Keith and I signed up for a trial-run of a brand new trek, trek being the word used here for a long-hike through the jungle. An ‘ecolodge’ had been built in a poor, remote village in the jungle with the idea that money could be brought to this community by having tourists trek through the jungle to get to it. Tourists would pay to stay in the village, to have the villagers cook for them, as well as pay local tour guides to show them the way. We were told the trip would be two days of hiking through the jungle, with an overnight stay in a Hmong tribe village. I’d always wanted to try doing this, as there are many such treks for sale in LPB, but they usually cost $50. This one, since it was a trial, was only $9.

We met our two young Hmong guides, Wee and Frankie, in the center of Phonsavon. Wee spoke superb English and Frankie very good English. The trek began with a two hour drive down bad dirt roads, past tiny poor and dusty villages. The van dropped us off in a Hmong village with a Christian church that felt like
the end of the line and we began walking up a dirt road. Everybody in the village stopped and stared at us. The children followed us at a distance but were afraid to smile, wave or say hello. The houses were one-room, wooden with bamboo roofs. People wore modern dirty clothing. The women all wore sihns, the long, beautifully patterned and woven skirt that is traditional in Laos. All the adults were working hard and the kids were playing. The kids ran away if you came too close, so strange we looked to them.

We stopped to buy some sugar cane from women who had just cut it from the jungle. After ten minutes of walking we arrived at the center of this village and stopped to eat our sugar cane. Frankie pulled out a big knife to strip the sugar cane of its peel and handed a piece to each of us, to enjoy by gnawing the sugar-water from it. Meanwhile, Wee went to find a local man that would guide us through the forest, to our destination. He emerged five minutes later, with two local guys, who weren’t busy and were pleased to be hired to guide us.

For six hours we walked through the jungle, up steep mountains, and down steep mountains, upon thin, dirt jungle trails. The foliage was not dense, so we often had sweeping views of the surrounding mountains. We did not pass anymore villages as we hiked. Wee had been down this path many times, but it was Frankie‘s first time. Wee had grown up in the countryside, at a nearby village; Frankie in the city of Phonsavon. Frankie wore a blazer, a button-up, long-sleeved, collared polo shirt, suit pants and Chucks sneakers. Wee was a tad more casual in nice dark jeans, a belt and a new collared button-up, with Chucks also on his feet.

At lunch time, the guides flattened some bushes aside the trail, ripped out some banana leaves and lay them down to make a big mat. Everyone poured on to the mat what they had brought for lunch, so we could all share our food, Lao-style. We ate sticky rice, steamed bitter rat, bamboo shoot salad, beef with vegetables, century-old eggs, oranges, bananas and strawberry wafers.

One point in the walking found us on a dirt trail cut in to the side of a mountain, the hill falling away to our right. At the edge of our local guides’ village, which amazingly stretched for hours through the jungle, before turning in to the property of the next village, where we would spend the night, the guides left us. Wee knew the rest of the way. The guides would make their way back home, hopefully before dark as it was getting late and they had no flashlights. Wee paid them 30,000 kip each for the three hours of guidance plus whatever time it took them to get back home. Although we were miles from the actual huts of their village, this jungle was considered a part of their village because they used it all, for hunting, farming, rice fields, building equipment and foraging.

Our city guides pointed out edible and non-edible fruits and vegetables, told us when to put on bug-spray because there were many leeches and showed us places where rice fields had been. Villagers must move their dry rice fields every year, a very laborious demand. We saw only one animal all day, a small red bird in a tree, so I never worried about giant tigers jumping out and biting me. There used to be hundreds of elephants, leopards, tigers, even deer, but due to economic necessity, most of these animals have been hunted and eaten to extinction already.

Nearing the end of the day, the jungle began to look like a plain forest, not much different than the woods back home around Massachusetts. Keith also said the scenery was a bit dull and looked just like England, his birthplace. Late in the afternoon, we came upon a few separate jar sites, which was intriguing, finding them so deep in the jungle. They were one with the forest, many covered in moss or bushes or trees, in the midst of the forest and not on a cleared open plain like the other sites had been. Villagers passed us upon the trail, walking back with heavy loads of rice from their rice storage huts near their fields, the rice held in baskets upon their backs. They moved with ease and speed through the paths that we moved through slowly and laboriously.

