Call it Work, Call it Fun

by JG Learned

Recently I spent a month surveying possible new trekking routes north of Luang Prabang, the ancient Royal Capital of Laos, by motorbike, boat and walking.

Sak our Lao guide, and I left Luang Prabang early one misty morning on motorbikes, heading north. Forty kilometers up the road we entrusted the bikes to a roadside shop and engaged the services of a long-tail boat on the Ou River to take us 2 hours up-river through rocks and rapids.

The boat driver and his pilot wife let us off on a small beach, far from any sign of human habitation. From there, a small trail led up the bank and into the bush. In twenty minutes we came to a Khamu (also called Lao Teung) village of about 30 thatched roofs. We introduced ourselves to the village headman and the local teacher in the one-room school house (grades 1-4 only). After several refreshing cups of smoky, herbal tea, we hefted our packs and trekked up the Huay Phang valley, crossing and re-crossing Huay Phang Creek untold times. At some points the river itself was the trail and at times, without a guide it would have been difficult indeed to pick up the little-used path where it re-entered the thickly jungled banks. The Khamu are almost entirely animist in their spiritual beliefs and it was no surprise to see offerings to different tree and rock spirits along the trail as well as snares set for small game.

Reaching a large shaded pool we paused to let the sweat dry. With a collapsible Chinese fishing pole we caught two small silver carp, which went into the pack wrapped in a leaf. Two Khamu hunters soundlessly emerged from the dark forest and offered to find us some bamboo-beetle larva. From a large clump of 5-inch diameter bamboo he selected a new shoot, already 20 feet high but still soft. Having cut it, he split the top off the lower sections. Inside each were 10-30 fat white grubs. Taking a smaller piece of dried bamboo, we soon filled it with squirming larvae and corked it with a leaf. This followed the fish into the pack. Thanking them after sharing a smoke, we headed further up the valley. From this point the trail became a challenge. Not that the trail itself was bad, but because this was the tail-end of the monsoon: blown-down dead bamboo and other trees lay at all angles across the trail, so that we often had to walk in a crouch, struggling and snagging through obstacles. It was slow, hot going.

At the end of each monsoon, the trails are cleared, each village responsible for clearing the section halfway between their village and the next. The next 2 hours were hellish as we battled through the deadfalls. Eventually the trail improved and we came upon a village completely surrounded by a stout bamboo fence - very unusual: I'd never seen a fenced village.

Sak informed me that they discouraged outsiders entering due to ‘bad spirits'. Stopping outside one of the gates I conversed in Lao with two children. They were of the Akha tribe but their dialect was completely different from the Akha groups in Northern Thailand . Even their word for water was different. I met a man coming home from the fields. It became immediately apparent what the ‘bad spirit' was – leprosy.

As the sun was nearing the ridge, we hastened upwards. The trail was clear but became steeper and steeper. Walking through the blow-downs in a crouch, pack continually snagging on branches, had seriously stressed my knees. The last mile up was a slow painful process. Our destination for the day, a Black Hmong village, came into sight as the sun went down. A chilly bath at the village spring and laughing children revived me remarkably.

Sak broke out the bamboo grubs in the headman's house and after arranging the coals on the wood-fire cooking pallet to his satisfaction, tossed a dozen or so on the glowing embers. With a pair of chopsticks he carefully turned them to perfection and set them in the ash to cool. Pure protein. We were famished, having eaten nothing since early morning. The fish were next. With a sprinkle of crushed sesame seed and salt they were ambrosial.

Appetite unabated, we waited for our host and his family to prepare the evening meal. We were in luck. Hilltribe people do not as a rule eat meat every day – raised animals are not slaughtered simply for hunger. Outside of taking wild game (the Hmong are brilliant hunters); there must be reason and ritual for the taking of life. In this case, because of an illness in the family, to propitiate whatever bad spirit was causing this malady, a pig had been sacrificed earlier in the day.

Dinner was pig boiled with a vegetable from the tomato family - hard, green, creased spheres about 3 inches across. They are suspended over the cooking fire for a day before eating, which imparts a lovely smoky flavor to the food. A wonderful, mild hot-sauce, also made with the same vegetable was the accompaniment. A bowl of rice for each and a bowl of water between each two, and dinner was served. Rice is eaten with the fingers (right hand), squeezed into a ball. The spoons are used to dip into the boiled pig and salsa and then to take water, spoonful at a time between bites. A thoroughly satisfying meal.

Exhausted and replete, we went out of the slat board house to digest under the stars. The firmament was staggering; the Milky Way pellucid like a shimmering river in the moonless sky. No electricity, no radios, no T.V; the only sounds were the murmurs from sleepy houses, insect life in the surrounding forest and the subdued, restless noises of pigs, goats and cows, chickens, turkeys and ducks in the star-strewn darkness.

Eyes nodding, we went inside and lay on the bamboo sleeping-pallet above the packed earthen floor. By 9:00, the village was ready for bed. Before 5:00 a.m., the women are up building the fire, husking rice with the thudding music of foot-powered mortar and pestle. We arose in the opaque misty dawn. A throbbing knee had denied me of much-needed sleep but the headman's father offered me some medicine he'd grown and used himself, which improved my outlook on the day considerably: I had been concerned about a long painful descent down the other side of the ridge.

Packed and prepared by 9:00, we shouldered our packs and said thanks and farewells.

Just then, a lively, rhythmic chanting and jangling of a tambourine began from the headman's brother's house next door. I enquired what the occasion was and was informed another exorcism ritual to propitiate the sickness-causing spirit was being performed. Intrigued, I asked if I could observe, to which they had no reservations, but asked that I please not take photographs.

I spent the next three hours entranced. The shaman, a wiry man of indeterminate age and great energy, danced and pranced with a black cloth over his face before a spirit altar. In one hand he held two jingling bells and in the other a tambourine. There was an ambiguous element of levity to the scene: the gravity in similar tribal rituals I have witnessed was missing. The tone and rhythm of the shaman's dance and chanting seemed to be trying to cajole and amuse this obstreperous spirit into departing the premises.

At intervals he would jump spryly back and up, landing deftly on a bench, polished to a fine patina by many such performances. Then he would throw first the tambourine, then the bells to the ground. Without missing a beat, in one motion, he would jump down and pick up the tambourine and spring back to the bench. Again he would jump down and retrieve the bells before continuing his dance and song before the altar. This was repeated many times.

A trussed pig was eventually brought in and placed in the middle of the floor. Cut paper figurines were burned in the four directions, the shaman danced around the pig (whose minutes were numbered at this point) and soon its throat was cut, the blood collected into a basin. The shaman resumed his dance before the altar. I looked at my watch and was astounded that it was already noon. The ritual would continue until dark.

Saying second farewells, we headed off into the still-misty forest. On our descent we passed Khamu, Pu Tai, and Tai Dam villages before reaching the pirogue ferry on the river. Once across the river, we hiked to the road and waited for a local pickup truck-bus to take us back to our bikes. At dusk, we drove further north for two eye-watering hours through a spectacular but unnerving bug-storm before reaching our destination, a meal, a sleep and another day's adventure.

Call it work, call it fun, call it what you will. It doesn't pay much in the sense of cash, but the rewards are great. If you are ever feel the necessity for some adventure in places where westerners seldom if ever tread, or perhaps just for a different perspective on the world, get in touch - with us, with life, with the spirits.