Take a cruise in South-East Asia

Village life in Laos

Luang PrabangAnders Overgaard
Luang Prabang

Monks in Laos

For the first hour or so the river was the border. On the right bank Thailand was cultivation and fields, a raised stone embankment, a paved road, a line of street lamps, the occasional modern hotel. Laos, on the left bank, seemed to belong to another century. Jungle pressed down to the river banks. Should one pass this way at night, Thailand would be lights and movement; Laos would be dark and still.

Near the village of Pak Tha, the river swung left, and Thailand and the 21st century fell astern. Cascades of exuberant greenery descended on both banks. For long stretches there was nothing but tangled jungle then suddenly a roof would appear through the trees - the pitched thatch of a house, or the red and yellow tiles of a temple. The trees would falter, revealing ragged banana plantations and stands of withered maize, grey wooden houses on stilts leaning at precarious angles, with black pigs rooting beneath their floors, water buffalo wallowing in rice paddies and children, sleek as fish, leaping from rocks into the river. The villages were a mosaic of tribal ethnicities - Hmong, Yao, Lahu and Akha peoples. Each village, each tribe, had its own traditions of weaving, its own distinctive dress and its own religious practises involving spirit houses and ancestor worship.

Pictured: novice monks carrying rice pots on a morning alms procession