Cute Kiewkacham Kids

So after basically a solid week of awful weather it was time to leave Luang Prabang.  There was actually one day that was perfect from dawn ‘til dusk, and I made great use of it by shooting most of the day at Wat Xieng Thong, which is arguably the most beautiful temple in Laos.  On my final night there I met two other photographers, a guy named Branden who I met on top of Phou Si hill at sunset, and another guy, Paul, who’s living and selling photos in Luang Prabang.  We hung out and talked cameras and photos for quite a while, but before too long it was time to head back to my room and get some sleep before the long ride back to Vang Vieng in the morning.

Vang Vieng is 206 kilometers from Luang Prabang, if I remember correctly, but it’s a long 206 kilometers.  For those of you that must think in miles, that’s roughly 130 miles.  However, it is, as I said, a long trip due to the quality of the roads, and the fact that basically the entire journey is through mountains.  Added to that it was raining on and off the entire way, and I was often literally driving through the middle of clouds that were draped alongside the mountains.

As I did on my way in, I stopped in Kiewkacham on my way out, but this time only for lunch and not to stay the night.  I wandered around the village and snapped some photos, and talked to the village chief again, this time asking him for information on Hmong New Year’s celebrations.  He informed me that it falls on November 27th this year, and said that the celebrations are best in Phonsavan in Xieng Khouang Province, near the famed Plain of Jars.  Big check mark in my book for that one…  I’m DEFINITELY going.

The entire way on Route 13 there are Hmong, Khmu and Lao villages hugging the edges of the highway, and almost without fail kids in every village waved and yelled “sabaai dii!” (“hello”) as I drove past.

In the afternoon as I was just about to leave Luang Prabang Province I saw a Hmong girl in traditional festival clothing standing by the side of the road in Lak Ha Village.  I pulled over quickly to ask for a shot, and then I noticed 2 or 3 other girls coming out dressed in the same way.  After they let me take a few posed portraits a Lao woman came up to me and started telling me that this was a “Cultural Village”, and that they were having a celebration that day.  A “Cultural Village” in Laos is basically a village where they produce some kind of traditional food or crafts and they promote it for tourists to come and take photos.  She invited me to come down into the village and check it out, and so I pulled my bike off the highway and walked further down into the village.

Hmong Girls on the Highway

There was a great big party going on with long rows of tables set up with plenty of food and booze for everybody.  In the center of the village they’d set up a stage where old Lao men were dancing with young Hmong girls in traditional costumes.  The men seemed to be having the time of their lives.  The girls looked absolutely miserable.  I was invited to eat and drink, which I did for a while, but things started to get odd for me.  Somebody went and fetched a young Hmong lady and basically ordered her to sit down next to me and serve me.  Every man eating at the table had a girl feeding him and serving him drinks, the girls basically looking bored and dejected.  I was the only foreigner there, as they were “celebrating” the fact that the “Cultural Village” would be opening to tourists soon.

Put bluntly, it’s kind of like a human zoo where tourists will stop off on their tours through Laos so they can snap pictures of the colorful little people.  While I did get a couple of nice shots while I was there, that kind of situation just really isn’t my scene.  I like natural interaction with people that leads to natural looking photos, and I want the context to be honest, unstaged, genuine.  And I just simply felt bad for the girls there.  Some of the younger teens seemed to be having fun, but the others, sitting and serving the men Lao food and dancing to Lao music (in the Hmong cultural village…), just looked depressed.  I had to get out of there.

And so I did.  From that point it’s about 90 more kilometers to Luang Prabang, and during that stint of the trip I got stung by a bee in my hand and had to pull off the road to find shelter from torrential rain twice.  And thank Gawd I did, ‘cause hiding from the rain in another Hmong village I got my favorite portrait since I arrived in Laos.

I spent 3 more days in Vang Vieng, sitting in a little hut by the river, watching the almost relentless rain we were plagued by.  Laos is a slow place with little to do on a sunny day – on a rainy one, well, there’s pretty much nothing to do but sit around and stare at the rain.  Maybe play cards.  Or drink too much Lao whiskey.  Which is what I’m going to write about in my next post!

Handmade Mulberry Paper Star

So, I’ve been in Luang Prabang for a few days, and here’s what I’ve figured out:

• I should have rented a house in Luang Prabang, not Vientiane
• Lao tuk-tuk and boat drivers are great fun, and you should get drunk with them
• When you get drunk with them on Lao whiskey, your head hurts really bad the next day… I mean, like, REALLY bad.  Don’t let that stop you, though
• When there is sunlight coming from the direction you want, there are thick clouds where you need blue skies.  And vice versa
• Tourism hasn’t spoiled the locals
• Luang Prabang is one of the most beautiful small towns on Earth

Will I keep adding stupid lists to all my posts? Keep checking them, and we’ll both find out! For the moment, they serve my purposes. Don’t expect me to expound on each point.

