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!

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.

My House in Vientiane

Well, it’s been about a week or so since I posted, so it’s time for another.  Overdue, actually, but internet access is a pain in the ass here, so… bear with me.

I know the photo I started this entry with is less than exciting, but a few people have asked to see my new house, so… there it is.  I signed my contract 12 days ago, and moved into the apartment unit next door while I waited for them to finish fixing up the house for me.  I was assured that it would be ready in 2 or 3 days, and 12 days later it’s finally ready!  Now, this is Laos, so I wasn’t expecting it to be ready on time.  But my patience was starting to wear thin.  I wouldn’t have even been getting too concerned yet, except for the fact that tomorrow I’m taking off for Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang in the early morning, and won’t be back until the day before Hans, my friend, will be arriving and moving in with me.  I’m not positive, but my gut feeling tells me that Hans wouldn’t be too happy if he arrived and I told him that we would be sharing a bed until the house was ready.  In fact, I’d be a hell of a lot more concerned if he wasn’t upset about that.

Anyhow, I don’t know what in the hell they’ve been doing in here for the last 12 days.  In fact, I’m not convinced they were doing anything at all.  I mean, there were a couple of guys in here every day watching TV and smoking cigarettes, but I didn’t notice any other significant activity.  I’ve been over to check out the house every day – not difficult to get in, seeing how they’ve left the door not only unlocked, but wide open, all night long, with the TV, refrigerator, etc. sitting inside – and I swear to God, nothing was being done at all.  I came over the first day, looked around and thought to myself “okay, there’s a couple hours worth of cleaning and picking up to do, then I’m in!”.

Har dee har har.  I tried coming over and standing in the doorway and staring at the guys “working” inside to try and “motivate” them a bit, but they just smiled, and then offered me a seat and a shot of whiskey.  Finally I made it abundantly clear to my landlady yesterday that I absolutely needed the place tonight.  So, she did the wise (and predictable, if you’ve been in Asia long enough…) thing and told the men to get the hell out of the house and did the work herself.  Once she was finished, it took me 10 whole minutes to move all my stuff over here from the adjoining apartment unit.  12 days… 10 minutes.  Call it cultural differences if you will.

My house is $300 a month, has two bedrooms, and one great, large room that serves as kitchen, dining room and living room all in one.  Want to see an oh-so-exciting picture of it?  Here it is!

The bare inside of my house...

Looks bare and boring?  Wank off, I’ve been inside for an hour.  Want to see the inside of my bedroom?  Well then… come over and get real friendly.  It’s basically illegal to have a Lao girlfriend, so you might find I’m very receptive.

So anyhow, it dawned on me the other day that while there is a body of work I need to produce inside Vientiane, a certain amount of stock photography I need to compile, really it’s not a very exciting town to shoot in, and the work will be slow going.  In fact, the majority of the work I need to do in Laos is in Luang Prabang and the countryside.  Vientiane is a very pleasant town, it’s relaxed and easygoing, the people are sweet and quite funny, great to talk to.  There’s basically no stress here.  And if your job is to sit around and hope for weather decent enough to work with during the few hours a day it’s worthwhile to shoot here, you’ll be bored out of your friggin’ mind.  It’s the only sensible place to be based in Laos, and I’ll need to be here about a week out of each month to sort through and optimize my work.  I need to be here to shoot Thaat Luang festival coming up, which will be great…  but it’s time for me to get the hell out and do some real work.  So, I rented a motorbike with the intention of going out of town and scouting for spots to work in.  So that’s what I did.  I went out of town, and started traveling down dirt side streets (they’re all dirt…  besides streets inside of larger towns and highways, the entire country’s infrastructure is comprised of rutted dirt tracks) looking for good spots.  I found a really lame waterfall, especially for Lao standards, and I found some dusty, inactive villages with a few people sitting beneath their stilt houses, wondering what in the hell I was doing.  I almost dumped my bike in a stream I had to ride across.  I knew that if I kept going on the highway I would eventually meet mountains, so I kept going.  And wound up taking a 160km detour to Vang Vieng district.  I wanted to scout for spots, and so I got my wish!  My rental contract, by the way, had a clause that said I wasn’t allowed to take the bike more than 20km from the center of Vientiane.  Bah!

If you don’t know about Vang Vieng, it’s basically a pit-stop on the highway between Vientiane and Luang Prabang that has become a hippy hellhole.  The bars in the town have opium and pot on their menus, and lots of backpackers go there, sleep all day, and then party like idiots all night.  Inside the actual village itself, there are now rows of bars/restaurants with padded lounge seats all facing large-screen TVs that they show DVDs of the TV show “Friends” on, ad nauseum.  I’m not even kind of exaggerating.  They show “Friends” all damn day, and the worst thing is that the places are completely packed.  Young, adventuresome types fly halfway across the world to come to Vang Vieng and sit on their asses eating crappy Western food, smoking weed and watching American TV.

And let’s hope God keeps them there because Vang Vieng district is one of the most stunningly beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I don’t want to be bothered by those people while I’m out photographing the sites that they’re too baked to enjoy.  I was only there for one afternoon and one morning, but that afternoon I went around and scouted for sites to shoot the next morning.  I woke up the next morning, went out and “bang, bang, bang”, hit each spot methodically and got some of the best landscape photos I’ve ever taken.  Here’s one for you to check out.

Vang Vieng Scenery

Sorry, but the early morning shots with color in the sky and warm, golden light get to go on my marketing site the next time I’m in Vientiane long enough to do some optimizing.  Even with the hazy sky I think this shot came out fantastic, and it looks really great full size.  I love the grayscale effect of the staggered mountains in the background.

Not all the shots I took that morning were of the quality I’m after, but most importantly I was able to look at my material and figure out exactly where I want to go next time, and how I want to crop my shots.  I’m itching to get back out there and knock out more work.  On my way back I made notes of some other great spots along the highway with fantastic views, jotting down the kilometer numbers on the highway markers so I know exactly where to go back to.

So I’m off tomorrow.  I’ll be gone for about 10 days, then back here for 2 days, then back out for a few days.  So, it might be a little bit before I write again, please forgive me.  I’ll try to write while I’m gone, but since I won’t have a decent monitor I won’t be able to work on accompanying photos ‘til I’m back here in Vientiane.  A couple people have commented that my posts are great, but the internet generation doesn’t have more than a 5 minute attention span.  Well, I’m verbose, and my lack of ability to make frequent posts means the ones I make will be lengthier.  Hope you can make it through them.  Next time, no crappy shots of my house, I promise!  In the meantime, if you want to find me, try kilometer 144 on Lao national highway 13 at about 6am, approximately 15km out of Vang Vieng.  I just might be there.  Bring your own tripod, mine is being used.