June 1. Stay another day...

On our extra day we visit Peuan Mit again, have a nice cup of coffee there and I donate what is left in kip to their program. That is a no-brainer for travelers, of course. Whatever you have left IS part of your budget so don't come with "I don't have money" it won't work not with me.

We also stop by at bigbrothermouse (remember, that project with the a-hole in Luang Prabang), a beautiful initiative  carried out by a harsh antisocial expat living in Luang Prabang by the name of Sascha Alyson. I visited him at his office there and instead of a warm welcome (I wanted to donate 250$ to his project) he told me I could look at the website. Later, more people confirmed that this man behaved oddly, and I was relieved. At least it wasn't me. But having experienced it perfide owner, I wasn't going to avoid his interesting initiative, increasing literacy in rural Laos by installing libaries in village schools. I went in and put our suggestion in the suggestion box. "Work together with 1kgmore". Would Sascha Alyson be thankful? A propos, you can visit their website www.bigbrothermouse.com, it really IS a great initiative!

At five pm there's a bus to Hue in Vietnam. We would love to visit Savannaketh on the way, but time decides against it. A thoughtful end to this post, combining literate trash and philosophical sprinkle: It's us who decide against it not Chronos, it's priority not the pendulum.

May 31. Worst War crimes ever?

Cornflakes and coffee, and it's already ten. Lazy bastards, you think. Where's the early morning gymnastics, the 2-mile-walk, the 150 pushups and the rigor-vigor?

Anyway, we visit COPE today and have a good look at the museum that displays handmade prostheses, we are talking about wooden leg, cast iron pparts nailed together with rusty nails, old bottles turned into a cast and wooden sticks. There was a man who used his homemade leg for thirty years before he received a real fitting prosthesis from COPE. They have a huge mirror with a leg in front of it where you can lean on with your knee, looking at yourself as a cripple. This makes us realize the dramatic changes in self-perception (and self-confidence) people have when the lose a leg overnight. Also on display are 'bombies', the contents of a clusterbomb that disperse over a huge area. And the big fife hundred pounders. More than 500,000 missions were flown during those eight miserable years of warcrime. It still outrages me, I mean the US should pay 100,000,000,000,000 to Laos for a start and then apologize every single minute for what they have done. Unlike in Vietnam, fighter pilots could just dispose their load at wish and did so to get rid of the frustrating restrictions in Vietnam. They bombed everything that moved. And now, thirty years later, millions of deadly bombies are scattered along the Ho Chi Minh trail and in other large areas of the country. Some areas are so saturated that in every village you find someone missing a leg - or a close relative. We also watch a video about clearing the UXO's, starring a former Australian soldier who teaches a team of locals how to deal with the rusty old bombs.

Their donating concept is brilliant: you can donate a leg for 50 dollars. It cost 50 dollars to produce a leg prosthesis. We donate four legs and a "brick in the wall", another great fundraising technique. They have a wall with virtual (plastic) bricks with the logos of sponsors on them. We have learned a lot and are happy when we return to the city.

We have to return the motorbike, and we bring our luggag to the center. We have to move on once again, and so we buy a bus ticket to Vietnam, but then I realize my visa is only valid from June 2nd, so we change the date. We have to stay another day, and we follow the book. There is a guidebook "stay another day" an every visitor to Laos should use it!

May 30. Volleyball in rural Laos.

It is so nice to have 100cc of boiling hot metal shafts between my legs, that I decide to rent a motorbike in the afternoon and tour around Vientiane. We take the main highway north (direction Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang) with the option of taking a dirttrack to a beautiful waterfall. An option that we miss, since we take another sideroad and reach some villages where they are not accustomed to foreigners visiting. We decide to stop at some point and play volleyball with a group of youth. We are all laughing, having a great time.

At 8pm we meet Ly and a couple from New Zealand at the central fountain, the most obvious meetingplace in town. Chris and Marieke have interesting travel stories to share, and are very interested in our concepts and the tips we could give about volunteering and money-making your way around Europe and Korea. They return the favor by pointing out some terrific places on NZ north island. All this is done against the backdrop of the wooden patio of our restaurant, and we are immersed in the fresh air and mellow silence of backstreet Vientiane. It is a memorable evening - this is what memories are made of.
We zoom back to Ly's place on our hired motorbike and sleep well.

May 29. Borrowing vintage bike.

