piled high and an unexpected 3 ft deep drainage ditch along the pavement of the main street which would have UK citizens hurling themselves into it in the exuberant joy of easy litigation. Here, given that the advice in all guidebooks is 'go to Thailand if you have a medical problem', people step across. It is not a place to have fun. Electricity lasts from 5.30 till 11, and the only entertainment is to go to a restaurant for dinner, where the food is considerably worse than Louang Prabang - though considerably better than in the rest of Laos, as I later found. Alternative entertainment is the snooker hall, where myself and Marianne embarrassed ourselves considerably. Every local male from 12 to 21 was gethered there (since there's nothing else to do), and watched the two western women make total asses of themselves on the table between watching their own games. They were most intrigued to see us set the table up for a game of pool, given that it was a snooker table and they use a different number of balls. With any luck, they thought it was a peculiar western rules thing, rather than neither of us knowing how to play snooker.
So, went to the Jar sites. They are, indeed, big and mysterious. 5 to 8 ft tall and almost as wide as high, 2-3,000 years old, carved out of solid stone that doesn't exist locally, weighing some tons each, there are a few thousand of them scattered around a few hundred square miles of plain - and no-one knows why, they haven't even been properly charted yet; they're still waiting for the state archaeologist to finish a course in Australia in order to investigate them properly. Meanwhile, they're scattered all over the place, getting overgrown and used in any which way. The few sites we visited (the only ones open to tourists - the others are still in dodgy ground. Apparently.) had 50-100 jars each. Site 3 was the most interesting to reach, having to traverse the ditches of ricepaddies for a couple of kilometers before getting to a small old forest where ancient trees were growing through and around the remmains of jars they'd splintered in their growth a thousand years ago.
The next day, began the trek. It was utterly lovely: driven out to a roadside Hmong village (major hill tribe, thousands of them scattered in villages around the north-eastern border with Vietnam, fought the communist Pathet Lao back in the 60s and hence are now thousands instead of hundreds of thousands). The trek was a doddle: 4 hours walk on reasonably easy tracks, slightly flooded at some points but no problems. Passed numerous villagers heading one way or the other, on foot, horseback or bicycle - our guide met someone from school whom he hadn't met in 6 years heading our direction - but not a tourist in sight. It all felt remarkably Lord-of-the-Rings-ish, to spend hours walking through beautiful hills and dales without a sign of civilisation other than locals on the track - uncultivated land, no sight of anything from this century - or this millenium - other than the bikes and clothes of the locals.
And got to the village. I've been in native villages before - a Masai village in Kenya for example - and always had the feeling that it was a show put on for the tourists to some extent, lotsa tourists gazing at the natives and their quaint traditions; a human zoo. If this place was a human zoo, we were the exhibits this time. Everywhere we went, the people stared - taken aback - then smiled, in surprise and seeming delight that we were there, quaint and peculiar as we were. Our guide - Han - said it had been a year since he was last there. Given that the children ran screaming from us, then gathered and peered, then ran again if we moved too quickly (or, like Marianne, stomped roaring with waving arms towards them. Boy, did that get a reaction) - I would certainly guess that they weren't overly used to westerners.
The whole place was pre-medieval. The villagers had taken the following items from the twenty-first century: bicycles (only recently have the paths been made good enough for these to be practical. Not yer posh mountain bikes or anything - these are all like old style Triumphs, no gears and very staid); torches (far better than candles if you need to go outside at night); clothes (traditional dress, the chief said in translation, was uncomfortable and too warm - so ragged Chicago Bulls t-shirts abounded above the old stiff silk-weave). And that was pretty much it. They haven't even invented the toilet, for chrissakes - and that, in my eyes, is a serious failing in a nation which spends half the year in the rainy season. I mean, how difficult is it to invent a roofed hole-in-the-ground next to the house? Yes, I got caught short in the night. And after our guide's dire warnings of the propensities of the hogs and dogs to sit next to you while you are obeying the call of the wild, in order to munch on what the wild has to offer - and given that my torchlight was failing - and given that it was raining and all the leaves were dripping heavily on me - it was a most uncomfortable experience.
