One Night in a Village Somewhere in Laos

Day 8 (Jan. 31): Off the beaten track
I left off last time with scenes from the Mekong slow boat. It's been almost two months since I've written about my trip to Thailand and Laos (and over three months since I actually went). But this weekend, I'm going to see Greg, the American expat teacher I first met in Laos, so I thought it appropriate to write a bit about the circumstances of our acquaintanceship. In a nutshell, we got to know each other well when he convinced me to get off of the boat half a day early and spend the night in a small village in the Laotian jungle, which I absolutely did not regret!

So this was on day two of the Mekong boat trip; the boat left Pakbeng at 9:00am and was scheduled to arrive in Luang Prabang after eight hours. I passed the morning reading, playing Boggle, and chatting with Corine and Ian. Time passed fairly quickly. Around 3:00pm, Greg, who had explained his situation to the captain, pointed out the bend in the river where he knew this village to be and signalled for the boat to stop.

Somewhere in Laos... (taken by Corine as the boat pulled away)

We pulled up close to a huge stack of driftwood on an otherwise nondescript sandy bank and hopped off. Everyone on the boat was staring at us, for obvious reasons. What on earth would two clearly non-local guys be doing disembarking the boat in the middle of nowhere? I didn't really know, myself. I was just tagging along. Greg, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was doing.

As it turns out, he has been visiting this village regularly, about once every couple of years, since 1999. He's friends with one of the families in the village, a single mother, P, who has five children. Actually, in some ways he's a surrogate dad to them, or maybe like Santa Claus, because he's close with the children and brings them snacks and chocolate milk, photos he's taken on pevious visits, and useful items like medicine, candles, and batteries from the city. I was amazed at the precious relationship he's built with this family over the years. He knows so much about them and fits right in, even though there's a slight language barrier. All the other villagers joke that he should just marry his friend and come to live there permanently, but I think his plan for the future is to open a hostel or small tourism agency in Thailand or Laos and continue supporting and visiting the family a few times a year. Already I have tons of respect for his generosity and heart for people whom he met almost on accident fifteen years ago.

A heart as big as the adorable baby he's holding.

I was honored, then, that Greg invited me to visit the village and see what it was like for myself. His family there enjoys having guests, and they were very generous. I talked with them, took a tour of the village to see its buildings, farms, and infrastructure (e.g. generators powered by several nearby streams), and took tons of photos. We met a group of the village men who weren't working but simply sitting around drinking a very strong liquor they called "Whiskey Lao". It was disgusting, but I smiled through the burning taste and chatted in my very limited Lao. (Basically, "Hello", "How old are you", and "I'm from America".)

The farms are by the river, but the banks change every year as flooding patterns change, so the farms change accordingly.

A hydro-powered generator for the village's limited electricity. They do have TVs!

One of their school's classrooms. Elementary education is provided here, but for middle school and beyond, students must travel to another village downriver.

Machete-made machine gun!

Dinner that evening was an interesting experience. P killed one of their farm's chicken and made a stew with it, accompanied with traditional sticky rice and lettuce. The interesting part of it was actually that we ate by candlelight because the house had no electricity and it got dark very quickly in the mountainous jungle. It was very quiet and peaceful; I don't know if Lao people generally don't talk during meals or if silence was just the modus operandi when Greg came to visit. It seemed like Greg could communicate a lot without saying very much.


After dinner, I broke out the pack of Oreos I'd brought along as a snack and showed the kids how to dunk their Oreos into the milk Greg had brought. I also showed them all the photos of Thailand I'd taken on my camera, let them play with my camera, and tried to teach them how to hand whistle, with limited success. More exciting was thumb-wrestling and Korean-style rock-paper-scissors. I had a great time with the kids! I'm so glad that language is no obstacle when it comes to simply having fun.

Save for the stars, it was pitch black by the time we went to sleep. It was blacker than black, actually. The windows were closed and the lamp was blown out by 10pm. When I lay down and looked up at the ceiling, I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or shut. It was almost scary, because I can't remember ever being in such complete darkness. But it definitely had a soporiferous effect, and I was out soon enough.

And that is how I spent the Lunar New Year of 2014. Happy Year of the Horse!

I may have eaten this angry-looking guy.

Selfies by candlelight!

