2/16–Luang Prabang–TEAC afternoon

Arriving back at the hotel to hang out before we have to leave again for the 3 pm TEAC tour, we find that our Vietnamese pal here has decked out the New Year’s offerings.  There’s tons more stuff here now – including a full case of beer, lots of books, Buddha fingers and of course, Coca Cola.  Every day the offerings grow, one day soon, we won’t be able to get out the doorway! It’s fun though to see what will be offered next!  We hang out on the balcony and then in the room because it is way too hot out there in the midday sun. Then begin to make our way back into town around 2:30.

This time we walk all the way down the river road, past an awful lot of sidewalk building and enlarging, until we get to the place the hotel guy calls “BBQ Street,” which is a stretch of sidewalk along the river side of the street where you can order a BBQ buffet.  We’re not sure if it is like what we had at The Brotherhouse last night, or what I read somewhere that you point to what you want and someone else cooks it for you.  Don’t think we’ll find out though, since we just had BBQ and the area is all open air, very much street food-ish, and while that can appeal to us in certain moods, we’re looking for more sit down restaurant meals at this point in our travels.  

Picking our way through the construction and past the morning market (which is the vegetable and wet market in town), we eventually cross the main night market street and arrive at TEAC just in time for the tour.  Admission to the center is free, but they charge for the tour, which is worth it since you get a good narrative about all the different tribes and aspects of tribal living.  The displays here are informative, focusing on the different Laotian tribes and their crafts, lifestyles and cultures.  The center focuses on the four most well known Laotian tribes:  The Hmong, Akha, Tai Lue and Kmhmu.  There are various crafts and clothing associated with each tribe – The Akha features clothing and a headdress made from thousands of pieces of silver; the Hmong display tells a story of the courtship traditions of the tribe, The Tai Lue depicts the weaving skills fo the tribe, along with the process to turn raw cotton into thread, and the Kmhmu display provides examples of bamboo basket weaving.  Our guide walks us through all the displays adding in fascinating commentary and explanations for each and every tribal custom.

 

The final space is given to a special exhibition called “Seeds of Culture” which displays handicrafts made from and with living plants. This one is totally fascinating, as virtually every piece of clothing and jewelry is made from plant seeds called Job’s ear.  You can see the seeds in everything, and our guide explains that everything is done by hand, and the half seeds shown on the headdress are actually bitten in half by the women making the clothing. 

 

After the tour, we inspect the giftshop, but don’t see anything really exciting.  We do hang out a bit on the patio near the cafe talking with our guide, who tells us about his life, where he is from and how he began working here (basically the textile and artisan organization Ock Pop Tok turned his application down, but referred him to TEAC and they hired him).  He was a font of knowledge about villages, tribes and festivals and really quite an interesting conversationalist.  As we took our leave from him, we wandered out into the botanical garden (read: very small garden) and spied these rice cakes drying on the roof of the building across the street.  Its all natural in these parts of the world!