Anyway. The village was interesting - wooden houses; roofs of thatch or wood-slats; mudpaths; chickens, hogs, dogs, cattle, horses and buffalo all roaming around; a couple of corn-grinding stalls (quern-stones rotated on top of each other by manual power. I was abashed to find a ten year old girl could do it better than me. By far.); a village school; 30 houses. And that was pretty much it. The shaman was in the process of blessing a family, which we could observe. The hut was big and dark inside, with one large bed (wooden slats covered by woven straw mat) and various herbs around, and an altar which was like a wooden shelf divided in three; a candle in the middle partition and a phallic looking object which the guide couldn't explain below; he banged a gong for a long while, clanged cymbal-like wire circles with metal clangers for another long while, moaning meantimes in languange incomprehensible to all (according to the guide, he was possessed by genii / spirits. I would be more dismissive of such primitive beliefs if some catholic friends of mine didn't take the idea of people talking in tongues quite seriously). The people were obviously materially poor (literally so: the childrens' clothes were ragged) but seemed pretty healthy and reasonably happy and pretty friendly, curious rather than jealous, though not obtrusively so.
Walked to a nearby extra jar site - the one intact jar had been almost entirely overgrown, so hacked some of the growth away - uncovering a scorpion in the process (my first scorpion!). Another jar had been converted into a chicken coop by the locals a couple of years previously by hacking a door into its side. And the others were shattered.
And ho for dinner. Sat in the chief's kitchen (a separate building; with a massive stone fireplace with two hobs for the pig and chicken corn food, and a humble little fire in the middle of the floor for the human food. No chimneys, alas. I went outside to have fresh air to smoke my cigarette - or at least, to stay at the same level of carbon inhalation). Talked with the chief and a couple of the head villagers via the guide as translator. The Hmong language seems rather convoluted - anything we said in 30 words was translated into 300 words. They weren't interested in discussing politics or the war that didn't happen, but were very interested in our marital status and in the marriage customs of the west (apparently, in Denmark, they cut the socks off the groom at the end of the night with scissors - a hazardous enterprise after a drunken night). In Hmong custom, a young man is expected to wait outside his intended's door until she decides to join him; he can't meet her inside - which, again, is a rather uncomfortable tradition in the rainy season.
And talked and talked away, slowly via translator, and were bloody starving by the time we moved into the next house, the diningroom-cum-bedroom (a table, benches, a cupboard, and a double bed which myself and Marianne would have to share - again, wooden boards covered by a very thin straw mat). It was 10; we hadn't eaten since a sandwich at lunch, and had had a fair amount of walking meanwhile. So I was well looking forward to the food. It was served in a communal, help-yourself style. Big bowls of rice - fine. Big bowls of chicken soup - fine. Big bowl of - what the hell was that? It looked like a demon's claw, surrounded by lumps of gristle; greenish wrinkled skin, long pointed nails... boiled chicken claw, apparently. I suddenly remembered the chicken that had become my best friend while we were waiting for the guide to reappear before dinner - a most affectionate one, which happily walked all over my bags and feet and squeezed behind my back when the chief's wife came striding up. Like a traitor, I had let her catch the bird. Oh dear. So I avoided that plate and the assorted gristly bits of meat around it, and went for rice with chicken soup. Until - tilting a bit too much into my bowl - I uncovered the executed and boiled Head of a Chicken. Mouth agape, tongue sticking out, I looked into the accusing boiled eyes of my friend.
Well, at least the rice whisky was good. Or if not good, at least it helped me sleep on that bed. Marianne and the guide wimped out after a couple of polite mouthfuls. I, however, impressed the hell out of them by knocking back 4 glasses during the toasts and thanks. And I snoozed through the hens and pigs scuttling around the wooden bed quite happily that night - until they woke me at 7 for the next happy day of trekking.
Well, I wasn't exactly hungover, but wasn't exactly in the best of form either. And this day was looking pretty damp, opposed to the previous day's sun. And I was pretty hungry, and we were up at the wrong time for breakfast, and apparently going to start walking anyway - with no food. And the guide was still asking for directions as we started walking, since we were taking a route he hadn't tried before. The omens were not good.
