Exploring Rural Laos. Mat Houses, Rapids, Castor Bean Farms

You know, I believe $BTC and $HIVE may grow soon. Why? There is this saying about max pain in crypto, and I do identify I've already received that maximum. I started blogging on Hive in 2021, and that was when I got involved in crypto for the first time. Roughly in a few months, the whole market started falling. Since then, I've repeated "crypto will recover" so many times that all people I know have concluded that I am a absolute weirdo. 🤡 When I start talking about crypto's future growth, people look at me like at a man who is claiming aliens sending him messages by means of white noise on an old TV.

With such a mood, I am staying in mountain Laos. It is not that much mountainous (rather hilly) but they call it this way. The region is rural with bunches of jungles here and there; its center is a compact roadside town, called Xepon, that earns on trucks plying from Vietnam to plain Laos and Thailand. The highway is the central street here, and the only asphalted road in the whole town.

A couple of dozens of roadside restaurants are present in the town, a few snack stores work even after 20:00 (!), and there are a couple of places with karaoke here with a lonely voice or two shouting Asian hits at night; that's quite lively actually, and even dogs don't attack you here when you're strolling along the highway... Not bad for Laos!

To me, Xepon is also a place to recover from Vietnam's main disaster: aggressive noisy traffic. The town itself is much calmer than streets of Saigon and Da Nang. But there is also a tranquil Banghiang River here with lots of boulders and dragonflies soaring over them...

And that's where I headed recently, on August 18, 2024, with two lenses, a Nikkor 70-300mm and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G.

Not many houses along this road so it's quite peaceful from the point of canine threat. This time, I met a couple of pups on my 1-hour way there and back, that's it.

That's how many rural Laotians live in Xepon surroundings: mat houses covered with metal sheets.

Shiny roof, maybe even not plain metal sheets but something else...

But in the tropics, the idea of ​​the house is different. Some houses of this type can only be a place to sleep for a period of time, for example, for seasonal agricultural workers with their children for weeks or a couple of months while their true mat home is somewhere in a nearby village. Etc.

A family house at a castor bean farm, I saw it a year ago as well, in 2023, always full of people:

Someone even came down to look at a stranger (me):

Descending to the Banghiang river's rapids:

It took an hour and a quarter of energetic walking to reach the place. Having a 1.5kg camera in the hands all the way. As a result, I was dying of heat, and heavily lowered my bottom down a boulder to recover.

I didn't swim although I guess the water is clean here (no big settlements above the place). But I did enjoy the amazing freshness of the river - washed my T-shirt (fully soaked with sweat), washed my head then, wiped my body with the T-shirt... and at last put my feet in the water - heaven! - +25-27C or so in the river.

At last, a local appeared:

Not first fishermen at this river. Always with this kind of net: framed with a heavy metal chain so a fisherman tries to spot fish and throw the net in order to trap it between the net and the river's bottom.

Seeing how the skin color of the locals matches the color of the earth, one cannot help but wonder whether this is a coincidence or an evolutionary predetermined one. Yes, a daring theory.

On my way back to the town:

Goats are another occupation of local residents.

As for plants, they grow a lot of castor oil plants (Ricinus) in Xepon surroundings:

There are so many uses of castor oil:

used in the manufacturing of soaps, lubricants, hydraulic and brake fluids, paints, dyes, coatings, inks, cold-resistant plastics, waxes and polishes, nylon, and perfumes.

These are Ricinus below trees too:

On the way back to the hotel, I could barely drag my feet after 4 hours of walking. That's because of heat and heavy photo equipment.

Returned at 6 something pm. Was happy to shower with cold water and lower myself on the bed.

More stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out my previous posts on my personal Travelfeed or Worldmappin map.

I took these images with a Nikkor 50mm / a Nikkor 70-300mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on August 18, 2024, in Xepon, Laos.