A new machine in town

[Ron Evers]

Looks like the product from the primary crusher on the left & final product on the right. Still much human labour involved.

 

[The_Traveler]

Looks like the product from the primary crusher on the left & final product on the right. Still much human labour involved.

Several places we saw people, usually women, laying out the gravel by hand, not even with rakes.
Heavy equipment is expensive and both difficult and expensive to move across a terrible road network.
When time and human labor is cheap and the alternatives are very expensive, it's clear what teh choice will be.

Up until a very few years ago, all traffic across this river that divides the town went over a frighteningly flexible suspension bridge.
The roadway was one plank thin and lots of the planks were broken and repaired.
At best it was very bouncy and unnerving.
Traffic too heavy went the long way around or got down to the river and drove across when it was shallow.
Then the concrete bridge was built and the town expanded as traffic increased.

 

[Ron Evers]

What an experience you have had visiting these places.

The new bridge looks to have been built using modern equipment. For instance the piers look to have been formed with steel forms & the concrete placed in mass rather than by the bucketful.

 

[snowbear118 49]

Fascinating. I notice the women at lower right apparently washing clothes.

 

[The_Traveler]

Water is free- and cold in the morning

Quite near car and motorcycle wash

And just upstream from boat landing
many villages are built along and mainly accessible by boat.

Boats are quite shallow draft as there are many places along these rivers where it is shallow and rocky.
The next day we rented a boat and boatman to take us down river about 4 hours. The boat was exceptional because it had actual seats (old auto/truck seats) as opposed to a narrow butt-busting plank.

 

[The_Traveler]

Yes, it was a great trip - for several reasons: I wasn't lugging really heavy camera stuff; we went to places that didn't attract casual tourists and so the other travelers we met were generally interesting well traveled and fun; the people and the country were terrific; not too hot and muggy; my traveling partner was laid back, interested in damn near everything I was and wasn't tight with money. (he also uses Sony A series so I didn't get concerned about backup bodies, etc.)

All in all a spectacular trip topped off by a final two days in a nice Bangkok hotel that was overbooked so they put us in truly lovely rooms on the club floor.

 

[baturn]

Wow! Great thread. Cool photos and interesting narrative. Thanks to Lew and those who asked the questions.

 

[The_Traveler]

Every day, from morning until night, I would see new things that highlight just how different their life is from mine.

Somehow this beer company got the idea that 'drinking store' is an appropriate translation for cafe or bar so all across Laos I would see signs that say 'drinking store'.
And Beer Lao is just terrific. This is an ordinary village street; a small truck every day or so, motorbiles or bicycles or pedestrains routinely.

Drug bring sadness and pain.
Heroin, methamphetamines get transported across the northern tip of Laos from the Golden Triangle and some inevitably leeches into the local population, opium gets grown in the hills. Government anti-drug forces are spread thin and its hard to guess how sincere it is.

Tourists usually hit only Luang Prabang and Vientiane; everywhere else is much harder to get to. More serious travelers usually enter the country in the North-West by bus and generally travel a clockwise route so we tended to run into people several times over the three weeks. We had run into a couple of bikers who were riding the small trails of northern Laos. (The narrow, rutted trails of Laos are great for riding a dirt bike (Tour Maps Forum Trip Reports S.E. Asia GT-Rider Maps and a couple of days later came across this menu in a restaurant where they'd left their mark.

Prices are in kip, about 8012 to the dollar; the period is used where we in US would use comma.