Lazing in Laos - Friday, Nov-27

At 6 o’clock in the morning, the nameless side street between the Mekong river and Luang Prabang’s main street is quiet under the foggy sky. Even the roosters have stopped crowing, having already announced their presence as early as four, and now replaced by the scattered chirping of songbirds and the occasional barking dog. Before long, a long line of orange-robed monks turn the corner, punctuating the silent morning with the soft padding of their bare feet and the gentle swishing of their robes. This the tak bat, the monks’ morning rounds, when monks and novices file down the street near their wats, accepting offerings of sticky rice and fruit. For Theravada Buddhists, it is a means of merit-making, and devotees believe that by feeding the monks, they are feeding the souls of their departed ancestors.

I find a spot on a corner and sit and wait, approached by ladies selling packets of sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf, should I wish to make an offering. The monks do not eat this rice. I was told some monks got sick from eating this rice, and others have said that they object to the commercialization of this ritual. Whatever the reason, I politely refuse. I would rather be a quiet observer.

The Lao faithful line up individually, kneeling on mats or sitting on low stools so that their heads are below those of the monks. It is an expression of humility and respect. When a line of monks pass, sometimes as many as a dozen at a time, each person places a small ball of sticky rice in their alms bowl, starting with the eldest monk and ending with the youngest and shortest novice. All is silent except for the click of tourists’ camera shutters. A small group of falang whisper among each other, “This will be the only food they eat all day,” but that is not true. As novice La explained “monks love pizza.”

I see my monk friend Khamchanh and we make brief eye contact, but he quickly casts his eyes down and I turn and look away, not wanting to interrupt the moment. By 6:45 the monks have all returned to their wats for breakfast, and it is time for me to do the same.

Breakfast at Manichan Guesthouse is always the highlight of my morning, and today Peter cooks up a yellow lentil omelet for me, along with the oven-warm baguettes, homemade jams, and strong Lao coffee that are the usual morning staples set out on the long communal table in the courtyard.

I make postcards after breakfast from bits of ephemera I’ve collected along the way. Brochures and ticket stubs and SIM card jackets are repurposed as art, but I won’t be able to mail them until 5pm, when the only post office in town opens its doors. Travel agents and moneychangers open early and close late, making it easy for tourists to part with their US dollars, euros, of Thai baht, but I haven’t grasped the rhythm of business hours in the government-run offices.

Today’s adventure is a culinary one, and my first destination is the well-known Tamarind Restaurant, an institution in Luang Prabang. Aside from lunch and dinner, Tamarind offers banquet-style tasting menus and cooking classes in a cozy location not far from where I observed tak bat. I order kratiep si khai, a rosella and lemongrass cooler. Rosella, or more commonly known as roselle, is a species of hibiscus with the tart flavor of raspberries and rhubarb, and is used in traditional medicine as an antihypertensive and diuretic. I am soon brought my entrée of mok pa, a river fish steamed in banana leaf and topped with a dill and basil sauce, with a small basket of sticky rice to mop it all up. Traditionally, Lao food is eaten with the fingers, using a ball of sticky rice to scoop of the food. Sticky rice is a special variety of rice that sticks to itself when cooked, but does not stick to one’s fingers, thankfully.

Even though portions are much smaller than what we are served in the States, I am always more than satisfied by the end of a meal and have yet to sample a local dessert. No matter how many times I pass by the JoMa coffee house by the Night Market, past their displays of coconut cake, lemon cake, chocolate cake, and doughnuts, I cannot manage to squeeze in dessert. There are dozens of street stalls offering a rich variety of fresh fruits blended into tasty shakes that satisfy both thirst and sweet tooth.

I am expected at English class tonight, so an afternoon siesta is in order. I keep the shutters in my room closed all the time to keep the room from getting too hot during the day, and in the quiet darkness I sleep fitfully until my cellphone alarm wakes me around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. There’s barely time to mail my postcards and grab a fruit shake before class. A proper dinner will have to wait until after class.

Today’s lecture is about United States history, the symbolism of our flag’s thirteen stripes and fifty stars, and how the US can be compared to fifty nations with their own cultures, dialects, and laws, but united under one federal constitution. At one point Xay, the teacher, asks me to name all fifty states.

“Is this a test?” I ask, laughing, “Because I can’t imagine why you’d want to know all this useless information.”

