Laos (cont.)

So when we got to Pakbeng, they were having a huge one day boat festival, where they race those long skinny row boats. The little town of 1000 people had about 3000 people there. And I think most of the people had been drinking all day. They have big bottles of beer here, like 22oz, I guess. But there were also people drinking beer out of baggies, like zip lock bags with straws, it looked like. There was a band, and lots of people were dancing. It was pretty cool, I thought, but it made parking our boat and getting up the muddy hill from the river a little difficult. Also, it took forever to get our dinner. It’s like when you go to a restaurant with 12 people, they only have one wok, and one person cooking, and so the food comes out one dish at a time, and the soda and beer is warm, because there is no real electricity and often your appetizers (spring rolls) are the very last things to come out. But whatever. That’s just the way it is. Of course the other American’s are constantly complaining, and I just want to be like, “if you expected it to be just like the way things are at home, why did you fly half way around the world?! STFU!”
So Laos is a landlocked country, bordered by China, Cambodia, Vietnam,
Thailand, and Burma. It is 70% mountains and has a population of about 6 million. The main industry is agriculture. Most people work and grow food and tend to animals for themselves. A lot of people still live in villages and stay in their villages. There are no pensions and kids usually stay at home and take care of their parents when they get older. There are many different languages spoken, and the people are basically divided into 3 groups, the lowlands, midland and highland groups. Laos is a Buddhist country and many boys go to the temple to get an education. Most schools in Laos are private and it is pretty expensive to send kids to school. But about 80% of kids go to school now. 10 years ago, it was only about 25%. Also, 10 years ago, when boys turned 18 they had to go into the military, but now it is optional.
Laos has had a pretty crazy history. Along time ago it was ruled by kings. Then Thailand came in and it became a Thai state. In an attempt to resist European Colonization Thailand succeeded a big part of it’s territory, basically Laos and Cambodia, to the French. During WWII the Japanese briefly occupied Laos, and then the French re-asserted their control. Resistance to the French stated to form with the help from North Vietnam. Laos gained it’s independence from the French in 1954, and a royalist king was in control. But civil war broke out between the royalists and the communists. The 1960’s was total chaos in Laos. There were civil wars, coups, and then they got dragged into the Vietnam war as a pawn for the superpowers. The US bombed the crap out of Laos, trying to cut off the supply route to North Vietnam during the war. More bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war, than were used during the whole of WWII. In fact, the US dropped the equivalent of one bombing run every 8 minutes for 9 years. How insane is that?! So in 1975, the communists came to power. They arrested the old king, who later died in captivity. The communists launched a socialist transformation in Laos and the country was closed to westerners. In 1979, due to food shortages and the fact that hundreds of thousands of refugees had fled to Thailand, the government made some reforms and allowed for some privatization of agriculture. In 1986, after Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, the Lao government closed the re-education camps, released most political prisoners, invited the refugees to return and opened their boarders to the west. In 1989 they had their first elections, although all the candidates had to be approved by the communist government, and there is still today only one political party allowed. It’s a similar system to the one in China and Cambodia, I guess. They call it a democracy, but really there is just one party, the communist party and you can’t really criticize the government. They don’t really have freedom of speech or anything like that. It is still an oppressive society. In 2000 they celebrated 25 years of communist rule. Their last elections were in 2002 and all but one person elected was from the governing communist party, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.
Our Lao guide said that there are really no poor people in Laos, and that they don’t need any outside aid or help. That struck me as some propaganda bull shit, and you get the feeling that they are supposed to tell you that everything is fine and everything is great, even if it’s not. You don’t get the impression that it’s ok to ask about political issues, and he kept stressing that they are a democracy, but it doesn’t really seem like it to me. I guess our Thai guide, Yo, brought a group of people through Laos on a Basix Intrepid Trip (which means that the guide is really more of a facilitator than a guide and just makes the travel and hotel arrangements) and she didn’t have a Lao guide with her, and she got stopped and hassled by the police. They insisted that there be a Lao guide with every group of tourists, and they say it’s to make sure that the tourists can ask questions and get accurate answers, but really I think it is to control the propaganda machine.
The Mekong river is the main mode of transportation throughout the country. The Mekong starts in Tibet and is about 5000 km long. There are lots of fish in the Mekong, but catfish are the main ones and there are 3 different kinds of catfish. One kind, the brown ones, I think, can grow to be huge, like 30km. (That is really really big! Can that be right?) Obviously, I haven't independently checked any of the information in this blog. This is all just stuff I've picked up along the way, lol.