We finally arrived in the village around 5, exhausted and hungry. We saw about 4 women, 2 men and 40 small children, the kids running around playing together but
stopping to stare at us. They had so little exposure to white people they were afraid of us, and at first wouldn’t say hello, wouldn’t wave and ran away if we got too close. The kids were playing a game where they threw one of their plastic sandals at a pile of rubber bands, trying to be the first to separate the pile. There were pigs and piglets everywhere, as well as chickens, some dogs, buffalo and a few cows. Manure covered the muddy, dirt ground. It was a picturesque scene, the thirty or so bamboo huts set amidst softly rolling hills, surrounded by tall steep mountains. The village was called Ban Phakeo.

But it was an awkward feeling, our arrival. The villagers were busy so there was no “Oh, hello” or welcome of any kind when we arrived. The locals seemed to be like, “Oh. Some weird people are here. How strange.” After thirty minutes peeking around town, and standing around, awkwardly staring at the locals, we were ushered in to the eco-lodge, as it was getting dark. The lodge was really just a basic hut-style barn, made of wood with a bamboo roof, with many open spaces
between the boards, and an open door on each end. There is no warmth in these villages.

There were no fires, no signs of relaxation in the surrounding huts. We heard continued work from the villagers, much crying of the many small kids, pigs squealing, chickens squeaking. There we sat in darkness, exhausted, hungry, thirsty and cold. Likely, experiencing the everyday life of the villagers. There was a long table in the lodge, with wooden benches, as well as a raised wide bench, which the chief came in and laid with thin mattresses, pillows and blankets from big bags at one end of the raised bench.

Wee asked what we’d like to eat for dinner and we said chicken. (Actually, I said vegetables, knowing an animal would be killed if we said meat, but everyone else said chicken.) So Wee went to buy a chicken from a family in town, for $4, and delivered it to the designated cooking women to prepare for us. These women were paid to cook a meal for us. It was then 6 PM and they had just gotten in from working in the rice fields. They were probably happy to make some money but I’m sure they were exhausted and less than enthusiastic to work more after a long hard day in the fields.

Keith assigned Frankie to go buy a bottle of lao-lao, the locally made rice-whiskey, produced by most every family in the country. For $1.25, Frankie came back with a liter soda bottle full of the gasoline-tasting stuff. Keith made a good time. With lao-lao, everyone must drink, and out of a single small shot-glass that the host passes around. After an hour, the chief and assistant chief came in, sat and drank with us, and Wee took our questions and translated them to the chief. This was rather fascinating.

To survive, each family in this town grows rice and vegetables and raises livestock to sell and to eat. They sell vegetables when they have extra by walking a few hours to the next town, which has a market. We learned that each family must grow enough rice in the few rice growing months to last for the entire year. If a family cannot, due to weather problems or because a member of the family is sick and can’t help, the extended family will help them to ensure they have enough rice. Families with buffalos or cows sell these animals only once or twice a year. All the villagers get together to make big decisions , deciding things as a community, like whether to move the village closer to a road, as many villages have done. (They decided not to.)

There are 176 people in the village, with an average of 7 kids per family. The older women in town, who are considered experienced, help the younger women give birth. Nobody goes all the way to the hospital. Once or twice a year, someone in the village is so ill that they must be carried hours to the next town, hammock-style, where they can get a ride to the hospital, thirty minutes away in Phonsavon. People are able to build their homes in one day by getting all the materials beforehand, maybe over a period of years, saving up for them, and then calling on all their neighbors to help out for day of building. The two elders in town are 70, which is considered quite old. The chiefs were in their fifties, and took turns being chief and assistant chief. They did not appear to enjoy a different standard of living than the other villagers.

Aside from this interaction, we felt like odd strangers in a strange land, in our own hut, with our own bathroom, set outside in a separate outhouse. But it was a worthwhile experience to feel what village life was like. Many people like to idealize this quaint life but once one sees it firsthand, they see how damn hard it is. Sure these people might be happy, might have their simple pleasures, but undoubtedly, their lives are much harder than they need be in this modern world. But of course along with modern eases come modern problems, as people love to say.

