Mak toum

Mak toum or bale (or beal; or Bengal quince) fruit infusion, refreshing and delicious. Tamarind restaurant, Luang Prabang, Laos.

The famous reclining blogger of South-East Asia

Courtesy of my travelling companion in Laos. Homage to the famous Buddha of Wat Pho, with all necessary apologies made...

Giant statue of a reclining blogger, podiatrical perspective, observed on a lazy cafe terrace overlooking the Nam Khan river, complete with reading material, sticky rice meals, and lots of fruit juices, in Luang Prabang.

Patongkoh

From China to Malaysia, Vietnam to Burma, these sticks of fried dough are sold for breakfast.

These ones are being made fresh in Laos, and were sold plain (slightly salty) or coated in sugar. They're deep-fried over a fire in a cart, then cooled in a conical woven basket the same shape as a sticky rice steamer before being dispensed to hungry customers.

Later, in Chiang Mai, I breakfasted on the same snack, served with hot sweet soy milk. It's especially delicious dipped right in the hot liquid, if a rather rich way to break a fast.

The dough sticks are yu tiao in Mandarin, and you can buy them in Chinese and Viet groceries all over Canada (though not usually as freshly made). In Laos, they're called pah thawng ko (or so wikipedia tells me) and in Thailand, patongkoh. But pointing and smiling works fine.

Market abecedary

Baguettes and bamboo shoots in Luang Prabang.

River weed

I just can't get enough river weed. These fresh bundles are being sold at the outdoor morning market in Luang Prabang.

I never managed to try eating the fresh weed while I was in Laos, but I'm told that it's usually stirfried with garlic, and I am confident it's delicious. Next time...

Witnessing

Photo: Young monk with begging bowl, taking part in the sticky rice ceremony of alms-giving at sunrise, Luang Prabang.

It's curious to go from very touristed places to very undertouristed ones, as your presence means such different things.

In a city like Luang Prabang, which in the past years has seen a huge surge in tourism, which as a small city is awash in the visiting, mostly European foreigners, you are one of a lucrative herd. People aren't surprised to see you. They might be enterprising, they might be weary, they might be genuinely friendly, but they've seen your type before.

When you get further out, even just to the outskirts and sidestreets of the same tourist town, is when you get more of a reaction. People look twice. Sometimes they even look shocked, frightened, as if you've intruded somewhere they thought they were safe - this is a terrible feeling. More often though, people stare openly and with interest, and usually with a generous smile.

It's a whole other feeling entirely in Mae Sot, a smallish town just east of the Thai-Burma border. It's not that foreigners are particularly rare, but most of them are longer-term visitors: volunteers and NGO workers. People's friendliness is stepped up a bit. You're a neighbour, probably even a good neighbour, since you're here for altruistic reasons. So many people say hi, especially kids, and your cheeks ache from smiling back.

The impact that your gaze has is very different too, from Luang Prabang to Mae Sot. Even though I love this photo, I have misgivings about having taken it at all. One of the most popular tourist sights in LP is the early morning alms-giving ceremony. Women get up in the dark to cook sticky rice, make meals, and then dress in their best sihn and blouse, with a temple scarf draped over their shoulders. They kneel in the early morning damp, mist, and chill with woven bamboo baskets in front of them. They wait patiently for the slow approach of the orange-robed monks in single file. The monks will come holding out their begging bowls, and each woman will offer a small ball (which she has pre-rolled) of rice to each monk, each offering a blessing. While the women wait, some chat, while others sit quietly with their faces closed in private meditation. When the monks approach, all the women become still, faces relaxed as they hand out the rice with a prayer, until all the wats have had their turn, and the women can return to their daily work.

It sounds beautiful, and it is. What the photo doesn't show, though, is what a miracle it is that there are no tourists obtruding into the still moment. Even though all over town there are stern documents instructing tourists on how not to ABSOLUTELY DESTROY the alms-giving ceremony, foreigners stand with their enormous cameras right up against the waiting women. The clicks and flashes (because it is still quite dark) rob the moment of its proper solemnity. Though their faces are controlled, it's not hard to imagine how irritating it is to drag yourself out of bed at 4am as a religious duty, a gift, only to have the meaning leached out by the presence of gawky pale people in quick-dry microfibre and fleece. Of course I still went, and I still took pictures, so I am just as guilty (though at a slightly greater distance).

It's the opposite in Mae Sot. There are so many pictures I haven't taken with my camera - but everywhere my eye falls I try to fix the image in my head - faces, artefacts, detention cells. Since being here (where I tend to forget I'm still in Thailand, so Burmese a town it is) I have learned so much more about the situation in Burma, culture and history as well as current deprivation and atrocities. I have met so many open, incredibly generous people, who are so willing to give of themselves, to sit down with me and teach me, even to house and feed me, so that I'll understand.