I explain what freedom of speech means to Americans, and how we are a nation of immigrants. “In fact, there are many Hmong living in California,” I add, but I don’t discuss how the US repatriated the Hmong who helped the CIA during their secret war against the Vietnamese Communists in Laos. I talk about Spain and bullfighting, and how I always root for the bull but he rarely wins. I’ve brought a few photos to share with the class so they can see my family, my cats, and my home in San Francisco.

“Your husband is wearing a white shirt like you.”

We are posing under a bas relief of apsaras, celestial dancers carved into the temple walls of Angkor Wat. My partner Richard had unbuttoned his shirt against the searing Cambodian heat, and his chest is exactly the same shade of white as my tanktop.

“That’s not a shirt; that is his chest,” I correct one of the students, and they all laugh at how pale his skin is.

Toward the end of class, I read aloud from the only English book in class so the students can listen to my pronounciation. The students read along from photocopied pages that are very nearly illegible. It is a challenge for them to pronounce the letter r, and I write a few words on the whiteboard that we can say together.

Rabbit.
Radio.
Rain.
Red.
Ruin.

And finally, the most monstrous of all “r” words: Rural.

Class is over at 7 o’clock, and Xay and Olay, one of the older students and a close friend of the teacher, invite me out for beers at one of the many restaurants along the banks of the Mekong. Xay gives me a ride on the back of his red motorbike, and then goes and fetches Olay. They arrive in two minutes and order a couple of tall Beerlaos and a bucket of ice.

I learn that Xay is getting married soon, on December 26, but for now lives with his fiancée and soon-to-be mother-in-law. His family is from Vientiane and he moved to Luang Prabang to teach. Olay is married and has a 2-year old son and has a knack for fixing anything that is broken. But he’s tired of being an auto mechanic and wants to learn to fix computers instead. We talk about marriage in the US and our high divorce rate, how extended families are rare, and why we put our elderly in nursing homes when they are too feeble to care for themselves. I tell them about my own mother who, at age 83, insists on living alone, but it works for her because she has a tight network of friends and family nearby who all look after one another. “Juntos pero no revueltos,” is her motto. Close but not all jumbled up.

“I would like to invite you to my home for dinner, when you have time,” offers Xay.

“I have nothing but time, and I would be most honored to be invited into your home.”

No matter how much I protest, the fellows insist on paying the tab. After saying our goodbyes, I head toward the Night Market and grab a Lao-style baguette for dinner, happy to have made new friends here in Luang Prabang.

Tags: Laos, Luang Prabang

Lazing in Laos - Thursday, Nov-26

Today is an easy day: no biking, no plans, no commitments of any sort. It is also Thanksgiving back home. I only give it a momentary thought, because it wasn’t a holiday my family observed. My father loathed turkey; it was too frequently served when he was away at sea. My mother is Spanish, so Thanksgiving has no significance to her and she only used the oven for drying clothes in the winter or for storing unused cookware. As for me, it’s a day off from work, which is cause enough to celebrate. Like my mother, I have never roasted a turkey and probably never will.

I linger over breakfast with my fellow guests, Hilda and Rebecca. Breakfast is always a leisurely affair with plenty of coffee to go around and lots of stories to share. I take pleasure in conversing with them both. Hilda lives half the time in Vancouver; the other half of her time is spent in Chiang Mai where she own a condominium. Rebecca is from Hawaii. Of the two, Hilda is the most outgoing. She’s a captivating conversationalist, smart, worldly, and with an elegant air about her, underscored by her slight English accent. Rebecca is quieter, soft spoken, but has a subversive sense of humor that peeks out when she gets to know you. Hilda tells me how she took her children out of grade school (they’re my age now) and set sail around the world. There was a little bit of home schooling while they traveled, like keeping up with reading and math, but most of their lessons came from being out in the world, from the places they visited and the people they met, and when her children returned to school they were far ahead of the other children in their class.

Every falang I’ve met thus far has traveled far and often. I think you really need a bit of wanderlust to visit Laos. It’s accessible to a degree, but is not the first place people choose to visit when they set their sights on Southeast Asia. Laos lacks the tourism infrastructure of Thailand, the dynamism of Vietnam, or a major attraction like Cambodia. But what it lacks in sightseeing options it makes up for in stunning, unspoiled natural beauty, trekking opportunitites to remote places, and some of the most laid-back folks on the planet. Laos is the least populated country in Asia, with fewer than 70 inhabitants per square mile. To put it in perspective, Vietnam has nearly 670 inhabitants per square mile. There’s a lot of elbow room here.

