Trip Report, 8-15
May 2011
On the road,
again, to NE Laos for one new school group to work with, a followup visit to a
couple completed projects in Xieng Khouang, and an unexpected opportunity to
visit Tha Thom.
For the second
time Sunee was unable to go with me, household and kids duties at home, so I
was thrown back on my old IVS & USAID/Lao language “skills” for the trip,
no real problem, been there before, done that.... Sunee’s hot to trot, though, for the next
trip, her sister has moved back in with us so she can assume the kid-care and
such.
Day One: Out of the house at Klong 10, NE of Don Muang
Airport, at 0400, a bit early, but provides time to get some things
accomplished in Vientiane on arrival.
It’s about an eight hour run for me to Nong Khai, including a couple pit
stops and a hotdog break at a 7-11 along the way. Mostly nice easy driving since the highway is
4-10 lanes all the way from Bangkok to Nong Khai.
I was met at the
Friendship Bridge at Nong Khai by friend Auke, a Dutchman who lives in Chiang
Mai, he’s a “mapmaker” extrodinaire and a real whiz at things related to
GPSing. Auke had suggested that he come along on the trip since I planned on
hitting a couple of roads he’s not yet been on.
Since I’m a bit of a map freak, and definitely NOT a GPS expert, I was
happy to have him accompany. He also
picked up a detailed Lao GPS map for me on a micro SD card, baht 1,500 and well
worth it, really detailed.
We had dinner and
one or three or so Beer Laos that evening at the Khop Chai Deu Restaurant in
Vientiane with three motorcycle guys who’d just come back from an upcountry
“mud run,” they had some good tales to relate.
One of the guys, Phil G, runs an offroad motorcycle forum out of his
place in C. Mai: http://rideasia.net/forum/ And I do like the bill you get at the Khop
Chai Deu Restaurant, easy to tell how to pay.
Then walking back to the hotel ran into a nice old Buick, probably left
over from the “old days.”
Day Two: On the road to Xaysomboun (XSB), down Rt 13S
along the Mekong to Tha Bok, then north on the country road up to the
Australian run Phu Bia Mine (PBM) junction with the Long Tieng-Sam Thong road,
and east to Xaysomboun town for the night.
While this road is just a two-laner there is some heavy traffic on it as
it’s the main haul road for shipping the gold and copper ore out to the
Mekong. Usually encounter some of their
heavy trucks and this time saw one heading back north to the mine with
replacement tires for the high capacity dump trucks used at the mine. Driving straight through it’s about a four
plus hour run but with pit stops and a pho break, make it five hours plus on mostly decent
gravel roads.
RONed, as usual,
at the not too bad Phu Bia Hotel, which at least has hot water and sit-down crappers,
really great for my knees. Dinner that
evening at the market area, rice and fish, chicken, veggies, good eats, and a
Beer Lao....
Day Three: We met
up early with Mr Bounkeo, the chief of the Xaysomboun district education
office, whom I’d met back in December when we did a survey of the schools 25-30
km east at the Moung Om area. Their felt
need is for school furniture, especially for several school rooms that have
none, thus requiring students to double up in a furnished room. In a couple cases, this resulted in 70+
students per room, and in another instance, double shifting the students,
morning and afternoon, not a good solution.
We’d earlier
listed the priorities for TLCB assistance and after agreeing on the school that
would receive the furniture funding, I handed over kip 21 million, a decent
sized bundle, equivalent to about $2,600.
A good portion of this funding was contributed by Pat & Eric Lohry
who donated $5,000 to the Assistance Fund.
The balance of the funds was used for two projects in Xieng Khouang
Province.
Since Bounkeo and
I’d already visited the school designated for the assistance in December, no
need to go again. We did, however, visit
the proposed furniture contractor. I had
some price questions for him so he pulled out earlier purchase orders from the
district for identical furniture that showed the same costs as we were
getting. OK, at least no price inflation
just for us.
We finished up
before noon so Auke & I decided to head on up to Phonsavanh, via Long
Tieng, Sam Thong, Tha Tham Bleung, and on to the PDJ at Lat Khay.
(You can check
out various Lima Sites at “Dusty” Jim Henthorn’s mapscan project: http://www.nexus.net/~911gfx/sea-ao.html, the
area is on map sheet NE48-01. The track
also shows up fairly well on Google Earth, start with a search for “long
tieng”.)
