Over the Mountaims to Phonsavan

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Day 6: Phonsavan

Meals included: 1 breakfast

Activities:

​After breakfast we take with us our spirit of adventure and travel on our private bus to remote Xieng Khuang Province, an area that was devastated by American bombing between 1964 and 1973. The high altitude means that the weather will be relatively cool. We visit the province's old capital of Muang Khun that was largely destroyed in the bombing raids, as well as the nearby villages, home to the Hmong hill tribe who have an interesting local culture and a colourful history. The Hmong people wear distinctive costumes and live at high altitudes. We spend the night in a basic hotel in the small town of Phonsavan, which is the province's current capital.

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Our small group of travelers boarded our bus this morning At 8:00 am and got under way.  We will be driving most of the day up and over the high mountains in Northern Laos.  We were advised last night to keep our motion sickness medication handy as the roads would be quite twisty, and they are.  There are scant guard rails and narrow shoulders.  We have snaked through thatched hut villages that cling to the narrow shoulders hanging over the deep valleys like barnacles on the side of a great winding serpent.  

Children and pedestrians play and walk precariously on the only flat surface...the highway where tour buses, farm trucks, motor bikes and bicycles zip along at crazy speeds.

 Earlier in the morning, we rose up through the clouds until the mist was beneath us forming icitua sea of clouds between the mountains.  By 11:00 the clouds has mostly  burnt off leaving a haze off residual moisture and smoke from morning wood fires and cooking.  Farming and logging sustain the locals, although the mountains are so steep, one wonders how they hang on to the earth as they garden.

Unlike home, the vegetation seems static as our elevation changes.  There are no oak then pine forests to mark our climb.  We estimate that we are at 4-5,000 feet as we look out from high vistas.

Power poles line the road so the cliff hanger villages have access to power.  Few homes have any appliances that might need electricity.  Others may use it for a light bulb.  Televisions are more prevalent than refrigerators.  Our Guide Tui, says he pays about $7.00 a month for power because he has only a few appliances.  Petrol runs about $1.20 a litre, about $4.00 a gallon.  A new small motorcycle costs about $700 which we thought was pretty inexpensive, but Tui said they are cheaply made and breakdown.  This is his main mode of transportation.  

Yesterday, when we rode on the tour bus out to the water fall for a hike and a swim, I asked him if he brought his family out here.  "No," he said because only his wife and two of his children fit on his motorcycle.  He said when the children can walk or ride bikes, then they might come as a family.  Most marriages in Laos are arranged.  Unlike some of the Pacific Island countries when a man and woman marry and the woman goes to love with her husband and husbands family, the man moves to his wife's family.  Then if both sets of parents are living and there are many siblings to help the elders, every three years the couple and their young children will alternate between families.

Education in Laos is "compulsory" until a child is eleven years old.  No one however enforces this and many children younger than eleven do not go to school, particularly in the mountains.  Forty percent of the people are illiterate, most semi-literate.  The country lacks educated workers and teachers to properly educate the students.

Teachers are often recruited to teach in remote areas if they have a high school diploma. Tui explained that in Laos teachers make about $35.00 a month, policemen about $100, bankers and pilots are probably the best paid $200-300 a month, with the exception of the tax collectors who are very well paid.  I'm not altogether sure whether the tax collectors are well paid by the government or whether they might be pocketing some of the tax collections for themselves.  Salaries are so low, families require many members to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

Young men and women in one province are employed digging a trench by hand shovels so that fiber optic cables can be laid.  Hard work!

Laos would be a difficult place to live.  The people are very enterprising and work hard to get ahead.  Some middle class merchants are emerging and in towns like Luang Prabang there were a noticeable number of shiney big SUVs. 

We stopped in a few places to use the toilet facilities as we climbed through the mountains.  Squat toilets are the norm here.

Before we left Australia, I thought this might be the case, so I bought myself a a little rubber silicone apparatus called a Go Girl, also known as a SheWee.  It's a wonderful innovation to allow women to discreetly stand and urinate.  Ladies, don't leave home for under developed countries without one.

All is Well With the Worrall Travel R's.