The other day we visited a toothless old lady who grinned a lot.
She spends her days making lao lao, or rice whisky in a little shed in her back yard.
She kindly sold us some of her lao lao for a very reasonable price- about 30 pence a litre.
When we drank it, it seemed to make us dance and sing a lot, and then I woke up feeling bad.
It is said that the Chinese will eat anything with four legs except a table and anything with wings except an aeroplane. This ethos seems to have spread all over south east Asia. Having spent 4 days on the Mekong and the Nam Ou rivers and 3 days in the jungle and, having seen absolutely no wildlife apart from the odd butterfly or spider, I can only assume that the locals have eaten it all.
My fears are confirmed when I find a dark and dingy local's market in a remote part of a remote town, where one could buy a whole fresh porcupine, jungle cat, flying squirrel, bamboo rat, various birds and amphibia….this sadly remains the most wildlife I’ve seen anywhere on the trip.
I have tried a few of the local delicacies including stir fried locusts and chilli worm things. 'Dancing shrimp' consists of tiny, live baby shrimp in a soup- cruel, odd but ultimately very fresh. None of the above will be finding a regular place in my diet.
The Secret War was not so secret over here in Laos. On average a bomb was dropped every 7 minutes for 7 years, 2 tonnes of ordnance for every man, woman and child living in the country, making it the most bombed country in history. The American people and congress were oblivious. The southern strip of Laos was bombed because it had jungle tracks that facilitated the transportation of Vietnemese troops and supplies, the north was bombed to quash rebel uprisings. These attacks cost 2.2 million dollars a day and there were approximately 560,000 missions.
One particularly sad story that stays with me is of an entire village hiding in a cave from the continual air attacks starving and afraid for 5 years. One day an American pilot fired a missile into the cave and incinerated all 457 of them leaving just one guy who wasn’t in the cave at the time. He lost every single person he’d ever known in seconds and still finds their bones scattered in the cave today.
Cluster bombs, an incredibly evil invention, contain 300 tennis ball sized ‘bombies’ or bomblets that scatter everywhere whilst the bomb is falling. They are supposed to explode on contact with the ground but many do not.
In fact 30% of the bombs dropped still remain unexploded and many years of tireless work from various aid organisations has cleared only 0.19% of them. It is estimated that it will take well over 100 years to complete the task at the current rate. The bombs are everywhere and crop up in school playgrounds, under houses, in trees….farmers trying desperately to make a living risk their lives every time they plough their fields. Thousands of Laosians are killed and maimed every year by the bombs, America is doing very little to help.
The people of Laos seem to accept the bombs as part of everyday life. They are happy and smiling and do not seem to bear any kind of grudge.
Pai- charismatic, hippy little town in the top left corner of Thailand just near the Burmese border with beautiful wooden shacks and bustling street markets. An incredible live music scene with a different act every few yards. A reggae festival coincided with my time here and I spent the night dancing in the dust with about 3,000 others from all over the world. The reggae scene is massive here in Thailand and it takes a while to get used to seeing Thai rastas roaring through town on seriously badass choppers.
Bamboo- so very, very useful in this part of the world. Building bridges, houses, fences, ladders, cups, ashtrays, chopsticks, scaffolding, tattooing, weaving into baskets, you can even eat it although it’s not the tastiest of plants. It grows quickly and efficiently just about everywhere.
The male frog uses a valve in his throat to make some weird and wonderful noises to attract a mate- he chooses to go on the pull at night presumably because the night is generally a quieter time for him to be heard. Some people sleep at night.
One such frog chose to do his mating call right next to my ear one night, separated only by a wall constructed of leaves the powerful clicks reverberated through my chest. This particular frog, I deduced, was either very lazy or just not very good at finding his perfect match and seemed to be expecting her to come hopping right to his side without having to go anywhere. When his mates started up the chorus I had no choice but to join in- needless to say I was quite relieved that I didn’t score.
Travelling with three guys (Ajax, Manchester and Ben, Newquay) has made for some interesting and often uncomfortable sleeping conditions. Sharing rooms cuts the cost in half and we regularly end up drawing straws for the floor. Last night we ended up in a tiny bamboo hut just big enough to fit a double mattress in and had to sleep sideways with all our feet hanging out the door. I awoke in the middle of the night to find what I later discovered to be a bamboo rat (think cat sized vole with beaver teeth) sitting on my feet enquiring as to the whereabouts of the biscuits. A sharp and jumpy boot to his mid-rift from me sent him flying out the door enquiring elsewhere.
