To Laos and Longcheng with the TLCB

The TLCB had another trip planned to Laos and although transport was available this time, I offered to join with my car as it is often handy to have an extra car to accomodate people who join to visit the school projects supported by the TLCB. So after my trip to the north-east of Thailand I headed over to Vientiane to join the TLCB to check on progress of their projects as well as "handing over" completed projects to the villages and the schools. The itinerary this time was to start in Vientiane and drive to Longcheng for an overnight stop there and then the next day check progress on the dormitory project at the Longcheng school and then continue offroad via Xamthong to Phonsavan where we would stay 2 days before heading back to Vientiane and home. We had planned an early start from the Friendship bridge but unfortunately on Monday morning there were a lot of "visa runners" needing a "visa-on-arrival" for Laos so the early start was delayed quite a bit and we only managed to leave from the bridge around 10 o'clock 

Lots of vans waiting for the "visa runners" to bring them to the Thai Consular Office


Once everything had been arranged we set of for Long Cheng taking Rd 13 South to Thabok from where we headed north to the Phu Bia Mine and from there on to our destination of the day. Now, with the rains, the brown hills get more and more green while our cars got more and more brown






The Phu Bia mine with the big trucks using the haul road to and from the mine


The Nam Ngone market where we stopped to buy supplies


The main junction in Ban Nam Ngone - north (up) goes to Long Cheng


The road to Long Cheng is being upgraded now Long Cheng has become a District at the same time Xaysomboun was upgraded from District to Province


Along the way we had quite a bit of rain which made the road quite slippery but in the end we made it to Long Cheng without problems. 

View of Long Cheng at the left with the 2 karst mountains also known as the "vertical speed brake" sticking out at the end of the runway and the basecamp of the Nam Ngum 3 hydropower project contractor in the center-right of the picture


The only Guesthouse in town




Long Cheng has seen a lot of changes over time from basically just an empty valley which was large enough to fit an 1260 meter long runway to a booming town with some 30,000 people living there during the late sixtees/early seventees. From that time till about 2004/2005 Long Cheng was a more or less deserted place with only a Lao army and some civilian presence but now the "one-road town" is again growing steadily

Long Cheng as seen from the air in the lates sixtees - early seventees (left) and as seen from the plane in 2004 en route from Vientiane to Phonsavan (right)
 

Long Cheng during late 2013 / early 2014 with the picture taken from the karsts at the end of the runway


The next day it was "work" as usual but the weather did not look good and we had a lot of rain that day on our way to Phonsavan via Xam Thong, Tha Tham Bleung and the Phaxay district

Some pictures from the Guesthouse (N19.10507 E102.92505) known locally as the Sayphasert GH.




The royal palace on one of the hills overlooking Long Cheng (the palace is off-limit to visitors)


Breakfast at the restaurant in town and the rain started coming down by the bucket-full so even the chickens looked for a dry place to hide


While waiting at the Long Cheng district offices I noticed that they had a map of the new Xaysomboun Province complete with the borders of the new districts. I wanted to take a picture of that map but the guys in the office looked decidedly unhappy about that so in the end I took a picture of a picture of Long Cheng which had been nailed to the wall. The American compound is in the lower-right corner while a little bit higher on the right Vang Pao's house is clearly visible


Still heavy rain so our trip offroad to Phonsavan was an interesting trip with quite a of bit slip-sliding up and down the mountains







The vertical profile of the track from Long Cheng to Phaxay District


Mac handing out some pictures which he took on a previous trip and which he had printed out to people in Tha Tham Bleung



We made a quick stop to have a look at the remnants of a Russian tank and Mike indicated that according to him it was a PT-76 (light amphibious tank) and not a T-72 tank.



The next day the work started in earnest - handing over some completed projects and this requires speeches, paperwork, signatures, rubber stamps, picture taking and celebrations and I can tell you that the Lao people know how to celebrate














 

The celebrations involve always food, sometimes a "Baci" ceremony and lots of drinks - the horrible white stuf Lau-Lau or Lau Kau in Thai which you feel burning all the way from your thoat to your stomach and copious amounts of Beer Lao

Baci ceremony at the school in Ban Sy Vieng Kham with lots of prayers and the tying of the white thread on the right hand wrist of the person who is being wished well - for background information of the ceremony see Baci - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The three M's (Mac, Mike and Me) after the Baci ceremony with a few of the local ladies serving beer at the party. It is quite common that during and after the meal one of the ladies gets up with one glass in which she serves the beer for the guests and starts asking everyone to drink a glass of Beer. But she is followed by Lady No. 2 and later by Lady 3 and so on and belief me, the ladies can be very persistent that you drink another glass of beer.




But then again, who can resist drinking a beer served by a lady with such a smile


The older guys normally prefer lao Lao and these two guys made sure that not even the last drip was wasted by serving it in the bottle cap