The road from XSB
to the PBM junction and up to Long Tieng has been improved, at least a little
bit. Made it to Long Tieng in just 2 hr
15 m, much better than we went up there in February 2008 with Bill Tilton and
John & Nancy Sweet, that trip was butt buster. We passed a working elephant striding along
the road, first one I’ve encountered up in that area, didn’t know they had any. We stopped at LT for a pho break, ran into
Ajan O-Roth, the principal of the LT secondary school had a bit of a chat with
him, then on to visit the new combined primary and secondary school project
that’s just about complete, the contractor for this job is Vietnamese, of all
things, especially at Long Tieng.
On to Sam Thong
where I’d been with USAID spring of 1969, a busy time for me. It’s a quiet sleepy village these days. Stopped at the primary school for a chat with
the teachers and a couple photos of the kids. Note the algebra lesson on the
blackboard, and this in primary school! Then on up to the PDJ and to Phonsavanh
for the RON.
Day Four: Had something of a morning off this day as we
weren’t scheduled to pick up Art C. until the afternoon plane from
Vientiane.
Art’s our TLCB
guy in Vientiane who’s been working with us for the last couple of years on
these projects, long time resident in Laos, super Lao speaker, reader, and
writer, not like me, but I do manage to muddle along OK.
Auke and I headed
up on a back country road north of Moung Soui to the Nam Khan River, which runs
west there all the way to Luang Prabang.
I’d last been in here, LS-261, spring of 1969 but that time via a CASI
Pilatus Porter. Really a nice quiet
place, no electricity except what they generate themselves by small water
powered turbines in the river, good concept.
There’s a small
ferry crossing there for pickups and it’s possible, at least in the dry season,
to drive on to Luang Prabang, about six hours or so west. Gotta try that one day.
Back to
Phonsavanh airport, picked up Art, then we went to the Provincial Education
Office to present TLCB “thank you” certificates to Mr. Soundeuan, the guy we
normally work with, and his boss, Mr. Boualy, who allows Soundeuan the
flexibility to assist us.
Day Five: With Art and Soundeuan, off 25 km east to
Nong Pet and the Khang Don Primary School where the TLCB funded a new
library-meeting room. This project of
about $2,000 was actually funded by Pat
& Eric Lohry’s donation. This school
of 271 students is about 95% Hmong; we
were met by a good bunch of them at the gate, all suited up in their finery,
along with two students playing their Hmong Khene pipes. Meeting in the new library, which looks very
nice, well built, then out for a walk around the school grounds, a Baci
ceremony, along with the obligatory glass of lao Lao (UGH!! I hate that moonshine stuff) and a
mid-morning meal. Then a cultural show
by the students followed by a round of lamvong dancing by the students, the
teachers, and of course by popular demand, us.
Then back to our digs to nap off the Lao Lao.
Afternoon was the
follow up visit to Phou Kout District, west of Phonsavanh, and up the road to
the Nayxaythong Primary School, where we’d funded a new roof, again with the
$2,000 for this one coming from the Pat
& Eric Lohry donation. The school
Principal and Nai Ban, "village chief,” at this site are well engaged with
efforts to fix up their school, there’s been no problem at all in drumming up
interest on the part of the villagers for work.
Plus the teachers appear to be better at teaching than at many schools
we’ve visited. For example, here, one
room had a wallboard display of native bugs and leaves, both edible and
medicinal that had been collected and prepared by the kids. After a group meeting, we had another lunch
and lao Lao, and another good cultural show, this one being by ethnic Phuan,
another type of lowland Lao.
Back to the guest
house and another lao Lao induced nap, dinner that evening at the Craters
Restaurant, run by a Vietnamese family, nice folks who’ve been there about two
years now. Dad is the boss, part-time
waiter and speaks French, mom the cook, son, who goes to a local Lao primary
school in Phonsavanh, is part-time waiter and Lao translator, niece, who they
brought in from the Vinh area, waitress and English translator.
Day Six: Thought we were about finished for this trip
but Soundeuan had finally made contact with the school people down south in Tha
Thom District, here we’d tried to go last December but were “muddied” out after
just 2-3 km on the road. This is an old
road built by the French in the old days and probably a trail 100s of years
ago, but it’s now under a massive upgrading project by a Vietnamese construction
company. It leads from the PDJ on south
through Tha Vieng, Tha Thom, and on down to Paksane on the Mekong River. It will be almost a super highway, Lao style,
when complete, a nice drive if someone has included road maintenance in the
national budget, perhaps wishful thinking...
Just two hours
down the road we came to what might have been a dead end, thought perhaps we
were jinxed in our efforts to get to Tha Thom.
