Laos April 29- May 08/ 2013

    The Chinese have economic ties with Laos; they’re building roads in return for timber. I can’t say that the engineering is the best; water drainage is poor

The result on rivers and the environment is obvious

 This is the payback; six wheel drive Chinese ex-military logging trucks collecting the prize

 

 Logs are then trimmed into square sections and trucked out on grossly over loaded, over wide and over long loads  

While trying to find a camp for the night we decided to try next to one of the many hydro dams that have been built in the last 5 years. This one was only finished four months ago. The security gate was locked but the guard asked the ‘boss’ who took a liking to us and showed us over the hydro plant and gave us a great park for the night

A beautiful sunset over the new dam

The drive north was trhough some interesting limestone karst mountains

Life can be tough work

At Ponsivan a visit to the Plain of Jars was intriguing. No one knows how or why these were built but their age is estimated to be around 2000 years and weighing up to 6 tonne. Best speculation is that they were made for burial purposes

     How long each took to make and how they were made from solid basalt makes you wonder

     Ponsivan was the location of some of the heaviest bombing by the Americans during the Vietnam and Secret War. As with this example bomb craters are everywhere

      The remnants of war have also been put to good use. With 30% of all ordinance failing to explode and a price of 20c for scrap steel makes for a dangerous game of salvage 

   How about 6x 500lb unexploded bomb casings as foundations for your home?......

  

  ……or for growing a crop of spring onions…

   We drove up one valley to a cave where the Pathet Lao hid from the American bombing. The drive in was superb with heavy rain forest, mist covered hills and sharply rising karst limestone cliffs…….

….and finally the first cave which was a medical depot but closed to our entrance

   With the wet season just starting the paddy fields were being prepared for the next crop of rice

    This was an interesting table of meat. How about this animal lying next to the pork and eggs! I don’t know what it was but looked like a cross between a dog, a possum and a fox! Certainly not my dream of a delicacy!…..

……or perhaps some rat. Yes!!! Sun dried rat!!....…..

    ……so Marina decided to continue with her own cooking and did another class, this time in Lao cooking but without the animal thing above

 

    But with so many restaurants along the Mekong why cook? Here we enjoyed a Lao bar-b-q

  Fishing the Mekong

 Luang Prabang is a world heritage city with many beautiful Watts. This is the Sene Watt    

 

  The giving of the alms is a traditional ceremony to give food to the monks every morning at 6 o’clock

A visit to a traditional silk weaving factory……

….which produces some beautiful fabric

The final road north to the Chinese border had some very rough patches

    This was rather indicative of Laos; still harvesting and thrashing rice by hand. In Thailand it’s all mechanized  

   A visit to a school to deliver some books as a gift brought some great interaction with the children

A bunch of kids were on the run from the foreigners!

 Our last camp at Boten, Laos before crossing the border. An economic zone that hasn’t worked. We are in the parking area of a four story shopping mall with escalators installed but never finished being built.