A bit of background

This project was warmly recommanded by a french girl that we met in the Boloven.
She is biking around the word, auditing on her way some "sustainable" or "responsible" tourist initiatives, thus helping set up a web site (www.echoway.org) for "responsible tourism".

The way this project works...
This project is funded by Nederlands and was set up by a number of foreign advisors. It is now managed by Lao peopl...but it is visible that the whole project has been well thought and well implemented, thus avoiding some problems that could have previously undermined that sort of projects.
In this, Laos is very lucky that they start very late their tourism developpement and can benefit from the experience of other countries...

It would be very long to describe why we got that impression, but for exemple, the way our money is spent is quite tranparent and spread out between the villagers.
The village head choses a different family for each group of tourists. This means that the families won't feel invaded, because they only get tourists once a year or so. Plus, they don't "professionalise" it, which means they are curious and open to the tourists, and not "blasés" like we saw in other places.
Moreover, this means the revenue from the tourism is shared between the households.
Same with our food, which is purchased from different sources.
As for the guides, we have different guides each day. Some of them were meeting Falang (foreigners) for the first time!
This makes it very interesting, but also a bit difficult, because those people are so shy that it takes a bit of time for them to feel confortable with foreigners...
Luckily, we also have 2 great english speaking guides, Nic and Kuang (whose pictures you can see in the other article), who act as interpreters and sometimes help the guides think of the stories and tricks of the forest that might have some interest for us...

Faces and smiles...

We went for this trek with our 2 "communication instruments", namely;
- Our Polaroid camera (which spits out the pictures straight away); the villagers all come to check out the "magical camera"...and it enables us to thank the homestay family and the village chiefs.

Polaroid session-Ban VongSikeo

- Our small picture album, showing our families.
The ripe age of our Grandmothers (86) makes the villagers nod with desbielief, as their elder is about 70...
I get a lot of wedding offers for my brother, pictured barechest, with his long blond hair and green eyes...but I refuse; not enough buffaloes (plus his girlfriend would kill me!)!

But actually, what interests more the people are the "backgrounds"; high rises, New-Caledonia Beaches, a nice appartment in Marseille...and, above all; the snow...which sent me showing off a very convincing (or so I thought!) ski ride to a crowd of dubtfull villagers, wondering what is the fun about risking to break an arm or leg while jumping in cold sugar with bended knees and sticks in the hands!!!

Anyway, the ice is broken (ha ha ha), and we spend a long evening (very tiring for our2 interpretors) in a "questions-answer" session, where we learn a lot about their life, the way they see their future and the possible lost of their culture and the way they see the oustside word...

Women have a hardlife...going to school only until 12yo (for this generation only!), then getting married and having kids...
Waking up at 3am to break the rice, make the fire, prepare breakfast, then go to fetch water, look after the kids, cook, some find time to weave...

In the second village, we are given a traditional Baci ceremony.
This is usually given for wedding, birth, or when a personn is sick or going away, and needs all her "spirits about".
In the ceremony, the 32parts of the body are called back (in case they were wandering around) and tied to the person with cotton bracelets around their wrists.

Sinatron, village head daughter, Ban Nyang