Oudomxay

I have just completed a most amazing and satisfying hike. I am currently in Oudomxay (also Oudomsai, Udomsai, Udomcai, etc.) and it is a wonderful gem of a town in Northern Laos. It gets pretty short shrift in the tourist guidebooks because there is very little organized here for the satisfaction of a typical Western tourist. Because of its proximity to China, the tourists here are predominantly Chinese, and their tastes do not overlap with those of the North American, European, Australian, or Japanese backpacker. The Chinese are here to shop, gamble, drink, and eat Chinese food, and probably not a few of the men are here to enjoy the attentions of hospitality girls.
The town has really cleaned up its act since I was here last, though. It used to be much more open about the hospitality girls, and the main drag was lousy with seedy hotels and young Lao girls on every corner. The seedy hotels are still here, though not in such great number, and more places are catering to “respectable” tourists. There is only one place in town where the tired-looking girls in tight clothes are in evidence in the lobby. When I checked in to the place I’m staying now, they told me at the reception that they don’t have girls like that here, and they don’t want them.
Oudomxay is surrounded by mountains, a wide valley around the River Ko. I have been looking for any kind of historical museum to find out more about the region: it appears to be an ancient crossroads between China, Lanna (old Northern Thailand kingdom), and Lan Xang (old Laotian empire.) Certainly it is the perfect spot for a community: the extensive rice paddies and orchards attest to that. The mountains on the south side have been flayed and denuded of cloud-forest hardwoods, and replanted with rubber trees. This is a similar story all over northern Laos. The Chinese have an insatiable appetite for wood and rubber, and have stripped vast acreages of forest cover, under the auspices of “Chinese Project for the Replace of Poppy,” according to the big blue signs. Under the noble ægis of helping Little Sister Laos wean off the opium, China is laying to waste one of the richest and most poorly understood forests in the region. China helped build the new road between Huay Xay and Luang Nam Tha, which I traversed twice, and it is a gigantic improvement for regional travel. However, it has made much more land available to chainsaws and trucks, and the land proximal to the road looks like an ever-widening, infected cut. The foothills of Bokeo Protected Area and Nam Ha Protected Area look like stubbly cheeks with a one-year growth of rubber saplings.
Apropos that road, it was just finished this year. It shaves the trip-time from the border to Luang Nam Tha by something like five hours. But, looking at the red-clay hillsides they cut away to put in the road, there is nothing to stop that clay from sliding off like cake batter when the rainy season comes. It has not been replanted or shored-up. Expect news of massive landslides and road closure; expect the travel-time from the border to Luang Nam Tha to increase by about five hours.
Back to Oudomxay! On the north side of town is a massif called Puhipii, that looms in blue grandeur over the airport and a few villages, fish farms, and rice fields. It is richly covered in gigantic trees, and appears quite steep. I asked around town whether there was a way up, and received mixed replies. There was a great deal of confusion on the local side about why I would want to there at all; I finally resolved this by explaining that I was a Mor Pii, the local word for an animist priest. When they heard this they nodded sagely and gave me conflicting instructions on how to ascend.




I finally decided to just hike towards it and see what happened. When I got into the villages at the foot, some men sitting in the shade invited me to join them for a snack of snails pickled in lime and chili, washed down with rice whiskey. It was not yet ten in the morning, and my stomach did somersaults at the very idea of a snail-and-whiskey brunch. They were disappointed, but offered me some cold tea instead. The villages were Khamu tribe, an offshoot of the Cambodians who built Angkor Wat, and I listened to their strange language. It is a thrill to hear something so completely foreign, and to know it is backed up by centuries of literature and culture.
I excused myself after too long and started again toward the mountain. I ran into a pair of teenager boys, whose hair was exquisitely styled and their collars turned up. They even had the mien of sullen defiance. I said hello, and they asked me where I was going. I pointed at the summit, and received the first helpful directions so far in the entire endeavor. He told me I couldn’t get there from here; I’d have to backtrack and go to the next path leading up. I looked at the mountain and saw it was indeed four or five peaks, and following his suggestion would put me in a valley leading up between them.
I am saving the description of the climb for another purpose, but suffice to say it was a magnificent trail: old-growth cloud forest, lots of wonderful bugs and plants, and an unbelievably steep ascent to the top. I didn’t make it all the way, sadly, because the “trail” petered out well before the summit, and in trying to crash uphill through the underbrush, I incurred a number of painful wounds, notably nine long pustular welts on my forearm where I tried to push a poisonous vine out of the way, and a suicide-bomber bug that went into my eye and stayed until that night, when I finally dug him out with my well-washed fingernail. He was like a jellied herring, coated with eye-booger, and I immediately lamented pulling him out before he could form the nucleus of a rare and beautiful pearl.
Here are pictures from the climb:













Back in town, I have been exploring the various side-streets and paths. It’s such an amazingly nice setting: clean mountain air, cool weather, and very friendly people. They are obviously not used to Westerners wandering around in their neighborhoods, and they are very hospitable, inviting me onto their shady porches for oranges or a glass of beer. The prices are also the same for me as for the locals, which I find charming. The streets are lined with old trees, and in sunny spots are mats of sliced ginger, drying in the sun. The old tribal women come down out of the hills to sell garlic and homebrew on the street corners. There are children everywhere, just like everywhere else in Laos.
I went to one of the Chinese restaurants the other night. I forgot the word for “menu” and pantomimed looking at a list of things, then choosing one. The manager yelled into the back for the cook, who then escorted me into the kitchen and showed me the larder. We were skipping the “menu” middleman, here was the purest kind of list available. I surveyed it like a connoisseur, and then described exactly what I wanted: strips of pork cooked with oyster mushrooms and garlic, over a bed of rice. He nodded, and fifteen minutes later I had an unimpeachable meal.
In the center of town is a little hill crowned by a Buddhist stupa – presumably containing the ashes of a famous historical monk. I went up there on my first day here, with Montreal Max, and we got into a conversation with a friendly monk from Luang Nam Tha. His English was surprisingly good, and he pointed out various interesting things around town from the vantage.





There was also a crowd of kids running amok on the crown of the hill, under the scowling eye of a girl about seventeen. I gave the kids bug-cards, and played with my little voice-recorder, then got them all to stand for a picture.



One of the kids had this aggressive shirt:



Yesterday I went to the Chinese market at the crossroads. You know all that crap we have at Wal-mart that’s Made in China and of marginal quality? Well that’s the super high-standard export stuff. They also make unbelievable quantities of crap, and the Communist regime ensures there is no quality assurance, because this would be an unnecessary complication in the absence of competition.
There were policemen all around the market, which made me uncomfortable about snapping too many pictures, but the Evil Teletubby was irresistible:





His pal, the Cherubic Cetacean, also made me curious. Why the exposed ribcage? Did someone at the toy factory have a flensing knife?



I had planned on spending two or three days in Oudomxay. It has been almost a week, and now I need to move on. I may be out of computer range for a few days – I am going to Muang Ngoi Neuah on the Ou River, then down to Luang Prabang and then Vientiane.