Laos Part 2-Ban Nadi

The first place we were going was a village called Ban Nadi, high in a mountain valley south of Phonsavanh. The drive there felt like a trip back in time. Little groups of thatched huts alternated with vast rice fields and forested mountains that peaked somewhere in the clouds beyond our view. We climbed steadily on a dirt road until we got above the treeline, where the only things to see were grass, ferns, the occasional water buffalo, and Buddhist shrines at prominent gravesites.

After breaking tree line we continued for another hour or so until we reached the valley where we would be working. It’s at the headwaters of the Nam Sane river (“Nam” is Lao for water). Growing rice is difficult at this altitude, so the rice fields have to be bigger than they would be at lower elevations to feed the people. The valley floor is the only flat area for miles around, so it’s an agricultural center for the region. Fourteen villages share the valley, and every square inch is built on, used as a vegetable garden, under rice cultivation, grazed, or some combination of these uses.

On arrival we met with the regional chief of the fourteen villages. For somebody whose home is being eyed by the government for development, he was a remarkable cheerful and helpful fellow. He designated villages for us to visit, people for us to talk with, and instructed the individual village chiefs to assist us with our work. I won’t bore you with the details of my work; suffice to say it involved a lot of walking around and looking at streams, talking to people about streams, and making sure I didn’t step on anything that could hurt me.

The most interesting part of my time in the Ban Nadi was integrating into village life. I had no choice; there aren’t any guest accommodations in these villages and Lao tradition is to show extreme hospitality to strangers. The chiefs decided that the best place for us to stay was with Ban Nadi’s chief ‘s home. According to Lao tradition that meant it was his responsibility to look after us, and he was a most gracious host. We stayed with him and his family (which included his wife and him, his inlaws, and an undetermined number of children that were in and out the whole time and never spoke to us) for four days, and while we there we were treated as part of the family. We at, slept, and socialized with them. The men of the family often accompanied us on our walks to the various streams in the area while the women prepared the food, fed whatever livestock the family had in their yard, and generally looked after the home. The meals invariably consisted mostly of sticky rice, but boiled or fermented vegetables, some spicy sauce, a clear chicken broth, or occasionally a bit of meat of some kind generally accompanied the rice.

The house was a typical rural Lao dwelling in construction and design, but larger than most others I saw. It was a rectangular plank hut with a thatched roof on stilts. It was essentially a one-room building but the two couples slept in little alcoves with bed sheets that could be drawn for privacy. People in rural Lao have little or no furniture, no heat or air conditioning, and no plumbing. They also eat with their hands from shared dishes. We had our meals seated on the floor on mats with the dishes of various foods spread around us.

Sleeping arrangements were equally Spartan. Each person has a thin straw mat that they roll out over the hard wooden floor. I slept on the floor the first night with the rest of the team, but the chief was clearly distressed by this. There was a single bed in the house. It was a simple raised platforrm with no mattress and was no more comfortable than the floor. Nevertheless it was clear that he thought that I, as the leader of the team, a guest in his house, and a “falang” (Westerner) should be sleeping on the bed. Even though I preferred to sleep on the floor with the rest of team, I risked offending him if I did not accept his offer. I slept on the bed because it was easier to graciously accept his offer than to insist on being treated equally to everyone else.

Most villagers in Ban Nadi and the surrounding villages own tiny hydroelectric units that they stick in local streams. They look vaguely like small outboard motors. These units typically generate enough power to run a couple of low-wattage light bulbs or maybe a DVD player at night (provided the streams are running fast enough to turn the propellers. If there's no water, there's no electricity. Most evening socializing is still done by firelight. Just like in a campsite, the fire tends to be the focus of activity. With no TVs, radios, or computers there isn't much to do at night, so people generally talk a bit after dinner, the men might pass around the lao lao (Lao moonshine), and then they call it a night.

We had full schedules while in Ban Nadi so most nights I turned in early, but one night I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up talking with the chief’s inlaws. Between answering questions about what Australia and the US are like and why I’m not married already I took my first good look at the hearth by the light of the single light bulb. It was a cement block poured into the floor with a metal tripod embedded in it. As I looked closer I realized the tripod was made of discarded artillery shells. My hosts informed me that artillery shells are the preferred material for hearth stands in Laos because the holes in the shell casing are perfect for holding meat on a spit over a fire. That way you can cook rice in a pot on the tripod and roast meat on spits at the same time. It essentially turns a campfire into a multi-burner range stove. I was intrigued by the ingenuity of the concept, and heartened by the idea that something originally designed to kill people had been turned into something that now makes peoples lives better across the country. That night just as I was drifting off to sleep a sudden rumble shook the house. The father-in-law saw the startled look on my face from across the room and simply said “bomb” through a snaggle-toothed grin and then chuckled at his wide-eyed falang friend trying to sleep.

The next morning we got up early for our trip to Haiter, but before we left we had a hearty breakfast of sticky rice, eggs, and various leftover chicken parts. While some of the team were gone to buy the final supplies, the father-in-law brought out a tiny round metal canister and set it in front of me and began to chatter away in Laotian. The object was a cluster bomblet, one of the most feared weapons of the Vietnam war. Planes dropped cluster bombs over enemy positions and the bombs opened mid-flight, broadcasting dozens of baseball sized bomblets over the target area. Each bomblet was filled with a handful of explosives and bunches of ball bearing-like shot. As I understand it they weren't much use against machines but were grotesquely efficient at punching holes in people. According to one of the bomb-clearing organizations working in Laos they were responsible for more deaths during the war than any other munition, and continue to be particularly dangerous today because there are so many of them remaining in the landscape. They are the perfect size and shape to either go unnoticed near a house or school, or be picked up by an unsuspecting child. Anyway, the father in law explained that if you can snap the fins off the top and remove the explosive and primer without killing yourself, you’re left with a round metal vessel a little larger than a man’s fist. Unscrew the cap, fill the inside with kerosene or fuel oil, screw the cap back on and stuff a bit of cotton in the primer hole and you’ve got yourself a portable, compact, nearly indestructible oil lamp. Apparently these things light homes throughout rural northern Laos today. Shortly afterward the rest of the team arrived from the market and it was time to meet the security team that would escort us south to Haiter.

