Young Martin's Laos Adventure

by Martin Khanlee

Martin Khanlee is an unusual 17 year old American. He lives between USA & Beijing China, where his mother & father work. Last January he joined an exploratory expedition in the Central Laos Limestone with one of our teams. He kindly related the experience back to us in his own words…have a read and enjoy!

Our group consisted of seven guys. My father and myself are both Americans. We had met Nick Ascot a few years before while traveling in Laos, while we were checking it out, and he was looking for possible tour routes. Then there were the three Swiss guys. Edi was at home in Southeast Asia and indeed, had lived there for a number of years, at some point running into Nick. The other two guys were his friends who he was hanging out with. Nick, had set it all up, and Montri was Nick's right hand man, sort of like the tour-guiding equivalent of Indiana Jones. Together we spent four days in western-central Laos, spending most of our time in the middle of nowhere, and our last day in a town just across the Mekong River from Thailand.

Kuankatcha, the village where we stayed for two nights, was a full four hours away by four-wheel drive truck, and hiking boots. The drive was long, bumpy and dusty but still extremely enjoyable, even for people who aren't masochistic. The scenery is great, and the fact that you're sitting in a truck driving through Laos is thrilling in and of itself. The hike was good too, not all that hard, and short enough that no real blisters had a chance to form. The temperature was surprisingly clement, although most of that had to do with the abundant tropical shade, and the higher elevation.

To get to Laos from Isan (Northeast Thailand) one takes a ferry trip across the Mekong River. The ride isn't long, but more interesting than most ferries. The boat was perhaps 45 feet long, with benches on both sides and an after-thought sunroof constructed of a striped tarp. There were all manner of people on the boat: a few grandmothers, some teenage boys, various men and women from both Thailand and Laos, and of course our luggage and us. In perhaps ten minutes the boat had crossed the Mekong to the Lao ferry station, which looked disconcertingly like the Thai ferry station. Our group emerged into the bright, hot Laotian sun. Waiting for us in the street was a fairly odd vehicle found commonly central Laos and not so commonly elsewhere. It was in fact a four-wheel drive truck, slightly wider that your ordinary pickup, with a cab that could sit five people without too much squashing, and a bed that was perhaps half the size of an ordinary pickup. It was unanimously decided that as the group's official teenager, it would be my honor to sit in the back, accompanied by a member of the Swiss delegation. After loading our backpacks, and then situating them in such a way that it would be comfortable to sit on them, we roared off into the wilds of Laos. We left and drove for about an hour and a half along Laos's "Super Highway" Route 13 (a road constructed of asphalt and small stones) stopping for noodles a little before we turned off onto a dirt road.

Laos seems to be a county of extreme dustiness (in the dry season at least, in the rainy season it's just muddy). The dust of Laos is actually a very pretty color, a red orange, that would look beautiful portrayed in a painting, but significantly less beautiful in, say, your mouth. Be that as it may, the drive became more, if not less interesting as the scenery became increasingly more rural. We were entering the region where we would be staying for the next couple days, an area rife with karst limestone formations, products of soft stone and lots of rain. The road gradually became less and less traveled, which is to say that it became more and more bumpy, eventually turning into a service road for high-tension power lines. And then, the road stopped; we had reached Ban Hua Na (commonly known as “the village where the road ends”). It was slightly past three o'clock and we were all somewhat jarred and dust covered but otherwise unharmed. After greeting the village headman, working out some of the kinks afforded us by our extended drive, Montri acquired the services of some of the village men, to sherp (sherp being the verb form of sherpa) for us.

Our destination was a small village of perhaps 300 people that was built in a higher mountain valley, accessible only by a five-kilometer hike up and over the mountain. We reached our destination Kuankatcha around five o'clock, having made good time. We were met at the outskirts by a gaggle of people and escorted to the headman's house, where we climbed a wooden ladder to the open platform. The platform became our home as well as the headman's for the next two nights.

[Sidenote 1: Laotian houses are quite interesting, built on four or more stilts; they usually have an open area, a walled off area, and a corner for cooking. Walls are constructed of woven bamboo, the roof of thatch, and the floor is left un-chinked so that small refuse may be dropped through. The village has a number of headmen, one appointed by the communist party, one appointed by the village, and one or two others of no definite purpose, these men make up the legislative, judicial, and the executive branches of the town government.]