Shaun, a friendly Australian guy living here offers us his little vintage motorbike in the morning, and we gladly accept that enhancement of our mobility.

We will be taking that green bike to the friendship bridge and back today. Not that there's much to see - the friendship bridge is essentialy a concrete corridor secured by grim fences - but the ride was nice. It is also a tribute to Dennis Hopper. I read today that he died and recall the easy rider sentiment, even though I've never known it myself. On the way back from the friendship bridge we take a different route and almost get lost in the outskirts of Vientiane, until we decide to follow the flow of traffic and are finally able to identify some buildings. Blabla. It was a nice ride. The color of the bike was green, and also white.

May 28. What is ten dollars?

We have a brunch with a German lady, Dagmar, who tells us her compelling story: she is editing and publishing an autobiographical book about a Lao monk. It's what keeps her here, and what keeps us listening. It is really nice and I hope she will publish the book.

I pick up my Vietnamese visa and with it rush to the Cambodian embassy. It is extremely hot today, especially for a stamp collector. At the Cambodian embassy they tell me to come back on Monday because they are only doing express service today. I can wait and want to save those ten dollars. Ten dollars! Imagine what zou can do with it. Beautiful afternoons in posh grand cafés with wifi, 10kg of rice for an orphan home, hundreds of minutes of international phone calls over skype, enough white paint for a large wall, tools for a street shoe polisher, essential medication for a week for a refugee, a busticket from Nairobi to Kisumu, two soccer balls for a children's center...

The photos shows Lao whiskey!

May 27. COPE-ing with UXOs

Our arrival in Vientiane should be different than Vientiane, I think, and stick obstinately to my idee fixe when we arrive at the bus station. NO tuktuk, we are FINE, we know our way around. We walk a couple of miles and indeed, reach central Vientiane and lose about an hour. We make ourselves comfortable in one of the affordable hotels alongside the Mekong river, freshen up, and I head out to the Vietnamese embassy for a visa. I hitch a ride with a very coooollll German guz in a Landrover, gee ce type a traversé le monde entier! He has been everywhere and Laos was a stopover for him to arrange visas for Russia, Mongolia, and Kasachstan. He has been on his way for two years doing what? Filming a documentary that he is trying to seell to German media houses. The truck plus equipment cost a fortune. Anyway, he kindly gives me a ride to the embassy since he knows where "they all are". The American embassy I had just seen must have been a fata morgana, I learn from him. I take things for granted when they come from experienced people. So we chat and chat and finally get to the Cambodia embassy. The Vietnamese embassy was nowhere near there, and in fact I had been right in the beginning. Here I am, a guy who has navigated the whole wide freakin' world can't find his way around in the quiet, orderly town of Vientiane... I stick out my thumb and hitch a ride to the real Vietnamese embassy, where I can buy the relevant sticker in my passport for 50 dollars.

I also visit "COPE", an NGO supporting people with disabilities, in particular victims of unexploded ordnance (UXO) that outrages me and every other human mind who knows about this. Their exhibition is really well done and very informative. I decide to support it and will return on Monday with Yeon.

At night, we go to a presentation about the role of women in Laos. It is what I have expected, and I enjoy it. What else? I brushed my teeth, washed my hands, and we stay at a little hostel facing the Mekong. Whatever! Vientiane is really calm and laid-back.

28
We have a brunch with a German lady, Dagmar, who tells us her compelling story: she is editing and publishing an autobiographical book about a Lao monk. It's what keeps her here, and what keeps us listening. It is really nice and I hope she will publish the book.

May 26. A very nice man.. not!

Rather than niceness, it are the events of flat bluntness that stick to a traveler's memory. I have this experience this morning at "bigbrothermouse". This is a small ngo aiming to increase literacy in rural Laos by publishing and distributing bilingual children's books. It is and remains a wonderful concept, and so we visit their main office in Luang Prabang (they are also represented in Vientiane). A modest house not far from the main tourist street serves as the nerve center of bigbrothermouse, and the owner, the infamous Mr. Alyson, lives here. I walk up to the counter with Yeon and introduce ourselves and our project. We are asked to wait at a long table, where a few foreign volunteers (an Australian girl I believe) read English books together with local kids. After a while, Mr. Alyson comes down and we introduce ourselves to him. Conversation goes something like this:
"We are charity travel, and supporting charitable causses in every town we travel to.."
-"What are ya doing here?"
"We would like to support your bigbrothermouse foundation with a donation of about 300 dollars."
-"And..? What do you want from me?"
"Perhaps you could tell us if there are any book parties scheduled so that we could chip in?"
-"That information is all on the internet."
"I've seen the website, it is very nice!"
-"All the information you need is on the internet. I AM NOT GOING TO SPELL OUT OUR WEBSITE FOR YOU."

