261206 Culture...Shock

Lao towns are made up of little neighbourhoods/villages (ban), each with their own temple (wat) of the same name e.g. Vanvisa Guesthouse is in the Ban Wat That neighbourhood of Wat Maha That. Ban Wat That was where silversmiths working for the Luang Prabang royal court lived, & the owner of Vanvisa Guesthouse moved here after marrying a silversmith from this neighbourhood. One silversmith at the Chao Fa Ngum Road end of Ban Wat That has a little 'SILVERSMITH' sign decorated with fairy lights, which served as a landmark for the cat when finding its way back to the guesthouse at night.

A few doors away from Vanvisa Guesthouse is the home & workshop of Thithpheng Maniphone, a silversmith mentioned in travel guidebooks. Over the next few days the cat would walk past the sounds of endless tapping & chiseling from the outdoor part of the workshop several times a day, where several young guys in jeans would be seated on low stools under a shelter in the driveway, pairs of hands busy keeping a piece of Lao heritage alive.

Sometime it saw the old master himself inspecting the work of his apprentices, usually when everyone had laid down their tools & disappeared for lunch + nap. The cat never got to talk to him, but it wonders if he feels the same as some of the Kyoto craftsmen, artisans & iemoto, the cat's wushu teacher, & Akha pima (village 'historians' who memorise all the myths, rituals & entire migration history & the genealogy of every guy in the village) - that one is but merely a 'vessel' for passing on the knowledge of a timeless tradition, & with one's talent & skills (at a fine art, a craft, a martial art, or memorising) comes great responsibility for ensuring that it is faithfully transferred to the next generation so that it may live on.

He once served the Luang Prabang royalty, & now his showroom of glass cabinets filled with silver items for sale has framed photos of Thai royalty (HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn) dropping by...the cat simply couldn't imagine the entire entourage complete with security detail squeezing down this little lane that serves as a badminton court & tricycle path for neighbourhood kids...(& is this why this particular lane is so nicely paved? =P)

After checking into Vanvisa Guesthouse, the cat set off on its first foray into the UNESCO World Heritage town of Luang Prabang...walking past Pheng Maniphone Silver Shop, it reached the Chao Fa Ngum Road end of the lane near Nam Phou fountain, turned left onto the main road towards the Post Office, & within the space of a few minutes, it saw as many falang as it usually sees in an entire day at work back home, even before it hit the Post Office (usually filled with falangs shipping back their loot from the Luang Prabang night market)...


!!!!

click to see the cat's reaction

(The cat works in a falang-dominated environment with people from France, Germany, Switzerland, UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Italy, Canada, etc.)

Khon falang laai kwaa khon lao (Caucasians more than Lao), a bit of a shock to the system after the time spent in Phongsaly province. Wonder if this is how villagers from places way off the tourist trail feel when they arrive in Luang Prabang for the first time?

261206 Vanvisa Guesthouse, Luang Prabang

The entrance, where new guests are greeted with a cup of fruity tea:



Sometimes it seemed that it didn't matter if one wasn't a guest - he/she would still be welcomed & served tea anyway =) This place felt a lot more like a favourite aunt's house rather than a guesthouse.

Facing the entrance is a wooden cabinet filled with the owner's collection of weavings, & to the right is a little living room with black & white family photos from another era. In the space beneath the stairs, there are shelves with even more weavings & books, including a cookbook, Food & Travel Laos, co-authored by the owner.

For most of the cat's stay, a wizened smiling old lady was parked on a wicker chair near the entrance, wrapped up in scarves & attended to by various female family members who busied themselves with watching Thai channels on TV, in between cleaning & running the guesthouse. Months later, when reading about the cookbook online, the cat realised that the old lady was most probably the owner's aunt, mentioned here & here:

Mr.Suthipong Suriya received his culinary training in Luang Prabang court cuisine from Lady Bua, a Luang Prabang royalty, and her niece, Mrs.Vandara Amphayphone in the past few years.The writer has a strong emotional attachment with Laos and a personal home cooking experiences with Lady Bua Lattamali who was married to Luang Prabang royalty. Lady Bua used to work as chef assistant in Luang Prabang court in a number of ceremonies. She is now 96 and leads a simple life transferring cooking skill to her only niece, Vandara Amphayphone. She also once assisted Phia Sing Chaleunsilp, the former chef and Master of Ceremony of Luang Prabang court. Phia Sing died in 1967 and left behind an invaluable manuscript on original court cuisines.

The cat had made a booking through this website, & in this peak season (cool season + Christmas + New Year) there was no jacking up of room rates, unlike many other establishments in town. Cat's room in the front section of the house:



It had booked a double room for USD8 (no single rooms), but somehow it turned out to be a triple (for the same price)...enough room for the cat to swing itself around. About three rooms in this section share two bathrooms with 'antlers' serving as towel hooks...the whole place was decorated with all sorts of interesting items, including a spear along the staircase...! The rear section has larger ensuite rooms, & in between both sections is the kitchen & dining area where cooking classes are sometimes held.

Unable to find any power sockets within the room, the cat had to charge its camera batteries using one outside its room. However, the socket was at eye level & as loose as all Lao power sockets are. Everything had to be held in place with electrical tape, with the long wire dangling down onto the floor where the charger rested. The cat hid everything behind a tall potted plant that was just of the perfect height, to prevent anyone from tripping over the charger =P This, & the lack of air conditioning which would be the bane of tourists in the hazy & hot seasons, are the only drawbacks of this guesthouse that the cat can think of.

In the garden:





The last flower is Clitoria ternatea (Var. pleniflora?) aka. butterfly pea. Once upon a time the cat had to collect 44 of these flowers for its entire class to dissect for an upper secondary Biology practical class, which is why the scientific name remains embedded in the cat's brain till this day. Didn't get to ask if it is used in Lao cooking...the petals are the source of the blue colouring used in Peranakan food e.g. Nonya bak chang (steamed glutinous rice dumplings filled with pork, chestnuts, spices, etc) & kueh (glutinous rice cakes) like pulut inti & pulut tai tai.