Day 9 (Feb. 1): At long last, Luang Prabang!
The next morning, I woke up still in completely blackness and was a bit disoriented. At 7:30am, Greg, P, and I left the village and took a local boat -- really a canoe with a motor attached -- down the river toward Luang Prabang. Our skiff stopped at a larger bank where other people were waiting for a larger boat. As it turns out, the Mekong is an avenue, the main channel of transportation for the hundreds of villages that run its length. Small skiffs are like tuk-tuks that take you short distances, and larger boats are like buses. Many people take these river buses to work or to the marketplaces in the city every single day. It was fascinating.

Boat #1. I was really scared I'd topple out of it and into the river.

Boat #2 was like a bus! It was twice as full by the time we reached our destination.

We were packed in a narrow boat that Greg told me was what the Mekong slow boats used to be way back before tourists and backpackers began traveling up- and downriver in huge hordes. I watched a huge variety of people -- ethnic Lao, Burmese, Hmong, and more -- go about their daily morning routine. It was impossible not to bump elbows with P's friends, who happily fed me sticky rice and fried noodles on leaves. They began to joke that I could get a Lao wife from one of their villages for a month's salary, and I politely declined the offer.

By 11am, we had arrived at Luang Prabang -- and in the city proper, not the scammy pier that the slow boat had stopped at. Luang Prabang is charming and lively, almost shockingly so after one night in a small village. I wondered what P's opinion of "city life" was. But it seems that she comes into town fairly often. It's only three hours and two boats away, after all.

Luang Prabang's river pier! The boats are so colorful, and the monks fit right in.

Because of the holiday, the city was overflowing with tourists. It wouldn't have been easy for me to find a guesthouse had I not been with Greg, who knew of a good place with a few open rooms. 80,000kip for a single room and shared bathroom for one night was probably a good price for this season. It was actually really nice to have space completely to myself after a week of close quarters.

I cleaned up, ate lunch, and then set out for a day adventure in the World Heritage City! Next time: temples and tourists, sunsets and splurging on food!

I'd like to see these kids again one day. I wonder how likely that is to haapen?

Dazaifu Tenman-gū (太宰府天満宮) and Fukuoka

Entrance gate to the Dazaifu Tenman-gū with a "Happy New Year" message on the banner.

As soon as I arrived in Fukuoka, I had about six hours to kill by myself before meeting up with my friend Erik. He suggested that I go just outside of the city to Dazaifu, where a famous Shinto shrine and some temples are located. Though the directions he gave me were meticulous, I can't deny that I was a bit nervous about journeying all by myself from the port terminal to a mountain town an hour away. Fortunately, I encountered no mishaps as I took one bus and two trains and found myself walking up a cute street lined with souvenir shops and bustling with tourists toward the shrine.

The first thing I did was get something to eat; a long line had formed outside one of the many food shops. I realized that they were all selling essentially the same thing: rice cakes made with ume, or Japanese plum (梅, and 매실 in Korean). But I got into the longest line, because if there's one thing I know about street food, it's that long lines means a worthwhile wait.

Me in front of the main shrine at Dazaifu Tenman-gū.

I then walked the grounds of the shrine itself and marveled at its beauty. Dazaifu Tenman-gū is a shrine dedicated to the worship of Tenjin (天神), a kami (spirit or, in this case, deified human) in Shintoism who represents scholarship. Most pilgrims to this shrine come to pray for success in passing important exams; I briefly considered buying a token as good luck for getting into grad school, but the blatant commercialism of the entire enterprise turned me off a bit. Still, I enjoyed walking around and taking photos of the beautiful details all around the shrine.

These talismans are for writing down your wish. It's the 26th year of the current emporer, and also the Year of the Horse on the East Asian zodiac!

Torii, sacred gates.

The grounds of the shrine are actually quite large. Besides the main shrine, there are smaller shrines and also a few Buddhist temples. I walked along a path I found near the back and followed it up a hill, passing some teahouses along the way. The gravel path led to a stone path lined with torii, the red gates that symbolize entrance into sacred ground (but in this case were built to bring prosperity, which is why you see so many of them in a row).

I ended up on a hiking trail that wound through the hills and passed a very small theme park complete with a rollercoaster, a racing track, empty stalls, and very creepy carnival music playing despite there being almost no guests in the park. I almost wanted to stumble upon a Spirited Away-esque adventure.

The Kyushu National Museum was also located next to the shrine, but I wasn't feeling it, so I took the trains back to central Fukuoka, got very lost in the underground shopping malls, and finally met Erik at a Starbucks. He took me on a quick tour of the Things To Do in Fukuoka, including eating ramen at a yatai (which are very much like the ubiquitous Korean food carts, 포장마차, but apparently are only found in Fukuoka in Japan), being solicited (...) in Nakasu, and shopping at the Tokyu Hands department store, the Don Quijote everything-store, and the various chikagai (underground shopping centers). It was a long evening after a long day, and I was tired but happy when I finally went to sleep. And that was Day 1 in Japan!