He literally said that, and walked off. Here is someone who wants to support your charity and you don't even take one minute to tell them if you have current projects.. The guy has mental problems, I conclude, and sadly this is confirmed later when we talk to a friendly German expat in Vientiane. It serves very adequately for my personal anger management program, as I teach myself not to get back to Mr. Alyson, not to punch him in the nose or write him nasty emails. Rather than that, I stick to my initial judgement that his project is a genuine good cause, and call people to ignore Mr. Alyson's crappy rudeness and take bigbrothermouse at face value.

After the visit, in which I thus saved myself 250 bucks, we walk around to experience the strange, surreal atmosphere of this tourist enclave. It is nice, even though we miss the famous temples, the elephant rides, the whitewater rafting, the tubing, and the drinking sprees.

We book the overnight bus to Vientiane, and wrap up our day with an afternoon stroll.

May 25. Hey. Pssst. Motorbike?

Countless curves await us on the eight-hour busride to Luang Prabang. The scenery is pretty as we expected, and makes up for our diet of dry cookies and sodas. I remember having a can of beer during the break, but apart from that, don't expect any events from the busride.
Arriving at Luang Prabang comes with the expected dose of tourist stress.
"Hey, pssst. Motorbike? Tuktuk?"
-"No thank you..."
"Which hotel where ya staying sir? I bring u there very cheeeeep."
-"No, we're fine..."

"Motorbike?"
I am stubborn and Yeon has to persuade me to hop on a tuktuk to move towards the heart of this touristic mecca. There are tourists everywhere and handicraft markets as far as you can see. We stroll around the night market where handicraft and textiles are displayed in such abundance that a naive visitor might doubt Laos' poverty. I don't buy anything here, probably because I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the carvings and batiks.

We stay in a backstreet guesthouse, in (vain?) attempt to support a struggling Lao family rather than an expat nouveau-riche. The staff of the obviously family-owned business is very friendly; the boy who shows us our room is preparing for some school exams.

May 24. Of motorbikes and hospitals.

We almost miss our morning ride to Namtha. I have the bus tickets and the bus (there are only a few daily) stops at Bryan and Leila's house early. We rush to the streets and take our seats in the crammed minibus. Quick handshakes and best-of-luck constitute our goodbye to these wonderful people. I want to move on to Luang Prabang, but overestimated the bus frequency on the tourist trail. We stay in another guesthouse and book tickets for tomorrow.

Today, we rent a motorbike with the innocent intention to do some sightseeing here in Luang Namtha. We ride around and quickly find out that there are not so many roads we could travel on. In a silent backstreet, Yeon tries the motorbike but unfortunately operates it with the wrong reflex, making the Honda leap forward in first gear and then throw her on the asphalt. It's a flesh wound, and she's bleeding a lot. A woman sees us and takes Yeon to the hospital, giving me the opportunity to follow her on the motorbike - a stressful yet effective way to get to know a vehicle. I still prefer those Honda bikes if I rent a light motorcycle. Anyway, we rushed through the quiet streets of Luang Namtha towards the small local hospital with Yeon holding her arm tight to stop the bleeding.
At the hospital we can explain ourselves and a young doctor will stitch the wound. When I walk to the paying counter I suddenly see a familiar face: Bryan is here. They came to the hospital too for an x-ray, and the unfortunate conclusion was that the wrist was broken, and the couple would travel to Bangkok for decent treatment. Such a coincidence! When I leave that hospital, I am full of mirth.
With Yeon's wound stitched, the bike brought back, we steal into one of the wifi-enabled restaurants and indulge in the internet.

May 23. Easy bashing German state aid.

We have a delicious noodle soup for breakfast in a place that looks like what you would expect of a Lao eatery: the wooden terrace was built in the field, and farmers are ploughing in sight. This valley has always played an important cultural role as many different hilltribes interact here. Even today, local schoolchildren belong to numerous different tribes and they have to learn Lao in order to receive an education. And then there's English, perhaps the most important of their subjects since it enables them to communicate with the world.
Our day gets along calmly, I live the Lao rhythm now and enjoy it. I don't even remember the deeds I might or might not have done, the ride to the market, the afternoon nap, the rearranging of the center's bookshelves.

