Going Tribal

Parts 1 to 3

Shanti Keochanty.

Another peaceful, quiet Lao village.

Nothing much has happened since I rolled in a few hours ago, just a bit of farm activity, the occasional makeshift tractor puttering by on the main road, and lots of sitting around chatting and laughing.

There's kids everywhere, as there are in all these hill tribe villages.

It was a long steep ride today, a rise of over 1000m, and then an even longer descent. It was tiring, but so beautiful.

The views were stunning right from the word go.

Between a cliff and a dangerous place

Pineapple fields forever

Sad but true. Any chance I get. Sugar, gluten and pleasure.

Dusty break

Entering Xieng Khouang province, which has the dubious distinction of being the most heavily bombed region on Earth. More on that later.

It's hilltribe country through here, which is a name used in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to describe people who have migrated here from another place, and who generally live in the higher elevation regions.

In Laos, hilltribes make up about 15% of the population, and they generally live in elevations of above 1,000m. I've been cruising through and staying in some of these villages since I hit the hills. No doubt I'll be in many more before I leave this beautiful country.

Some of the people are relatively recent migrants to Laos, arriving within the past 200 years, and they were often forced to leave their traditional lands because of war. But others have lived here for many more centuries, having migrated from southern or central China. The Hmong, Akha and Miên are the most common groupings in the country.

It's amazing to pass by or stop in the villages. Life here is really removed from the consumerist busy craze of much of the world. It's a hand-to-mouth existence, people are poor, but they have land, so they have fresh produce, if the weather provides.

And they still have what appears to be a very vibrant ancient culture.

I've heard traditional music and chanting going on from inside huts in lots of places, sometimes people are congregated around fires outside, cooking up feasts. There's celebrations and rituals going on, sometimes a whole pile of people in a village will be in traditional dress for some celebration or important ritual.

Often the old women remain dressed in traditional clothes, and sometimes the old men. But generally the rest just get around in old western clothes, and dress up traditionally just for special occasions.

Everyone's so friendly. The kids call out from the sides of the road and wave their hands off, or run next to me, or race me on their bikes. They always win. I always let them.

People call out "sabai dii," (hello in Lao), or "hello" in English, and lately the kids have been calling out "bye bye" as a greeting. It's so fun.

If I got a dollar for every smile I've received in this country, my bank balance would be so elongated it would leave Elon grated and he'd no doubt say very nasty things about me on X.

Are there any adults living here?

Yay! Downhill!

Gourds army

They have to cage them in because they always try to go on some crusade somewhere or other

The beautiful Nam Chat, the Chat River, along which I'm sure much is said

Delicious fresh food, with local organic produce - spinach, those white pumpkin things, fresh lettuce right out of the garden, and an egg fresh out out of a hen's butt.

Watching nothing happening

That sun's getting low

The funniest thing to have in this quiet place. Just so you know, this is about as far from being a resort as is possible. Thank Buddha.

To Phonsavan

The next day was the longest and hardest day I've done on this whole trip, in terms of a combination of distance and elevation. The road was actually pretty good, but it did have some very dodgy bits, and when they happen up a steep incline, I can't get any traction and have to push.

That's tiring.

It was a long distance too.

So guess what? I went to bed at 9.30pm! Unheard of.

Beautiful morning views

This friendly young fella quickly stood at attention when I asked to take a photo of him with his amazing papayas. When I asked him the price he kept saying "sip haa phan" which is 15,000 Kip, or about $1.20 Oz. It didn't matter which one I chose. Of course I didn't want to carry one of the big ones.

Even when I snapped another pic looking back, he stopped walking and stood up straight again.

Heading up

Eventually I hit the Xieng Khouang Plateau, a vast area of rolling hills, plains and rivers, averaging at about 1000m elevation.

It's a beautiful area, and much more developed agriculturally than higher up in the hills.

Typical roadside village

Snack attack. Delicious papaya and sticky rice. A cheeky young calf kept trying to eat it.

There's loads of animals wandering around on the road, always. Cows, goats, dogs, buffaloes, chickens, ducks, and the occasional turkey. And then there's forest critters sometimes, especially snakes, lizards and the occasional civet.

Stunning Wat entrance. It's so much hotter, now that I've dropped down to about 1000m. And super dry.

