Eric just takes the brick making far to seriously
I’ve been out of the loop for a few days; myself and Sunny took ourselves off to an organic farm in Vanviene for the weekend. Must admit to not really knowing what to expect I had mental pictures of being in the middle of the jungle in very primitive conditions, ‘sawn-off’ toilets, sharing a handful of communal rice whilst chanting ‘pinko commie fag slogans’ and being eaten alive by the mosquito’s. I was assured by Pete, a German, nay Bavarian, who is one of the semi permanent ‘residents’ there, who was in Vientiane last week (doing a ‘ visa run’ to the Thai border), that the facilities were quite modern and that they had some nice rooms. Anyhoo’s Saturday morning a 7:00 am bus to Vanviene, a 4 ½ hour bus trip to cover the 150 odd km. We went for the luxury bus which I believed rolled out of a Vietnamese factory something like 50 years ago. I would describe the seating arrangements as ‘crowded’. I would confess to not being a great fan of public transport especially in countries where I am not too hot on the local lingo, and tend to break it down into 1 % interesting adventure to 99% hot, sweaty, uncomfortable slog. Fortunately the early start and the gaps in the windows and doors were letting a very pleasant breeze through. The bus had a crew of 2 a driver and a conductor/ passenger wrangler who should really find his happy place. About 2 hours in and after the fares have been collected (an outrageous sum of 30,000 kip, about $AUD4) for a 4 ½ hour trip, a number of passengers dropped off and along the way and there belongings thrown off the roof. The passenger wrangler squeezed himself onto the back seat next to me pegging me between him and a stack of Styrofoam boxes full of vegetables and promptly fell asleep. It was a bit of a squeeze but not uncomfortable (remember in Laotians do not have any concept of personal space). The problems came when we hit the sharp bends in the mountains and every right hand turn passenger wrangler squeezed me against the boxes.
Vanviene reached just after lunch and we were deposited at the ‘international’ bus station. The organic farm is about 3 km out of town, my first pleasant surprise, not exactly deep jungle, you can still phone out for a pizza. Sunny attempted to appropriate a tuk tuk to take us there. However we were given a price of 10,000 kip each for the 3 km trip. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if a 150 km cost 30,000 kip a 3 km tuk tuk trip should not cost a third of that. We were then approached a by a middle aged lady who spoke pretty good English and asked where we were going, she said we could have a lift in the song tao (a Ute with 2 bench seats) she had acquired for a her family of three young girls, which was going passed the farm. So we hopped aboard, this rattled the tuk tuk drivers as the ‘rule’ is fulang (westerners) travel only by tuk tuk to the organic farm and the fare is 10,000 kip. Some heated debate followed and the lady said that if we got off and walked a couple of hundred meters she would wait in the song tao and take us to the farm. This all seamed a bit odd, but Sunny seamed to have a handle on the situation and sure enough 200 meters down the road the Song Tao was waiting for us. It is handy to know a bit of local information, the middle aged lady (who actually lived in Minneapolis coincidentally where Sunny’s mother was born) and her family were Mong a much maligned and persecuted ethnic minority. The large tarmac expanse at the southern entrance of the town was actually the runway for the US airbase to run bombing raids on the Ho Chi min trail in the north west of Laos, in the war that didn’t exist. There are a lot Mong in the area as the previous generation would have been staff on the base. During the war that didn’t happen the Mong for all sorts of complicated reasons sided with the Americans which has not endeared them to the majority of the other native Laotians (there are other underlying issues but a. do not fully understand them b. would attempt to relay the complex geo politic map of SE Asia in the time I have in this blog). The upshot of this persecution and isolation means that they will do anything to irk the native Laos and give them the big ‘up yours’, so if you are a fulong in the wrong place at the right time you could be a beneficiary of this counter culture.
Safely deposited at the Farm entrance and the whole place was a much more substantial organisation I was expecting and to be quite honest quite an organisation. The farm is spread over 18 Hectares and is owned and run by the owner of the land Mr T (no not the ‘pity the poor foo….’ B A Baracus Mr. T a different one). The location is spectacularly beautiful right next to the river at the north end of the town, unfortunately the construction of the bars along the river bank had got as far as 200 meters away so the PA sparked up just after the monks had finished in the morning but thankfully finished at sunset. The whole place runs on a loosely based all hands together, everybody chipping in commune type thing although a bit more structured. The accommodation ranges from the basic a bunk in a dorm to a luxury room with its own bathroom. I plumped for the later which was costing 130,000 kip a night (about $AUD12) and the room was pretty basic; bed with mosquito net & fan but pretty good. Sunny stayed with his friends in one of the mud brick huts that had been built by the semi permanent residents. I am probably generalising too much but the residents there ( I will call the residents until I can think of a better description ) tended to work back in there native country to build up funds and then return to the farm for 2, 3 or as many months as there cash would allow. They were a interesting cross section of people and included Pedro, a Spanish dentist, who works for an NGO who organises a group of Spanish dentist (www.dentistassinlimites.es - fans of collective nouns go for it ) to take sabbaticals and visit various countries to administer western dental care. He was in the process of building his own mud brick house which is what we were working on for the weekend. Eric (The Goat farther) who was Belgium but lived in France who ran the goat farm apparently the Goat farther works well as a joke in English, Laos and French). Pete, as mentioned before, the Bavarian Anarchist who was already living in his mud brick house which had a superb balcony view of the river the mountains and the mulberry field. Mark, from the Shetland Island who just dropped in on his travels and decided to stay longer and was running English classes. Claudette an Austrian taking a years sabbatical and travelling around Asia. She was also teaching English but moving on to Cambodia in a couple of weeks. And the Dutch guy who I only met briefly as he was flying back to Amsterdam the day after we arrived who was doubling as a Tuk Tuk driver, which is quite bizarre.
