World of Weaving and Bamboo

There are three surefire ways to tell where you are in Southeast Asia with a single glance: the tuk tuks, the boats and the night markets.

Luang Prabang, the largest city in northern Laos, provides a plethora of all three. The city is a textbook presentation of French colonization’s influence on a vastly undeveloped country– I fly in over small wooden houses sprawled along dirt roads, each lit by a single fluorescent beam.

The city center, however, is different: delicate double-story row houses boasting blue shutters and French doors line the main street. Flowers and vines burst from gardens along twisting alleys. Women and children hawk fruit smoothies from dozens upon dozens of stands between French bakeries (apple cake and brownies!) and backpacker central. Temples gleam in the sun behind white stone walls.

And yet, the country’s more traditional heart heralds form every place I look. Girls walk to school in universal uniforms: a black skirt with a single white stripe. Long, slender boats made for distance travel in a land-locked country crowd the banks of the Mekong and the Nam Ou rivers where they embrace the city. Striped tuk tuks rattle past old, polished Mercedes parked in front of riverside boutique hotels. And the night market overflows with handicrafts- traditional embroidery and weaving sit next to wooden carvings, silver rings, bracelets and the obligatory scorpion-and-cobra-stuffed rice wine, presenting an awe-inspiring marriage of talent and tradition.

I quickly discover the place I’ve booked for my first night in LP is the epitome of a backpackers’ party hostel. I’ve found that I do truly enjoy having people to share experiences with, despite giving up the flexibility that comes with travelling alone. However, waking up to drunk Europeans doing the deed in the bed next to me takes the concept a tad too far.

I move across the street the next morning, connecting with a Spanish and French trio. With Spanish as our common language, my brain gets a solid workout over the next two days. Together we rent motorbikes and ride out to Kwangsi Falls, a rushing ice-green drop and subsequent cascade overflowing with monsoon waters. We climb to the top and descend hundreds of stairs, laughing at Europeans in bikinis next to Chinese girls in long white sundresses. We watch sun bears snooze in their sanctuary. We swerve to avoid water buffalo as they plod up the street and we pull to the roadside to look down over LP from a high winding mountain pass.

We pile into longboats to head up the wide, lazy Mekong and pass young monks as they set off bottle rockets by the water’s edge, running and screaming in glee. We watch mahouts bathe their elephants, standing upright as the animals dip deep into mineral pools. We duck into side alleys for dinner, filling two-dollar bowls from sprawling buffets as thunderstorms crack, shattering the skies, shaking buildings and sending deluges to swamp the street surrounding us.

I head further north for the second half of my stay, piling into a minibus to rattle three hours through twisting mountain roads to the small town of Nong Khiaw. (Multiple dams have recently been built on the river running from Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang, privatizing travel in an area that historically provided transport between the two cities.)

I continue an hour further up the Nam Ou with Sharon and Phil, an Aussie couple I’ve met on the Mini-bus journey. We crouch on narrow benches as our longboat navigates the passage, twisting between rocks and rapids and lazier patches until we arrive in Muang Ngoi. The little town of 800 people sits on a raised bank, nestled amongst massive peaks, overlooking the Nam Ou until it disappears around bends in either direction. A small temple sits at the near end of the main street (the only street), a deeply-rutted dirt lane running parallel to the river. Small restaurants and guesthouses line the street, gardens adorned with artillery shells collected from American bombardment during the war as supply paths to northern Vietnam were bombed. Chickens and ducks squack and scatter in every direction.

The town is simple. Life flows at an easy, carefree pace. For an afternoon we simply relax, watching water pass below and disappear around the bend from hammocks strung along our bungalow porches.

The next day, Sharon, Phil and I leave town for a two-day trek with a guide named Vita, entering a world of sticky rice and bamboo. We follow a small road into a valley behind Muang Ngoi, full of rice fields in their prime, surrounded by bamboo fences protecting crops from hungry cows.

We step into the mouth of a cave that provided refuge for hundreds of people during the Vietnam war– for 12 years, the cavern’s underground river ensured their survival by providing water, prawns and fish. A low, narrow entrance opens onto a labyrinth of passages, still marked with divots where bedposts rested.

Rice fields turn to bamboo jungle as Vita leads us through unmarked trails, following seasonal streams and old tracks before turning up into the mountains, climbing close to three thousand feet to a tiny mountaintop village. Along the way, Vita teaches us about rice: he points out different varieties, squeezing open young black kernels to show us their milky insides and snagging bunches of golden strands from which we munch. He points out little things– a hydrophilic leaf upon which water gathers into pearl drops and plants to eat when a person is sick with Malaria.

Sometime in the morning a small, black, floppy-eared dog joins the party, trotting ahead of us and chasing lizards through the brush. Although Vita tries to send him home, he actually likes having him along– he’ll give us advance warning of any snakes we may encounter.

Stream crossings reveal tall, slender foot bridges built from bamboo stilts and woven stakes, and low, sturdy bridges supported by woven bamboo rounds filled with rocks. Occasionally we find miniature bamboo dams providing hydroelectricity– just enough to power a light or small TV for a family.

When we arrive at the mountain top village, just before dusk, we discover the true breadth of the plant’s versatility and our hosts’ ingenuity. Houses are constructed of woven bamboo, as are chicken coops and a two-room schoolhouse. Bamboo fences lashed together with hundreds of slender bamboo ties protect small vegetable patches from chickens, pigs and dogs running amok. Slender bamboo coops shelter young tobacco plants. Bamboo baskets of various shapes and sizes hold sticky rice, dry chilies under the sun and scatter rice for pigs. Woven bamboo tokens invite good spirits to visit rice fields and warn visitors from houses with bad spirits. Massive bamboo contraptions pound dried rice from its shell while bamboo baskets three meters tall hold a year’s supply of grain for a family. Thick bamboo stalks are used to store bamboo worms by the kilo, to be sold or eaten by the village chief at a later date. Bamboo cradles hang from bamboo sunshades.

The modern world has just begun to touch the village. A recently built “road” consists of a rocky mountain path navigable by a very talented motorbike driver (with an air pump for good measure). Perhaps a third of the village’s houses boast a solar panel and satellite dish. And, home-made guns resembling two-meter muskets hang just inside doorways; apparently residents do also hunt to supplement their diet.

That night, looking out from the cliff behind our hosts’ house, I see Orion for the first time since leaving home.

The following morning I wake to enraged scolding from the village chief’s wife as she chases a puppy who’s apparently developed a taste for chicken. The puppy, not much larger than the chicken itself, spends the next fifteen minutes chowing down as he snarls away his brothers and sisters. Belly bulging, he waddles over to settle next to a doorstep and promptly pukes up half of his hard-won meal.

We begin our walk downward after watching the beginning races and other festivities planned for National Teachers’ Day. A complication occurs half way into our day when we encounter downed bamboo on the path, left to rot instead of being burned. While Sharon and Phil escape unscathed, I find myself faced with the unhappy task of navigating a swarm of very large, very angry hornets. Six stings later, I decide carrying an epi-pen in the future isn’t a half-bad idea.

Our final day in the area we journey upriver once more to visit Shop Jam, a small weaving village. Hundreds upon hundreds of scarves and temple sashes flutter in the breeze in front of handmade looms, where delicate bamboo rods and quick fingers make easy work of intricate embroidery. A small white kitten finds a paradise in threads and half-finished scarves hung at the village’s far end.

The three of us return to Luang Prabang on our final morning and part ways in the afternoon. I take a final stroll through the night market, and forty minutes later, my plane lifts off for Hanoi.