Photos:

1. The valley where we stayed.

2. A villager demostrates a particular kind of fish trap called a sohn and says "The fish go in here!"

3. The chief of Ban Nadi and me.

4. The chief's house.

5. A mini hydroelectric generator.

6. The hearth in the chief's house. Note the three artillery shells used as a cooking stand.

7. The oil lamp the chief's father-in-law made from a cluster bomblet.

Cairns

In late January we took a trip over east to Cairns. Cairns is a busy place by Aussie standards. It has stoplights and a road with more than two lanes which is more than enough to qualify as a major city in much of the country. It's also the northernmost point of true civilization on Australia's East Coast. There is a good road north to Port Douglas, but Port Douglas is little more than a crossroads. The area between Cairns and Port Douglas is noted for its stunning and treacherous coastline. I know of at least two 50+ ft yachts that were wrecked there just while I was in Australia. For geography and ecology buffs, its also the only place on Earth where two United Nations World Heritage Areas occur adjacent to each other. North of Port Douglas most places are easier to get to by bush plane than any other means. Up there you're closer to Papua New Guinea than most of the rest of Australia anyway, so why not fly?

Cairns was Angel's introduction to the Oz experience. We had planned to dive the Great Barrier Reef, but when I got to Cairns and collected her from the airport the prospects for our GBR dive looked grim. Queensland had been having record-setting rainfall for the preceding month, and the forecast was for more of the same. Queenslanders have a reputation around the rest of the continent for being crazy and part of that reputation apparently comes from their penchant for disregarding personal danger. In case your were wondering, Steve Irwin was a Queenslander. Lately the Queensland youths had taken to swimming in the flooded roadside ditches, which had led to several of them being stuffed irretriavably into culverts where they ulitmately drowned. It seemed like the whole place was under a veneer of hot chocolate-colored mud and and runoff, which hardly makes one want to don a mask and fins to go have a dip.

We figured that since it was raining, why not go see the rainforest? The Daintree rainforest is the oldest rainforest on Earth and sits between the Pacific and the mountains north of Cairns. It's truly unique, with lots of plants that occur nowhere else on the planet, including giant tree ferns that can reach 20 or 30 feet tall. It's the kind of place that you almost expect to find dinosaurs still walking around. The vegetation is so thick that in some places instead of walking on the ground you are actually walking on a solid mat of roots growing along the surface of the ground. The forest floor is in a perpetual twilight because very little light penetrates to ground level, and even during thunderstorms you often don't get wet because the rain doesn't get through the canopy. It's a good idea to stay on the path too, because if the excessively thorny plants don't cut you to shreds, there's always the possiblity that an irritable cassowary could kick your head in. The place was visually stunning, but the sounds of the forest were even more impressive. Foresters say that healthy forests are noisy places, but the Daintree exemplifies this concept to the extreme. The insects were so loud that at times we had to raise our voices just to converse even when we were standing right next to each other.

The next day we continued to make the best of the soggy situation and headed a couple hundred kilometers south to Tully. It's the wettest place in Australia and one of the few spots in the country outside Tasmania where whitewater paddling is possible on a regular basis. The record rains had long maxed out the reservoirs upstream of the town so the Tully river was raging. We geared up, hooked up with our guide and a group of like-minded adventurers and headed up to the top of the Tully Gorge. The road is cut into the south sided of the canyon well above the river, but you can't see the river from the road because the sides of the canyon are so steep and the vegetation so thick. The only hint of its existence is the constant roar from below and the numerous waterfalls on the opposite canyon wall that all seem to headed to roughly the same place below.

I don't have any photos of our trip down the Tully for several reasons. Taking a camera with us would have been comically stupid. The outfitter wanted a small fortune for the photos they took, and they weren't that good. Most important, as a member of the whitewater kayaking fraternity I have a natural aversion to rafts. Admitting in writing that I "pushed rubber" down a perfectly good Class IV river is bad enough; offering photographic evidence of the deed would be heretical.

My personal inclination toward hard-hulled whitewater transport notwithstanding, it was a hoot. We had six plus the guide in our boat. In the bow were two guys from the UK who were clueless but affable and physically able. They were useful as long as you could keep them paddling together and in the right direction. Angel and I were mid-boat until mid-day when we exchanged with the guys from the UK. Behind us were two blue jean clad Koreans who were utterly useless except as ballast and entertainment. The guide perched on the stern where he did an admirable job of keeping us safe from the river and our raftmates.

The guide's name was Stubby, and we had a lot in common. He also preferred kayaking to rafting on his time off and had competed internationally in whitewater slalom. We traded kayaking stories and he told us about the geology and ecology of the of the river. He even had a boogey-man type yarn about a primitive Aboriginal tribe that supposedly practices cannibalism like some of the Papua New Guinean tribes do to this day. This tribe is supposedly located far up in the remotest parts of the Great Dividing Range where the Tully River originates. His tale included supposed confirmation of the tribe's existence by SAS soldiers who had sighted tribe members while conducting survival training in the area. Even if the cannibal Aboriginal tribe only existed in the guide's imagination, it added some local flavor to the trip.