That night not too much happened. We put our bags in a corner and sat watching the sunset in the Lao hills, while a group of children and adults sat a few feet away, watching us. After a while Montri made some food (duck, sticky rice, and some sort of vegetable), and then we ate and ate some more, Montri talking animatedly, the rest of us just taking it all in and basking in the differentness of everything. Carbide lamps, which while interesting did little to ward off the very dark night of the village, had lighted the platform.

The next morning did not dawn quietly. One often associates words like "calm", and "peaceful" with dawn, but such was not the case in the village. Roosters started crowing sometime around 4:30 and kept it up until after everyone in the village had woken up. The morning was spent schmoozing with the people, in general being friendly, and trying to break the culture barrier. Edi, one of the Swiss guys, who had actually been to the village before, had brought a Badminton set, and I was drafted into demonstrating the quintessence of Badminton for the slightly taken aback Lao villagers. At first none of the children would try, but eventually the headmen (the one who owned the house where we were sleeping. He spent the most time with us, and will hereafter simply be called "the headman") gave it a shot. After watching the headman play, the village boys became sufficiently emboldened to give it a try for themselves.

That afternoon, our group and four of the village men, one of whom was our headman, headed off to the other side of the valley where they wanted to show us something. On the way we passed the non-smoking area, posted as such because of natural gas seepage somewhere, that had the tendency to blow lighted cigarettes out of proportion. Stopping on the way to cut some bamboo and get some water, we made our way across a goodly bit of the valley, up a wash, and into a place where one expected Harrison Ford to come bursting out of the jungle followed by a horde or blow-gun toting pygmies. Where we ended up was breath taking. Directly in front of us, but separated by a chasm, was a sheer limestone cliff that ascended up and out of the jungle and into the sky. The chasm, which was really just a steep drop off, went down perhaps 30 meters, before converging with the mountain, and forming a cave that descended another 70 meters or so. Needless to say it was an incredibly cool place. While the rest of the adults rested, catching their breath and enjoying the peaceful Laotian atmosphere, Montri, myself, the headman and one other man who may or may not have been a headman, went down into the cave to generally check things out and have a look around. The cave was extremely interesting. The floor, looked like a child's drip castle, and was flecked with little spots of something shiny. There were stalactites that were actually protrusions from the cave's walls that made xylophonic sounds when hit. The general aura of exploration was incredible.

Lunch was rice, cooked inside bamboo, and some member of the fowl family, which was cooked over a small fire. Rice cooked in bamboo is definitely a culinary point of interest, and I was intrigued by it. It seems that the bamboo is cut into sections, and then the inside is coated with leaf (by folding a large leaf in half and pushing it in). The bamboo is then filled with rice and water and set to cook in the fire. In a while, "voila!" you have rice. After lunch we returned to the village, and generally hung out until dinner, for which Montri made a coconut papaya curry and ant egg salad, the latter of which some of the group deferred eating.

The next morning dawned loudly again, and after playing with the children, seeing the school, and undergoing a parting ritual we left the village.

[Sidenote 2: The parting ritual involved the holding of rice, egg, and coconut while simultaneously bowing one's head and holding out one's other hand while the locals blessed us and tied cotton string around our wrists. The string, I'm told, was to make sure that our souls were not left behind when we began our journey homeward.]

When we did get back down the mountain, we found our truck waiting for us and after a discussion with the village headman (the village at the end of the road that is) we drove off, accompanied by two of the headmen from the village where we had spent the previous two nights. All in all the truck was quite full, and the two headmen (they were accompanying us to Tha Kaek to buy medicine) ended up sitting on the tailgate, a very uncomfortable proposition considering that for the first 15 minutes we drove over rice paddies, bumping over the dividing barrier every few feet. On the way back we stopped for lunch in an old French town, and stopped again at an old abandoned French mine. We still are not entirely sure what they were mining because of the language barrier, but it might have been cadmium, on the other hand, it might have been silica. Whatever it was, the mine had been bought by Russians, and was only temporarily closed down, while they waited for the price to go back up some. We were treated to watermelon and Californian Chablis by a very startled Russian couple from Siberia who had been left, or stayed behind to watch over the mine.

We got back into Tha Kaek fairly late, ate some interesting seafood, and went to bed. Next morning we ate a Vietnamese breakfast, and dubbed around the town for a while, looking at the Museum of the Revolution and taking in The Barrier Wall (a rock formation that may - or may not - have been manmade) before heading back across the river to Thailand.

All in all it was tremendously fun, interesting, and exciting. I can't wait to do it again.