Communism and Spirit worship

Wrenching myself away from the idylic Si Phan Don, I got myself to Savannaket. Up to that point I was starting to ask myself what exactly was Communist about Lao. You buy stuff just like everywhere else and there was nothing about the villages Id visited that gave anything away. Id only ever been to Ex Communist countries before so I was naturally curious. Then I arrived in Savannaket. Supposedly a big town, but nothing in Lao is really that big - there are only 6million inhabitants in the whole country. So the sickle and hammer flags in Savannaket took me a little by surprise. This was the birthplace of  Lao Communist Hero, Kaysone Phomvihan so the local museum was a great example of provincial hero worship. But I at least started to learn a little more about Lao history, and the fact that it is the most bombed country per capita in the history of Warfare. Shockingly, having fought for years for independence from French colonial rule, the poor Laotians then find themselves in the crossfire between the Americans and the Vietnamese. The  Viet Minh built the Ho chi Minh Trail  through Lao to get supplies from North to south Vietnam. Consequently, the US bombed it to smitherines and Lao is still covered in UXO (unexploded ordinance) as I would later see with my own eyes...

I was in Savannaket to do a 3 day trek into the east of the province, to a sacred forest very close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail so the next day, I and the lovely Corrinne set off on our trek. The trek was great, we walked through Dong Phu Vieng a Sacred forest and National Park, staying with different families as we went. On the first night we got to ask the chief of the village about the various customs. In this part of the world, spirits are worshiped rather than Buddhism and we had a wonderful insight into living with spirit and animist traditions. Spookily, the night before coming, Id dreamed of Thomas my late Stepfater, and in this village there is a strong tradition that if you dream of a dead parent it means that they feel excluded from your life and you have to do a special ritual to them... I made a note of it and vowed to check in with dead relatives from time to time. The second night we had a special ceremony to ward off evil spirits and to wish good luck. It was followed by drinking and dancing and singing, and Corrinne and I had to sing a song to the group... we did a slightly repetitive rendition of La vie en rose, which was less than impressive and I got the impression that the locals thought it lacked feeling.... The next morning a wonderful lady let me loose on her weaving loom - its incredible how long it takes to make one scarf, and how complicated the whole process is. I think they were surprised by my enthusiasm! its not that clever dear... Oh well, I thought it was pretty incredible! The trek through the countryside was lovely altough it was pretty chilling to keep on happening upon live unexploded bombs. Obviously we went no-where near them but its tragic to think these things still litter the countryside and people are still dying daily, almost 40 years after the war.