Altogether the trip down the river took about five hours and we covered roughly ten kilometers of the rivers. There were several Class IV rapids and one Class V with enough strainers, rock seives, and hydraulics to make it interesting. Although the road follows the river the whole way, the steepness of the gorge, low hanging mist, and forested shores made the place feel more pristine than it actually was. We had a great time and I swam some of the rapids after we paddled them for grins. If you're into that sort of thing and are in the neghborhood I'd recommend a trip on the Tully.

Considering the record-setting rainfall Queensland had been having I was beginning to think that our reef trip was going to be a washout. The dive company had also called to tell us the boat we had scheduled was in dry dock for emergency repairs, which deepened my concern that the three-day dive trip we had planned was not going to pan out. But the company was able to fit us in on their other boat and the day we were due to depart dawned bright and sunny, so we grabbed our gear and trod down the waterfront about a kilometer or so to the harbor.

Plenty of high-speed catamarans are available to get divers out to the reef and back. For several hundred dollars you and about three hundred new friends can pack onto one of these air conditioned espresso bar toting rocket barges and get the outer reef in such sanitized comfort that you'd hardly know you were at sea at all until you jumped over the side. Then if you could manage to navigate out of the mass of pasty white tourist blubber around you, between the forest of legs and swim fins you might actually see something. Angel and I wanted a more relaxed experience that focused more on diving than caffeine and horsepower, so we chartered a sailboat that carried only fifteen or so people including crew. The cleintele was very cosmopolitan and included two Japanese, a couple from Spain, a very entertaining girl from Milan, a couple from Norway, two British guys, and us.

There were five crew, and they were as interesting as the passengers. J.P. was the skipper-he looked about my age but had leathery skin from a life on the water, several earrings, a handful of tattoos, and an obsession with cricket. Put a frilly shirt on him and a sword in his hand and he would have looked at home on the set of "Pirates of the Caribbean". Richard was the slightly older owner of the vessel, but he left the running of the operation to J.P. and spent most of the three days tinkering in the engine room. I think I only saw him once when he did not have grease smeared over much of his hands, arms, face, or torso. He was a pleasant guy, I just think he preferred the smell of diesel fumes to the company of his customers. The two divemasters were Jason and Aumeneh. Jason was British and had done the job long enough to be tired of it, although he tried to hide his contempt for tourists. Aumeneh never said much at all. Then there was Crystal-the cook and most colorful of the lot. She was half Philipino, half Aussie and showed up to the boat dressed in a green and yellow bikini and Australian flag. She kept us well fed and even cooked special onion-free dishes for Angel. Crystal took her role as cook seriously, but after dinner she was the first to have a drink and the last to quit. It made for some interesting late night conversations on the rear deck.

We got a total of five dives and tons of snorkeling in at the reef, all at a reef called Thetford. It's nearly due east from Cairns and had enough other dive sites on it that we could have dived twice as many places just on Thetford without getting bored. A word about the Great Barrier Reef-I had a mental image of a ribbon-shaped reef stretching the length of the coast with a gap or two here and there. In reality the reef is more spread out than I had envisioned. It's better thought of as a series of individual reefs than as the living monolith I had imagined. The other surprising thing about the reef is its size. On a map of the entire Great Barrier Reef the area we were in is little more than a dot, but when you are actually looking at it on the water the dot on the map actually stretches nearly to the horizon. You have to be there in person to understand how massive it is in real life.

Under the surface the Great Barrier Reef is even more outsized. Individual corals on the Great Barrier Reef can be as big as some entire reefs I've dived in the Caribbean. All the fame and pressure the Great Barrier Reef has been subjected to over the years notwithstanding, I think that you could spend a lifetime diving the reef and still find new wonderful things all through that time just because the place is so big.

The diving was mediocre by Great Barrier Reef standards due to sub-par visibility, but even under those conditions we enjoyed it thoroughly. There were more damselfish, parrotfish, and angelfish than I could count. We saw a Napolean Maori wrasse that was probably 2/3 as big as us, plus whitetip reef sharks, sea turtles, stingrays, morays, and

even a sea snake. We found Nemo, even though we're told he's a lot scarcer than he used to be as collectors have been pursuing him relentlessly since his movie debut. The fish are used to divers so they hung around long enough for us to get a good look and snap a few photos. We even had a giant trevally that loved to eat watermelon rind living under the boat for most of our time on the reef. Although dead coral is common now, what remains is stunning and after every dive our first words upon surfacing were "Did you see....". We've both wanted to dive the Great Barrier Reef since we were kids and we agree it was well worth the wait.

After we got back we wanted a day of dry activities so we took a drive up to the Atherton Tablelands, which is the plateau on the west side of the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing Range hugs the east coast of the continent; they're like the Appalachians of Australia. It was very relaxing. While we were there we did some local wildlife spotting (although we didn't get to see a crocodile or a platypus, our main targets), checked out a four-century old fig tree that's so big it creates its own microclimate, and ate at a roadside lunch stand named after Australia's most common vermin. Between all that we even found time to be breathalized by an overzealous cop, take in some great views of the coast from the front of the range, and nearly make road pizza out of a bandicoot.

The next two days we continued packing in as many activities as we could. We went fishing on the Cairns estuary with a colorful Scottish guide, whom Angel cut down to size by asking if the grunts we were catching were intended as bait for real fish. We even went back to the Daintree and hopped on a crocodile spotting cruise where we got the rare treat of seeing a mother saltwater crocodile guarding her eggs. The guide didn't want any of us getting chomped so he only got us to within maybe ten feet of her, but that was still close enough to count her teeth and see how big she was.

