Lost in Laos: No toilets, but there's TV
By Chen Fen, TODAY | Posted: 25 September 2008 1053 hrs

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Ban Muang Keo is a village about 30 minutes by long tail boat up the Mekong from Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. Like many of the villages we were to visit over the next few days, this one is a cluster of wooden huts with no running water.

But it has electricity. And television — satellite TV no less — brought into the homes of the villagers by dishes planted on rooftops or on wooden stands, like the skeletons of giant overturned umbrellas.

Incongruous as it may seem, the people of Laos appear to be avid watchers of television even though in many other aspects of their lives, they have yet to catch up with the rest of the developing world.

So it was that on one of our visits, when the call of nature grew too loud, we found ourselves running into the woods. “Just close your eyes and nobody will see you,” said our guide, as we struggled to hide behind the thickest bush we could find.

Toilet problems aside, the countryside offers the visitor a glimpse of life as it is lived by the rural folk who form the majority of the Lao population of more than five million people. Many of the villages along the Mekong, especially those near Luang Prabang, are known for their special skills in specific trades.

At Ban Mouang Kham near the Pak Ou Caves, villagers showed us how they boiled river weed in tamarind, pounded it and spread the pulp on wooden frames to dry in the sun. The river weed, studded with garlic, tomato and sesame, is a favourite among the Lao people. Stacks of the khai paen are sold in the market in Luang Prabang.

As we sat on stools outside a hut, a villager set up an electric wok, fried the dried weed in some oil and offered it to us as a mid-morning snack. The khai paen was thick and chewy, quite unlike the thin, crispy Japanese nori even though they look similar.

Farther south of Luang Prabang, on the road to Xieng Khouang Province, it is the building material used by the villages that sets them apart. The countless air raids in the ’60s and ‘70s have given the local people what seems like an unlimited supply of metal from spent bombshells and flare casings.

Some of that war debris have been turned into stilts and fencing for houses while some are now cattle troughs or planters in gardens. In Ban Hat Hein, villagers use the more solid parts of spent bombs as anvils for their blacksmithing work.

Unexploded ordnance still lies beneath the ground in the countryside around Xieng Khouang Province. At the Plain of Jars, huge signs warn visitors not to stray away from the marked areas that have been cleared by the United Kingdom-based Mines Advisory Group, with aid from New Zealand.

The narrow paths leading to the huge jars are marked with little square signs pegged into the ground, with red markings showing that the area beyond them could still contain unexploded bombs. There are over 130 archaeological sites in the area containing thousands of jars, discs and stones. But only three are open to visitors.

At Thong Hai Hin, also known as Site One, more than 300 jars, each weighing about a tonne, can be seen. The site, 10km southwest of the main provincial town of Phonsavanh, also contains the biggest jar. This one is more than two metres tall and weighs over six tonnes.

Nobody knows exactly what the jars were for or how they got there. Archaeologists speculate that they were funerary urns, the bigger jars for aristocrats and the smaller ones for the poor.

The Plain of Jars was cloaked in an eerie silence the day we visited. But the huge bomb craters that dotted the landscape were loud reminders of the horror of the air raids long ago. - TODAY/ra

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