We also took the bikes out to hang out at the farm and get some peace and quiet, and ride around the greater Ponhong area, which we discovered offers more than we thought - a driving range *and* a discoteque! Who knew?A bit about the village of Napho: it is pretty small, maybe a few thousand people. It is on a road that runs between the main road and a network of roads near the reservoir. The most desired real estate is directly on the road because then the women of the house can open a business in the front of the house. Secluded, quiet houses out near the farms are considered highly undesirable and are only for the very rich or the poor. The business opened out of the house is usually a soup shop, (as in, what shall we eat, oh joy, another soup shop), cafe, barbershop, gas station, or a mini-mart. The mini-marts sell a few clothes, packaged foods, toiletries and other necessities. Grandma's house has a gas station. Basically uncle drives out to the main road gas station and buys a few gallons at a time, which they sell to motorbikes and tok toks for a little more than the prices on the main road. It's a cush job that mostly involves napping in front of the house, but hey, somebody's gotta stay and watch Grandma! If you can't afford a house on the main road, then if you are enterprising and willing to work your ass off, you can go into the steamed fertilized egg or mauna pua bun business, which involves walking (if you are unlucky) or riding a motorbike all around the entire area all day with big heavy steamers on poles, selling eggs or buns.
The homes vary from the woven thatch homes on stilts at the poorer end, to stucco with red tile roofs on the rich end. Grandma's house is somewhat in the middle and is a common variety - a brick bottom floor, with the brick faced with stucco and painted. Rebar enforced concrete pillars support a wooden top floor made out of some of the excellent and strong Lao hardwoods. The roof is metal. The front room downstairs is large and tiled (a sign of prosperity) and there is a kitchen in back. The toilet and shower/dish area are in stalls in the kitchen area. They don't have gas or powerful electricity so they cook using a kind of charcoal briquette made from wood. The bedrooms are upstairs, but we are working on extending the house closer to the street so that we can add two bedrooms downstairs so that Grandma doesn't have to climb the stairs every day and the uncle and aunt who live there can have a bedroom near Grandma. It's funny - no permits or nothing, we just started sledgehammering down the front wall and went from there!On gender: Women, as far as I can tell, have basically the same rights as men, but cannot become monks because in the Lao version of buddhism, women have to be reborn as men before reaching Nirvana. At least that's the guidebook explanation. Naturally I think this is dumb. There is a less common type of female nun though that wears white instead of orange, following a different branch of buddhism. As in "fine, I'll get my own religion" which is what I would do!
There is some division of labor. Women tend to run the shops and businesses and keep house while the men farm, unless the family cannot afford a house in town, in which case everyone farms. I imagine everyone chips in during busier harvesting or planting seasons too. It was kind of funny, when buying a bicycle, the men were the salespeople and bicycle mechanics, but the women set the price and did the numbers, and we had to wait for the wife to return to actually negotiate the price and buy the bikes. At night, the women cook, and the men helpfully consume the alcohol and food.Women also take whatever extra food they have to sell at the town outdoor market in the evening. Here (well in winter) you can get veggies such as green onions, green leaf lettuce, cabbage, cilantro, mint, basil, and bok-choy like things. You can buy pork, and sometimes beef, tendon, or water buffalo. The fruits in winter are papaya, coconuts, mandarins, tangerines, papayas, and mangos. They prefer the green mango and papaya eaten with chili sauce and are amazed when we actually show desire to eat the ripe ones. You can also get imported apples and pears.
As far as food goes, only two words are really needed: "sticky rice." Every family grows its own, as well as the regular boiled rice, and eats it all year. Last year the crop failed somewhat due to the rains, so Laos has its own real estate crash right now due to families who got out loans against their homes and land to buy nice new Toyota Hilux trucks, and now can't pay the bills.At least there are lots of Hilux trucks now!
When eating at home, everyone sits on the floor around a woven platter holding the various dishes - everyone shares, eating out of the same dish. Sticky rice is eaten with the hands and is used to dip or pick up the food in the dishes, a skill I have entirely failed to acquire so they always bring me a fork and spoon!
The pho rice noodle soup is usually eaten for breakfast (when it's cool enough outside to eat it) and comes in many varieties: chewy thick noodle, regular noodle, glass noodle, with beef and patay or meatballs or fishballs or dried octopus, or with a kind of pork chili. It comes with cilantro, lime, basil, and sprouts, and often lettuce and green beans. You actually are supposed to eat the lettuce cooked in the soup, which made us gag at first but you get used to it. Most people just eat leftovers with sticy rice for breakfast though.