Photos:

1. The Great Dividing Range meets the Pacific north of Cairns.
2. Walking on fig roots in the Daintree.

3. Palms in the Daintree. Each leaf was several feet long.

4. The Daintree's way of saying"Go Away". Would you touch this?
5. Looking back toward Cairns on the way to Thetford Reef.

6. Rum Runner 2, our boat for the reef trip.

7. Some of our boat mates for the trip.

8. A common coral on the reef, maybe Acropora?

9. Two giant clams. These things were everywhere, some up to about 4-5 ft long and with every color mantle imaginable.

10. Honeycomb cod. Aussies call groupers cod, which makes things really confusing if you know cod actually are.

11. Angel harasses a pineapple seacucumber. It felt like one of the those spiky rubber dog chew toys. We returned it to the bottom unharmed.

12. Another unidentified coral, maybe Porites?

13. Paddletail in a crevice in the reef.

14. Napolean Maori wrasse. Unfortunately this photo provides no scale or context but the fish was enormous.

15. Whitetip reef shark.

16. Movie of the giant trevally that lived under our boat. Look quick toward the middle and you'll see a jack crevalle too. (Caution: this file is 20 meg so it may take a while to open especially on slow connections).

17. Black anemonefish. Again its hard to tell sizes here but the anemone was over a foot in diameter.

18. Stream outside Yungaburra in the Atherton tablelands. When I heard there might be freshwater crocodiles in it I couldn't resist looking for them.

19. Trunk and aerial roots of the Curtain Fig. This tree is so massive the first branch meets the trunk over 70 feet above the ground.

20. The Termite Takeaway outside Yungaburra. They make a good roo burger.

21. Female saltwater crocodile. She was about nine feet long and closer than she looks in this picture.

Laos Part 4-Thathom and the Plain of Jars

After leaving Haiter we had one more set of villages to consult. It was about a seven hour drive from Haiter, which meant backtracking halfway to Phonsavanh, and then driving south for about six hours to Thathom, where we had our final meeting. The drive to and from Ban Nadi had been enjoyable; the drive to Thathom was depressing. We passed acre after acre of freshly logged and burnt forest. This was unsustainable slash and burn agriculture at its worst. The farmers in this area appear to have long ago exhausted the soils in the flat areas closest to the rivers, and are now forced to attempt rice cultivation on ever steeper mountainsides. Unfortunately the terrain is so unstable after it is cleared that the soil washes away before they can plant their crops. We saw many rivers and streams running red with eroded topsoil through clearcuts that had never had a single crop planted. The pace of deforestation was sobering. At one point the dust on the road was so thick from truck traffic that we couldn’t see more than a foot or two ahead of our vehicle, and as a result almost got into an accident with a Soviet-era troop transport that had been converted into a logging truck.

We got to Thathom in one piece and had our meetings over the following three days. When I came out of the building after the first of two meetings with the local fishermen I looked across the river and observed three bomb disposal technicians sweeping the lawn of the local primary school for ordinance. They each carried a five gallon bucket, a folding shovel, and a metal detector. I watched them for about five minutes, during which time I saw each one fill their buckets at least twice with chunks of suspect metal objects. They would fill the bucket, dump the contents in the back of a truck, and then return to work.

I was thinking about what it must be like being a kid in a place where simply playing in the schoolyard could be deadly when I heard popping sounds coming from the front of the building. I walked outside and saw our drivers shooting sparrows out of a tree across the road with an air rifle. They got two and stuffed them under front seat of our trucks. I didn’t see them again until the next morning when our drivers joined us on the back porch of the house where we were staying. We were cooking rice for breakfast over a campfire when they showed up and placed the now-plucked sparrows on the cooking grate. The birds were whole; the heads, feet, and internal organs still intact. After the birds had been on the fire long enough for the pin feathers to singe and the skin to turn black, the drivers removed and ate them. When they were finished the only remains I saw were beaks and a couple of bones. We left later that day for the drive back to Phonsavanh.

Our departure from Thathom marked the end of my field work in Laos. All that remained to do was to travel back to Vientiane and compile my notes. I felt like celebrating and I had learned earlier that our route back to Phonsavanh took us within a couple of mile of the Plain of Jars, which is a plateau outside Phonsavanh where giant jars carved from solid stone were placed by prehistoric tribes. It’s also a United Nations World Heritage-designated cultural site and probably the most photographed place in all of Laos. Several of my team had never been to their own country’s most famous landmark, so as a gesture of my appreciation for their hard work over the preceding week and a half I purchased everyone tickets to see the area. Not much is known about the jars, but archaeologists have dated them from sometime in the Iron Age. No one knows for sure what purpose they served, but the leading theory is that they were used as communal secondary tombs, where the bones of the deceased would be re-interred after exhumation from a prior tomb. What the significance of the second burial was is still a mystery. There are several locations around Laos where similar jars may be found, but the Plain of Jars has the largest concentration of stone jars in one place in Laos. According to the signs some of the jars were damaged when the Ho Chi Minh Trail was bombed during the Vietnam war. We did see some that had been cracked or split open, and some massive holes in the ground that were signposted as bomb craters, but most of the jars remained intact. Most were uncovered and lacked obvious decorations, but at least one had a carved lid and a few others had rough pictographs carved into their sides.

After taking in the sights we got back to Phonsavanh for a late lunch and attended a festival in town that evening. The next couple of days were taken up with travel back to Vientiane and rather monotonous work-related chores before heading back to Perth. Angel was a sight for sore eyes when I stepped off the plane. I was tired, but happy to have had the expeeince and to have made it back safely. I was particularly looking forward to visiting with Beth and Brian Versak, who had spent the preceding week with Angel and were due in from Melbourne later the same day.

