As I look back through our photos of our days in Laotian villages, I am struck by the simplicity of these people's lives. No electricity at two villages because they don't have enough water to generate power. No outhouse or water, other than shrubs and the spring, at those villages either. At all the villages, timber-framed houses with bamboo-mat walls; most of these don't have windows so the heat can be retained in the winter and the smoke in the summer to keep out the mosquitos. If the houses aren't raised on stilts, then the floors are dirt. The same structure, just larger, is used at the schools. The kitchen is one or two pots over an open fire or rough fire pit.
Off the paved roadways, the villages are accessible by dirt trail. A motorized vehicle, something like the front half of a tractor, can pull a trailer over most of the rutted tracks that are wide enough. The numerous creeks have no bridges.
Our Anchorage home seems very palatial in comparison. Even our Talkeetna cabin, without water or electricty, seems like a luxurious house.
Click here to see more photos of the villages in the Nam Ou Valley that we reached by hiking and by boat.
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