Dinner was served around 9. A pumpkin soup, composed of water and pumpkin, chopped up boiled chicken, boiled greens and large bowls of fluffy rice to round out the meal. The flavors was shockingly simple compared to the complex spicy, sweet and sour of Lao food. But I was very hungry and satiated myself with mounds of warm, fresh rice and bits of greens and pumpkin. Curiously, our two guides raved about the pumpkin soup, saying how much they missed Hmong pumpkin soup when they were away from their homes. I wished I had some creamy nutmeg-y pumpkin soup from home to have them try. The chiefs dined with us, enjoying the tastiest chicken morsels, the head, the clawed feet, the wings, which we happily bestowed upon them.

After an evening of talking and drinking, we all hit our communal bed around eleven, where I fell in to a deep sleep exhausted by the long hike. The other seven trekkers seemed to think it was not a particularly difficult hike, a bit embarrassing for me. So tired was I, I slept until 7:30, through hours and hours of roosters crowing, villagers washing at the nearby communal tap, and going about their morning chores. People in the village wake up around 4 or 5.

I enjoyed watching the women bathe together at the town’s one water tap, covered with their cotton sinhs, using tiny plastic packets of shampoo and soap. It was a social scene, the village meeting place, and after the bathing, it was used for the washing, and then the larger animals were led to it, to drink. It was left running all morning, although it was never really not in use, because its supply is endless, the water piped from a nearby river. They’ve only had the tap for two years, since Engineers without Borders came from Colorado and spent ten days creating the system to bring the water in. It is winter, and the water coming out of the tap is cold, but before the tap, it was the river and so they’ve never known water any different than cold. It’s no wonder all the little kids are filthy, the probably run away when their moms try to bathe them in the cold weather, and their moms have little time to waste running after them.

That day we hiked for about eight hours, with fewer steep inclines than the previous day but still a lot of up and down. We walked by many rice fields, as well as grazing buffalo, and villagers walking by to do work in different parts of the forest. At one point we ran in to a few villagers sitting in the forest with a small pony. I wasn’t sure what they were up to, but I hadn’t seen any ponies in the village so maybe they had found him somewhere that day. He was bridled
for riding or for carrying goods. We stopped for lunch at the bottom of a beautiful hundred-foot tall waterfall. Upon banana leaves, we ate big bags of rice, pickled greens and chopped up boiled chicken, packed for us by someone in the village.

We hiked upon a fabulous path chopped in to the stones beneath the waterfall, criss-crossing the falls multiple times during our ascent. The locals had actually designed a trail that went right through the waterfall, at one point even boasting ladder-like steps that carved right up through the roots of a tree. Arriving at the top of the falls, after a steep climb of about twenty minutes, I was absolutely nackered, as the Brits like to say. Luckily, the end was near, and a short walk further found us in the rear of a truck, heading back to “town”.

The town we came upon was Wee’s town, also called Bomb Town, for the number of bombs that have been found in the area and for the number of spent bomb casings that have been used in constructing various items around town. There were multiple bomb-shell flowerbeds, bomb-shell foundations, bomb-shell fences, even bomb-shell doors. Wee also showed us two massive bomb-craters, each about the size of a swimming pool, and not unique around town. Two years ago, Wee lost three cousins in the area to UXO. Yet incredibly, neither he, nor anyone else we met in that town harbored any resentment towards Americans. All the villagers were stoked to see us, waving, saying hello and watching us walk around town. And this town, being just off a driveable road, felt much nicer and neater, and less foreign, than the town we'd just spent the night in. Although this town, despite having electricity, does not have a single tap for water, and the villagers must walk to the nearby river each time they need it.

Many people are not aware of the difference between monks and novice monks in Laos. This is completely understandable as it's hard to find a reliable reference on the subject. Most of what I've learned comes from talking to novice monks, who sometimes even contradict each other, but are still my most dependable source.

Novice monks are young boys, between the ages of eight and twenty, who temporarily commit to monkhood for a period of three months to twelve years. They shave their heads and don the orange monk robe. All Lao boys are expected to become novice monks for at least three months of their lives. By becoming novices, the boys bring merit to both themselves and their families. Many of the boys come to bigger towns from impoverished, remote farming villages with poor or nonexistent local schools. These boys  have access to a superior education in town than if they had they stayed in their small villages. Living at a temple, the boys learn to be devout Buddhists, and with time to attend school and study.  Most rural families need their sons to help for survival. The ability to sacrifice a son to temporary monkhood is a merit-gaining honor most families hope to achieve.

