March 29, 2002
Pak Beng
Continuing down the Mekong after a pleasant, but hot night in Pak Beng, a growing village on the river fueled by experience starved backpackers in search of the perfect traditional market, strange foods, oddities, and cute kids. Mostly cute kids. There is no shortage of cute children in Laos. Men between the ages of 35 to 50 may be gone, but children are a plenty. These children are like all others... Maybe more dirt on their clothes, maybe a baby sister on their back, maybe selling a bracelet or two, but the same.
After a night of excellent Lao food and drink I woke up early and ventured down to the local market (like any good backpacker). Third-world markets are fascinating and sell some of the most unusual things. Along side the fruits and vegetables were oddities like rats, bats, ant larvae, crickets, and secadas (buzzing grasshoppers). The meat market clearly lacked the controls and modesty of most western markets. In Laos everything is utilized. The carcass is whittled down right in front of your eyes and everything is utilized including the eyes, the testicles, the intestines, the hooves, etc... 
The meat still has the hide attached in many cases. After all this visual stimulation I stopped for breakfast at a nearby market stand and enjoyed some slightly spicy noodles with pork. At least I hope it was pork.
As we motor away from Bakau Caves on our last leg of the trip to Luang Prabang I'm sitting on the roof of the boat, humid breezes off the brown water are cooling me down. The Bakau Caves are a pair of dark caverns set in the side of a jungle cliff filled with thousands of Buddha statues like ancient amulet treasures from centuries past. It gives off the feel of an Indiana Jones movie set. I'm waiting for upset natives to pelt us with poison darts as we escape in our longboat.
Prior to to the caves we stopped off at a Hmong village along the Mekong. Although the Hmong are indigenously associated with the Indochina highlands, this group has settled near the river. The seemingly well fed villagers and children were relentlessly selling their embroidered bracelets and touristy handbags. My guess is that even in this obscure village tourism is king and traditional ways are disappearing. I was heartened by the idea that this life wasn't much different from days gone by. One can easily interchange tourists with colonists, colonists with explorers, explorers with trading tribes, and so on... It certainly seems natural to trade with arriving visitors no matter what I might think. The people seemed friendly and the children adept in cuteness. Pigs, cows, dogs, and chickens roamed freely. While many children were occupied with selling, others hid in doorways and shied from our snapping camera shutters.
I was struck by how incredibly different it was in this tiny Hmong village more than 15,000 miles from St. Paul, Minnesota. Yet thousands of displaced Hmong people ended up in the frigid state of Minnesota. Liberal politics provided a haven for a group of people that aligned with the wrong side in what one might classify as an incredibly pointless covert CIA operation in Northern Laos. An operation that left the land pitted with bomb craters, scores dead, populations displaced, and remaining populations discriminated against. I wonder how the Hmong population of St. Paul feels so far from home yet debatably more welcome.
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