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Village Life

Friday, November 16th, 2007

After leaving Luang Prabang, we headed north via songthaew (a sort of pick-up truck that constitutes most of the land-based public transport in Laos) and boat to the village of Muang Ngoi, which was a nice place to relax for a few days. It’s only accessible by boat, and there are only two small slow boats per day that go there from Nong Kiaw, so that limits the number of tourists somewhat despite the village’s reputation as being the ‘new Veng Viang’ (we haven’t been to Veng Viang yet, but I am sure it is infinitely more developed than quiet Muang Ngoi…). I found Muang Ngoi to be a very laid-back place with friendly people, and no motor transport was a bit of a bonus as well that added to the peaceful, river-bank vibe.

We were lucky to be able to meet a couple of the teachers from the local high school and talk to them a little bit – one of them teaches history, geography, music and sport! Since Muang Ngoi is the largest village in the area, students come from far away to go to school. The teacher told us of a couple of students from a village four hours walk away who walk to Muang Ngoi at the start of each week, have had some sort of shelter that has been built for them to sleep in during the week, then walk back four hours to their village on the weekend to see their parents. The teacher was very enthusiastic about his job and about the attitudes of the students, so it was nice to hear that.

On the second day we walked for a couple of hours through rice fields (at harvest time) to another very small village, Ban Huay Baw, where we stayed overnight for 50 cents. All the houses here are built with bamboo and wood only and it was quite interesting to spend a night in a tiny Lao village among many chickens and ducks. Both Ban Huay Baw and Muang Ngoi have four hours of electricity each night so it was quite a simple experience but an enjoyable one. Unfortunately our walking trip to a waterfall the next morning was a bit of a disaster, as we slogged our way through a stream and some mud and many leeches before reaching the entirely unimpressive falls. But not to worry; we were back in Muang Ngoi that night and had a bit of a party with two other Aussies and a bunch of locals over some duck (broke the veg. streak, I know, but I’ve been pertty good other than that) and lao-lao, a potent local spirit that can be anywhere from 30-90 per cent alcohol and is pretty nasty, but incredibly cheap (about US$1.50 for a one litre bottle).

We’ve now headed east to a remote part of Laos, and I’ll blog more about that soon.

Posted in Asia, Laos, Southeast Asia, Travel | 1 Comment »

The real Arabia? I think we found it…

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

We’ve just come back from a two-day, one night trip to Shahara, a mountain top village north of Sana’a that’s about 2000m above sea level. The only way to go is by hiring a car and driver, and while it’s expensive, I enjoyed it immensely and it was well worth it.

ShaharaIt started rather inauspiciously, though. We woke up yesterday morning to the hotel staff in Sana’a telling us that Shahara was ‘closed’ and that we couldn’t go that day despite arranging everything the previous day. (Places in Yemen periodically become ‘closed’ to foreigners if there’s potential danger, but it all seemed a bit unusual because Shahara is not usually one of those places.) The police were milling around the hotel, so we really didn’t know what was happening. After a few minutes, a middle-aged Australian man arrived and took us aside.

“Are you the ones going to Shahara?” he asked.

“We were…”

“You still are. Let’s go.”

It turned out that Shahara was not closed at all, and the hotel staff were trying to take business away from our new Australian friend after a spat they’d just had with him (according to him, they tried to swindle him out of $1000, and he lost his temper and a yelling match ensued). The police had come to arrest him, but he jumped in his truck, we hopped in, too, and we drove off. As we returned this afternoon, the Australian said there was still a chance he’d be thrown in jail, as the police will likely side with the Yemeni hotel owners in this dispute.

In a nutshell, that’s Yemen – an old, tribal, traditional, disorganised, and remarkable place. To illustrate this further, as we were driving we came to a point on the highway where the armed bedouin were stopping cars and demanding money from each passing car (highway robbery, I suppose). They let us go straight through without stopping because we were foreigners – strange, I thought, since we probably had more money than any of the other cars. When we reached an official government checkpoint a few minutes down the road, our driver tried to tell the police about the bedouin; they didn’t care.

It took us all day to reach Shahara. For the last two hours, as we climbed up the mountain, Wendy and I were standing up in the back of the pick-up truck, which is the scariest, but also the best, way to travel.

The scenery around the place was majestic. After spending more than a year effectively living on a giant, flat, sand bar, just seeing mountains was wonderful enough in itself. The landscape was barren and the mountains rocky and jagged, but many of them were still terraced, with the locals all growing the same thing – qat, a stimulant-type of leaf that all Yemeni men chew seemingly all day and night, every day (many spend 2/3 of their income just on qat). Because of the instant profit of growing qat, everyone wants to do it, even in isolated villages where it would be more practical to grow produce. For the record, I tried it yesterday for the first time and didn’t experience any effects. I think even for them it’s not about the effect anymore; it’s a social activity, and most business deals and negotiations are done while chewing qat.

RuinsBy late afternoon, we reached Shahara and I was lucky that the light was still very good for photography. The town is literally perched on a cliff and some of the buildings date back to around AD 1200 (or they’re 1200 years old, and thus date back to around AD 800; hard to tell since local guide Yahir’s bad Italian was the lingua franca for the trip). In the ruined building pictured here, a cow was grazing in the interior of the ground floor. There are several other beautiful buildings in the village, but it’s unfortunately quite dirty as Yemenis don’t understand how not to litter. (Side note: When our Australian friend pointed out hundreds of plastic bags, that once held qat leaves, lying littered on the side of the road to a local guide, the Yemeni, frustrated, held out his hands in disbelief and loudly said, “It’s Yemen!” One of the things the Australian is trying to do is change attitudes like this among the Yemenis; to make them understand that they should take pride in their country and keep it clean.)

BridgeThe other attraction of Shahara is a small, 17th-century bridge that joins two adjacent mountains. This morning we crossed it as part of a 2.5 hour hike part of the way back down the mountain through the abundant qat crops. Once we crossed the bridge, the views back towards Shahara on its cliff perch were spectacular, made even more atmospheric by the clouds of mist that rose up from below, as you can see in the first photo at the top of this entry.

Now we’re back in Sana’a, ready to do some more exploring tomorrow of some places nearby. We’ll probably do another overnight expedition, then return to the capital where our well-connected driver from the Shahara trip has said he can introduce us to some locals and give us a bit of a different experience from the usual sight-seeing stuff.

As always, more photos (and better versions of the ones that are up here) can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jungle_boy/

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 1 Comment »