The novices take ten vows, a very small percentage of the two hundred-odd vows that monks must take when they make a life-time commitment. Living in small huts around a temple, the boys are expected to work, pray and study. They form close bonds with one other, as they are young boys away from their families for the first time.

The boys keep a strict routine. They awaken around five to chant ancient Buddhist prayers in Pali and to meditate together in the temples. Afterward, they straighten their robes for their daily alms-collection.You may have viewed hundreds of novices walking the streets of Lao towns early each morning, particularly in Luang Prabang. This is the ancient tradition of tak bat, wherein pious villagers rise early, prepare sticky rice to feed their novices and monks, and kneel on the street to personally donate the food. The novices and monks walk the streets barefoot, in quiet meditation, with their baskets strapped around their necks, lids ajar to receive their staff of life: sticky rice.

The novices and monks then return to their temples and clean the grounds and the buildings. During this time, villagers come to the temple to donate larger dishes of food. Around 7, a meal is made from the donated food. Half the sticky rice from tak bat is saved for the lunch meal, but the main dishes are eaten in full, as the villagers will drop more entrees off around eleven. Villagers consider feeding the monks to be a good deed, and particularly merit-bringing. Many elderly people donate food, because, according to the novices, they will soon die, and want to increase their merit as much as possible in preparation for their next reincarnation.

To show alliance with the Buddha, who ate only when necessary to emphasize the Middle Way, food is not eaten after noon-time. If a novice or monk is ill or weak, exceptions can be made. Juice, water and Milo are allowed in the afternoon. Most novices say at first it is very difficult to fast after lunch, but after awhile they readjust and no longer mind. Some novices keep snacks under their bunks, bananas or crackers or chocolate, which they eat in the evening when they get very hungry.

Novices attend primary or secondary school during the day as well as Buddhist school and many also go to "college" programs to learn English, Japanese and Chinese. When school is not in session, the monks will sometimes organize the novices to do construction. They renovate the two to four-hundred year old temples, or add new religious or housing structures. In the evening, they clean the temple grounds again and at 5:30, prayer resumes in the temple. The beautiful sound of synchronized Pali chanting permeates the dusk. In the evening, the boys attend "college" or are expected to study and meditate. It is a life with a strict routine but also free times and fun times with their fellow novices and with tourists who come to visit.

Some of the boys love to be with friends, have a schedule, not have to scavenge or toil for food, and attend school and study advanced topics like Japanese, living in the excitement of a big town, getting the chance to meet foreigners. However, other boys are miserable living the novice life. They miss their families, their villages, hate having to go to school, despise fasting and praying, and feel that they don't fit in among the other novices.

Most novice monks are very good little boys, but there are a few naughty ones. On occasion, a boy with a shaved head can be seen in normal clothes, at the disco with his non-novice friends. Or a novice will have obscene photos of girls on his phone. Yes, many novices have mobile phones. (Novices are not allowed to touch a woman and should not think impure thoughts about one either.) Some novices have even told me about watching obscene videos on the TV in the temple after their abbot has gone to sleep. (These videos can be bought in the local outdoor market, where the music CDs are sold.) These mischievous novices are in the minority, but they do remind us that novices are typical teenage boys, expected by Lao society to suppress their hormones until they leave the monkhood.

Novice monks wrap their robes differently than monks, so you can tell them apart. But while novice monks are typically younger than monks, some boys decide to become monks very young, at around twenty years old. Meanwhile, some men do not do their time as novice monks until they are older, in their twenties or thirties.

As a tourist, novice monks can be your best source of information about Lao culture and tradition. This is because many speak English, are in town, and are very curious. They have some free time on their hands and are eager to chat. So when in Laos, do not be afraid to talk to novice monks when visiting the temples; most boys will be delighted to learn about you too. Just be sure to dress appropriately, this means knee-length shorts or skirt and preferably shoulders-covered tops. Never touch the novice. Monks, undoubtedly a much better source of information, tend not to speak English and to be either much busier and/or much less interested in speaking with tourists. Show respect when speaking with novices or monks; they are an honored member of Lao society. Remember to always ask before taking a photo of a novice or a monk, to do so otherwise would be rude and intrusive.

Novice monks make up an important and fascinating part of Lao culture and tradition. But they are not the same as monks and its good to know the difference.