Photos:

1. The Thathom school. The bomb disposal truck is visible to the right of the schoolyard.

2. The Plain of Jars.

3. A close-up of some of the jars.

Laos Part 3-Haiter

When I was planning the trip to Laos I was advised that I would need security for the trip to Haiter, but not to worry because it would be arranged by the villagers in Ban Nadi. Accordingly, I had left it to my interpreter to arrange and concerned myself with other logistical and technical issues. I retrospect I realize that I didn’t know what I to expect in terms of security at the time, but I do know that I was not expecting what showed up. Our muscle for the trip was four guys, probably about 18-20 years old, each toting ancient Chinese-made machine guns. They didn’t look particularly menacing, but they did look careless, and they spoke no English. It was not a comfortable feeling.

The team I was responsible for had swelled to thirteen people at this point, including two drivers that and our newly acquired muscle. We drove about 20 minutes south out of Ban Nadi until the the road ended. I instructed the drivers to meet us back there in two days' time. The drivers departed and I briefed the team on our objectives and on my expectations as far as safety was concerned. They guys packing the heat seemed to pay attention, but I was still nervous as we set off into the bush.

It turned out I had little reason to be concerned. Apart from wandering off the trail at times (I think in an attempt to find bush meat) and leaving the slower people behind, they were model team members. They were clearly not acquainted with the finer points of weapons safety but they walked with the safeties on and mostly avoided pointing their weapons at other people. Under the circumstances I couldn’t have reasonably expected better.

The walk was mostly downhill but through many twists an turns and several short steep inclines that required scrambling on all fours. The further down we went the hotter and more humid it got. It was tough going . By the time we stopped for lunch we had gotten through most of our water and we weren’t even halfway to Haiter. I filtered water from a nearby stream while the rest of the team prepared lunch. When I got back the muscle had made mats of banana leaves and laid the food out on them. Everything was left over and cold, but we were hungry and didn’t care. As I was serving myself some rice I noticed the regional power agency representative to my left gnawing on something odd-looking. I realized it was rooster’s head. He had fished it out of soup bowl and was chewing the comb off the top of the head. I looked down at the banana leaf where what used to be two chicken’s feet lay in front of him. He had stripped the skin off the feet, sucked the connective tissue out of the joints, and I’m not sure but it looked like he might have gnawed on one of the spurs for a while before giving up.

This experience illustrates the Lao attitude on food. I was ready for all sorts of weird gastronomic experiences and was fully prepared to be asked to eat things I wouldn’t feed to my dogs back home. But I had always assumed that this was because that type of food was all that was available. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not an issue of not being able to obtain or afford “good” food; everything on the leaves that day was free to the chicken head-eating government official. It wasn’t a matter of his being poor and therefore accustomed to sub-standard food either, because he was a relatively high ranking government official with a reasonably comfortable salary by Lao standards. There was plenty of “good” food available to this guy, but he was eating rooster combs and chicken gristle because he wanted to eat it. I don’t know about the rest of Asia but in Laos eating weird things isn’t a matter of survival, it’s a matter of tradition and preference.

They don’t waste much at all, but it’s not like they polish their plates at every meal either. In fact there were leftovers at every meal while I was in the countryside but they just re-serve uneaten food at the following meals until it’s eaten. What little material they consider unfit for human consumption they recycle as animal feed. I can’t recall seeing anything thrown away while I was there, but the Lao do not permit frugality to dominate their approach to food. They’ve worked out a system that is efficient without being draconian. My only advice to Western travelers in the Lao bush is to bring an open mind, plenty of snacks, and Immodium.

The trail to Haiter got steeper the closer we got. We walked around large patches of forest that the locals were burning to make way for new rice fields this season. When we finally got there, Haiter turned out to be far and away the most primitive place I saw in Laos. The only sources of domestic water were the Nam Sanh and an open bamboo pipe running down from the mountain. There were no toilet facilities at all, not even a designated latrine area, so you had to watch your step because of human and animal waste alike. We stayed with the village chief and his family as we had in Ban Nadi. His house was on stilts like the ones in Ban Nadi, which kept the living quarters out of the dust and filth from the free roaming livestock on the ground level. However, almost half the houses in the village were built on the ground and had dirt floors. There was no way to keep contaminated runoff out of these dwellings. Some of the women walked around half naked, and several children had not a stitch on. It was like something out of National Geographic. Thankfully we had no problems out of the Hmongs, but we got some pretty piercing stares from some of the residents. I found myself glad to have the muscle with us, and was relieved when we hiked out the next morning.

The way out of Haiter was just about all straight uphill. We took frequent breaks which afforded the locals in the team plenty of time to forage in the bushes. By the time we got back to the pick-up point they had filled 3 plastic bags full of edible flowers, and had snacked liberally on other fruits and berries along the way. They had also picked up some traditional medicinal plants with the aim of selling them later. Thankfully the trip finished without incident and we arrived back in Ban Nadi in time for dinner, which consisted of sticky rice and steamed flowers. The next day we would be leaving for good, so I really took time to enjoy the company of the chief and his family. They had shown us great hospitality over the preceding week, and I was a little sad to pack up my things and leave the next morning.

Photos:

1. The trail to Haiter.

2. A Lao-style trail lunch, and the site of the rooster head-chewing incident.

3. Overlooking the Nam Sane valley near Haiter. The haze is from deliberately set forest fires burning off camera to the right, below us.

