The land of the rising sun has provided us with many things over the last two days. Delicious sushi and beer, orderly street crossings and clean air to name just a few. But one of the most exciting things for flashpackers like us has to be the uncensored and incredibly high-speed internet we have at our hostel. We have had our Mainland Southeast Asia highlight video finished for weeks but despite having a VPN we were unable to get it past the Chinese censors and uploaded to Vimeo. Check it out below, and if you have not yet seen the first two episodes you can check them out here.
Also be sure to to check out our guest post on the Art of Backpacking here. The post details our experiences and features some of our best pictures from Expo 2010 in Shanghai. We will soon have a post here highlighting the different sustainability efforts we saw at the Expo, but this post gives our overview and recommendations if you are planning a visit to Shanghai and the Expo. Be sure to leave a comment on Art of Backpacking with your thoughts.
Looking to learn something new, Keith and I stumbled upon a one day silk dyeing and weaving class at the Ock Pop Tok Living Gallery in Luang Prabang, Laos. Our goal was to walk away with two presentable silk placements made with our own hands. The class began with a cup of tea and a tour of the Gallery’s garden and the plants that the staff uses to make natural dyes for their silks. Then the hard work began.
Our first job was to crush and boil the natural pigments. For orange silk, we used the seeds from the Annatto tree. Once the dyes were boiled, the raw, white silk threads were dipped and soaked in the liquid until it turned into the desired shade.
Next we learned how to reel the newly dyed silk threads onto the spools used in the looms’ shuttles. This was harder than it looks – the thread must be spun only in the center of the spool and you have to be careful not to catch and break the threads. We didn’t exactly master this phase of the class and eventually our instructors sent us to lunch while they finished the job.
After a delicious traditional Laos lunch, the weaving began. It was a little tricky at first, but once we found the zen-like rhythm of sliding the shuttle through the warp (the lengthwise threads stretched across the loom) and mastered the foot pedals, weaving the solid parts of the placements wasn’t too hard. Then came the pattern.
To add a pattern to our placements, we followed the blueprint for the motif which is held in the rows of the heddle, the series of white strings that pass vertically through the warp. Each row of the pattern is then transferred to the silk cloth by raising the warp strings. With the very kind and patient assistance of our instructors, we painstakingly wove our way through each patterned row.
Some four hours later, our placements were finally complete. While I think we did a pretty good job for our first weaving efforts, I don’t think professional weaver is a viable career alternative for when we return home. Besides, where would be put the looms?
Are those boys are panning for gold? I learned, while kayaking on the Nam Ou River in Laos near Luang Prabang, that in fact they were. Many of the poor rural villagers in this area practice small-scale artisanal gold mining. The average family finds 24 grams of gold through panning at the river during the 4-month dry season (January-April)[1]. In Laos, where the per capita GDP is $1,776[2], that additional $850 represents a significant increase in income for these poor rural families. With the chance of such significant financial rewards it should not have surprised me that there are some people willing to take substantial health risks looking for it.
One of the most surprising aspects were men that walk along the riverbed using homemade “scuba” systems. I observed this firsthand while kayaking in the middle of the river, 25 meters from shore. As I paddled over a bubbly patch of river I looked over to shore and saw a bamboo raft, on top of which was an air compressor with a plastic tube running from it into the water. I asked our kayaking guide, why were the villagers putting air into the river? He told me that there was a “diver” attached to the other end of the tube and he was collecting sand for gold panning. I was at first impressed by the ingenuity while also remembering from my PADI scuba certification that air from a standard air compressor can be very dangerous. The air fed to the “diver” by these petrol-powered compressors is filled with exhaust fumes and dangerous carbon monoxide.
While most of the gold panning on the Nam Ou is done by local villagers, there is also an increasing presence of larger, more commercial efforts. These are marked by the use of heavy machinery that is able to move significant amounts of earth on the banks of the river. And while the villagers have been panning for gold on the Nam Ou for at least 25 years, these industrial scale operations are new in the last couple of years. My guide informed me that the larger scale efforts are largely Chinese, permitted by the Laos government to mine the river in exchange for building badly needed infrastructure projects such as roads and schools.
With much of rural Laos being industrialized by the Chinese, it is only a mater of time before the quiet beauty of this mountainous country is transformed forever. There is no doubt that Laos is changing fast. For those looking to experience its laid back charms, now is the time to visit. I was encouraged and inspired to travel to Laos due in part to Kathy Dragon from TravelDragon. I had the good fortune to make her acquaintance through my work at J&J and she shared with me her amazing pictures and stories from her own travels to Laos. She insisted that Laos was changing very quickly and to be sure to made it there soon. I am very glad we did.
[1] Source: Luang Prabang Artisanal Gold Mining and Sociological Survey, Lao PDR Final Report for UNIDO “Removal of Barriers to the Introduction of Cleaner Artisanal Gold Mining and Extraction Technologies”
[2] Source: http://envirocenter.research.yale.edu, accessed March 27, 2010