Amazing rice fields. I was gonna photoshop them and make them all green like in National Geographic

Gums! This really reminded me of Oz. Especially the smell. Aaaah, what incredible nature we have in that country.

Red Centre-ish, except there's a volleyball court instead of a cricket pitch or golf course in the sand

Very fine looking Brahmin bull

Yet another Oz-esque scene

Looking down at the old bridge from the new

I had a strong wind against me in the afternoon. The two flags are the Lao national flag and the flag of the ruling party, the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

So eventually I rolled into the town of Phonsavan in the heat of the mid afternoon, and was surprised at how big it is.

Xiang Khouang Province

You really have no idea of what a place is gonna be like until you get there and see and feel it for yourself, not even if you've seen pictures of it beforehand. I had no idea this plateau would feel so different to the higher mountainous areas I've just come from, and to where, Insha'allah, I'll be going in a couple of days.

Because the land's a little flatter, there's space for more farming. The predominant ethnic grouping here is Tai Phuan, a people who migrated from southern China all the way back in the 13th Century. Everything's much more settled here, compared to the relatively more recent hill tribe villages.

I went to the local museum, which gave a fascinating account of the ethnic groups in this area, and the massive impacts of both of the Indochina Wars, as well as many other wars, on this region.

Because the plateau is right on the border between Laos and Vietnam, and really not that far from the Thai border either, it was of great strategic value to many armies over the centuries.

Unfortunately for the locals.

The indigenous people of the area are called the Khmu. After the Tai Phuan came from China they formed the independent principality of Muang Phan, and they established a thriving trading economy, trading metals and forest products with both China and India.

Their riches made them the constant target of the Lan Xang (Luang Prabang), Siamese (Thai) and Annam (Vietnamese) kingdoms.

By the mid 18th Century the Siamese desperately needed workers, as their population had been decimated by years of war with the Burmese, which they, in fact, eventually lost. So the Siamese forced many locals here to migrate to Thailand and resettle. They also destroyed village infrastructure and crops, so there was nothing left for other invaders. So nice of them.

The weakened region then became the target for Haw bandits from southern China, who would launch village raids and loot the countryside whenever they could.

The whole country was then colonised by the French from 1887. After that the Japanese invaded and ruled all of Laos between 1939-45, and then the locals battled both the French and the Americans/Vietnamese (and each other, on different sides), until the end of the civil war in 1975.

Sounds like a hilariously fun history doesn't it.

As I've talked about before, this part of Laos has the horrible legacy of being the most bombed region on our precious fragile ailing Mother Earth. As the area was used by the Viet Minh to transport weapons along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the US approach was to bomb the living shit out of the place, and to destroy villages and villagers who were supporting either the Vietnamese or the Lao communists (Viet Minh or Pathet Lao).

So the countryside is pockmarked with bomb craters, and there's millions of cluster bomb "bombies" and larger unexploded ordnance hidden all over the bloody place. This province has the highest proportion of it in the whole country. Wild camping is not a good idea around here.

Ethnic Groups

There are really six main ethnic groups living here, namely the Lao (the main ethnic group in the country), the Tai Phuan (original migrants from China in 13th Century), the Hmong and Tai Dam (both originally coming from southern China in the 1800s) the Khmu (indigenous) and the Phong (originally a Viet grouping).

I'm gonna test you on all those.

White Hmong woman from 1933. There are different Hmong tribes, White, Black and Striped, and, believe it or not, you can tell them apart by the dresses the women wear.

Reeded bamboo flute

Amazing Hmong reeded flute called the khen. As you can play more than one note on these instruments, and because they're reeded, they sound more like a type of mouth organ than any sort of flute.

Incredibly, Hmong musicians also blow across certain leaves, as a musical instrument. It sorta sounds a bit like a gazoo.

Tai Dam erect these tree-like sculptures every three years, and have a ritual to appease the spirits, and to connect the mundane and supernatural worlds. They all dance around the sculpture to music, beckoning the spirits to descend to earth for some food and drink. I saw these sculptures in the Tai Dam village I visited in northern Thailand a few months back.

Amazing weft ikat fabric. String is tied to yarns in the fabric so those parts are unaffected by the dyeing process. After dyeing, the uncoloured yarn is then interwoven with other yarn to create beautiful designs.