4. Identifying fish caught by the locals for us in Haiter. After we identified them they were quickly cooked and eaten.

Laos Part 1-Vientiane and Phonsavanh

I haven't written at all until now about work, because really who wants to read about someone else's boring job? But in March ERM sent me to the People's Democratic Republic of Lao, or Laos as we know it. It was an unusual assignment to say the least, so I'm breaking with my heretofore reluctance to talk about work to give ya'll some of the highlights.

I have to admit to being more than a little apprehensive about the coming fortnight when I got on the plane in Perth. I was being sent to a mountainous region in Laos to basically act as a biological detective, figuring out as much as I could about the aquatic biology and habitat in the region as well as local fishing practices. Sounds like a peachy assignment right?

Maybe. The adventure and challenge aspects of it appealed to me but as I began my descent into Singapore for my first of two connections the reality of what I was about to attempt began to penetrate. First, there was the basic headache associated with getting there. You have to take three flights through three countries just to get to Vientiane, the Lao capital. Then it was another flight up to the mountains, a day's drive from the airport higher into the mountains, then another day's trek through higher mountains yet along a river where waterfalls have killed people as recently as last year, and that was just the first half of the trip. Suffice to say it was more than a walk around the corner, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On the way from Singapore to Bangkok I had time to ponder the unknowns surrounding my assignment. I couldn't speak one word of the language. I had never met the people I was going to work with (and on whom I would be nearly completely dependent. We had no accomodations arranged in the outlying areas we would be visiting because tradition dictates that travellers arrange accomodations in each village with the village chief on arrival. Even if you wanted to arrange things ahead of time there is no reliable way of contacting some of these places from the outside, so it doesn't matter. I was also going to be doing biological field work in an area where I knew exactly zero about the local flora and fauna, so if my local contacts weren't hotshots the team's professional credibility would be on shaky ground. Speaking figuratively I wasn't going to be off the edge of the map, but I'd be be very close.

One the way from Bangkok to Vientiane I considered that ignorance might might be a good thing, because what I did know was more frightening than what I didn't. Laos has the dubious distinction of having been bombed more intensely per capita through history than any other country on Earth. It is wedged between Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar (the former Burma), and Vietnam, and China isn't far to the north. All of its neighbors have at one point or another waged military campaigns in, over, or through Laos. A long history of home-grown conflict coupled with foreign interference on the southeast Asian penninsula by the USSR, China, French, and the US over two major wars has rendered unexploded ordinance shockingly common in Laos, and leftover bombs still kill people in the area I would be working in. I also knew that the Hmong ethnic group was active in the most remote village to which I would be traveling. They are armed and don't like the government very much, and we would have government officials with us.

Vientiane is a city with an identity crisis. Half of it is a crumbling relic of the fervent communist imperialism of the middle 1900's. This part looks as if an army of Soviet barracks builders with unlimited supplies of concrete built the entire city in about three weeks back in the 70's, then packed up and took off and nobody has even washed the buildings, let alone engage in any substantive maintenance since. It looks bad, and thanks to the open sewers on the roadside it smells worse. The other half is composed primarily of brightly colored, ornately decorated Buddhist temples which are cleaned fastidiously by the monks. The temples and monastaries are as vibrant as the rest of the city is dull, and far cleaner than the neighborhoods that surround them.

As you probably have gathered by now Vientiane lacks many of the conveniences you might expect to find in a western capital, but the place has no shortage of character. Laos' long history of foreign occupation means its capital has been home to expatriates from all over the world. As a result Vientiane has a surprisingly diverse selection of ethnic food, particulary along the Mekong riverfront. You can sit and have a German beer with a Chinese, French, Indian, or American-style dinner while overlooking a traditional Laotion food market against the backdrop of Thailand on the far shore. The fact that many of the same seats in the same food stalls that I and other consultants and travellers were in were occupied up until 20 0r 30 years ago mostly by spies and mercenaries only added to the mystique.

I'm also pleased to report that the omnipresent foreign influences in Vientiane do not appear to have overly diluted the indigenous Buddhist culture. You can't walk a block in any direction without encountering a shrine, temple, or monastery. Even though Laos is communist and fundamental communism officially discourages overt religious activity, monks in saffron robes walk the streets freely accepting alms. Ancient wooden bells chime from the temples throughout the day and monks chant prayers over loudspeakers from behind the monasterys' walls. Prayer flags are hung on the gates and fenceposts along main streets, and the temples and monastaries are open to the public during business hours. In a curious concession to modern culture, the monks have taken to chanting ancient prayers over bass-heavy beats from contemporary rap music. I guess the struggle to stay relevant is universal for religous orders around the world these days.

Some people are around, scurrying about on some errand or another, but Vientiane hardly feels like a national capital. Those people who are around get around mostly on teeny motorbikes or in a curious version of a taxi called a tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is best described as half motorbike, half wagon. It's got one front wheel and a bananna seat for the driver like a motorcycle, but the rear of the vehicle consists of two bench seats about four feet long over a pair of rear wheels. There is a tin roof over the back, and passengers climb in and out through the open back. You share the back with as many as eight other passengers and hold on to any handhold you can find for dear life. I would consider tuk-tuks absolute deathtraps except for the fact that I don't think they possess enough power to do any significant damage. Their engines only have one cylinder and the name comes from the tuk-tuk-tuk-sound they make as the single cylinder chugs them down the street.

I didn't have much time in Vientiane; my assingment was to have some brief meetings with government ministers and then get to the remote parts of the country where the real fun could begin. After a day of meetings and tuk-tuk rides, the next morning I caught a short flight to Phonsavanh. Phonsavanh is the gateway to Xieng Khouang province and rest of the wild part of northern Laos. It's the last place to get a decent meal or semi-warm shower. The pavement ends not far from the town's outskirts, and the bombs start showing up in earnest here. I saw them used as fence posts, signage, lanscaping elements of every description, and even support columns on the front of a building. At least the Laotians have a sense of humor about unexploded ordinance; in Phonsavanh two 500 lb bombs form the entrance of a restaurant appropriately named "Craters". After an uneventful evening in Phonsavanh, it was off to the untamed parts of Xieng Khouang the next morning.