The start wasn't too bad - cultivated lands, paths leading between fields, a couple of streams to hop across but nothing too bad. But then the guide paused and yelped and started hitting his feet frantically. Leeches. And looking down, I saw two nasty little buggers poised on the top of my wellies, blindly waving about, seeking my flesh.. I shrieked and kicked my boot off, and realised - too late - that putting my socked foot down was an Even Worse Idea - and hopped over and started hitting my welly with a twig. The guide, meanwhile, had fled up the path and was yelling at us to follow him - don't stop - keep moving.. but I needed Urgently to deleech my boot before I could replace it. Finally got them off (difficult: as soon as you detatch one end, the other has refastened) and ran after them.. uphill for several minutes - and found the others perched on a couple of small stones. Any time you stop in the grass, the leeches come swarming, the guide explained - and sure enough, there were about half a dozen bloodsuckers on the non-deleeched boot and, even worse, on my sock, trying to get through to my flesh. Marianne who, being Danish and Organised, had not only got Proper Hiking Boots (instead of wellies bought in the market the previous day), but also Proper Hiking Socks - two pairs of them, mind you - was horrified to find that a leech had managed to penetrate to her skin through the socks and all. In spite of my open top cheap wellies, cheap thin socks and legs mostly bare with my shorts, I was still unscathed. But we still weren't out. So on for another long run, uphill all the way again, trying to get through the leeched area as quickly as possible - and I could feel the energy draining from my body as we skidded on muddy paths and splashed through streams, three hours into a hell of an exertion trek and still no breakfast and pursued by hordes of ravenous leeches... Stopped at a couple of points where there was relatively high ground to scrape them off; I picked up one bite but no more, though I removed a couple of dozen. Actually, in retrospect, we could probably have walked it without much damage, but our guide was seriously phobic about the leeches, tending to screech and wallop with a twig whenever he saw one, which didn't exactly inspire us to a positive reaction towards the repulsive slimy little brutes. So we ran - or rather, half walked, half slipped - rapidly for a long time, and by the time we got to the non-leech area, were thoroughly exhausted. And still a long way to go. And still no food. Our guide found a cucumber growing in a field, so we split that, but it's not exactly high-energy food. And on: wading through fast streams along narrow gulley, balancing on trees laid across swamps and rivers, to another Hmong village. Bigger than the one of the previous night, and with a particularly attractive feature - a chicken coop raised on stilts, using bombshells for the stilts. (They use bombshells for everything here - pig troughs, hearthstones, bridges, flowerpots. Wonderfully multifunctional things, bombs - far more so than you'd expect).
Anyway, no food in that village either. And walked on. My wellies were by now proving to be a mixed blessing - the blisters I'd formed wearing sandals the previous day weren't being further chafed; it was great not to have to lug them through the whole trip (at 1.50 a pair, just buy and discard); they were great in mud and water; but definitely Not the most comfortable for long walking, and after almost four hours, were proving to be pretty uncomfortable. And, as the path widened, we saw a blue Volga in front of us. The taxi. Halleluiah. Picked up a bunch of bananas as we drove to the restaurant and ate them as happily as a troupe of apes.
Anyway, enough typing already. Went to some hot springs - not remotely like Bath; more like a rather nasty bathroom with hot running water which you could have a bath in (yes, that's normal to you. Not here.); the springs themselves were just a blue lake, bubbling slightly at one end - but yes, it was damn nice to soak after that trip. Went to a cave where 300 villagers were killed by the americans - just a cave, though you could picture the panic as they sheltered and the rocket exploded among them. And back to Phonsavvet. Had planned to go further east today, to some major tunnels of the Pathet Lao - but the bus left early, for a wonder, so found a plane going to Vientiane instead and here I am. Will drop my passport at the Vietnamese embassy tomorrow, and on north again to Vang Vien tomorrow I think - it's meant to be a good spot for tubing and caving.