Na Jong!

Monday, 11/30, 8:30 pm

I have a lot to catch you up on from the past few days. On Friday, in Vientiane, I finally met up with Vikham's sister-in-law who turned out to be the cutest 83 year old ever! She's right up there with Grammie in terms of cuteness. :) She came to the U.S. as a refugee back in the 70's, lived outside of DC for about 10 years, and then decided to move back to Laos once things calmed down. So she speaks pretty good English, though we had a bit of miscommunication on the phone. I think that may have been her hearing more than anything. (Again, like Grammie!) So it took a couple of attempts before we successfully met up, but once we did, we had a great time together. She took me out for both lunch and dinner and wouldn't let me pay for a thing. Lunch was at a casual place, but dinner was at a very fancy place that had great Lao food and traditional music/dancers, but mostly catered to the tourist crowd. We chatted about her life in the U.S. and in Laos, both before leaving and after returning. She's very independent - on the day I left Vientiane, she did too - for Thailand, and all by herself! Maybe I'll still be traveling alone when I'm 83...

On Saturday I took a very long bus ride to Luang Prabang - about 10 hours up a mountain and around all sorts of curves. I did well for most of it but by the end (despite stopping for food and potty breaks) I was kind of car sick and just blah! The "rest stops" were just open fields - Laos' bathroom options for tourists are the same as for locals, unlike Vietnam. It's fine though, I mastered that skill in Ghana. At least the bus was roomy - unlike Ghana. Unfortunately I have to do the same bus ride tomorrow, in reverse. I was going to buy a plane ticket - in fact, I started to, but Lao Airlines doesn't accept credit cards online and you have to send a fax and I was like screw it. Now I wish I would've searched for a fax machine!

Once in Luang Prabang, I *finally* met up with Amy (former co-worker) and her new husband Omar! We've been in the same city on more than one occasion, but never seemed to be able to make it work - mostly because she doesn't have a phone and I had no way to get a hold of her. But the three of us had a lovely dinner swapping travel stories and reminiscing about USCCB (ha). She's on her 3rd month of travel and has a few more weeks until she heads back to DC. Again, it was wonderful to see a familiar face.

Yesterday and today I was on a trek to a local waterfall and to a (white) Hmong village, which was *excellent* - probably the highlight of my trip. It was finally a very authentic experience, particularly the homestay. I sucked it up and paid a guide to take me on my own for the trip - $140, which is like millions of kip here. Before continuing, I should explain that there are 3 main ethnic groups in Laos - the Lao, Hmong, and Khmu. Each has their own language, though most of the Hmong and Khmu also speak Lao because that's the language used in school. But they each have their own culture, including the types of houses they live in, foods they eat, etc.

So my guide was half Hmong, half Khmu and was raised in a Lao village, so he's trilingual and tricultural - perfect for this sort of thing! I got to ask any and all questions and I specifically requested to stay with a Hmong family as opposed to a Khmu family, which is who people on this trek usually stay with. So I'm pretty sure the family I stayed with had never hosted a foreigner before.

Yesterday we started hiking around 10 am and hiked for a few hours. Most of it was going up and I was feeling kind of beat. After only an hour or two, we stopped in a village that was half Khmu and half Lao. Right away the lessons began because you have to greet each group differently ("Smile-ut" versus "Sabadee") yet I couldn't really figure out who's who. The Khmu's skin is a little bit darker and their houses are different...so I had to keep pausing and thinking hard before I'd spit out the right greeting. :) We had lunch in this village and I knew that they hadn't seen too many foreigners ("Falang") because the kids were staring at us eating through the holes in the walls. I have this hilarious picture of the kids' eyes through the holes.

Then we continued our hike for a few more hours until we arrived at the Hmong village (Ban Long Lao II, about 16 km outside Luang Prabang) where we'd sleep that night. When we arrived, I immediately began practicing the Hmong that Lee, my guide, taught me earlier - mainly "Na Jong" for hello and "Aw chow" for thanks. Sounds easy enough, but after learning the basics in Khmer, Vietnamese, Lao, and Khmu, my brain was fried! Lee made sure to do all the appropriate communicating, like greetings and so on because he had never been to this village before and we needed to sleep there. Within 15 minutes or so, it was decided where I would sleep - at the home of Noy, Paw-Chaw, and their 3 kids (this is my English spelling for how to pronounce their names). We went to their house and he explained to me that if there were leaves hanging on the door we couldn't enter because of something about bad spirits. He also had to ask permission to enter, which also had something to do with spirits. (The Hmong believe in spirits, which heavily influence a lot of what they do and believe.)

Lee began figuring out what we'd cook for dinner. Can you imagine some stranger coming into your home and taking over your kitchen?? Lee was very good at "translating" cultural experiences, so I asked him more than once if it was okay/weird that we just showed up and were now cooking in this woman's kitchen and he assured me it was totally fine. They decided that they'd kill a chicken for me and so some of them went to figure out which chicken they'd kill (there were dozens roaming around). Meanwhile I went outside and observed the kids. The Hmong children in this village (about 50 families and some had 10 kids) seemed so happy. They were the happiest children I've seen on this trip and perhaps in any developing country I've been to. Or at least they outwardly expressed their happiness much like children from the U.S. do - lots of smiling, giggling, and tons of playing games. The girls in all the villages I've seen play this game with a rope. Sometimes it reminds me of Chinese jump rope but other times they jump over the rope and it reminds me of the high jump or hurdles. The boys in this village were busy spinning tops - like the kind you wrap with a rope and then whip it so the top spins. Later on the kids found some inedible berries that they ran around and smeared on each other. Some of the older girls were sewing - the Hmong do a type of cross stitch which is beautiful. I just bought some at the market tonight.

This is getting long so I'll fill you in on the rest - the killing of the chicken and getting to know the family - tomorrow. I'm off to take a long (hot) shower for now!