We have dinner with a German couple, and I seize the opportunity to talk German again. The man gives a sceptical account of German state-organized development aid in this region. The GTZ (for technological cooperation worldwide) paid millions for a rubber plantation to create jobs for poor Laotians, while Chinese entrepeneurs came in later, invested some money and set up a more profitable plantation without any aid money. They installed electricity and the result was Lao people flaunting their laziness watching bootlegged Thai sex movies. The efficiency of those aid millions is very low, not to say that it's counter-productive. I've heard similar stories about the GTZ and the DED many times, and I think some of it must be true. I'll try to get hold of them back home although I heard they are a select and conceited club. Anyway, I crafted my own concept of doing something good, and yes it IS a delight that I am not dependent on proto-cynical overly bureaucratic government services for that.
We talk about our donation to the butterfly children and the school before we all go to bed. We need some rest am I writing this boring diary about a terrific time I can't believe it... so rest because we will leave early tomorrow. We got our call to move on, towards Luang Prabang and Vientiane, following the common trail to save time. So what, everybody does this. Read everybody's blog. Anyway, to get some words in, the butterfly center in Muang Sing we supported is really nice and quite unique. You don't want to know how much trouble the US couple had to get their allowance to live there. So it is really great that they aren't retiring Thailand-style but empowering the local community and enabling many of the kids to go to college. It would be nice when everybody would do that, wouldn't it?

May 22. Paper mash.

The accident could have been avoided. It was my idea to do paper maché, and I feel a little bit guilty about it. The kids gather at the porch as usual and when we let them storming in they are enthousiastic as always. Yeon prepares a bowl of glue and we start dipping little pieces of paper into it. We are going to make little monsters or dragons - the kids' fantasy has free reign in this domain. They glue and paste and fumble to their hearts' content when suddenly our hostess Leila slips and falls headlong on the floor. It takes a while before I realize what happened; then there is ice and we arrange to go to the hospital asap. The nearest medical service is provided in Luang Namtha, almost two hours by bus, and if it turns out to be broken, she'd have to travel to Bangkok to have it casted. Meanwhile, the children have made an enormous mess of the paper that sticks to every other stalk of grass. We slowly clean it up and tell the children to get back for the night event: a movie.

At night, we show the movie Ice Age again (the perfect children's movie, enjoyed through Charity Travel by hundreds of kids in Palestine, Kenya, Mozambique, India, Cambodia), projecting it on the ceiling with our little gadget. The kids lie on the floor watching and giggling - they love it. I realize that Bryan and Leila are doing good work here supporting these children with scholarships and a possibly much brighter future. After the movie the kids go home and I crawl under the mosquitonet too.

May 21. Jump around.

We have found a beautiful place. We stay under the mosquito net long this morning, before enjoying an extended breakfast, as far as the reconstruction goes. The house is really quite, despite the main road that crosses the fertile valley and should connect to China and Thailand. The local market in Luang Namtha does offer products from those countries because the cargo drivers aren't allowed to enter each other's countries, we are told. Our bedroom is next to the community room, where the children come after school, almost every day, to receive additional training (computer, English) and hang out. It means a lot to them, and we love how the project is organized by Bryan and Leila. Yeon has a call to order the shelves and does so most impressively.
Children are already waiting at the little porch in front of the house, and when we come out they almost jump on us. What have we got?

From earier occassions we remember a few games and activities we decide we can do here too. To our initial surprise, it all goes very well: the kids are concentrated and like the yoga exercises, aerobic jumping and head-and-tail snake game that we improvise. We have done some shopping earlier and give them a soccer- and a volleyball. In the course of the session we learn a lot from the children we can take with us on our travels and apply in other places.
At night, we see a Californian high school's performance of the musical Les misérables on DVD, an astonishing achievement I think, (and a great way to introduce adolescents to art, I can't help myself thinking). My mind drifts off to what we are planning for the future: a mobile (puppet)theater traveling to remote villages in the poorest part of the world, performing for marginalized kids while introducing basic services to their communities. But that's another story. I sleep well that night, happy about being in Laos where finding a charitable cause is a lot easier than in China.

May 20. Butterfly children.