Photos:

1. Gateway to a Buddhist temple in Vientiane.

2. Buddhist monks in Vientiane.

3. Dragon statue on the grounds of a monastary in Vientiane. Feeding the statue is supposed to bring good fortune; the little balls of rice visible on the statue's lower jaw have been left by observant Buddhists seeking divine favors.

4. Tuk-tuks.

5. Bombs decorating the entrance to a hotel in Phonsavanh.

6. More bombs in Phonsavanh. How many do you see here? I see six: one used as a sign, another as a picnic table with 2 benches (also made of bombs), one used as column supporting the roof of the front porch, and another just sitting out front.

Samson fish

At one point I mentioned to my Mom that over the last ten years or so a small number of charter boats have begun specializing in jigging for Samson fish on the west side of Rottnest Island. She asked if we could go. She didn’t need to ask twice, I had been waiting to try Sambos as they are called here for some time.

Samson fish are like a freakishly large and strong version of our amberjack. Beyond being larger overall than our amberjack, they are also deeper bodied than our fish which provides them even more strength when they pull sideways. Their name refers to their strength and stamina, which Australians apparently regard as Biblical. The technique is similar to jigging for rockfish on the bay except that everything is several times as big. The jigs are close to 10 inches long. The rods are similar to what you use for tuna. The fish average 40-50 lbs. The reels hold several hundred yards of 50lb braid. The adrenaline rushes when you hook one, and if you catch more than one or two you feel it in your arms and shoulders for days. One of my stouter coworkers told me caught two on a recent trip and then had to lay down in the cabin for the rest of the trip. Now I know why.

On the hour and a half boat ride out to the fishing grounds we got to know the rest of the people on the boat for the day. There was a British guy who had taken a break from driving one of the iconic black cabs in London to tour Australia with his 10 year old son. There were two couples from Victoria, one of whom had recently caught a black marlin out of Cairns but had come to WA to fish for Samson fish after hearing how strong they are. Two others in their party hadn’t done much fishing before and later had to be restrained by the captain to avoid being pulled overboard by their fish. There was a chain smoking miner from Calgoorlie who had clearly done it all before, and jigged so violently that he frothed the water with his line. There was another American who works as a sales rep for one of the major offshore sportfishing yacht companies out of Atlantic City NJ. There was an Aussie teenager who I later realized I had met before at the local tackle shop. He had one of nicest custom rods I’ve ever seen, which he had made himself. Then there were the captain and mate. Between long drags from their pungent hand rolled cigarettes they told stories of week long trips to exotic but fairly close locations like the unsettled portions of the Abrohlos archipelago, and boatside encounters with dangerous bronze whaler sharks.
I’ve caught Yellowfin tuna on 20 lb spinning gear before and that was fun, but Samson fishing is more exciting than any tuna fishing I’ve done. There are many reasons to love Sambo jigging. You have the rod in your hand when the fish strikes so you feel every head shake and tail stroke from start to finish. They are aggressive, often hitting several times before being hooked. One of my Mom’s fish struck so violently that it bent the jig, which is about ½ inch thick and has a steel pin running its length. The initial run is blistering. The Samson fish we caught were about 200 ft deep so the initial run often came very close to spooling the reels. That makes drag adjustment and line management critically important, and makes the fish that much more challenging to catch. Needless to say my Mom and I had a blast. Between the two of us she caught the biggest one, a 44 pound fish. Mine were slightly smaller at around 40 pounds. The biggest fish on the boat was over 70 pounds, but the captain said he’s seen many bigger than that and the record is over 110 pounds. It’s primarily a catch-and-release fishery, but one of the approximately 30 that we caught didn’t make it so we kept that one. It provided enough meat for everyone to take home a good portion, and our portion fed all four of us that night. I never thought of amberjack as being particularly good to eat, but grilled Samson fish is delicious.

Sadly I just recently found out that I may have gotten in on the tail end of the Sambo fishery’s heyday. This year the fish got scarce just after our trip. More worrisome is the fact that lately the sharks have learned that hooked or just-released Sambos are vulnerable, and they are taking increasing numbers of these fish. Many of these fish are large pre-spawn females and the Australian captains pride themselves on taking a conservationist approach toward the fishery. It is critically important to these skippers to minimize mortality in this fishery, but increased mortality from shark attacks has prompted some captains to curtail their fishing activities. I’m thankful for having gotten to experience it, and can only hope that the fleet’s good stewardship is rewarded with many more years of good fishing.

Photos:
1. My Mom with a nice fish.
2. The English kid with as much fish as he can handle.
3. Me with one of mine.
4. The >70 pound (32 kilo) fish; the biggest of the day.
5. The guy from New Jersey. The release apparatus is visible hanging off the left wall of the transom opening, level with the mate’s right hand.

The Holidays

Over the holidays my Mom, sister Erin, and Erin’s boyfriend Zach came down to visit me in Perth. After 5 months of not having seen anyone from home it was great to have them here. Their arrival on Christmas day was a fantastic Christmas present, and one that I had been looking forward to ever since I got here.

