Laos trek Pictures

A beautiful sad looking Akha girl wearing Joan Crawford's jacket.



The Akha village.



The new school for which I bought paper and pens for the 30 students.




A tuk-tuk arrived with a small array of fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. This Akha village has been moved closer to the main road ostensibly to provide them with a school and medical care. The old village had been vacated and many of the structures dismantled and carried six or so km to the new one. It was unclear to me what the actual benefits were.



An Akha grandmother tends to her grandchild while stringing freshly spun cotton between two pegs.




On the second day we passed a group of young Black Tai men who were on their way to go fishing with their homemade spear-fishing guns. My guide Xai brought me one as a present to our hotel. We'll see if it makes it past the TSA.




Broom grass. Perhaps eight feet tall. Harvested once a year. As we have been driven hither and yon, we have seen women carrying bundles of this green brush which they dry in the sun and beat to remove the seeds. It is then woven into dust brooms which are everywhere.




One of my superb meals. A river fish larp, a sour soup made with the remains of the fish and various stray vegetables, a cabbage stirfry, some fresh chillies, and loads of sticky rice. The clear liquid in the glass bottle was what they called crazy water, grain alcohol. made from fermented sticky rice and yeast. I had some for breakfast the last day when we passed a working still. They were using herbs to clarify it and I was sure it would have some wonderful flavor. It really didn't. It just tasted like alcohol.




Light filtered through the woven bamboo wall illuminating the smoke from the fire under the cooking Chinese cabbage.



The early afternoon light on our Akha hut where we slept. At night there were sounds of barking deer. On the roof of the hut our headlamps caught the eyes of hundreds of spiders' eyes that reflected our light back. As we were going to sleep the forrest rats could be heard scurrying around the hut. I was convinced one would end up trapped in my mosquito netting as had happened to a Swiss woman who I'm sure is still recovering.




Dinner the first night served as usual on a banana leaf. BBQ water buffalo, a wonderful vegetable soup, and a tomato and garlic curry, and sticky rice.



After the chillies were roasted they were ground with coarse salt and rubbed into the meat before being " barbecued"--- cooked slowly and dried out over the fire.





Roasting the chillies threaded in a sliver of bamboo




My guide through Green discovery was Xai (Cy) who was Black Tai. We were also accompanied the first day by two Khmu villagers and the second day by two Akha. Those villagers interested take turns going out with treks as a way of earning money. They are extremely poor. On this day the Khmu guide (Comeon) had forgotten a knife and had sharpened on a piece of stone a scrap of metal he found to cut the meat and vegetables for the meal, no prob.




Responsibility starts early in the Akha village



The second morning as the mist cleared.




The ferns towered overhead and were the same optimistic green of new rice in the paddies.





Waiting for the sticky rice to steam.




On the path the first day of the trek we came upon some Akha hunters gathering some medicinal herbs to go to China. They showed us how to set a trap to catch small rodents. It was very ingenious and used only found materials. Hunting is discouraged as the wildlife population has been decimated.