The farm had a number of sources of income, the restaurant and guest house business, the organic farm products which were mainly mulberry tea and goat meat & cheese. The locals didn’t like the goat milk but, there lower intestine complete with contents are considered a delicacy. They also run free English classes for the local children. The Sunday we were there, there was a local youth group came to visit a bunch of about 15, 8 to 14 year olds mainly girls, Mong & Camoo ( another persecuted minority) who were spending a day making mud bricks for Pedro’s house and plaster to finish off Pete’s house. I was wondering what the ‘work safe’ and legal ramifications of child labour might be for running a similar scheme in Australia, one thing was for sure, they were all having heaps of fun. In exchange for a days exploitative child labour there was a lunch thrown in, which was absolutely delicious, and a speech by Mr T. I think that they also benefit from free English lessons but I hadn’t figured out how that works into the equation. The mud brick houses are built by and for the semi permanent residents but are used accommodation and charged for when they are out of town, so everybody benefits from the building. There were also a couple of local guys who appeared to have more expertise on the buildings than most that were there and worked extremely hard. Not too sure how they fitted into the whole labour benefit scheme but I am sure they’ll be some form of barter.
Mr T also encouraged them to do something different with the design. The mud bricks were mixed using the clay soil which the farm was situated on, sand, rice husks and straw and water of course. The whole thing is done by hands and feet with the odd shovel, bucket & wheel barrow, and is quite a mess. Once thoroughly mixed, the mud is dug out of the pit and dropped into moulds and left to set in the sun. Unfortunately the rainy season has lasted a lot longer than it should so keeping them dry during monsoon rain has been a bit of a headache but not as much as attempting to keep a half built building dry. About 10 days drying the bricks are ready for construction and are shipped by wheel barrow to the building site for construction using the mud again as mortar.
After enough dicking around in the mud it is a short walk to the river for a clean up. I must admit it was hard yakka but 4:00 pm I was absolutely beat, doing anything in that heat is hard work and physical work drains you completely. But heaps of fun and very rewarding and allegedly good for the skin.
In the evening Mr. T produced a bottle of tequila along with some dodgy looking local spirit, which was consumed by all apart from the token tee totaller. I must admit that I warmed to Mr T, he is on the ball finance wise and seems to be ready to make a deal as long as he come out to the good, however his willingness to help the local community, particularly the more marginalised, is genuine rather than lining his own pockets. He is open to ideas to add to the farm and a biogas powered herbal sauna is in the planning stage. We plan to return in a couple of weeks and I would like to talk to him about the possibility of setting up a couple of projects, the installation of a nano-hydro power system. (A 1Kw water turbine generator that can be placed in fast flowing rivers or creeks) was discussed briefly.
The trip back was fairly uneventful on the express bus which only took 4 hours, apart from the vision of the bus we travelled up in crashed in a ditch, seemed to have happened some time ago, I don’t know if there were any injuries, that sort of thing is generally not covered. The bus dropped us off in the centre of Vientiane and refused to go to the bus station, only VIP buses go to the bus station according to the driver, so the 30 minutes we saved by express was lost in the walk back to the station.
It is a constant source of amusement hearing the Laos reasons why we are being ripped off, A herbal sauna went to on the Friday night ( no where near as grandiose as it sounds ) charged fulong double the price of the Laos, this was because we were ‘fatter and therefore sweated more’.
Vene looking resplendant in her sarong just before she leaves for Hanoi 
The USAF runway in Vanvien constructed for the bombing runs to the Ho chi min train in the war that didn't happen 
Sunjan one of the kitchen staff at the organic farm 
The organic farm restaruant 
"... how I learned to love the bomb..." a UXB ( cluster bomb we think ) uncovered last year near the farm 
Mark enjoying the Laoation mudpack treatment 
The esquitly appointed bathroom in Pete's house 
One REALY REALY good reason to use the mosquito nets 
Mr T makes speach to the assembled eaters 
Yours truley offereing Deus free advertising 
The view from the river during 'bathtime' 
One of the girls from the youth group helps to make bricks 
communal mud making 
The bed in the luxury villa - net essential 
The ladies making mulberry tea 
mining for mortar by hand 
Pedro surveys his partial domain 
Pedro's house built to first floor 
A completed mud brick house 
Pete's mud brick house 
Erics Cireon Delat one careful owner 
My Luxury vila for $AUD12 a night 
Sunny Catches some zeds on the bus 
The Luxury bus 2 days before the crash 
the dinners
Pete gets help with making plaster
The pre lunch bath