Tai Phuan women from the 1920s

Tai Dam, 1950s

Hmong family in the 1900s

Khmu women, 1910s

Phong women and a boy, 1900s

The road I cycled on, in 1910. Road Number 7. It's in slightly better nick now, for cycling on that is, but it looked way nicer then.

Phonsavan

I stayed in this cute little guest house.

Every day I had some variation on this soup, called fer, which is actually the same way you say phớ, the Vietnamese noodle soup that you may be familiar with. Really delicious, even the veg version around here.

Sunset getting close, over the monument to Chet Chuong, revered leader of the Muang Phuan Kingdom.

Old army trucks

Lao fighter jets

The chicks are deliciously fat in this tiny ritzy burb

No, it's not a B52 bomber crashing, just another beautiful sunset.

My guesthouse garden, where Bewdy hangs out at night

The last cyclist who stayed here never left

Improvised brekky. Banana, sweet yoghurt, and a couple of dry digestive biscuits. Beats noodle soup 3 times a day.

Although this doesn't look bad at all, does it. This feast totalled 50,000 Kip ($4 Oz), and also totalled my belly, as the bowl was so large and deep it even filled up my hollow leg-straws.

Plain Of Jars

I went to visit one of the many UNESCO World Heritage sites containing these incredible rock jar megaliths that are dotted around the countryside here. The site was about 10 clicks from town.

Yes, they're jars, chiselled out of granite between 500BC and 500AD, during the Iron Age.

There's hundreds of them. This particular site is a bit of a high point, and was therefore used by Pathet Lao troops during the war. Notice the bomb craters, compliments of the typically bombastic US Air Force.

So far they've removed 127 unexploded bombs in just this little area.

Scientists agree that the jars were used as part of some sort of burial or funeral practice, and there's been burial sites discovered around the jars (but never underneath them).

One theory is that the people who carved them would put their dead bodies in the jars until everything but the bones were completely decomposed (called a primary burial), and then the bones would later be buried in the ground somewhere nearby (secondary burial).

But others disagree.

The local myth is that they were used to brew lao lao, rice liquor, for huge celebrations. But by the number and size of the jars this could only happen if every single villager was a complete pisshead all of the time, which is unlikely.

This is the King's Jar, the largest of the lot. It's taller than me above ground, and is also partly buried.

Trenches dug by soldiers

The lucky trench diggers

The jars aren't all round, but tend to follow the shape of the rock they've been carved out of. This one's more square-ish.

This isn't a lid, but a marker stone for a burial site.

They must've had dogs.

The atmosphere's pretty hazy on and off around here at the moment, partly because of crop and grass burn offs like this one.

I wasn't hot enough in the mid afternoon sun, so I climbed this hill

Nice view over Gundagai, I mean, over Xieng Khouang Plateau.

Lao trooos in the area during the war against the French

Som thum and khao niaw. More fire breathing.

The great chef. Notice the 2 women in the distance in traditional Hmong wedding clothes.

A local guy offered me these fruits, called som. They were pretty disgusting, incredibly sour and pasty, and he insisted I dip them in chilli powder and salt to make them better. I reckon they weren't ripe enough, but Lao people love eating tart fruit, as, it seems, do all Southeast Asians.

I mean, I quite like the green mango, but these were next level tartish, like the Valley in Brissy on a Friday or Saturday night.

Muang Kham

The next day I rode along the plain for awhile, and then got back into the hills, and eventually to another plain.

Photogenic hills

Cemetery

Traditional Tai Dam house

Amazing roadside stalls. Loads to eat, but I skipped the som, the fruits that look like little tomatoes.

Displaying their wares. The metal in all these is worth quite a lot of cash around here. Unfortunately that provides an incentive for poor locals to go and dig them up, with sometimes horrific consequences.

Lunch. Some sort of gluggy rice thingy with bits of onion in it, onion pastry balls, and delicious mango.

Downtown Muang Kham

The view from the back of my guest house

The view of the back of my guest house

Tham Piew

In the arvo I rode about 8 clicks out of town to check out a cave, Tham Piew, which was the site of a particularly horrible event during the American War.

Army base

Pretty farmhouse

Riding through little villages and farms to the caves

Half moon run

Rice silo. The silo is made of bamboo, and then covered in buffalo dung to insulate it.