Steaming, umami-licious ramen from a yatai. At this particular booth we made the acquaintance of a Japanese-American and her Taiwanese-American boyfriend who studied at Berkeley. Small world.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Yesterday was Seollal, the Korean Lunar New Year! This differs only from "Chinese" New Year in that it is celebrated differently by a different culture; the date, however, is the same.

The word Seollal is 설날 in Korean. If you can read Hangul, the Korean alphabet, then you might notice that the individual syllables are seol (설) and nal (날). Seol refers to the new year, and nal means "day". Hence, New Year's Day. However, in Korean phonology, an syllable-initial "n" that follows a syllable-final "l" becomes elided or assimilated into the "l". Thus, instead of Seolnal, we celebrate Seollal.

To wish someone a Happy New Year in Korean, however, you don't even have to worry about linguistics. The traditional New Year's greeting is 새해 복 많이 받으세요. Let's break this down: 새해 (saehae) is another way to refer to the new year, using the native Korean words for "new" (새/sae) and "year" (해/hae). Next, 복 (bok) means "happiness", and 많이 (man-hee) means "much". Lastly, 받으세요 (padeuseyo) is a respectable way to ask someone to receive something. So, 새해 복 많이 받으세요, or Saehae bok manhee padeuseyo, means, "May you receive lots of new year's happiness (or blessings)!"

So, what did I do for Seollal? Well, the Korean tradition is to travel to see your family, make and eats lots of food, and perform some ancestral rights. In fact, it's very similar to the customs of Chuseok, only with different food and a different vibe. Chuseok is the most important Korean holiday, and pretty much everything shuts down invariably. Seollal is probably holiday number two. It's a bit more festive, less solemn, and also observed less. Maybe this is because I was in Seoul this time, but a lot more businesses and restaurants were open than I'd expected, and the city in general seemed no less empty than on any other Sunday morning.

On Sunday morning, my apartmentmates and I all woke up rather late and straggled to a lunch date at The Flying Pan Blue. This place is arguably one of the most famous restaurants (for tourists) in Seoul. It's located in Itaewon, the international district of the city, and specializes in European-style breakfast and brunch. By European-style breakfast, I mean eggs, pancakes, French toast, and delicious lattes. Although the meal was pricey, I think it was well worth it. Every time one of our dishes was brought out, everyone gasped, oohed, and aahed at how pretty it was, and how wonderful it would feel to have that deliciousness soon in our stomachs. And yes, it was delicious.

Mandu-making. Photo courtesy Jessica.

For dinner that night, we went to a fellow Fulbrighter's apartment for a mandu-making party. Mandu (만두) are Korean dumplings. Well, they're just dumplings. I guess what makes them Korean is that they're made in Korea, and they have kimchi in them.

Anyway, this little New Year's get-together was so much fun! Jessica and Connor got a ton of ingredients (dumpling skins, ground beef, mushrooms, rice noodles, veggies, kimchi, peppers, and more), gave us the low-down on how to properly fold a dumpling, and we all sat down on the ground to make them together. I've only made dumplings once before in my life, so mine weren't great.

They say that if your dumplings are ugly, then your future daughters are doomed to the same fate. We had a lot of fun predicting the various levels of misery we were all going to inflict on our progeny.

In the end, our company produced over six dozen lumpy, floury, misshapen, and delicious dumplings that we then cooked with 딱국 (rice cake soup) or pan-fried to crispy perfection. Then, we ate them all. And we also had wine and cake. Now if that doesn't make for a great dinner party, I don't know what does.

Our first batch of mandu!

And that was New Year's Day. But as is typical for Korean holidays, it stretches out over some time. My host family actually traveled from Changwon to Seoul for the new year, and this morning (Monday), they were still around. So, they invited me over to my host mother's mother's apartment in the northern part of the city for lunch. We had 만두떡국 (manu ddeokguk/dumpling rice cake soup), which is a traditional new year dish and other stuff. It was nice to see them on the holiday again. And now, I've met the extended family of my homestay family on both sides!

Happy New Year! 운수대통합니다! It's the year of the snake on the Chinese zodiac. So hiss a bit when you greet your Korean friends: ㅆ~새해 복 많이 받으ㅆ~세요! Okay, that was lame, I know.