For a town on an asphalt road that is the only gateway to the boats to Muang Ngoi (Tourist Central--'Laos style), Nong Kiaw is an amazingly 'nothing' town, most of its roads dusty dirt, and um...most of its roads being, like, one actually, that comes off the one narrow potholey asphalt road. You know those postcard images of the vertical Limestone Karst mountains in southern China, that erupt like mushrooms out of the watery ricefields? Well, that's the scenery around Nong Kiaw, too. Nong Kiaw has perhaps 2 rustic guesthouses, and a few shops, all of them without shopfronts, just a room without a front wall, opening onto the street, displaying goods on wooden shelves or tables. All packaged things mostly imported from China or Thailand, and then a number of items important to rural people like agricultural hardware--tools, ropes, and the like.
Luisa and I wandered down the one street and saw that the few spirit-houses that were visible (all forms of spirituality having been banned or greatly constricted by the communist regime) were homemade, and given corrugated iron rooves like the humans' houses. They were very simple affais, often just a little platform with some food offerings--not like the mass-produced, gaudily painted paired spirit-houses or opulent spirit-mansions seen all over Thailand. Yes, Laos is a poor country. And yes, this means that much of the beauty of the way things are traditionally done has not been lost (yet). The fact that spirit-houses are hand-made enables each family to pour their craft-energy, if they have any left over, into their personal connection with the spirits they believe in, rather than just buying a pre-packaged and standardized spirit-house made in a spirit-house factory in Thailand (yes, these exist: you see parking-lots full of cookie-cutter spirit-houses for sale along major highways all over Thailand. I guess the concepts of mass production and mass consumption wiggle there ways into everything everywhere, if you let them in.) Spirit houses are just one (ironic and to me culturally quaint) example of how meaning, creativity, personality, and diversity are lost in the industrialization process.
Enough moralizing. More later ;)
We took the boat from Nong Kiaw to Muang Ngoi, a simple handmade wooden affair like all the others, with an outboard motor attached. There were local passengers as well as tourists. I met, as you do, some travellers I'd met previously in distant locations. There were pink water buffalo grazing and mostly submerged in the shallows (as well as grey-brown ones), the odd white egret, gorgeous forest, groups of jumping, splashing naked tribal children gleeful in the water, women wrapped in sarongs washing, the rhythmic whistle of the captains of row-boats training for the 17-village race upcoming in 4 days, a funeral procession bringing a coffin down to the water with gong-baring monks, and the normal--but utterly amazing--images of farmer-fishermen in traditional dress paddling with handmade paddles their handmade fishing-boats, clad in traditional dress with the classic Mekong conical bamboo sunhats. It's still here! It's still happening! All of this is gone, gone, vanished in Thailand, only found on postcards. It is so poignant to see these images in Laos, knowing that the tourist industry here is exploding and unless some careful and wise decisions are made, the sustainable traditional communities with all their independent and diverse lifeways will be gone, gone, vanished in Laos, too, and confined to the historical postcards, and all the remarkable features of their ways of living harmoniously in community, of raising sane and healthy balanced children, of living without polluting or destroying the landscape, will become the unbelieved stuff of legends, just romantic fantasy, nothing that people actually can do, and human nature will mean individualism, selfishness, as it already has come to mean for us in America and Europe.
So I am torn. I want to tell you about my experiences. I want to share the beauty and the inspiration that these people and this country, Laos, have poured into my lap: And yet I know that by publicizing Laos further, to you as potential tourists, and by travelling here myself, am I not contributing to its destruction? Should I tell you to come here now before the traditional things are gone, so that you can carry the lessons of these traditional cultures and what is really possible for humanity out into the world......or should I tell you to stay the hell away from here if you care about humanity? Answers welcome: write a comment or shoot me an email.