The bus to Muang Sing leaves early in the morning, and after a nearly two hour ride through the staggering subtropical beauty of a national park, the road winds down into the big valley of Muang Sing. This region has the most different ethnicities of Laos, and is currently being discovered by travelers and nonprofits alike. We jump off the bus at the gas station and walk back until we see a friendly man waving at us.

It's Brian, who runs a children's center here in Muang Sing together with his wife, the pediatrician Leila. We are invited and over lunch introduce our project. We learn that Leila has traveled extinsively through Laos visiting hospitals and education pediatricians. It is really great

Leila has prepared several delicacies and we have dinner together.

We watch the movie "Shine" about the genius pianist David Helfgott together and marveled at the performance of the lead actor, which had earned him an Oscar back in the days when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were still together. The making and breaking of a musical genius briliantly portrayed, thanks to the superb supporting role of Armin Müller-Stahl who plays the part of the tyrannic father. At some points, the movie comes dangerously close to the usual genius-clichés, but the acting could just compensate for that.

We are offered our own room and sleep comfortably under a large mosquito net. Such a good life.

May 19. Lao mores.

We cross the border without any difficulties. The Chinese authorities stamp exit in my passport and we walk to the Lao side, a shack with a line of waiting tourists in front of it. I study the government poster of do's and don'ts in Laos, learn about the status of the monks, the sad occurences of child prostitution and the absolute faux-pas of putting your feet higher than your head or anyone's head. The poster has distracted me from the task at hand, and the officer calls me. A passport photo and 37 dollars please, and there is your sticker. I shuffle on and cash in some more official nods and smiles - I am in Lao DPR.
A short attempt to hitchhike and the quick realization that busfares are dirt cheap here. We get to Luang Namtha, where we contact our first cause in Lao from a nice coffee house.
The food they serve is too salty, but the hypertension somehow keeps us glued to our machines and dawn is setting in when we decide to spend one night in Luang Namtha first.

There are plenty of cheap guesthouses in this town, that seems to emulate the tourist paradise of Luang Prabang eight shaky bus-hours to the south. We pick one at random and enjoy too much luxury for too little again. Our prospect for tomorrow is good: we will finally be able to support a cause with our hands. I dream of that.

May 18. Crossing into Laos.

We get up early to take what will be our penultimate Chinese bus to Mengla. It's still a long ride down, but when we finally reach the border town of Mohan, and are in sight of the border post, we high-five like two Elvisses leaving the building. However, the border is "closed" after five o'clock, and we cannot possibly exit China.
"This is a free country" I want to shout in the smooth face of the composed soldier, but I realize that is an odd thing to say here, so I return his nod, and utter instead:
"When can we go to Laos then?"
-"Tomorrow eight o'clock."
"Thanks" I mumble while, at the same time, simultaneously,  walking off.

That means we have to stay a final night in Yunnan, as a sacrifice to China. The guesthouse is nice though and accepts dollars (I have changed our remaining yuan in Lao kip already). A quiet night between clean white sheets and I bid farewell to China.

I think about human rights violation at the border. We should be allowed to leave any time we like, no country can play hotel California on its visitors. Maybe the excuse is that the other side, Laos, doesn't have the capacity to let people in outside office hours. Failing to let people enter your country is not a violation of their right to free movement, as is denying them exit. Anyway, I feel this last night in China as if I am in prison, but it's a rather nice prison with color tv. We have some local supper before we nestle in the white sheets of our last Chinese guesthouse.

A system could bio-engineer its users for reasons of efficiency. Why taking the long detour of Pavloving children with certain patented fats and amino acids, msg, cheesy proteins and sugar if you can manufacture them with a craving for those things that garantee the optimum of your profit? It's just a matter of switching some genes here and there, and instead of the need to venture aggresively into new markets, your system could count on a stable market share.

May 17. Ordinary day.

Early morning we move to yet another town called Jinchang. We hope to get back to the main trail heading south towards the Laos-border. The road is beautiful again, and induces appetite for more.

We try to hitchhike here, but my stuck-out thumb is either not understood or all the drivers on the supposed main royal highway to China were locals who wouldn't get a mile away from their domiciles. A big Lao truck's roaring engine sparks some home, but the driver gestures that he is traveling in the opposite direction. Car after car passes, but the ones that stop are clandestine taxi drivers asking ridiculous rates to get to the bordertown. The sun sets slowly and I lower my thumb. We are stuck and in need of a guesthouse.