People are always asking me to recommend activities for their visit to Luang Prabang. Here are a few of my favorite things, although I have no doubt there are dozens of others you'll find on your own if you just explore.

Wake up around five and dress conservatively. Head out to any main street to watch the ancient tradition of alms giving, tak bat, as novice monks walk the town to collect sticky rice from villagers. Remember that this is a religious ceremony and should be treated as one. Keep far back from the alms giving, do not speak, take photographs only from afar and with unobtrusive equipment. Do not participate unless it would be spiritually meaningful for you to do so, and in that case do so only with instruction as to how to act and what to wear. It is a beautiful and unique tradition that can be easily enjoyed by watching from a distance.

Head to Big Brother Mouse, the children's book publisher, from 9-11, Monday through Saturday, to assist with casual English practice. Many teenage boys show up to practice their English with the travelers that stop in to donate their time. Read books with the kids, play games or just talk. The kids love talking to foreigners in this environment and you'll love the easy chance to interact, too. Buy a bunch of books if you can, to donate to Lao children as you travel through the country; or, donate money so the staff can bring books to Lao kids in remote villages.

Walk up to the motorbike bridge on a hot day and join the kids playing underneath in the clean, refreshing Nam Khan River. The current's strong and you can float all the way down to where the river meets the Mekong River.

Around five, head to the soccer fields on the main road to drop in to play with the locals. But watch out, these boys are serious about their soccer so you better be good!

My favorite thing to do is to head to a temple, around 5:30, when the novice monks and monks do their evening Pali chanting and prayers to Buddha. Sit quietly and unobtrusively in the courtyard with your eyes closed, meditating, or just enjoying the peaceful sound. Be sure to focus on your blessedness to be here in this wonderful environment. Try a different temple everyday, as the harmonic sound varies from temple to temple, as do the extraneous noises of the neighborhood and the beauty of the temple grounds.

Climb up Buddha's Imprint, an overlook on the side of Mt. Phousi, to chat with the novice monks who frequent this breathtaking spot, hoping for such impromptu English lessons. Learn not just about the life of a Lao novice monk but about the varied backgrounds and experiences of these young Lao men.

Stop by My Library, a wonderful library created to give kids a place to learn independently and according to their own interests and talents. Donate a camera or an educational book here. Kids can also come here to use computers to learn to type or to practice their English language skills. Spend time reading with a child or helping with their studies.

Take a boat ride down the Mekong; there are many underemployed boat drivers who'll be happy to negotiate a price with you. The massive brown river at the heart of the region is flanked by lush green jungle, tiny farming villages, and in the dry season, many islands.

Not to be missed is the food alley near the main intersection in town. The pho stand at the end of the alley is the best in Southeast Asia, better even than Vietnam, the home of pho! A new stand at the very end is selling delicious sauteed Chinese dumplings. Not to be missed are the fresh spring rolls, papaya salad, grilled chicken and fish, pickled greens, sweet soy milk. New to the alley is a young woman selling lobster-shaped bread. The alley is packed with authentic Lao foods; come here every night to try something new and don't be shy.

While every bus journey in Laos is an adventure, the trip to Savanakhet was one of the best yet. The ten-hour ride featured one fascination after another.

First, I watched as a mother assisted her two-year old son in urinating. On the floor. Of the bus. From her lap! The bus driver’s assistant, a boy who collects passenger’s money and helps with loading and unloading, objected to this method. “What? Why can’t my son pee on the bus floor? Why not?” No, I’m just kidding, I couldn’t understand the exchange so precisely, but it was clear the assistant was not OK with passengers peeing on the floor. Even if they were children. So the next time her son had to pee, the mother put an empty water bottle around his tiny penis and made Grandma throw the bottle out the window.

Then, I watched, enthralled, as another method of urination was introduced to me. The bus assistant told the driver he needed to urinate, so the driver pulled over quickly. The assistant walked one foot from the bus and simply pulled up on of his loose pant legs. He then peed, in full view of everyone on the bus, but without revealing his penis. The pant leg acted like a private stall for his penis! The ladies technique for peeing in public, something I had already enjoyed, involved wearing or bringing a skirt to wear, thereby allowing one to squat and pee in the privacy of the skirt-stall, in broad view of all. A young father carried his two sons off the bus to pee. The four-year old peed one foot from the bus, in to a puddle, while the baby was held in the air, to also pee in the puddle. Now last but not least, there was also a monk on the bus. When he peed, as he was wearing robes, he simply squatted, like us ladies did in our skirts.

