My mind is on the sort of overload that can come from travel, with places, scenes, facts and ideas jumbled together without organization. But some themes rise out of the flood of sensation:
The importance of Government
Perhaps it is because we left the US right after the conclusion of the government shutdown, but I'm repeatedly struck by the enormous impact government has on the lives of the people of the countries we have visited. Thailand has decent roads, literacy, a healthy economy. While individual entrepreneurialism may drive the economy, schools, roads and bridges come from social spending.
Thailand has infrastructure (though wiring in Asia can make it look fragile) that Laos does not. We took a boat from the Thai/Lao border up North down to Luang Prabang. In 200 miles of river, there was one almost complete new bridge and one just beginning construction. So the river is both sustenance--fish, boat traffic--and barrier, since vehicle crossing is only by ferry and few vehicle carrying ferries were evident in 200 miles until near Luang Prabang. Maybe no one has cars and there is little truck traffic, but if so, it's pretty hard to grow a national economy when transportation is limited.
More important, there are very poor villages in both Thailand and Laos. Without redistributionist government aid, young people in those villages have little future in the world that they can see via the ubiquitous satellite dishes. But they have schools, simple ones, but we saw kids in the poorest village we visited running joyously back to school after lunch.
We also hear about the heavy hand of government. I naively thought all of Vietnam celebrated the 1954 end of French colonialism, but it's not that simple. The North and South have had differences long before the division of the country (Buddhist/Catholic as well as tribal distinctions). The communist victory in 1975 not only did not erase those differences but has in some cases exacerbated them. One of our guides was the child of a South VN army officer who was killed in what they call the American War, while his mother was sent to the mountains for 20 years of re-education. He was raised by his grandparents, wanted to go to medical school, but was refused entry by the government because of his family's prior loyalties. When he got a good education to become an English teacher, he could not get a job, again because of the family past. Apparently the government looks back 3 generations. He said "the war is over but the pain is not." Our guide up North spoke of how his family venerates Ho Chi Minh, while his generation respects Ho, but values him most on the currency they want to earn.
Faith
There are Buddhist temples everywhere in Thailand, but more remarkable are the obvious expressions of faith--crowds visiting temples to pray and leave offerings, roadside shrines which earn 3 beeps of respect from passing vehicles. Basic principles: don't kill, don't lie, don't drink, honor your ancestors. For me it was surprising to see this practiced faith in the same place as the rushing crowds in the MBK megamall. Pretty clearly the idea that desire is the root of all suffering has not really changed behavior.
In Laos, a much poorer and less developed country (though the Chinese are building Laos Vegas so they have another place to gamble), there is great reverence for monks, who are a bit of a show in Luang Prabang early every morning. They walk down the street, collecting gifts of food in the bowl they carry, mostly bits of sticky rice, though also crackers, bananas and such. Tourists are asked not to get close to the monks, to sit lower than them, but many are not aware they are offending. There are beautiful temples, including one from the 17th century that survived when invaders torched all the others. I had not understood until this trip that Buddhism included so many aspects of Hinduism, especially the Ramayana story of Rama, Sita, the demons and the While Monkey. Another deep influence is Chinese, especially in architecture, language.
Compared to the villages we saw along the Mekong, Luang Prabang is a major economic resource, a mini-Vineyard or Nantucket, with clothing shop after shop and a large crafts night market. Yet unlike US resort towns, a full hour massage was $8. When the high speed railroad the Chinese are building comes to Luang Prabang, life will change.
Rice
The vastness of rice cultivation and the continuing requirement for manual labor are stunning. There are still water buffalo used to plow land. There are acres and acres of wet rice, which must be flooded at the right time, drained at the right time and harvested, by hand, at the right time--back-breaking work.
As with many commodities and goods, Thailand exports its best jasmine rice, importing lesser grades for domestic consumption. There's rice like we eat, the separate white grains, plus sticky rice, also many types of rice noodles and rice paper, which I first mistook for an inedible plastic wrapper when we tried banh xeo in Hanoi. There does not appear to be big agri-business, so I don't know how small farmers get their crops to market and then to the cities, but from the city markets we have seen, the process works, though without the big box, brand name approach our food comes through.
We are eating well, learning much, floating a bit on the surface of the places we visit, but that comes with the time we have to spend and the choices we have made. No serious health problems, we are lucky to have escaped danger from Typhoon Haiyan. Home November 20, to digest and see how the trip has changed us.