After breakfast, I decide today is a good day to visit the Royal Palace Museum, former home to the royal family when Laos was a monarchy. The palace was built in 1904 during the French colonial era for King Sisavanvong and his family. In 1975 the palace was converted into a museum after the monarchy was overthrown by the Communists and the royal family taken to re-education camps. They died shortly afterward.

The building itself is an interesting blend of French and Lao architectural styles. The site was chosen near the river so that visitors to the palace could disembark from their journey and be immediately received. The palace now houses an impressive collection of art and artifacts, as well as the residences of the royal family. Perhaps the most noteworthy object in the collection is the Phra Bang, a legendary Buddha statue believed to have been cast in Sri Lanka in the 1st century, and presented to King Fa Ngum in the 1359. Twice it was taken from Laos by invading armies, and rumor has it the Phra Bang on display may not be the original after all. The real one is safely hidden in Vientiane. Or maybe not.

The King’s reception room is decorated with murals by French artist Alix de Fauntereau. They depict scenes from traditional Lao life and are meant to be viewed at different times of day, depending on the light that enters the window that corresponds with the time of day represented in the mural.

The Throne Room is the most impressive of all. The walls are painted a rich, deep red and covered in mosaics made of colored Japanese glass mirrors. They illustrate legends, battles, and daily Lao life. It’s not the kind of place that would inspire a deeply moving experience, but I cannot help but stand in awe and imagine what it must have been like at the height of the monarchy’s reign. I am not able to take my camera in, so I have no photos to show how magnificent all this is.

In a building behind the palace is a photography exhibit by a German fine arts photographer, Hans Georg Berger, titled “The Floating Buddha.” In 2005 he photographed novice monks in Luang Prabang practicing vipassana, or silent meditation. His black and white silver gelatin prints capture a singular moment of serenity that, in its observation, becomes a meditation in itself. I am particularly drawn to one image. The novice in the photograph is holding one of those banana leaf and marigold offerings that resemble a stupa. His eyes are closed in meditation, and he has the most beautiful elongated hands that seem mannered and unreal. His face is angled with very high cheekbones, but also soft and serene. I begin to see that those Buddhas in the temples are not abstractions, that some Lao people really do look like that.

It is late morning, so I work my way down Sakkaline Road, Luang Prabang’s main street, stopping at every wat along the way to take some photographs. At Wat Sirimounkhounsayaram (I think it wins the prize for the longest name) I engage three novice monks in conversation who are sitting around outside. Most monks speak English well, having a lot of time to practice with visitors. One of them, Khamchanh, is very bright and chatty and fun to talk to. I ask them all how long they have been monks and how long they plan on being at the monastery. No one wants to be a monk for life.

Young men, usually in their late teens and often younger, will enter the monastery for a short time in order to make merit. Not only is it is a social and religious obligation, but it gives a family prestige to have a son who takes “robes and bowl.” Some boys become monks for as little as a few weeks, and others stay for several years so the can obtain an education if their parents are too poor to send them to university, or live too far from a good school. In some cases, a married man might get caught cheating by his wife and becomes a monk for a little while until the fracas settles and he can go home again. It is an arrangement to resolve marital discontent that I find curiously amusing.

After saying goodbye to my monk friends, I walk across the street to Wat Khili. Wat Khili is a rare example of a Xiang Khouang-style temple. Legend has it that the Black Flag Haw rebels who sacked and looted Luang Prabang in 1887 took special care to destroy these types of temples because their shape resembled Chinese coffins. It’s also said that the Buddha at Wat Khili broke into a cold sweat in 1958, a dark omen signaling the coming war. The province of Xiang Khouang was heavily bombed during the Second Indochina War, leaving no trace of its architecture, making the sim at Wat Khili possibly the last surviving example.

At Wat Khili I meet a young novice by the name of La, who has only been studying English for one year but speaks it remarkably well. We stand under an arbor of bougainvillea and chat, and he compliments my Lao pronunciation when I describe the places I have been to. I ask him if he can help me say a prayer for my neighbor who killed himself, and I tell him how I was there when it happened and how his death has tormented me ever since.

