If you haven’t read the last post, let me give you a quick update. From the previous post, I started our travel diaries to South East Asia in 2011. It was started with how we got our way to Luang Prabang and how amazing this city is in terms of beautiful architecture, natural beauty and above of all, the amazing life of Buddhist monks in the city, their daily life and early morning rituals.
Luang Prabang is amazing and even though we had 4 full days there, we definitely think that we could stay much longer. Our days were starting really early when monks were marching down the streets in their vibrant tangerine robes, followed by a visit to the local fresh produce market in town. The next activity of the day was traveling to small villages in short driving distances to Luang Prabang to visit the real life of Lao people out of big cities.
I’ve dedicated this post to the amazing Lao people living in the rural areas of Laos.
Lao Rural Life:
Vising off the beaten track and especially remote and rural area of any country that we visit, is always the highest priority. It’s where you see the real authentic lifestyle, where people are in their original elements and in the closest form to where their ancestors ever lived even though it’s changing rapidly. The other thing I love personally about it, is witnessing how resourceful and organic is their way of life comparing to the cities in the same country. How we’ve all been used to be an excellent craftsmen, carpenters, weavers, farmers and could make things from scratch. How little we need to build our own shelter with basic material around us and how we overcomplicated things and call the nice way of doing it organic nowadays!! And how much we consume and own things which are not even necessary to live comfortably or even make us happy. Because of all these, and how it forces us to think again about our lifestyles choices, rural areas are always on top of our list.
Over the course of 4 days, we visited at least 10 villages in the driving distance from Luang Prabang. We normally book a car with a local driver to drive us around and it saves us a lot of time and allow us to visit as much as possible. A nice local patient driver can also function as a translator as well of course if he can speaks at least a little bit of English.
We’ve been to Laos in the spring time and although morning breeze was great but by lunch time and especially in the afternoon, the heat and humidity was reaching its maximum. All along the way in between villages, the only cold drink available to buy was always Lao beer and the only size available was 1 liter bottles. So for the whole four days, I can certainly say that we were drunk from 11 am till late in the afternoon just to keep ourselves hydrated 🙂
Being nice, gentle and calm was a general theme for every single individual that we met in Laos. Going through the war not that long ago and, being one of the poorest countries in SE Asia, there’s a great sense of calmness in every single community that we visited. Every individual is supporting the community and we’ve hardly even seen one street fight even in the hustle and bustle of the big cities market.
Rural Artisans:
One of the facts that surprised me the most about the Lao villages was the number of artisans in each village and how many different types of arts and craft , Lao people are expert in. We are not talking about villages that are staged for sustainable tourism that locals are trying to show case their tribe or region arts to tourism. This is just about a normal slow afternoon in the remote villages in Laos. Weaving baskets, weaving textile, embroidery, wood carving and a lot more using basic and ancient tools were full on in every single village we visited. Let’s have a look at some of them.
Lao Children:
Ahh my god!! We just loved every single child that we’ve seen in Laos and I’m not exaggerating! They were the most polite, gentle and kind kids that you can ever ask for. Let me give you an example. It probably happened to you as well that you give a lolly or a chocolate to a well behaved kid and 90% of time they forgot to say thanks and their parent keep telling them, are you sure you haven’t forgot anything and finally they say Thank youuuu while feeling shy and ran away to have their lolly in peace? Well it won’t happen in Laos. I’m talking about as remote as some one can get in Laos. We normally pack some school materials like pencils, erasers, notebook and some lolly when visiting areas with less amenities on offer to give to kids. In Laos if we were seeing a group of kids, the older ones always pass on lolly to the younger ones and divide the school supplies between themselves without any drama and thank us politely for that. They were the sweetest even if nothing was on offer. Above of all, they were the cutest looking kids ever.
One of the greatest aspects of the children’s life in the rural Laos was their extensive access to the school and education. We’ve been to the poorest and the most remote villages and yet all the kids were at school during the day and help parents in the farm or with the stock in the afternoon. I know that there are some families that they can not still afford to send all their children to school but considering the economical situations in most of the villages we visited, it was amazing to see there were schools in every single village.
It would be naïve to ignore the level of poverty in Laos. There are some obvious problems which we will get to in the next posts. In terms of education, lots of poorer families, send some of their boys to the monasteries to have education for free as they can not afford to send all their children to school but I still believe the access to the school and education in Laos was way better than we imagined before getting there.
In the next post, we’ll travel north to get to the less seen part of Laos and visit the hill tribes living in the golden triangle between China, Thailand and Laos and talk about the golden triangle a little bit more. Till then take care and enjoy some more photos of the Lao children below.
