For the last three years I've been making movies in Asia. I have been fortunate in that I have been able to put my camera where my heart is. In 2002 I was able to document a health care project that will be used to help continue the funding of the project. In early 2003, I made a fundraiser for a school in India.
This project:
In April of 2003 John Howe, the Save the Children Australia country representative, told me that he needed a short promotional video for a company in Australia who wanted to sponsor a center for children and young people in the Khop district of northern Laos. Khop is near the famous Golden Triangle.
That sounded interesting. John said that we had to go in early May--before the monsoon rains closed the roads in late May. There were other complications as well.
Twice this year bandits have attacked buses going from Vientiane to Louangphrabang, the ancient capital and the modern-day tourism and business center of northern Laos. In the attacks many people, including two foreigners had been killed. So driving directly to Khop from Vientiane, which would mean driving through dangerous territory, was out of the question. John decided that he and his Lao staff would drive into Thailand from Vientiane, and then cross back into Laos near Paklai. Meanwhile, because of visa problems, I would have to travel for nine hours up the Mekong by passenger boat to Paklai.
At 8 am on Thursday May 15 I boarded a passenger boat and proceeded up the Mekong which, for about half of the journey, forms the border with Thailand. The boat was fairly comfortable except for the fact that the benches were too narrow to ever sit comfortably (I am the height and weight of most people in Laos.) Occasionally I would move from one bench to the next to try to re-distribute the discomfort.
However, every time I would move the captain would tell me to move back to where I had been sitting--I was tilting the boat. The other unique factor about this boat was that there was an in-board engine with absolutely no muffler. Everyone's ears were ringing for a few hours after the boat docked.
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When we finally arrived in Paklai, having not stopped once in 9 hours, John was, as promised, waiting at the dock. He said that when he had stopped for lunch he had seen me steaming by. I was, however, too deaf and uncomfortable to look up to see him.
From Paklai, we drove for three more hours to reach the provincial capital of Sayaboury. It was then 9:30 pm--John had been driving since seven in the morning.
Things had changed dramatically in Sayaboury since my visit a year ago. In fact they had changed dramatically in the previous four days--now there was electricity 24, instead of four, hours a day. Everything else was just the same.
From Sayaboury it was a ten-hour drive to Khop over a road that was, after we left downtown Sayaboury, a dirt track.
We stayed in Khop for five days. Our hotel had running water. Water ran out of a pipe into a waiste-high tank that everyone bathed out of. Conveniently, the toilet was beside the shower. Electricity has yet to come to Khop.
As is mentioned in the movie, Khop has its share of social problems. The people are, however, very friendly. With the blessing of the governor and the deputy governor, himself a former school teacher, everyone was extremely helpful and did all they could to help us. The couple I filmed harvesting rice, for example, said we were welcome to film them and then invited us to their house where they gave us three eggs. The principal of one of the schools we visited stopped the school so that we could film students entering a classroom. John and I will be remembered by the students of one of the schools we visited as the first Westerners they had ever seen.
Before we left Khop someone told us to be careful--the rains were coming. Sure enough by late afternoon it started to rain and the road instantly became treacherously slippery. As we were going up one particularly steep hill a pedestrian signaled us that a truck was just beyond the next curve. I thought that was a nice gesture. But when we got closer to the truck we saw that in fact there were two people walking behind the truck as well. The passengers had decided that it was safer to walk than risk riding in a truck that could easily begin sliding out of control and off the side of the hill. A bit after that our own vehicle started to slide diagonally across the road as we went up a hill. Wisely, our driver stopped, everyone got out, we put some dry branches under the wheels, everyone pushed, and somehow we made it up the hill and into Sayaboury.
The next day in Sayaboury, which now seemed amazingly cosmopolitan, there was a big monsoon rain. We had left just in time.
Once in Sayaboury John decided that I should fly from Louangphrabang back to Vientiane. The seats on the airplane seemed remarkably comfortable.
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If you are curious to learn more about the more technical aspects of filming, my cameras, and digital editing please read FAQ--cameras and production, on my home page thomasriddle.net.
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