So, if you read into my list at all, as far as my photography is concerned, I’m still struggling. I’m working hard, but I’m not happy with the light. I’ve stopped staying in and not going out to shoot when the light is “wrong”, but, being my own worst critic, I’m not completely satisfied with the work I’ve done so far, because the light is “wrong”. Portraits work really well with diffused light, but diffused and flat, while often found together, are different. Soft shadows are okay. No shadows?? Urgh.

And one thing is unavoidable – shooting temples, buildings, things like this – it doesn’t work unless you’ve got the right light coming in, and good skies behind. Beautiful, golden light on the temple with a flat, grey background? Hell no. Beautiful, blue skies, or even partly cloudy, with nice, fluffy, textured clouds behind… and flat, diffused light on the temple? Super hell no.

Stencil detail at Wat Saensonorum

Am I giving up? HELL NO. I did get some great stuff today. It wasn’t what I was looking for when I walked out of my guesthouse door this morning, but good stuff is good stuff.

And Luang Prabang is an amazing town, with endless opportunities. Next year when I come back to Laos, I’m coming straight to Luang Prabang and renting a place here, for two good reasons. First, if I get a house across the river and not in the center of town I can get a beautiful spot on the riverfront for $80-$100 a month. Second, and far more importantly, in Luang Prabang I can wander around the streets and get, oh, about a thousand times more good photos than I can in Vientiane. Plus, some of my new boat driver friends have assured me that they can introduce me to the chiefs in hill tribe villages nearby that would be happy to let me stay with them for a week or more for 20 kilos of rice and a bit of cash.

Live and learn. This year I’m going to struggle a bit, and I’m going to make mistakes. I’ve made a few already that I won’t make next time around.

My New Friend

So, anyhow, I have to admit that I drink Beer Lao every single night. At a solid average of $1 for a BIG bottle, I simply can’t afford not to drink it every night. Now, that doesn’t mean I get drunk every night, far from it, in fact. But a night without a Beer Lao here is a foolish, wasted evening indeed. Not only is it by far the most tasty lager available in Asia, it’s also, as I mentioned, $1 for a big bottle.   I mean, Jesus… I can ALWAYS afford $1 for a big beer, no?  (there’s also a Beer Lao Dark, incredibly good, but about 50% more expensive for a smaller bottle)  So, when the weather has been great and I’ve had a good day, I celebrate by drinking a Beer Lao.  When the weather sucks and I have a bad/unproductive day, I cheer myself up by drinking a Beer Lao.  It’s a vicious, inescapable, numbing and delicious circle.  Beer Lao is brewed with no preservatives, so hangovers are rare.

The view from Phoxai village, Vang Vieng District

Photography in Laos is not easy, I’ve been averaging about two photos a day which I can use, and for those of you that don’t know, that’s definitely not enough.  But I think I’m figuring out how to work here… more on that towards the end of the post.

Yesterday I tried to rent a motorbike in Vang Vieng.  I wanted a real Honda, not some Chinese piece of junk.  I asked a guy if I could rent one for 10 days, and he got very suspicious.  “Where are you going to go?” he asked.  “Kasi”, I replied, which isn’t all true.  Kasi is only 56 kilometers from Vang Vieng.  Yeah, I was going to go through Kasi… but I was going to keep driving another 150 kilometers or so through the mountains to Luang Prabang.  He said Kasi was too far, then became very aloof and stopped looking at me, which is the Lao way of saying no.  Being the bastard that I am, I stood and stared at him and basically forced him to actually tell me no.  Which he did.  I asked another guy, went through the same questions, and was told a ridiculously high price for the bike.  So, what should I do now?

Just rent a piece of junk and lie about what I’m going to do with it.

So, I did exactly that, got my clunky Chinese 110cc motorbike, and spent my first day with it scouting for spots between Vang Vieng and Kasi to shoot on my way out the next day.

So, having done that, I woke up this morning before sunrise, grabbed my stuff, hopped on the motorbike I’m currently abusing, and headed to my first spot.  There’s a great big, open, beautiful view point right off the highway I had scoped out, with a little shop next to it that sells coffee, which I most certainly needed when I arrived.  I got there, set up my tripod and…  waited for the light.  For almost 2 hours.  I’m damn glad I waited, ‘cause it was the only moment in the whole day that the light and color were right for a good landscape shot.  The shot that started this post is one of the black and white shots I snapped while I was there.  The fantastic color one I got will eventually wind up on my Laos Photo Library site.