Here’s this logging truck dug about 3-4 feet into the mud and blocking
the road. Another truck came along and
tried to pull it out, nope. Someone went
back up the road and got a road grader to come down and try a tow, nope
again. By this time there were several
pickups and empty turcks backed up at the blockage so the grader operator
helped out by blading a bypass, thank you very much, it would have been a
two-day haul for us to get back to Vientiane from that spot.
On to Tha Thom,
just two hours on down the road.
There are two new
guest houses in town, one of which has a sit-down crapper, cold water shower in
May was OK, refreshing.
We then went off
to the District Education office for a meeting to introduce ourselves, cover
the world situation, and see what assistance we might be able to provide.
After the meeting
we went on south about 10 km to the Phon Chalern Primary School for a
look-see. The school definitely needs
help, including a new roof, full walls, partitions, concrete floor, windows and
doors, indeed, a replacement building.
However, we decided to hold off proposing such assistance, primarily because
this is the first time we have worked in this district.
While discussing
the school building, a lady, who is deputy village chief, pointed out the small
building in back where the 4-5 single teachers without accommodation in the
village stay. It, too, is in bad
shape. The school had already requested
funds from the district to replace the teacher's small bunkhouse but funds are not currently available. However, a local sawmill has agreed to donate
lumber for the building, a substantial cost, which is supposed to be delivered
before the end of May 2011. Later that
afternoon, and evening after dinner, Art, Mr. Soundeuan, and the school
Principal, huddled for a few hours and came up with a plan and budget for a
replacement building with a budget of $1,400.
This has been considered, and approved, by the TLCB Assistance
Committee. We figured that happy
teachers make better teachers.
Dinner that
evening at a local, and perhaps only, restaurant in town, joined by a couple of
the district school officials, for more of a get to know each other session.
Day Seven: Finished with school business for this trip,
time to be heading back to Vientiane and back to Thailand. Breakfast at the same restaurant where we
heard that there were now some forty (40) loaded logging trucks stuck at the
same mud hole we’d encountered the day before.
FYI, these log trucks are hauling the timber from the forested areas
here back up to north Vietnam for processing.
I’ll refrain from commenting on what I think about this.
On the good road
for 30 minutes, then came to large bridge under construction. The local folks there pointed to a bypass
that led to a ford across the river.
It’d rained some
the night before and the bypass itself was a wide mudhole but our driver and
four-wheel drive made it through, then came to a screeching stop! Looking at the wide river ahead of us, our
driver kindly waded across to the channel, which was getting fast and deep,
came back to say “”no go.” Thinking
about the potential for a two day run to get back to Vientiane, let along the
blockage of the 40 or log trucks up the road, I suggested he walk back to the
bypass where there were several log trucks loading up, and see what’d it cost
for a tow across.
He did so and it
turned out to be just kip 100,000, $12.50, which I thought was eminently
reasonable, considering the alternative of possibly losing the rental pickup,
or returning to Phonsavanh and Vientiane by the long route.
Fifteen minutes
on down the road we came to another bridge under construction with a bypass and
ford, which looked reasonable.
The driver walked
it initially just to be sure and we crossed to the other side. Another hour on down the road we hit Paksane
and the main N-S highway in Laos, Rt 13, and headed west back to
Vientiane.
We arrived in
Vientiane at 1400 hrs, Art went on home, Auke got his own pickup and decided to
spend a couple more days hitting other roads for his mapmaking project, and I
headed over to Nong Khai to pick up my van that I’d left there. It was too late to drive all the way home by
then so I stopped in Khon Kaen for the night at a nice and expensive hotel,
with free WiFi. It was walking distance
to a monster mall there with lots of eateries so I looked up the Sizzlers
outlet and had a good farang dinner.
Day Eight: Woke up early, so out of the hotel at 0530
hrs and on the road back home. A couple
pit stops, hotdog again at a 7-11, and arrived back at the house at Klong 10 at
1030 hrs. Kind of a surprise for Sunee
and all as they’d expected me late in the afternoon.
In summary, we
visited four sites, handed over the funds for furniture for one school in
Xaysomboun, visited two completed
projects in the Phonsavanh area, and made our first ever visit and introduction
to Tha Thom District, and agreed to seek funding for one project there. All told, this was a pretty productive trip.
The overall
travel for this trip was:
-- Laos: 1,224 km, or 759 miles
-- Thailand, 1,172 km, or 727 miles
Photos for this,
and earlier trips, here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/mactbkk/?fgl=true&pli=1&fgl=true
Note: At the photos, you can click on one and after
a bit on the right, the Latitude and Longitude will pop up.
Now to get
planning another Lao run!!
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