Keep in mind, there are no “rest stops” or McDonalds busses can stop at for pee-breaks here. There are plenty of “restaurants” but if the bus stopped at a restaurant, purchasing of food would of course be expected. You can only stop to eat so many times on a bus trip, but peeing, oh peeing is a frequent need, and kindly and frequently indulged by the driver. Anyway, as the stops involve nothing but pulling over for one minute, the passengers peeing right next to the bus, frequent pee stops don’t add a lot of time to the trip. I also want to mention the amazing potty-training ability of most Lao parents. Many babies do not wear diapers yet do not wet themselves. Lao babies are trained very early to pee on command, usually a whispered, “shhhh” sound, and then are simply held, facing outwards, to pee in to the air.

At one point, a passenger, protesting the bus fee the bus assistant demanded, put on his motorbike helmet and pulled down the glass eye-covering, effectively ending the conversation by covering his face completely. It was hilarious! The stunned bus assistant, standing inches away, backed down and left him alone. But the passenger later paid. Not a bad way to avoid conflict.

I wouldn’t have thought there would have been space on the bus for fifty large bags packed with cabbage but apparently there was space. I should have known, when would I finally learn: there is no such thing as a bus that is too full. The bus assistant, after trying to shove all the bags in to the alley and failing, finally told the passengers in the four back rows of seats to move. He then took out all four rows of seats and over the course of ten minutes, loaded all the cabbage on. For a while some other passengers and I had to stand, because the cabbage was taking up all the space, but then people got off and we could sit again. But for the duration of the ride I was nervous and kept turning around, scared the cabbage precariously balanced at the top of the pile was going to fall and bury me.

At another point, we passed a really nice, new soccer field, with grass and lines and even nets! Goats, water buffalo and cows were grazing upon it, eating away at the nice grass.

The bus honked often, to alert villagers that it was coming so they could run out of their homes and hop on if they wanted. The bus assistant would hang out the door, yelling, scanning for people that seemed interested in a ride. People would run out of their little huts, throwing their clothes on, grabbing their children, hopping on to the bus that slowed, but did not stop, to pick them up. Sometimes the bus stopped at appointed bus stops, and cute kids would climb aboard with skewers of beef, pork, frogs and bugs, bags of sticky rice, bottles of water. Most popular were the skewered eggs, steamed and stuck on a stick for sale. During one stop, I was eating a skewer of chicken and beef on a bench aside the bus. I suddenly realized, as that irony-chalky taste filled my mouth, that I was chewing on a piece of congealed blood. I couldn’t do it, so I started looking for an escape. I looked up and saw ten passengers on the bus watching me intently to see how I liked Lao food. I was in a tough spot. I tried to swallow but I just couldn’t. I turned away from the bus, walked back towards a corner in the restaurant, and spit the blood in to a napkin, politely. I swear that’s only the second time I’ve done that here. The first was when I was eating what I thought was a normal hard boiled egg, but in fact was an egg with a duck fetus inside.

Back on the bus, cruising north, I glimpsed goats sitting on a table on the porch of a house. It was raining, so that must have been their way of keeping dry. I watched many mama-cows and mama-water buffaloes cuddling with their baby-cows and buffaloes. Their interactions were so human-like, I felt terrible about regularly eating them.

The scenery was much like that of the island, flat, with large rice fields, trees dotting the landscape, and ramshackle homes. Such a variety of homes: brick, cement, wood, thatched bamboo, and sometimes even a combination of those materials in one home. Often, this meant a cement first floor, if the house wasn’t stilted, and a wood second floor. Every house looked like it took hard work, all by hand, by people unskilled in construction. No such thing as having your house built here; if you need a house, you build a house. Now, some people are handy, but for most people: can you imagine trying to build your own house by hand? And solely with materials you found around you or were able to trade for rice?

Ten often thrilling, but still long hours after departing Don Kong, the bus reached Savannakhet. I couldn’t feel anything but lucky though, as many people, like the saintly teenage parents with the four-year and six-month old children, still had ten hours before they reached their final destination, Vientiane.