Hin Boun Homestay

  Ban Tabak, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, May 10, 2008

We spent most of the day on the bus from Vientiane.   On the way we stopped for lunch at a local café and outside saw that there was a stall selling boiled half-developed duck eggs - ewww!

Bolied half-developed egg anyone ??

Further along the road we stopped to take in the surroundings and met a local guy and his wife at the view point only then to notice he had an AK47 with him - nice.

Man with an AK47

  Mid-afternoon we arrived at the village of Hin Boun that would be our home for the evening.  We were spending the rest of the day in the village then eating and sleeping in one of the family's homes.  We first did a tour around the village meeting lots of the children, taking their pictures and then having them laugh in excitement as they saw themselves on the cameras.

Ban Tabak village

The village basically operates as a co-operative with the adults out in the fields all day and the children running the village and preparing the meals along with the odd old person helping out too.  We met one elderly lady who was on her knees husking rice.  She had no idea how old she was or when she was born but she thought she might be 80 - 85.  To us it seemed so bad that she was slaving away at her age.

Ban Tabak village

With all the kids around and no adults it was a bit weird like something out of Peter Pan but they were all busy doing stuff so it must work quite well.  Another odd sight is that outside each house (made from sticks and woven palm leaves) is a satellite dish - all mod cons here !!

All mod cons

After our tour of the village it was time for a "cruise" on the river.  I think that the Hin Boun villagers win the prize for the most inventive people on the trip so far as our boats were made from fuel casings from B52 bombers with what looks and sounds like a lawnmower engine on the back - very resourceful !

B52 Boats

B52 Boats

They actually went quite quickly too - must be the aerodynamic design !!  As we arrived back at the riverbank the sun was setting and it was time for dinner. 

The food was amazing and we have no idea how they managed to cook up so much stuff on the small  wood fire

Dinner at the homestay

cooker they had -  sticky rice, beef with ginger, chicken curry/stew, pork omlette and watermelon, pineapple and papaya for dessert.  After a few games of cards it was into our mosquito net tents in their living room (which Maud was pleased about after we spotted a preying mantis on the door post) and then it was lights out.  

Preying Mantis

 

He next morning we were all up at 5.30am.  Neither of us are morning people at the best of times and today it wasn't a good start for Maud.  The first cockerel went off at 4.30am followed by scores more and lots of chirping chickens.  By 5.30am it was really loud and being unable to stand it any longer she finally got out of bed and said "if you want to live in a barn conversion back in the UK, then there better hadn't be any %&$*ing chickens"....
 
We had breakfast at 6am then it was back on the bus for the long days drive into Vietnam.  The border crossing wasn't too bad apart from the fact that we had to walk through no man's land in the rain with all our bags, plus Klaus the old German dude was trying to take photos of the guards, not the cleverest idea in a communist country.  Once we got on our new bus on the Vietnam side you could tell the difference in the two countries immediately, No. 1 being the with the driving.  Laos is such a patient and pleasant place to travel in, with happy smiling people wherever you go and Vietnam is basically full of maniacs.  Basically the rule of the road is that there aren't any. You just drive as fast as you like, overtaking whenever and wherever you fancy and if something is coming the other way you just blast your horn and flash your lights until you force them out of the way.  We apparently had a "very safe" driver who only had to be told about half a dozen times by our guide Nicki "no no no no get back in" to various yelps from us on the bus as at one point we were driving head on towards a concrete mixer.  There are also cows everywhere just wandering along the road and we nearly took out a few of those as well en-route.  After a hair-raising and noisy few hours we arrived at Ninh Binh (it literally is a bin) our overnight stop.  As there didn't appear to be all that much there we settled for a night in at the hotel with dinner and a couple of drinks in the bar where Maud sampled the Vietnamese wine "Sparrow Dalat" - not quite the quality of a nice Aussie Red - but slightly better that the stuff that comes in a box !  An early night was in order after the excitement of the days journey and we had another 3 hours to come the next day on the drive up to Halong Bay.