Muang Ngoi, Tourist Central, is still a pretty village. The buildings are still made entirely of bamboo, for the most part. The 'road' through the village is just dirt like the rest of the place. But indeed, every other building is a guesthouse with bamboo bungalows, or a tourist-oriented restaurant. There are heaps of touts for the guesthouses or for tours to trek to tribal villages to stick cameras in peoples' faces and help destroy their cultural independence, or see a waterfall, or see a cave. Cave/village/waterfall: just things to look at, just photo-opportunities really. People may be involved, but they're just picturesque and third-worldy and brown people and they are illiterate and don't speak English so kind of not real people anyway, and you wouldn't want to stay there in the village for long, there's no proper toilet etc etc. Sorry to be cynical. I've just watched a lot of tourists and seen how they behave. It's a bloody shame that most of them aren't your best cultural embassador, or even respectful.
Thinking like this I repeatedly ask myself why I am any different from all the other tourists. Why my desire to visit a traditional, remote village is any more legitimate or any less damaging than theirs. And in a way it's not, of course, and I am no different, and so my criticism of their behavior is also, somehow, an investigation of my own motivations and what I consider acceptable for *me* to do, too.
What I have found (not for the first time) is that all it takes for me to feel comfortable with my participation in this thing called tourism is something called RESPECT. Apply it in all situations, at all moments, using lots of caution and awareness as seasoning, and something is transformed and becomes a beautiful experience for all concerned. I enjoy myself, and feel comfortable with my conduct and interactions: and I can see from the faces of the locals that I interact with that they are enjoying themselves too--they often seem surprised (and delighted) at the way this foreigner is treating them, even with things so simple and basic (you would have thought) as a polite greeting and smile. Apparently it's not that common from tourists, or it wouldn't produce such enthusiastic and surprised responses. Of course, it's very sad that this sensitive respect isn't the baseline of all intercultural tourism. And I am very aware that tourists don't, mostly, intend any harm. They are just not really paying attention, not really seeing the local people around them, and not watching what other people do. Not behaving as if they were guests in someone else's home--but as if they own the place, and even then, as if they don't respect it.
Simple things as an example:
Tourists sit down on steps in front of a streetside table-stall, not noticing that by doing so they prevent locals from getting to the stall and so reduce the business received by that seller. Why not just sit down /next/ to it instead of blocking it? Locals are too polite and forgiving to say anything.
Tourists who walk into temples forgetting to take their shoes off, or not having discovered (or noticed) that it's disrespectful to go in with so little clothing on.
Tourists who wear very very short shorts and bare their shoulders: locals don't do this and it's uncouth, have they not noticed, or don't they care?
Tourists who think it's funny to buy water pistols bigger than anyone else's and attack people with them, turning what's supposed to be a gentle, playful water-splashing celebration symbolizing cleansing for the Laos New Year, into a quite unpleasant and disrespectful water-fight, squirting the water directly into people's faces, including children's, and splashing moped-riders (dangerous), and setting a very bad example.
Tourists who ON empty market-stall tables pointing the soles of their feet at passers-by. Not only do locals not climb on the tables but surely the tourists must have read the basic rule in this part of Asia that it's very rude to point your feet at anyone. No local EVER does that. Come on guys, it doesn't take much, and if you keep behaving in these ways, Laos is going to be as full of the ugly side of the tourist industry as Thailand in no time.
These are just a few examples, all from today.
So, carrying with me the tools of respect, caution, friendliness, and watching what other people are doing, I decided I wanted to go to a tribal village and stay there as long as possible, to actually live people's lives there a little, helping them out in the fields in exchange for food and somewhere to sleep. 'As long as possible' meant only 4-5 days, unfortunately. On the first night in Muang Ngoi I found a Hmong tribal guide who seemed nice enough and spoke quite good English, who worked for the government tourist company, which gives a good percentage back into local communities, and who was prepared to take us to some friends of his in a Hmong village only accessible by foot, to stay with the family for a few days. Moreover, his price was very reasonable. He was at first confused that I only wanted to see ONE village, and wasn't interested in visiting the waterfall that every other tourist he'd ever seen went to.
Luisa, the Spanish woman, decided to come with me and Song, the Hmong guide. We left the next day, at noon on Tuesday 8th April.