For the other meals, more sticky rice with sticky rice, also all kinds of delicious chili, garlic, peanut, scallion, sugar, and/or fish sauce dippy sauces. To go with the sticky rice there is usually steamed vegetables or green papaya salad with insane spicy chili sauce that makes even Sam drip sweat. Sam calls the green mangoes and green papaya salad McDooDoo's. They are delicious though! Meat is a luxury and also the main source of fat since they don't have dairy or cook with much oil, so the fatty meat is prized. Definitely a formula for weight loss for me!
If you're looking for variety, you can also get eggs, buns, vegetarian spring rolls, fried spring rolls with pork, and rice noodle "nam" which is basically the thick rice noodle sheets wrapped around a little ground mushroom and pork. Also the mint and minced meat salad (say it 3 times fast) which they call "laab." In some places you can get bread and the Vietnamese style sandwiches with chicken curry or bbq pork or pork patay. Or you can get sticky rice for a change. Did I mention there's lots of sticky rice?
Families in Laos tend to be pretty big, with many children and strong family ties. The health care is better than it was in the past when the majority of the children would not make it to age 5, but still very basic. Many of the children typically start businesses or, if the family can afford it, go to the city for college and jobs. Typically it is the younger kids (boys or girls) that get sent to college, because the family has more time to save for it. One or two kids stay to be farmers. Most families boast a primary/high school-teacher or two also - grandma's family has three. And just like in the states, they make horrible pay, about the same as a day laborer.
Homosexuality and transgenderism, that is, ladyboys and toms, are pretty well-tolerated, and hate crimes would be unheard of, though there is teasing. Parents aren't usually too disappointed because there will never be a shortage of grandchildren! Plus there is a stereotype (not unlike at home) that ladyboys will be successful hairdressers, businesspeople, etc. However you can't make assumptions here: it is quite normal for friends (two girls or two guys) to hold hands, hug, or touch as a sign of frienship, where as it is frowned upon for a couple to touch physically in public. It is also frowned upon to wear clothes that show your thighs or shoulders except on the farm or around the family, though less so as the younger generation grows up. The women still like to wear the traditional wrap skirt ("sin") a lot though. I guess given the lack of bathrooms and rest stops on the road, it makes practical sense! Everyone just files out of the bus, lines up along the road, turns their back, and goes! Then when the bus has to wait for me as I claw my way out of the brambles, and they see why the bus was waiting, they all groan "oh, falang." (Falang is like gringo or haoli.)
The roads: The roads vary from rough dirt roads to highways. The highways are basically two lane roads that are actually wide enough for two cars. Due to the floods last year, they may frequently turn to rough dirt roads. The highways may have a line painted in the middle, or not. The line is meaningless anyway as passing is always allowed, though if you can't see far enough to pass safely, you should always honk your horn to warn oncoming traffic before going ahead and passing anyway. It is ok to pass another vehicle while it is passing a 3rd or 4th vehicle if there's room, though you should honk in this case as well. The horn is probably the most important part of the vehicle, used to signal "hey I'm coming!" If the headlights go out oh well, if it's burning oil whatever, but if your horn goes out you are screwed!
So anyway I don't think there are any actual traffic laws and certainly no driver's license is required for a car or motorbike. There's no speed limit either, though the potholes in the road work pretty well as speed bumps. When it comes to right of way, the rules are simple: the bigger thing wins. A passing car, truck, or bus has the right of way over an oncoming motorbike or bicycle which should get off the road in this case - fast. A pedestrian never, ever has the right of way - not in a marked crosswalk, not in an intersection with a green light, not when walking on the main road and a car is pulling out of a driveway or parking spot, never. When a side road joins the main road, vehicles turning left should yield, but when turning right, the person pulling onto the road has the right of way, and other vehicles should move left to make room for them. When a bicycle or motorbike or jumbo turns left, they typically cross the road when safe, drive slowly on the wrong side around the corner, and then cross over again when safe.
As far as drunk driving goes, not a lot is done to prevent it, and the roads are dangerous at night, not only because of drunk drivers but because of vehicles without lights and cars parked on the road for bathroom breaks, throwing up alcohol, or whatever. During New Year's, the drinking starts at about noon on New Year's Eve and goes until January 2nd, all while driving from party to party. Also everyone comes in from the city to visit family in the country. According to the news, over 100 died in Ponhong and over 400 in Vientiane on New Year's eve alone. So, not a very happy New Year's for 2009!
For our New Years, we stayed at Grandma's the whole time for New Years and hung out with the family, except for a few brave souls who went to pick up Sam's mom and uncle from the Vientiane on the evening of the New Year's Day. They made it safely. Grandma had been complaining about the crummy sausages we kept buying so we challenged them to a cookoff and celebrated New Year's with delicious lemon-grass and chili pork sausages. Then we caught a ride with Sam's cousin Ehp (right, pronounced "Ape") down south, more on that soon! However between Christmas and New Year's we first attempted to head south by bike, we'll tell you all about that next.
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