While standing there, the man that owns the little house/coffee shop by the side of the road came over and started talking to me.  The conversation basically went like this:

“Hi!  You’re taking some photos, huh?”
“Oh, yes, I am, thanks!  The view from your home is very beautiful.”
“Oh, thank you.  You drove here on this motorbike?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Do you have a driver’s license in Laos?”
“Oh… no, I don’t!”
“Hmmm…  you rented this bike, huh?  Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Luang Prabang.”
“That’s really far from here… you’re not supposed to take these rental bikes that far.”
“Yeah, I know, but the owner doesn’t know what I’m doing with it”
“What town did you rent it in?”
“I rented it in Vang Vieng.”
“Oh…  I work in Vang Vieng.”
“Really?  What do you do there?”
“I’m a police officer.”

Sooo… what could I say?  I said “Oh! That’s great!” and stood there with a big shit-eating grin on my face until he just started laughing, then he clapped me on the back and walked away.  That’s Lao people for you.  I’m starting to love them.

So, I got my great morning landscape, and set off.  The road was beautiful, but it was cloudy and raining on and off the whole way, and the 3 other spots I had picked out had to be shelved for another day.

Now, this is where I start to get frustrated.  This has been a typical day for me.  Wake up, get one, maybe two nice landscapes, then struggle the rest of the day to get another decent photo.  Here are the problems in Laos:

• The light sucks.  It’s way too harsh most of the day, and the times when it’s not, it’s likely to be cloudy or overcast.
• There’s very little color, especially in the landscapes.  Everything is green, green, green, which looks beautiful to eye, but when photographed has no tonal range and shows no depth.
• There’s very, very little activity.  There are less people in the entire country than in most major cities I know, and people spend most of the day sitting around in the shade doing nothing.
• When you pick up your camera to take a picture, people either run as fast as they can, turn their head so you can’t see their face, give you a stiff, unnatural smile (if they want to be nice), or just look scared or even upset.  People here don’t appreciate photographers.

I’m used to working in Vietnam, where there are so many people that in markets, and even villages, you can do some work going unnoticed or being ignored.  Plus, people in Vietnam like being photographed it seems.  They are usually really great about it.  I can be driving along the road, see a market, stop and pull out my camera, and people are welcoming, jovial even, and as you take their photos their friends tease them about it, and the result is lots of photos with laughing, happy, natural looking people.

Pull up next to a market on the roadside here and pull out a camera, and watch the people flee for their lives.

I stopped in a couple of villages today to photograph kids playing, and I got a couple okay shots, but really nothing great…  mostly kids looking scared.  However, I stopped in one village, sat down and bought a drink, and when the kids showed up I bought them all snacks, teased them for a while, pulled out my camera and showed them some other pictures, and then took some shots…  that yielded some better results.

Kids in Kiewkacham

Then about 2pm, I was feeling quite tired after being out and about since 5:45am, and I came upon a mountain village called Kiewkacham.  I saw that there was a guesthouse in town, and I decided to stop off and spend the night.  After taking a short nap, I wandered around a bit, taking a few shots here and there, but mostly getting the same results.  People just weren’t receptive.  So I laid off shooting, and just started approaching people and talking.  After a few minutes, I’d ask for a photo.  That started to work.  Eventually I wound up being invited to sit down and eat bananas and talk with a Hmong guy.  His wife and kids came out.  His father came over from another house.  The woman next door and her granddaughter came over.  A local school teacher stopped by.  Soon there were more than 20 people hanging about, most of them just staring at me.  But as I started trying to take photos… it started working.  Then the schoolteacher’s son took me over to the local school to meet the English teacher during his class.  I got a great shot of him, too.  Things started to flow.

The local English teacher in Kiewkacham village

Now, being able to speak some Lao helps a lot.  But I think I figured something out this afternoon about taking pictures of people in Laos:

You gotta’ hang out.  Rolling in on a motorbike, walking through the villages and taking photos simply will not work like it does in Vietnam.  You have to sit down with people and make friends, make them comfortable with you.  People in Laos, especially the minority tribes people, are very shy, but very friendly.  If you let them warm up, and do things on their terms, it can work.

Oh, and another thing I’ve figured out:  Forget waiting for the perfect light.  Use it when it’s there, but “perfect” lighting is hard to come by here.  I have to use what I’ve got to use, and that’s it.  If I hang out waiting for perfect light, I’m never going to have enough shots when I leave here.

So, after all this, as the sun was going down, I came back to my guesthouse, sat down with the Lao people sitting outside, and bought beer for everybody. We started chatting, joking around, and looking up stuff in my Lao/English dictionary together.   Now they want to hang out with me.  Now they want me to come back again, and stay longer next time.