We spent the first few days just hanging around Perth. On the first day we checked out King’s Park which overlooks the Swan River and the CBD (Central Business District, it’s what Australians call downtown). King’s Park is Perth’s version of NY City’s Central Park. At over 400 acres, it’s by far the most significant green space within the city, and that’s saying something because you can hardly walk two blocks anywhere in Perth without hitting a park of some sort. It has monuments, open lawns, bushland, fountains, cafes, and elevated glass walkway through the treetops, and botanical gardens. Kings Park was a hit with the family and a quick way to get them adjusted to the climate considering it was about 115 ˚F the day we went and they had just come from winter back in the US. Must have felt like they stepped off the plane and into an oven to them but they came right after a while.

After hanging out in Perth for a few days it was time for an excursion to Rottnest Island. Rotto (as the locals call it) is located several miles off the coast and is completely owned by the government. Like most of Australia’s best real estate, and in fact all of Australia if you go back far enough, Rotto was once a prison. Now the government operates it as a park. The only full-time residents are a ranger, lighthouse keeper, and perhaps a couple of seasonal support staff as needed. Everyone else gets there by ferry, and no private automobiles are allowed so most people get around by bike. Picture a version of Smith Island with clear water, wallabies, and filled with Aussies in bikinis and swimming trunks and you’ve got a fair idea of what Rottnest is like. Rottnest also marks the southern terminus of the Leeuwin Current which brings warm water south, so it supports some of the southernmost corals in the world.

We rented bikes and snorkeling gear and set out to find some snorkeling sites on the west side of the island. After a few stops to snap photos of quokkas (dwarf wallabies that are peculiar to Rotto and a couple of other spots in WA) in the underbrush and views of a couple nearshore shipwrecks we got to our first snorkeling site. We waded in and started swimming toward Africa. The lumps of limestone on the bottom were half covered with macroalgae and coral. There was abundant fish life, consisting mostly of buff bream and various wrasses, parrotfish, and damselfish.

After another bike ride north along the west coast of the island we stopped at another beach. We surprised and ultimately displaced a nude sunbather from a spot next to some limestone cliffs. A brief snorkel was enough to conclude that this beach had nothing new to see, and then we were almost displaced in turn by a dugite (a deadly snake) slithering though the rocks overhead. Fortunately no one got bitten despite some other tourists chasing it and poking at it with sticks. This behavior prompted us to be on our way. We rode back to the main settlement and caught the ferry back to Fremantle after a bite to eat. About halfway through the trip the waves picked up and started to break on the bridge above the passenger cabin. The captain called passengers off the upper deck. The main cabin started to leak, and the projectile vomiting began from some of the less stalwart passengers. We arrived shortly afterward in Fremantle none the worse for wear, but keen to get out of the reeking cabin.

My Mom was keen to drive in a foreign country but we both thought that baby steps were in order, so before her debut in a full size automobile we rented a Scoot car, which is basically a plastic bubble mounted on a backwards trike with training wheels and a windshield. I can’t explain why but these things are street legal, and looked to be the perfect way to introduce my Mom to Aussie rules driving. My Mom drove like a champ, but the episode was not without its more entertaining moments. When we showed up the proprietor of the establishment told us to be careful with the car because it was made in France, which meant it was cute, shoddily constructed, and exceedingly difficult to acquire parts for. He also didn’t relish speaking to the French on the phone. He said a typical conversation with the parts distributor went something like this: Bonjour......G’day mate!.......Bonjour?........Hello, do you speak Strayin?……Silence……….Do you speak English?...........Click……..followed by a dial tone. He then called the French “cheese eating surrender monkeys” admonished us not to take turns at more than 20 km/hr lest the car tip or we fall out, and wished us “Bon Voyage” before disappearing into his office.

During the rest of their vacation we did more things than I have space to write about, and very likely more things than you care to read about. The highlights included going to remote beaches as we worked our way along the southwest coast toward Cape Leeuwin. The Southern and Indian Oceans meet here, and the whole area is in the middle of a travel corridor for white pointers (Great white sharks). Unfortunately at Gracetown Beach we came across a memorial to a surfer who was taken by one there in 2004. Incidentally, Scarborough beach is part of the same corridor and a white pointer ate another guy right in front of some café patrons having their morning lattes about 2 miles south of where I live a couple years back, but nobody really likes to talk about that and I haven’t seen any white pointers yet. We toured the Margaret River wine country which has WA’s premier vineyards. Zach, Erin, and I paddled into a surf break in Yallingup, but we decided that the risk wasn’t worth it when we learned that many locals wear helmets in case they get thrown into a limestone reef that’s about a foot under the water’s surface just in front of the best waves. We saw wild kangaroos. We got up close to wombats, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, potteroos, walleroos, brush tail possums, and other native wildlife at a local wildlife park. We played Supagolf, which is like regular golf but with bigger clubs and balls. It’s a more forgiving variety of the game with all the fun and challenge, but without the pretense, cost, and cursing that often accompanies the regular version. It’s apparently made it to the US but I had never heard of it. If you get a chance to try it, I recommend you do. We accepted rides from strangers and lived to tell the tale. We watched fireworks on New Year’s Eve over the Indian Ocean, and my Mom nearly shot the windows out of a beachside concession stand with a champagne cork. It actually went over building and clanged its way to its current resting place atop the corrugated roof. It was fantastic.

Photos:

1. Left to right: Zach, Erin, my Mom, and me at Kings Park

2. West side of Rotto

3. A quokka

4. Unidentified shipwreck, widely thought to be the Shark, a dredge that broke loose from its mooring in Fremantle in the 1930s and was never recovered (but no one knows for sure)

5. Coral off Rottnest

6. Chasing buff bream off Rottnest

7. Scoot car in Freo

8. Gracetown Beach, one of many perfect beaches with no one on them in SW Australia

9. My Mom gets close to a wild Western gray kangaroo