And on a trip that is largely on the other side, the tourist side of the equation, it's good to be reminded of the impact of witnessing. There is a sense of importance just in knowing, in being able to share stories when across an imaginary line, a border, there is so much armed force commiting crimes of silence, of lies and purges and misinformation. There is a value in seeing, listening, and bringing reality to what was previously abstract.

And there's more of a value when those stories are shared again and again - which I look forward to when I am home.

Dislocation

It's early, early morning in Luang Prabang, Laos.

Sticky rice mountain

Winter and the dry season and the dead rice in the mountaintop fields.

Luang Prabang province, Laos.

More than that

Photo: Thatched bamboo house with rice straw roof in a Khmu village, Luang Prabang province, Laos.

I associate the song "Guess How Much I Love You" by the Lucksmiths with being twenty and being in love, and finding any separation at all an ominous, painful gulf. But when I was compiling my travel playlist it felt rather appropriate too.

I bought a postcard
I'm getting close but
I haven't got around to it yet
I know I said I'd write
And maybe I might

It's harႈd to pull together all the threads while travelling, hard to live in the moment and also get to all those things that need doing. Sometimes I feel like all I can think about are obstacles; and things to feel anxious about; and the moments spent waiting for something to happen, as if all the day is nothing but in-between time.

On the map the gap's three fingers
But it's more than that
More than that

Distances can seem so incalculably large when you look at two points, if all you think of is the gulf between them. But travelling this way, roaming over the surface of the earth and finding the familiar in so many previous unknowns, I find myself thinking of it the other way around. It's not gaps any more, but just so much more space to be filled, so much more possibility.

Lyrics.

Found in translation

Photo: Mekong river weed (khai pen) drying in the sunset on a plastic rice sack, Ban Xangthong, Laos.

I never get tired of coincidental links between languages - they may not have any meaning, but it's enough that they are funny. When I was taking a massage course in Chiang Mai this past week, they were careful to impress upon us the reason why Thai massages might start out too strong for us, and then just get more and more painful.

It turns out that "ow" in Thai means "more"! So the more you exclaim over the pain, the more it will hurt you...

On a related note, aroy means delicious in Thai. There was a saamlaw (motorcycle trailer/sidecar thing) driving around the neighbourhood yesterday with a recording going "aroy aroy!" (I think it was selling ice cream - something tasty anyhow). I was walking with two Filipinos, who burst into laughter. It turns out that "aroy" is the Tagalog equivalent of "ouch!"

Tremulous green

Tender young shoots of rice in the mountains, Luang Prabang province, Laos.

Colonial legacies

Rose and building.

River weed & satellite dish

The essentials of life.

River weed from the Mekong is harvested to make the local treat khai pen. Here it's drying, having been spread in thin sheets with sesame seeds, tomato, and garlic. In Ban Xangthong outside of Luang Prabang, Laos.

Khao niaow

Sticky rice steams over a charcoal fire in a clay pot. Outside a cafe along the Nam Khan river, Luang Prabang.

O RLY

I love the knowing look in this chick's eye. Photographed in a Hmong village near Luang Prabang, Laos.

Sihn in Laos

Please forgive the obscure pun, which I could not resist. Sihn are Lao-style skirts, the local sarong equivalent. They are basically a large tube of fabric with two sets of hooks, attached on the inside at one hip, and on the outside at the other. They are incredibly practical to wear, given that they are loose enough to give total freedom of movement, but keep you covered as wraparound skirts sometimes fail to do. (Apparently lots of styles of sarong are like this too, though I have mostly seen the kind that you just tie around yourself.) And women in Laos - at least the women I saw in Luang Prabang - wear sihn daily. They are the girls' school uniform, and they are worn by market women and women working in travel agencies and cafes and even in the fields and rivers.

Nothing I've said so far, however, reveals the incredible glory of Lao weaving. Even though many of the sihn around are mass-produced machine fabric, the traditional patterns and colours are marvellous. As for the hand-woven textiles, in ikat (locally mat mii) and supplementary weft...well, words fail.

Suffice it to say that I fell in love with sihn (and don't want to mention how many I acquired in my brief time in Laos), but I am not the only one, as this streetsign shows. Apparently the default human who crosses here wears a sihn and her hair in a bun...

Coffee and frangipani

Here photographed in Cambodia, and everywhere else I've been in South-East Asia.

I'm now in Laos where the flower is proudly emblazoned everywhere as a national symbol - and where the coffee is completely delicious.