La explain what the ritual entails, and then fetches the key to the sim (temple.) He returns wearing his yellow novice vest and prayer shawl. Inside the cool dark temple, I sit mermaid-style with my feet behind me, praying three times to the Buddha and ending each prayer by touching my forehead to the ground. I ask that he, my neighbor, accept this offering if he wishes, I pray for his passage to the next stage of being, and I pray for forgiveness because I was unable to help him. I put some kip in a silver alms bowl, and La begins to chant in Pali, the Buddhist liturgical tongue, reading from a prayer book. I feel tears running down my cheeks, but they are tears of relief, not of pain.

“I’m sorry,” La says sympathetically.

“It’s okay, La. It’s over now.”

He hands me a glass of water that I am supposed to pour outside while thinking of my deceased neighbor. I’m not sure if there’s a right or wrong way to pour water on the ground, but I impulsively make a heart shape and say goodbye, and go back inside the sim where La is waiting.

“I have something for you.” He reaches into a vest pocket and pulls out an orange and white cotton bracelet and ties it to my wrist, making sure not to make contact with me. Monks are forbidden to touch women.

“When you are sad, look at the bracelet and it will make you happy.”

For the first time in two weeks I feel whole again. I don’t feel the heavy burden, the raw wound of my neighbor’s suicide. This chapter is closed. La and I say goodbye, for now.

In the afternoon I visit the new Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre at the southern end of Mount Phousi and learn all I can about the different ethnic groups in Laos. I learn that there isn’t such a thing as “the Lao people” but that there are three primary ethnic groups and dozens of other ethnic minorities, the most visible ones represented by colorful exhibits showing their tribal dress. A fascinating and informative documentary about the Yao depicts a Taoist ceremony and indoctrination of two young men into the animist religion.

When I leave, I discover a path behind the museum with an enigmatic blue wooden arrow, nailed to a tree, that reads “tem ple” (sic). I can’t resist an off-the beaten-path adventure, so I follow the signs, winding my way around a different neighborhood, waving to children along the way and greeting ladies sitting on their doorsteps. It’s a gentle meandering path under the trees, ultimately terminating at the lower temples on Mount Phousi, and offering panoramic views of the mountains east and south of Luang Prabang without having to endure the punishing, merit-making steps I took two days ago.

After a streetside dinner of baguette, I take a stroll to the end of the peninsula and find myself at the wat with the longest name, Sirimounkhounsayaram. On the grounds is a long rambling building with what appears to be classrooms. It’s about 7pm and classes seem to be in session. I wander over and poke my head in one of the classrooms. The English teacher, a young Lao man, invites me in, so I remove my shoes as is the fashion and stand quietly near the door while they practice their listening comprehension from an old cassette tape. On the tape, a man and woman discuss their vacations. The man says he is from San Francisco.

“I am from San Francisco, too!”

The teacher, whose name is Xay (rhymes with “sigh”) asks me if I would like to speak to the class so they can hear a native English speaker. I have no inhibitions when it comes to speaking before a group, so I tell them all about my family, my partner Richard, my cats (who might as well be my children), how the weather in San Francisco is similar to Luang Prabang’s, what a big deal it was to elect Barack Obama as our president because he was the first president who wasn’t a white man, which led to a discussion about slavery and the Civil Rights movement. I ask the students, who are in their late teens and early 20s, about their hobbies and interests and what they want to do when they leave school. The girls are shy, but they boys are less so, telling me they want to work in IT or become lawyers. I tell them about my job as a web designer and write my email and web address on the whiteboard, inviting them to write to me any time they want. Class is over at 8 o’clock, and Xay asks me if I could please come back tomorrow night as well.

On my way back home I buy two silk scarves at the Night Market. They are handwoven in the typical Lao style with tiny diamond patterns, and made with natural dyes of indigo, turmeric, and ebony. One is a dark color, and the other is in light yellow tones. I don’t bargain hard and am happy to get both for 250,000 kip or $29 USD. I chat with the ladies at the market for a little while before I return to my room for the night. This was supposed to be an easy, lazy day. It turned out to be full of wonders and surprises, but it also brought some closure, and with it, some much needed peace.

Tags: Laos, Luang Prabang, Night Market, Royal Palace Museum, teaching