Beautiful spot for a staghorn

Buddha shrine close to the entrance of the cave

View from the cave entrance

Due to the almost constant carpet bombing of this district by the US airforce during the war, local villagers and Pathet Lao troops were always trying to find safe places to be for long periods of time, as it was so dangerous in the villages.

Caves were a good option, because they were safe from aerial bombardment.

The whole population of some local villages moved to Tham Piew, as the bombing was so constant.

But on Novermber 24, 1968, a US serviceman in a fighter plane fired a missile right into the cave entrance. It went in deep, exploded, and every single person inside died.

There were 374 victims in just that one attack.

These days, November 24 is an annual day of mourning in the whole of Laos.

The cave used to be extensive, but access to much of it has been destroyed, surprise surprise.

Families have erected small rock memorials inside, which they light incense on.

It was so sad to be there, knowing that my own government was carrying out attacks like this at the time, probably paid for by my dad's taxes. So I went for a walk in the bush, and reflected on how fucked up humans can be sometimes.

I was grateful to Mother Earth, because she did her normal healing thing.

At the museum in Muang Kham I watched a vid about what happened at Tham Piew, where one of the guys who had to remove the bodies of the victims was interviewed. He was still visibly traumatised by the event, of course. Those images and feelings would never ever leave you I guess.

Big Climbs

Today I broke another of my own personal cycling records. Not that I'm particularly into the numbers thing, in fact I don't even have a little bike speedo or odometer thingy, but up here it's sorta necessary to work out your elevation differences when you're planning your routes, as the roads are so steep, and the distances can be long.

So I know I climbed nearly 1300m today, and some of it was so bloody steep. But thankfully the road was actually relatively good, with not too many gravel patches, and I didn't need to get off and push my bike once.

Great to see some green rice fields (even if it's dry season and they're irrigated).

I check my eggs at the stalls these days. Three times I've bought the eggs with the little steamed almost-hatched chooks inside.

Yeah, dog on the menu. Really.

I stocked up on food before I left town, predicting there wouldn't be much in the food department for the next couple of days - no shops or eating places, just small villages. Better be self sufficient, just in case. I also have my emergency two minute noodles packs and my cooker, if need be.

So before I left town I bought mandarins, sticky rice, boiled eggs, deep fried bananas, and these sweet cassava balls.

I was right, there was nothing much around, and I won't reach a larger town for a couple of days.

It was a killer of a climb, but I took it slowly. That's my secret. As long as I respect my body, and rest when I need to, and don't try and cover impossibly huge distances in one stretch, I'm fine.

You can see the haze from the crop and grass burnoffs at lower altitudes. As I climbed higher the air got clearer.

Interesting

The views were amazing.

By mid arvo I'd had my fill of riding, and asked the family living in this beautiful house if I could pitch my tent in their field across the road. Of course they graciously said yes. It was the love heart that made me stop there.

I found a patch of shade, lay my sarong on the ground, and crashed out. Siestas are the best invention ever.

One of the young men started burning off around the property

I had loads and loads of companions on my patch for the night.

One of a few puppies that visited, as well the adult dog pack that looked after me.

Piggy on the edge

My alarm clock

Home sweet home

There were mountains of kids, all but one were girls. The best thing ever is that noone's got phones around here, and there's no range up here anyway. There's loads of gatherings, chatting, laughing, and music instead. Just like it should be. Pretty much every village I've passed through lately has had something or other going on.

The kids played piggy in the middle, throwing a tiny little cloth bag filled with seeds at each other. They laughed their heads off the whole time, and they all looked after the really little ones.

I played guitar for them for ages. When they got bored of that they played on a hugely steep hill that was basically a cliff, running around the steep edge like mountain goats.

In Another World

It really has been a beautiful experience up here in the tall tribal hills of northern Laos.

It's like being in another world, a world that existed centuries ago.

Life is so much slower.

And so is my riding, when I'm climbing the crazy long long steep hills.

It's tough physically, but my body's doing really well. It loves this healthy, wholesome lifestyle. Getting loads of physical exercise, being outside all day, eating pretty much only local home grown and home made produce is all manna for the soul.

I've got a few days more riding to get to Sam Neua, the next town of any decent size, and, of course, I've got mountains of hills to climb and descend before I get there.

And then it'll be back to the hills of Vietnam, and the elegant craziness of Hanoi❤️

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